After Donald Trump began to pull together his cabinet and inner circle it became pretty clear that the overwhelming tie that bound the group together was its embrace of Israel and everything that it is doing. There were even jokes that the top cabinet officials had apparently been selected by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel himself to reflect the fact that the Jewish state would be calling the shots for Trump even more than they did with the spineless Joe Biden. The handover of power was confirmed for all to see when Trump invited Netanyahu to the White House, the first foreign head of state to be so sanctified. While in Washington, a grinning Netanyahu was beguiled to learn of a crazy scheme to either kill or throw all the remaining Palestinians out of what was once Palestine and turn the ruins of Gaza into a high-end beach resort. Since that time, Trump has assured a delighted Netanyahu that no Palestinians would be allowed to return to visit what was once the site of their homes and communities.

So okay, those of us who had not yet learned to accept the occasional genocides carried out by Israel on its neighbors are now quickly learning to understand that the enabling role played by Joe Biden in the massacres of the Arabs was about to accelerate to a higher gear, which would include the clearing of the West Bank and incorporation of parts of Lebanon and Syria after the two million or so pesky Gazans are removed. Nevertheless, there were still some surprises to come and I must confess that some developments as well as recent comments made by Trump’s team have been astonishing even if one expected the worst.

Even seasoned Trump-o-philes might have been astonished by an apparently Artificial Intelligence (AI) generated short video prepared for Trump and released on Tuesday on his website Truth Social. It is a brief cartoonish tour of what Gaza might look like when it is transformed into Trump Gaza on the Mediterranean, a luxury beachfront destination, filled with posh sky-scrapers and condominiums, and even featuring bearded bellydancers. The video includes Trump and Netanyahu sunbathing together on the beach, Elon Musk apparently eating hummus, and a fifty feet high golden statue of Donald Trump the Founder located prominently on one of the resort’s main thoroughfares. Small replicas of the golden Trump statue were also seen on a gift shop rack for sale, apparently as souvenirs. Every family should have one to place prominently in its home to protect against Hamas “terrorists.”

Coming close to the Trump video in terms of its bizarreness, is the behavior by Representative Brian Mast from Florida, who heads the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Mast is perhaps best known for the fact that he was an American veteran who volunteered to serve with the Israel Defense Force (IDF) after he was wounded in Afghanistan and discharged. He has appeared in Congressional offices and in meetings in Washington in his Israeli army uniform, which some, including myself, consider to be both disgraceful and even borderline treasonous. Mast has often asserted the value of his Israeli credentials and cited his love for Israel saying “I stand by Israel,” which should be a disqualifier for the office he holds. In his latest stunt last week, Mast informed the fifty Republican staffers on his committee that henceforth they must not refer to the part of Palestine that is generally called the West Bank by that name. The House Committee must henceforth refer to the region as “Judea and Samaria” which is the Israeli preferred “biblical” usage that will no doubt serve as a first step in the annexation of the area into the apartheid Israeli state. Mast elaborated that “in recognition of our unbreakable bond with Israel and the inherent right of the Jewish people to their ancient homeland, the House Foreign Affairs Committee will, from here forward, refer to the West Bank as Judea and Samaria in formal correspondence, communication and documentation.”

While it may seem only symbolic, referring to the West Bank as “Judea and Samaria” is a clear show of support for Israeli annexation. Mike Huckabee, Trump’s nominee to serve as the US ambassador to Israel, also refers to the West Bank using the same language and has said annexation is possible under the new Trump administration. Earlier this month, Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas also reintroduced a bill that would require the use of the term “Judea and Samaria” in all official US documents. Representative Claudia Tenney of New York also introduced the identical legislation in the House and maintained that “the Israeli people have an undeniable and indisputable historical and legal claim over Judea and Samaria.”

Congress and the White House have clearly become Israeli Occupied territory as Pat Buchanan once colorfully described the US government. Another prominent Israeli firster who is showing his true colors is the grotesque Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, who has recently received the resignations of six of his staffers, who complained that all the work that they had been given recently had reflected the Senator’s obsession with supporting Israel. Congressman Tom Massie of Kentucky has declared that every Republican congressman but himself has among their staffs at least one “minder” (he calls them “babysitters”) who is present to monitor and report on how the representative votes in support of Israel. The Israel-first staffer is often an employee of the Lobby, commonly either connected to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) or with the even more virulent Anti-Defamation League (ADL).

After the “cleansing of Gaza” the West Bank will clearly be next. Israel has already announced that the approximate 40,000 West Bank Palestinians who have already been driven from their homes in ongoing operation “Iron Wall” will not be allowed to return and new Jewish settlements are planned for the former Palestinian towns and villages. As in Gaza the Israeli onslaught has involved the destruction of roads, homes, schools, churches, hospitals and other infrastructure, and the killing of civilians, including a pregnant woman and several children.

And there is more, lots more, but some of the developments are more interesting because they are impacting domestically on the United States and on the constitutional liberties and rights that are under siege as the Israel Lobby and Team Trump seek to suppress any criticism of the Jewish state and/or of the illegal activities carried out by its supporters through their corruption of government at all levels in the United States. Another revelation of how the new administration will be targeting any and all supporters of the Palestinians comes from the highly respectable Arab American Institute’s Director James Zogby. Per Zogby, “For those unaware of the situation, here’s what’s happened. In recent days, a tweet from Elon Musk shared hateful and dangerous disinformation about the Arab American Institute and other groups whose missions, though varied, have been either to provide humanitarian assistance to communities in need or to provide educational services and training. Mr. Musk reposted a tweet that listed several organizations that have received government grants in recent years. The list was almost exclusively Arab American or American Muslim organizations and labeled us all ‘terrorist linked organizations.’ Mr. Musk’s retweet, which now has more than 16 million views, refers to ‘terrorist organizations.’”

This systematic ethnic and religious demonization of Israel’s designated enemies is being backed up by legal initiatives to rid the United States of any and all foreign students who deign to protest against the genocide being carried out by Israel. At the end of January, Trump signed an executive order that instructs the leaders of federal agencies to provide recommendations on “all civil and criminal” authorities or actions available to the White House within 60 days.

The order says the report should include details of all court cases involving schools, colleges and universities, which could lead to actions to remove “alien students and staff.” According to an accompanying White House fact sheet, it will “marshal all federal resources” to combat what it describes “the explosion of antisemitism on our campuses and streets” since the October 2023 Hamas attack. Trump’s executive order promises “immediate action” from the Justice Department to “protect law and order, quell pro-Hamas vandalism and intimidation, and investigate and punish anti-Jewish racism in leftist, anti-American colleges and universities. To all the resident aliens who joined in the pro-jihadist protests, we put you on notice: come 2025, we will find you, and we will deport you,” Trump was quoted as saying in the fact sheet. He explained that “I will also quickly cancel the student visas of all Hamas sympathizers on college campuses, which have been infested with radicalism like never before.”

Attorney General Pam Bondi has inevitably taken the lead on the deportation plan. She told Newsmax in an interview that “The thing that’s really the most troubling to me [are] these students in universities in our country, whether they’re here as Americans or if they’re here on student visas, and they’re out there saying ‘I support Hamas.’ Frankly they need to be taken out of our country or the FBI needs to be interviewing them right away.”

And the faux compliments regarding what Israel is doing just keep on coming both from talking heads in Washington and from the Zionist dominated media. My favorite line spewed out regularly by both Democrats and Republicans is some version of the assertion that Israel is somehow a wonderful “democracy that is America’s best friend and closest ally.” Attorney General Pam Bondi went over the top when she called Israel “our greatest ally in the world” in an interview with Fox News. Interestingly, apartheid war criminal Israel is in fact neither a democracy nor a friend nor an ally but when the blind are leading the blind anything might well pop out of one’s mouth, particularly when it is not connected to a functioning brain that actually has a conscience.

Over at the FBI effusive comments also seem to be the general rule with Dan Bongino, the newly appointed Deputy Director of the FBI, when responding to a question about what might be the causes that are dear to his heart, stating, “Israel. Defense of Israel.” His comment reflects a broad commitment within the FBI and Justice Department to prioritize relations with Israel, as echoed by FBI Director Kash Patel, who affirmed that “America will prioritize Israel, and we stand by our number one ally.” Nice one Kash! Is that really your first name or just a pseudonym? Maybe you should be looking into the various internationally binding agreements entered into with the US guaranteeing the arrangements that are being violated by Israel in Lebanon, Syria and Gaza? They are war crimes and Washington is complicit. But I guess you are not interested in that stuff…

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.