October 7, two years on

On the second anniversary of the October 7 attack that kicked off the current round of horrors in Gaza and other parts of the Middle East, I’m posting this recent interview of nearly three hour with Norman Finkelsteiin, who is not only a scholar of the Holocaust but also one of the leading scholars on Gaza itself. (1)

Finkelstein, to put it mildly, is no purveyor of the Israeli hasbara propaganda positions.

Here he describes a long series of events in the history of Israeli’s attacks on Palestine, some of which caused outraged reactions among many people in Europe and the US. And he explains why Israel’s alleged peace plans and negotiating frameworks have to be taken with extreme skepticism. The famous “Oslo framework” that was supposed to lead finally to a two-state solution became actually just an ugly pretense of diplomacy that did nothing but facilitate further Israeli atrocities and illegal annexation of territory.

Finkelstein caused outrage among reflexive supporters of any and all Israeli atrocities against Palestinians (or Syrians, or Lebanese, or Iranians, or Yemenis, or Qataris) in his analysis of October 26, 2023 in which he described Hamas’ October 7 “Al-Aqsa Flood” attack through an analogy with slave revolts in a short essay titled, “Nat Turner in Gaza,” (2) referring to the Nat Turner Rebellion of 1831:

Turner was demonized by Whites after his death, the honorable exception being the White Abolitionists. William Lloyd Garrison, editor of the anti-slavery Liberator, championed moral suasion to win the public over to manumission. Yet, whereas he stated that the “excesses” of Turner’s revolt could not be justified and he was “horror-struck at the late tidings,” Garrison conspicuously did not condemn the slave revolt. Instead, he railed against the hypocrisy of those who sang paeans to the sanguinary struggles for liberty then being fought out in Europe, but who fell deathly silent when it came to the enslaved, lacerated Black population in their midst.

Haaretz columnist Gideon Levy, two years into the current war, also calls attention to the fact that the Palestinians were in a desperate situation two years ago:

The Palestinian issue had completely dropped off the international agenda – another moment of peace with Saudi Arabia and the Palestinians would have become the American Indians of the region – and then the war came and put them at the top of the global agenda. The world loves and feels sorry for them. There is no solace for the residents of Gaza, who have paid an indescribable price – and the world may yet forget them again – but for now they are on top of the world. (3)

In the context, it’s clear that he means there that Palestinians’ dilemma has become a major focus of world attention in a way that it was not before October 7, 2023.

Local Call editor Meron Rapoport recalls:

Not even a week had passed since the Hamas-led attacks of October 7 when Israel’s (somewhat impotent) Intelligence Ministry, led by Gila Gamliel of Netanyahu’s Likud Party, published an official plan calling for the “evacuation” of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents. The army began implementing a policy of destroying entire neighborhoods to prevent the return of the displaced not long after, and this became its primary mode of operation starting with the so-called “Generals’ Plan” in late 2024.

The result is that Rafah and much of Khan Younis in the south along with Beit Hanoun, Beit Lahiya, and now parts of Gaza City in the north no longer exist, having been entirely razed to the ground and their populations squeezed into an area comprising just 13 percent of the Strip’s land. [my emphasis] (4)

Carolina Landsmann also knows that it’s important to keep in mind the longer-term dynamics that led up to October 7, which is not at all the same as condoning atrocities and violations of the laws of war:

There is no disputing the fact that October 7 was the fruit of Netanyahu's rotten policy. Why was it rotten? Because it lacked any shred of goodwill. Netanyahu maliciously encouraged Palestinian society to be driven to extremes in order to sabotage the future. There is a well-known parable that a strong society is one in which its elderly citizens plant trees knowing that they will not get to sit under their shade.

Netanyahu not only failed to plant a single tree, but also poisoned the soil so that even the elderly of the future will not be able to plant any trees in it.

Even if we assume, a baseless assumption in my view, that the present generation of Palestinians does not want peace, the role of a healthy leadership is to nurture such a possibility. When Israel declared that there was no partner, did it wish that one would eventually arise or did it just want to prove that there wasn't one? It didn't foster a leadership that could become a partner, but eliminated anyone with the potential for being one. (5)

She ties this to Netanyahu’s and Israel’s very cynical policy “of strengthening Hamas and weakening the Palestinian Authority, a policy designed to prevent any chance of a future agreement, even at the expense of warping our society and bolstering terrorism.” This was part of a larger Western approach to promote Islamist political groups like the jihadists in Afghanistan in order to pit them against leftwing parties and governments in Islamic countries that might be sympathetic to the Soviet Union’s foreign policies. A policy which survived the Soviet Union itself.

Omer Bartov in these two interviews from this year talk about how Israel’s actions subsequent actions since October 7 of 2023 constitute genocide, one that is ongoing. Democracy Now!: (6)

Middle East Eye: (7)

Notes:

(1) Gaza’s obliteration has been paved by US-Israeli peace proposals - Norman Finkelstein. Middle East Eye YouTube channel 10/03/2025. <https://youtu.be/wkraKVOAqOk?si=bEt4t6MJ3kAkxGlS> (Accessed: 2025-04-10).

(2) Norman G. Finkelstein (Accessed: 2025-04-10). See also: THE SLAVE REVOLT IN GAZA, and Bernie Sanders. Norman Finkelstein Substack 10/12/2023. <https://normanfinkelstein.substack.com/p/the-slave-revolt-in-gaza-and-bernie> (Accessed: 2025-04-10).

(3) Levy, Gideon (2025): Do Cry Over Spilt Blood: Generations Will Go by Before Gaza Forgets the Genocide. Haaretz 10/05/2025. Full link: <https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2025-10-05/ty-article-opinion/.premium/do-cry-over-spilt-blood-generations-will-go-by-before-gaza-forgets-the-genocide/00000199-afd4-d5a6-afff-efdff5560000?gift=932c6ccd1b264ac9b8f7d70c7bfbf12e> (Accessed: 2025-05-10).

(4) Rapoport, Meron (2025): The Israeli right’s ‘time of miracles’ is over. The Palestinians are going nowhere. +972 Magazine 10/02/2025. <https://www.972mag.com/trump-20-point-plan-israeli-right-expulsion/> (Accessed: 2025-04-10).

(5) Landsmann, Carolina (2025): The Truth Trump Must Finally Acknowledge: Nothing About Netanyahu Is in Good Faith. Haaretz 10/03/025. Full link: <https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2025-10-03/ty-article-opinion/.premium/the-truth-trump-must-finally-acknowledge-nothing-about-netanyahu-is-in-good-faith/00000199-a656-dc12-a5df-bf5f8d790000?gift=fbf0ef6b69444f84bfc534388e8ab8ec> (Accessed: 2025-04-10).

(6) I'm a Genocide Scholar. I Know It When I See It": Prof Omer Bartov on the Growing Consensus on Gaza. Democracy Now! YouTube channel 07/17/2025. <https://youtu.be/QfmW0AQWV5E?si=JnnKmNZBG5NCk0pS> (Accessed: 2025-04-10).

(7) Holocaust scholar Omer Bartov: Israel’s campaign in Gaza is genocidal. Middle East Eye YouTube channel 08/20/2025. <https://youtu.be/S_R2zk3BSnA?si=1Nuw4aWP-9QxfbAt> (Accessed: 2025-04-10).

How is Peace President Trump’s plan for Gaza going this week?

Zeteo presents a skeptical, critical take on the “Trump plan” for Gaza and for supposedly ending the genocide, featuring the Palestinian attorney Diana Buttu: (1)

Former Israeli diplomat and negotiator Daniel Levy recently described how badly lacking the “Trump plan” is to achieve positive results – other than those desired by the most hardline Israelis. (2)

The Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politik is a leading German journal on politics and international affairs. It’s editorial perspective tends to be left-leaning. But they also feature article by authors that can scarcely be considered left.

Their current (October) issue includes three essays on the Israel-Gaza conflict and the genocide. (3)

Anti-Zionism and antisemitism

Eva Illouz mainly polemicizes against left critics of Israel, repeating various Israeli hasbara (public information/propaganda) tropes along the way. She is particularly scornful of anyone who doesn’t equate anti-Zionism with antisemitism. And, as usual in this particular vein of polemics, she treats criticism of Israel as criticism of Zionism which then is tagged as antisemitism. But, of course, this is a very problematic position conceptually, since many secular and religious Jews have been and are critical of Zionism, especially in its more toxic, narrow-nationalistic forms of which Netanyahu’s government represents by far the worst and most toxic manifestation to date.

It also has distorted the figures cited for antisemitic incidents reported in the US and Europe, because it’s now more of a challenge to distinguish between incidents of the I-hate-Jews variety and those of the Israel-should-stop-starving-Palestinians type. She recently wrote in Haaretz:

When [a Jewish intellectual] turns her head left, she cannot fail to register the spectacular comeback of antisemitism from within the liberal belly of Western democratic societies. This is palpable through the stunning increase of hate crimes against Jews everywhere in Western Europe and in the United States, through widespread public obsession with Israel and its actions, through the demonization of Zionism as a uniquely criminal ideology and through a boycott of Israelis reminiscent of the stigmatization and ghettoization of Jews of yore.

All of this wrapped in the claim that antisemitism doesn't exist, that it is a manipulative argument used by Jews or even better, that it is an understandable reaction to Israel's own actions. After October 7, the Jewish intellectual has been forced to sober up and recognize that antisemitism as an irrational force driving human affairs comes from within the ranks of its seemingly most democratic activists. (4)

But Illouz also comments caustically that the Netanyahu government has been undermining “its judicial – and thus democratic – safeguards.” And warns that “Friends of Israel must not avert their eyes from the nature of the government in Jerusalem, its misbegotten priorities, its incompetence and its no longer justifiable Gaza war.”

Of course, we don’t have to look much further than American Christian Zionists like US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee or the enthusiastically “pro-Israel” Christian United for Israel (CUFI) group to see that they can be very antisemitic in their attitudes. The AfD party in Germany and the FPÖ in Austria, both parties that push the envelope on how close they can come to Nazi positions without violating anti-Nazi laws, claim to be enthusiastically pro-Israel. The formula there is along the lines of: We hate Muslims and Muslims hate Jews and Israel kills a lot of them, so we love Israel and so we can’t possibly be antisemitic! (A related schtick is: We hate Muslims, and Muslims hate women, so we can’t possibly be woman-haters!)

Also, I’m having a hard time recalling any “left” argument literally claiming “that antisemitism doesn't exist.” Although I’m sure there must be some instance of it somewhere.

Indictment of Netanyahu’s conduct of the war and German complicity

Wolfgang Kraushaar, author of a 2024 book, Israel: Hamas-Gaza-Palästina, that includes the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack, is an authority on the recent history of the left in Germany, including editing a three-volume study on the Frankfurt School and the student movement. His Blätter contribution offers 16 theses about the “Gaza war.” He criticizes the German government belated response to Israel’s war that quickly took on genocidal dimensions.

He argues that Netanyahu’s government from the start of the current war declared two inherently contradictory goals: getting the Israeli hostages back and eliminating Hamas. He describes Hamas as an “Islamic murder gang” that nevertheless was no threat to the existence of the State of Israel as such. He writes, “The aggressiveness, even the hatred, with which Israel sought to discredit UNWRA, [the UN agency in charge of provides provisions to the Palestinian refugees for decades] and with which it increasingly fought it is unparalleled.”

And he goes on to criticize the contempt for human rights demonstrated by the Netanyahu government, the extreme nationalistic goals it has pursued in line with the hardline Israeli fundamentalists, and its assassination policy, including the infamous “Where’s Daddy?” AI-driven program. He argues that “AI-based warfare as such inherently has a tendency toward war crimes.” He also calls out Netanyahu’s notorious support for Hamas as a force to undermine the Palestinian Authority in Gaza as well as his dangerous underestimation of Hamas’ capabilities leading up to October 7. In his 16th thesis, he argues: ”Whoever wants to change the situation will have to consider how the Israeli war machine can be stopped, which has recently once again put the [ethnic] cleansing of Gaza into full swing.”

The Trump 2.0 world order

Seyla Benhabib emphasizes three major contributing factors to the current situation. One is Trump’s rouge foreign policy including his notorious military threats and his policy of threatening “the unabashed annexation of territories” like those of Canada and Denmark. Another is that the decline of the pre-2025 so-called rules-based international order and Trump famous deal-making is a retreat to a greater reliance on bilateral agreements and less on multilateral ones, accompanied by a declining emphasis on international law. And she also cites the rise of “autocratic and sovereigntist” governments which have a goal of freeing themselves from the constraints of international law.

Benhabib does use the term “genocide” to describe Israel’s war on Gaza’s Palestinians. Eva Illouz, not surprisingly, does not. Nor does Kraushaar, arguing cautiously that proof of intent on the part of the Israeli leaders is not clearly established. Genocide scholars like Omer Bartov have noted, however, establishing intent based even on the public statements of Netanyahu and other political and military leaders seems unusually clear compared to other adjudicated cases of genocide. The UN Genocide Convention includes intent as being a necessary element of the crime of genocide. And that is typically the most difficult element to establish legally.

In his 2024 book, he goes into more detail on the consideration of evaluating whether the Gaza crimes rise to the genocide level, though he notes that the Israeli historian Raz Segel called the ISF (formerly IDF) actions “a textbook example of a genocide.” It clear that Kraushaar treats the issue carefully and regard it as a serious matter. Including describing how seriously the International Court of Justice (ICJ) took the charges brought by South African against Israel in this case.

Kraushaar in Blätter also makes a relevant criticism of the concept enunc:ated by Angela Merkel that the security of Israel is part of Germany’s “reason of state,” which the current Chancellor Friedrich Merz has reaffirmed.

It was not a good idea to elevate the protection of the state of Israel to a Reason of State [Staatsräson] of the Federal Republic. If only because this promise was hollow from the beginning. And no one could assume that it would also include some kind of obligation for military assistance [of Germany to Israel] in an emergency.

Reason of State is a term from the arsenal of an authoritarian state. [That is, it’s a justification for the government to take actions it has no legal authority to take.] It is anything but a coincidence that it does not appear in the Basic Law [the German Constitution]. It simply does not fit in with a democratic state based on the rule of law. Now, however, it has taken on the function that Germany's Israel policy has literally buried itself in it. [Former Chancellor Olaf] Scholz, whose foreign policy has always been characterized by ducking away, had literally crumbled after October 7. By immediately invoking the reason of state, he went into hiding – no matter what might happen. That was convenient, but in the long run it became more and more untenable.

In his 2024 book, he explains that Merkel’s original Staatsräson declaration in 2008 was clearly in the context of Germany’s commitment to a two-state solution for Israel-Palestine. Even so, it was an extravagant and ill-advised declaration. The conservative German President (head of state) Joachim Gauck in 2012 at an official dinner on a state visit to Israel that the Staatsräson declaration could bring “enormous difficulties” to a German Chancellor. In the book, Kraushaar expounds at some length on what a problematic statement it was on Angela Merkel’s part.

Notes:

(1) Invaders Behind the Iraq War Are Now After Gaza. Zeteo YouTube channel 10/05/2025. <https://youtu.be/2NsgTnqYG_o?si=Vq9N2_a3opSMivwQ> (Accessed: 2025-05-10).

(2) Levy, Daniel (2025): Interpreting the Trump (Netanyahu) Gaza plan; reactions to it and what next. Daniel Levy Substack 10/03/2025. <https://open.substack.com/pub/daniellevy2/p/interpreting-the-trump-netanyahu?r=n5yv&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web> (Accessed: 2025-06-10).

(3) Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politik 10:2025. Benhabib, Seyla: Gaza und die Ära der Straflosigkeit; Illouz, Eva: Israel in der dekolonialen Matrix; and, Kraushaar, Wolfgang: Eine mörderische Sackgasse. Translations to English are mine.

(4) Illouz, Eva (2025): We Cannot Choose Between the Fight Against Antisemitism and Condemning Israel for Gaza. Haaretz 08/08/2025. Full link: <https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2025-08-08/ty-article-opinion/.premium/we-cannot-choose-between-the-fight-against-antisemitism-and-condemning-israel-for-gaza/00000198-7407-de53-a3f9-765f7a380000?gift=83f26410010c42368d5e8efe88c7f6a7> (Accessed: 2025-05-10).

How much hope can we put in the precarious Gaza settlement currently being finalized?

Gideon Levy, not one to be lightly optimistic about Israel’s handling of conflicts with the Palestinians, and certainly not one to imagine that Benjamin Netanyahu is or ever will be the creator of a just peace, allows himself a moment of optimism about the possibility of the latest cease-fire negotiations and the deal being sponsored by the Trump regime:

It is not a peace agreement between Israel and Gaza, which would, of course, have been much better, but rather an agreement that the United States forced on Israel. However, it has long been clear that only an imposed agreement can bring Israel to make a change. Here it is. A sign of hope for the continuation of coercive U.S. policies, without which nothing will move.

Tens of thousands of lives were saved this weekend. The fear, hunger, illnesses, suffering and hardship of over two million people may gradually come to an end. On Sunday, they will at least have their first night of sleep without the threat of bombardment over their exposed heads. Hundreds more people will have their freedom returned to them: the 20 living Israeli hostages, the 250 Palestinian prisoners serving life sentences in Israel and the 1,800 Gaza residents, most of whom are innocent, who are detained in Israel. [my emphasis] (1)

Levy has also been blunt about the level of callousness shown repeatedly in polls on the part of a big majority of the Israeli population toward the genocide their country is committing in Gaza. In this moment in which he is allowing himself to look on the difficult-to-see hopeful side of the latest diplomatic dance between the US and Israel, he writes:

This moment should be seized to change the mood in Israel: It is time for Israelis to open their eyes and see their handiwork. Perhaps there's no point crying over spilt milk, but spilt blood is different. It is time to open the Gaza Strip to the media and tell the Israelis: See, this is what we have done. It is time to learn that relying solely on military force leads to devastation. It is time to understand that in the West Bank, we are creating another Gaza. And it is time to look straight ahead and say: We have sinned, we have acted wickedly, we have transgressed. [my emphasis]

And the situation at the moment continues to be grisly and grim. From Friday:

Hamas agreed to release all Israeli captives held in Gaza on Friday, after what it described as "in-depth consultations" with leadership ranks, Palestinian factions and mediators. ….

"In this context, the movement affirms its readiness to immediately enter into negotiations through the mediators to discuss the details of this. The movement also renews its agreement to hand over the administration of the Gaza Strip to a Palestinian body of independents (technocrats), based on Palestinian national consensus and Arab and Islamic support," the group added. …

Hamas did not state that it agreed to the full 20-point plan as presented, and has, over the past week, repeatedly said that it needed to negotiate a number of points further.

Key among them is the demand for a demilitarised Gaza.

Hamas official Mousa Abu Marzouk told Al Jazeera that the group would not disarm before the Israeli occupation ends. [my emphasis] (2)

Foreign policy analysts tend to try to look for positive and constructive possibilities in situations like that of the current peace plan. If there is any reasonable chance it will lead to an improved situation, they are reluctant to dismiss it completely. But, especially in cases like the current one, the risk is that everything will go south, and possibly quickly.

Delaney Soliday takes such a position:

This Monday, President Donald Trump unveiled a 20-point plan to end the war in the Gaza Strip. The plan addresses many key issues perpetuating the current conflict between Israel and Hamas, but it may be too ambitious for its own good. A successful post-war plan for Gaza must prioritize crisis management, security, and interim governance before addressing longer-term challenges, such as economic recovery and reconstruction.

Negotiators should first focus their efforts on securing a deal that ends the war in Gaza, ensures a coordinated Israeli withdrawal from the enclave, sets up an interim governing body, and addresses the immediate humanitarian needs of Gazan civilians. While any plan for post-war Gaza is better than no plan at all, negotiations must prioritize policies that can first “stem the bleeding” before looking to longer-term initiatives like investment and real estate development. [my emphasis] (3)

He also discusses several obvious features of the plan that could fall through, e.g., “Trump’s plan also fails to mention a role for Palestinians on [the proposed] oversight board [for Gaza to be headed by Donald Trump and Tony Blair], nor does it address Gaza’s reunification with the West Bank.”

And there is still Netanyahu’s decades-long effort to have war with Iran in which the US would be drawn into a regime-change war which would (in his hopes) drastically weaken Iran or even turn it into a failed state.

Jasim Al-Azzawi assesses some of the major risk factors in such a scenario in the current situation. One factor that became obvious during Israel’s “12-day war” with Iran this year is that Iran now has hypersonic missiles that dramatically increase their ability to do damage to Israel:

“The hypersonic threat remakes the math entirely,” said Dr Tal Kalisky, a missile defence expert from Israel. Even as he highlighted that Israel had successfully shot down more than 95 per cent of ordinary missiles, he acknowledged the unprecedented challenge posed by missiles descending from beyond the atmosphere at speeds a decade faster than the speed of sound, splitting their warheads in flight.

Only Arrow 3 and David’s Sling [Israeli defensive systems] are capable of mid-air adjustment to pursue such threats, and both are dependent upon interceptor reserves that dipped perilously low during June’s action. An early-July Israeli Defence Ministry evaluation reported a general success rate of 86 per cent against ballistic missiles in the conflict. But here lies the key question: What if Iran fires not 400 missiles over 12 days, but 400 missiles in 24 hours? … [my emphasis] (4)

And he points out how Netanyahu’s reckless assassination policies raise the stakes considerably a war with Iran:

Israel’s June campaign introduced a dangerous new variable that will make any future war that much more unstable: deliberate targeting of Iranian leadership. The campaign, which assassinated senior military, political, and at least nine nuclear scientists, has not gone unnoticed by Tehran’s ruling elite.

Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian publicly admitted to being on Israel’s hit list, yet secretly assured advisors that any attempt on top leaders’ lives would be met with a region-shaking military response. Iran’s leadership succession crisis only increases the stakes. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 85, has signaled three possible successors but has not directly appointed any. Israeli intelligence officials believe that such a power vacuum would either radicalise or moderate Tehran’s response, depending on the individuals who ultimately come to power. Decapitation tactics cut both ways. Israel showed that it can reach deep into Iran’s command hierarchy. However, that capability may actually accelerate rather than decelerate conflict if Tehran’s leadership concludes that it needs to act before it becomes a target itself. [my emphasis]

This recent 1 1/2 hour presentation by Ilan Pappé gives important general background on the Israel-Palestine conflict (although the last half is a question period, which drags a bit): (5)

Notes:

(1) Levy, Gideon (2025): Do Cry Over Spilt Blood: Generations Will Go by Before Gaza Forgets the Genocide. Haaretz 10/05/2025. Full link: <https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2025-10-05/ty-article-opinion/.premium/do-cry-over-spilt-blood-generations-will-go-by-before-gaza-forgets-the-genocide/00000199-afd4-d5a6-afff-efdff5560000?gift=932c6ccd1b264ac9b8f7d70c7bfbf12e> (Accessed: 2025-05-10).

(2) El-Sabawi, Yasmine (2025): Hamas agrees to release Israeli captives but rejects foreign governorship of Gaza Middle East Eye 10/03/2025. <https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/hamas-agrees-release-all-israeli-captives-dead-or-alive> (Accessed: 2025-05-10).

(3) Soliday, Delaney (2025): Donald Trump’s Gaza Plan Skips Step One. The National Interest 10/03/2025. <https://nationalinterest.org/blog/middle-east-watch/donald-trumps-gaza-plan-skips-step-one> (Accessed: 2025-05-10).

(4) Al-Azzawi, Jasim (2025): Round two: Why the next Israel-Iran War will shatter the Middle East. Middle East Monitor 10/04/2025. <https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20251004-round-two-why-the-next-israel-iran-war-will-shatter-the-middle-east/> (Accessed: 2025-05-10).

(5) Ilan Pappé on the Israel-Palestine Crisis. Science4Peace YouTube channel 10/01/2025. <https://youtu.be/fvb2mZAyooY?si=AedRR70MvTm48Dva> (Accessed: 2025-05-10).

Trumpism and “respectable callousness“

Dominic Preziosi, editor of Commonweal (an independent lay Catholic publication), had some thoughts during the days that the Republican Party celebrated white supremacist, Charlie Kirk, as a martyr to the cause of the White Man. Preziosi wrote:

Washington Examiner’s Peter Tonguette recently wrote that Donald Trump’s “greatest sin may be in mainstreaming the idea that offensiveness is a sustainable posture in public life.” That may not be his greatest sin—the list is long—but there’s no denying Trump’s singular role in the debasement of our discourse. He lays down an ever-lengthening trail of cruel, vulgar, racist, and hostile statements, many of which are also lies. [my emphasis] (1)

Preziosi gives a good description of the current US version of what sociologists and commentators in German call “röhe Bürgerlichkeit” (respectable callousness).

Their debasement of language is of a piece with their debasement of government, civil society, and the truth. Mike Lee, Republican senator of Utah, joked on social media about the shooting of two Minnesota legislators and their spouses in their homes. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has referred to migrants as “dirt bags,” and J. D. Vance to Chinese laborers as “peasants.” And then there are the president’s own offhand insults, which have become so routine that we hardly even notice anymore. Washington Examiner’s Peter Tonguette recently wrote that Donald Trump’s “greatest sin may be in mainstreaming the idea that offensiveness is a sustainable posture in public life.” That may not be his greatest sin—the list is long—but there’s no denying Trump’s singular role in the debasement of our discourse. He lays down an ever-lengthening trail of cruel, vulgar, racist, and hostile statements, many of which are also lies. If many Americans have become desensitized after a decade of mucking through this verbal effluence, that just underscores the harm that has been done. As Peter Wehner wrote in The Atlantic, Trump’s mode of communication “has reshaped the emotional wiring of many otherwise good and decent people.” [my emphasis]

The cruelty is the point, in other words. The ICE raid in Chicago Tuesday on an apartment building was a straight-up act of government terror. We’ve gotten used to thinking of acts of terror as being done by non-state actors like revolutionaries or demented assassins. But the program of repression during the French Revolution was called the Reign of Terror, or simply the Terror, and American politicians still use it to characterize repressive governments of which they disapprove. Governments of which we approve practicing terror against their own people is, of course, something completely different. But terror can be government. In Chicago:

Dan Jones was jolted awake around 1 a.m. Tuesday to the sound of federal agents trying to break through his apartment door. They couldn’t get past his double lock, so he went back to bed.

But when he woke up hours later for work, he walked out and found broken doors littering the hallway — and his neighbors missing. …

The Department of Homeland Security said federal agents with Border Patrol, the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives arrested 37 people in the raid. DHS said some of those arrested “are believed to be involved in drug trafficking and distribution, weapons crimes and immigration violators.”

The feds also claimed the South Shore neighborhood was “a location known to be frequented by Tren de Aragua members and their associates,” but DHS gave no evidence to support the assertion, and authorities did not confirm that any of the people arrested were members of the Venezuelan gang.

Alleged Tren de Aragua members have been charged and detained in the city as recently as August. But the Chicago Sun-Times has found little evidence tying them to violence in Chicago. [my emphasis] (2)

This is part of the strategy that Trump articulated – although Trump is hardly “articulate” at all these days – to US generals and admirals this week when he told them to prepare to fight the Enemy Within, i.e., the American people. It was a call for civil war against Democratic-majority cities and states. It is a ham-handed but systematic and conscious effort to accustom members of the Trump cult to accept civil war against their fellow Americans.

It's also notable that the Trump regime here was using xenophobia and concocted claims of foreign gang affiliation to justify what was clearly an act of racial and xenophobic terror. The Nationalist International in many countries including those in the EU is making xenophobia a key element to establish authoritarian rule, while supposed pro-democracy parties like the British Labour policy deliberately inflame xenophobia in the same terms as the far right parties.

As Preziosi wrote in September:

[St. Charlie] Kirk’s “invitation” to debate - “prove me wrong” - emphasized the crush-your-opponent mode of interaction he favored, not an openness to exploring contentious issues honestly. He didn’t elevate the discourse; he degraded it. He leaves a damning record of smears against Black women, immigrants, Muslims, and transgender people, among others. He made fun of the attempted murder of Paul Pelosi and demanded capital punishment for Joe Biden. He wanted executions to be televised and said that children should be forced to watch “as initiation.” His standing as an exemplar of Christian values only demonstrates how successfully his movement has distorted Christianity to suit an authoritarian, ethno-nationalist worldview. Whipping up hate against transgender people doesn’t make you “pro-family,” it just shows you hate transgender people. Asserting that the right to bear arms is worth the many gun deaths this country suffers every year doesn’t evince belief in the sanctity of life; it reeks of the culture of death. [my emphasis]

This is the culture the Trump cult is promoting and attempting to impose by illegal force.

From 2024: (3)



The overt and explicit support of Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza by Donald Trump’s government – but also by Joe Biden’s – is also a major factor contributing to the domestic promotion respectable callousness. Criminal conduct by the government in foreign policy can never be fully separated from such criminal conduct by the government at home.

The critical theorist Seyla Benhabib recently argued that “international support for the Gaza genocide is very much part of “the rise of an autocratic and sovereigntist Internationale whose goal is to once again free state sovereignty completely from the constraints of international law and to transform it into a claim of impunity for state actions.” (4)

Notes:

(1) Preziosi, Dominic (2025): American Babel: Charlie Kirk and the corruption of political language. Commonweal 09/17/2025. <https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/preziosi-kirk-charlie-assassination-trump-maga-language> (Accessed; 2025-03-10),

(2) Hernandez, Cindy (2025): Massive immigration raid on Chicago apartment building leaves residents reeling: 'I feel defeated'. Chicago Sun-Times/WBEZ Chicago 10/02/2025. <https://www.wbez.org/immigration/2025/10/01/massive-immigration-raid-on-chicago-apartment-building-leaves-residents-reeling-i-feel-defeated> (Accessed; 2025-03-10).

(3) From ‘Bloodbath’ to ‘Vermin:’ Analyzing Trump’s Rhetorical Tactics. Wall Street Journal YouTube channel 05/02/2025. (Accessed; 2025-03-10).

(3) From ‘Bloodbath’ to ‘Vermin:’ Analyzing Trump’s Rhetorical Tactics. Wall Street Journal YouTube channel 05/02/2025. <https://youtu.be/QCtdF3HwVrI?si=LJSYMxW7fEQJ47u1> (Accessed; 2025-03-10).

(4) Benhabib, Seyla (2025): Gaza und die Ära der Straflosigkeit. Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politik 10:2025, 51-52. My translation to English.

Henry Kissinger on Ukraine, Russia, and the West: 2014

Henry Kissinger is one of my least favorite people of all time. But he was also a talented diplomat. And, as Spencer Ackerman wrote in an obituary for him, “It’s always valuable to hear the reverent tones with which American elites speak of their monsters.” (1)

I always try, when referring to something useful that Kissinger said or did, to avoid “reverent tones.”

But he did an article still worth reading in 2014 just after Russia had seized Crimea from Ukraine. He wrote, “To treat Ukraine as part of an East-West confrontation would scuttle for decades any prospect to bring Russia and the West — especially Russia and Europe — into a cooperative international system.” (2)

Kissinger complained that both the US and Russia had been blundering in their meddling in internal Ukrainian politics. Kissinger had considerable expense in meddling with other countries’ internal politics. (Just ask Salvador Allende.) He seems to put more emphasis on the concept of a Russian-speaking eastern Ukraine and a Ukrainian-speaking west that analysts today seem to do. Even though the pre-2014 elections did divide over how pro-Russia Ukraine should be, the voting patterns didn’t so heavy concentrations of either camp.

Speaking in realist mode, Kissinger wrote:

Putin should come to realize that, whatever his grievances, a policy of military impositions would produce another Cold War. For its part, the United States needs to avoid treating Russia as an aberrant to be patiently taught rules of conduct established by Washington. Putin is a serious strategist — on the premises of Russian history. Understanding U.S. values and psychology are not his strong suits. Nor has understanding Russian history and psychology been a strong point of U.S. policymakers. [my emphasis]

Kissinger made four specific points he called “principles, not prescriptions.”

1. Ukraine should have the right to choose freely its economic and political associations, including with Europe.

2. Ukraine should not join NATO, a position I took seven years ago, when it last came up.

3. Ukraine should be free to create any government compatible with the expressed will of its people. Wise Ukrainian leaders would then opt for a policy of reconciliation between the various parts of their country. Internationally, they should pursue a posture comparable to that of Finland. That nation leaves no doubt about its fierce independence and cooperates with the West in most fields but carefully avoids institutional hostility toward Russia.

4. It is incompatible with the rules of the existing world order for Russia to annex Crimea. But it should be possible to put Crimea’s relationship to Ukraine on a less fraught basis. To that end, Russia would recognize Ukraine’s sovereignty over Crimea. Ukraine should reinforce Crimea’s autonomy in elections held in the presence of international observers. The process would include removing any ambiguities about the status of the Black Sea Fleet at Sevastopol. [my emphasis]

With Joe Biden as his influential Vice President and the hawkish Hillary Clinton as his Secretary of State, Obama tended toward a hawkish, confrontational policy with Russia. That was largely continued under John Kerry, which became Secretary at the beginning of February, 2014. Victoria Nuland as Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs 2013-2017 also showed a lot of enthusiasm for regime change in Ukraine. She famously referred to pressures from the EU for restraint in pursuing a policy that would escalate tensions with Russia with her most famous remark, “f*** the EU.”

A little more attention by the Obama Administration to grumpy, pragmatic “realists” might have increased the chances for a less negative outcome for Ukraine.

Notes:

(1) See: Ackerman, Spencer (2023): Henry Kissinger, War Criminal Beloved by America‘s Ruling Class, Finally Dies. Rolling Stone 11/29/2023. <https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/henry-kissinger-war-criminal-dead-1234804748/> (Accessed: 2025-26-09).

(2) Kissinger, Henry (2014): How the Ukraine Crisis Ends. Washington Post 03/06/2014. <https://www.henryakissinger.com/articles/how-the-ukraine-crisis-ends/> (Accessed: 2025-26-09).

From Israel’s Gaza withdrawal in 2005 to the Gaza genocide of today

Most of the press reporting on the proposal offered by Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu will be treated for at least a few days, maybe a few weeks, as a hopeful moment, until the mostly likely outcome becomes too obvious to avoid: that this ceasefire deal is just another momentary diversion from the Israeli’s ethnic cleansing and genocide of Gaza’s Palestinians.

Ryan Grim and Jeremy Scahill in this hour-long report describes the context and many of the major provisions of the plan. (1) The best that can be said about it at this point is that it doesn’t completely eliminate the possibility that it would lead to some kind of improvement in the current situation, i.e., that it’s something more than a PR diversion from the continuation of the genocide and ethnic cleansing that Israel is performing with full support from the US and the warmongering Trump Administration.



Former Israeli peace negotiator Daniel Levy explains the process that occurred in 2005 which appeared to many at the time to be a hopeful sign, the Israeli governments removal of the illegal Israeli settlements in Gaza, actually wound up being a framework that contributed to today’s disaster.

In other words, October 7 was seen as an opportunity to resolve the demographic question not by severing Gaza from the rest of Palestine, but by annihilating and expelling its population, before resettling the territory. We can only begin to grasp the scale of those killed and maimed, often with life-altering injuries; Gaza is now home to the highest number of child amputees anywhere in the world. And beyond the human toll, Gaza is being physically rendered to dust. These losses are transformative on a national scale, and fundamentally affect any consideration of a future for Palestine and Palestinians. (2)

Hardline Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who was considered a war hero by Israelis, took that action which was widely perceived as at least a step toward a stable peace process. After all, it was removing illegal Israeli settlements, putting Sharon’s government at odds with the hardline rightwingers in the settler movement.

But Sharon’s primary concern with that move was to shift the Israeli government’s focus to expanding illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank. One of Sharon’s notable accomplishments had been inciting what became known as the Second Intifada (2000-2005), also known as the Al-Aqsa-Intifada. As Jimmy Carter described it:

In September 2000, with Prime Minister Barak's reluctant approval, Ariel Sharon and an escort of several hundred policemen went to the Temple Mount complex, site of the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque, where he declared that the Islamic holy site would remain under permanent Israeli control. The former military leader was accused by many Israelis of purposely inflaming emotions to provoke a furious response and obstruct any potential success of ongoing peace talks. Combining their reaction to this event with their frustration over Israel's failure to implement the Oslo Agreement, the Palestinians responded with a · further outbreak of violence, which was to be known as the second intifada. [my emphasis] (3)

Sharon was particularly focused on promoting illegal settlements in the West Bank to make any possibility of the West Bank being part of an independent Palestinian state. He and other Israeli governments have succeeded in that goal, even though the failed “Oslo process” was based on the idea of an eventual two-state solution with an independent Palestine. As a practical matter, an actual peace settlement would have to be based on what Netanyahu calls Eretz Israel, the area also known as “from the river to the sea.” In other words, it would have to be a single state incorporating present-day Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza. (There are also related considerations around the areas of Syria that Israel has illegally occupied, including the Golan Heights.)

Kenneth Stein in 2024 paid Carter what sounds like a compliment, though he very much meant it as a criticism:

By convening a global group of senior statespeople in 2007 that came to be known as “The Elders,” [Carter] created another megaphone with which to regularly chastise Israel and speak out on a dozen other matters. He clobbered Israel and its leaders repeatedly with unbridled criticism for settlement building, human rights violations, and the fraught relationship with Palestinians living in the West Bank, Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip. More than any Middle Eastern leader or public figure anywhere, he spoke out perennially in favor of the creation of a Palestinian state and blamed the Israelis for not promoting Palestinian self-determination. [my emphasis] (4)

Levy describes the coldly cynical side of Sharon’s 2005 disengagement plan:

To understand the legacy of Israel’s Gaza disengagement, a useful starting point is to recall how Ariel Sharon himself defined the intentions behind the move in 2005. While ignored by his right-wing critics, Sharon explicitly stated that the unilateral withdrawal was conceived to offset pressure for a deeper pullback in the more biblically and strategically salient parts of the West Bank that Israel occupied.

Sharon’s vision for the Palestinians was one of permanent subjugation without political rights, modeled on the Bantustans of apartheid South Africa, which he had been impressed by during a visit in the early 1980s. “The disengagement plan is the freezing of the peace process,” Sharon’s chief of staff Dov Weissglass famously commented. “You prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state and you prevent a discussion on the refugees, the borders, and Jerusalem. Disengagement supplies the amount of formaldehyde that is necessary so there will not be a political process with the Palestinians.” [my emphasis]

And in Levy’s view, liberal Zionists in Israel used the occasion to effectively drop their commitment to a meaningful long-term peace process:

Indeed, the response of the so-called liberal Zionist camp sounds rather familiar: instead of building on the disengagement to push for a wider peace with the Palestinians, they emphasized the need to reunify Jewish-Israeli ranks. The era of tzav piyus (a call for internal Jewish-Israeli reconciliation) was ushered in, Palestinians be damned. This revealed the depth of the settler-colonial mindset that traversed most of the Zionist camp, where liberal politicians serially failed to question continued Israeli settlement and Palestinian displacement in the West Bank as a matter of principle, only objecting to issues of location and degree.

Perhaps it is a mistake to impute an excess of strategic brilliance, foresight, and patience to the settler movement. Nevertheless, in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. In this instance, the national-religious settler class at least had a coherent ideology and a long-term strategy to back it up; liberal Zionists apparently had neither. [my emphasis]

Notes:

(1) Breaking Down Trump’s 20-Point Gaza Proposal. Drop Site News YouTube channel 09/30/2025. <https://www.youtube.com/live/vthE7EgUIcI?si=j2tO4quS0V-aaDPY> (Accessed: 2025-30-09).

(2) Levy, Daniel (2025): How Israel’s Gaza ‘disengagement’ planted the seeds of today’s genocide. +972 Magazine 09/10/2025. <https://www.972mag.com/israel-gaza-disengagement-2005-genocide/> (Accessed: 2025-29-09).

(3) Carter, Jimmy (2006): Palestine: Peace, Not Apartheid, 149-150. New York: Simon & Schuster.

(4) Stein, Kenneth (2024): Jimmy Carter’s Middle East Legacies. Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs 18:2, 206. <https://doi.org/10.1080/23739770.2024.2386757>

Tony Blair: From warmongering Labour leader to colonial viceroy of Gaza?

The BBC reports, “Former UK Prime Minister Sir Tony Blair has been involved in discussions about leading a post-war transitional authority in Gaza, the BBC understands.” (1)

It’s really pitiful that leader of the British “Labour” Party – including the current xenophobic leader Sir Keir Starmer – accept a “noble” title. It’s kind of a sick joke.

The proposal, which is said to have backing from the White House, would see Blair lead a governing authority supported by the UN and Gulf nations - before handing control back to Palestinians.

His office said he would not support any proposal that displaced the people of Gaza. …

In August, he joined a White House meeting with Trump to discuss plans for the territory, which US Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff described as "very comprehensive" - though little else was disclosed about the meeting.

The plans could see Blair head a body named the Gaza International Transitional Authority (Gita), according to reports in the Economist and Israeli media. It would seek a UN mandate to be Gaza's "supreme political and legal authority" for five years.

The plan would be modelled on the international administrations that oversaw East Timor and Kosovo's transitions to statehood. It would initially be based in Egypt, near Gaza's southern border, before entering Gaza once the Strip is stable, alongside a multinational force. [my emphasis]

This sounds like an ugly joke. This and every other cosmetic scam to facilitate Israel’s current project of ethnic cleansing and genocide against the Palestinians is just PR for the murderous project unless and until the United States cuts off all military aid to Israel and the genocide is stopped.

Blair may be a horrible person – what other kind of person would agree to become this kind of smiley-face sponsor for this project? – but he himself is not being bamboozled here. He knows this is a cover-up for a criminal settler colonial project and the inevitable Trump bribery projects that would be connected with it.

Haaretz has posted a copy of the confidential Blair plan document, named “Gaza International Transitional Authority (GITA) Institutional Structure.” Of course, it includes a military unit, the “International Stabilization Force.” That sounds more civilized than, for instance, “Colonial Genocide Force”. The GITA genocide force would cooperate with Egypt, because driving surviving Gaza Palestinians into Egypt is clearly part of the Netanyahu genocide plan: “A core administrative and policy hub may be temporarily located in Amman or Cairo, depending on access and staffing feasibility.” It would also coordinate “route and venue security with the ISF [International Stabilisation Force] and Civil Police.”

It looks almost like mocking cynicism to propose an “International Stabilisation Force” whose abbreviation ISF is the same one used in English for the Israeli Security Forces, i.e., Israel’s armed forces. Or maybe just truth in advertising?

The governing body would include Muslim collaborators “to ensure regional legitimacy and cultural credibility, who have the political support of their countries but preferably long-standing business credibility.” It would report to the UN Security Council, which would directly implicate the UN itself in the genocide project. Since the UN Partition Plan of 1947 became the opportunity for the first nabka (catastrophe) – the expulsion of Palestinians – having the UN endorse the Final Solution in which Tony Blair would carry out the gruesome GITA project (Israel seizing even more land not authorized even by the Partition Plan) would be a grim historical symmetry.

The document has the inevitable bureaucratese about services to be maintained and functions to be performed. All fluff on a colonial project directed by Israel with kickbacks to the Trump family. One of the more bitterly cynical lines declares that there will be a property Rights Preservation Unit that will ensure “that any voluntary departure of residents from Gaza during the transitional period is documented, legally protected, and does not compromise the individual’s right to return or retain property ownership.” (my emphasis)

Given Israel’s permanent disregard of the right of return for Palestinians since the original nakba – a right specified by the UN General Assembly in 1948 -  it seems like putting the “right to return” in this document is also downright cynical.

The document even suggests particular members for the GITA colonial governing board, including Aryeh Lightstone. Liza Rozovsky gives this sketch of four leading figures being floated for board, including Lightstone:

Sigrid Kaag – UN special coordinator for the Middle East peace process

Marc Rowan – CEO of the investment company Apollo Global Management

Naguib Sawiris – Egyptian billionaire

Aryeh Lightstone – Heads the Abraham Accords Peace Institute in D.C.; involved in establishing the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (2)

Wait, surely there will be a place for Trump’s real estate buddy and Special Envoy to Everywhere Steve Witkoff on that board! And what about Jared Kushner? Ole Jared has to be a board member!

Of course, there will be Palestinian representation. As long as it completely compliant with Israel’s government. Rozovsky:

Below them will be the Palestinian Executive Authority, which will handle implementation on the ground and will thus be the body actually providing services to Gazans. It will not be part of the PA, but rather a "professional, neutral" body whose CEO will be appointed by the international board.

Essentially, this is similar to the technocratic government proposed by Egypt in the governance plan it unveiled it March. But under Blair's plan – which the Israeli source said is backed by the White House and hasn't been ruled out by Israel – this body would will have no independent authority. Instead, its policy would be completely subordinate to that set by the board. [my emphasis]

What could possibly go wrong?

This report from the conservative Times of London raises, uh, doubts about the Viceroy Tony Blair idea, starting at 19:14 in the video: (3)

Notes:

(1) Landale, James & Mitchell, Ottilie (2025): Tony Blair in discussions to run transitional Gaza authority. BBC News 09/26/2025. <https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3drmk95xlzo> (Accessed: 2025-26-09).

(2) Rozovsky, Liza (2025): Draft of Tony Blair's Gaza Plan Outlines Remote Governance, Little Palestinian Representation. Haaretz 09/28/2025. <https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-09-28/ty-article/.premium/draft-of-tony-blairs-gaza-plan-remote-governance-little-palestinian-representation/00000199-91bb-d0f3-a599-d7fbbde80000?gift=5e5db339853943149c057a7fcd38eb9e> (Accessed: 2025-26-09).

(3) Tony Blair will never be accepted as interim leader of Palestine. Times Radio YouTube channel 09/26/2025. <https://youtu.be/PMYZ2mhuVkM?si=cIcJahIHhZpP0NEZ> (Accessed: 2025-26-09).

Trump defines leftwing “terrorism” in a National Security Memorandum

The Orange Anomaly has just issued National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (NSPM-7).

It’s vague enough that it would allow basically anyone the Trump cult doesn’t like to be designated as a leftwing terrorist.

Ken Klippenstein explains: (1)

The Trump administration isn’t only targeting organizations or groups but even individuals and “entities” whom NSPM-7 says can be identified by any of the following “indicia” (indicators) of violence:

• anti-Americanism
• anti-capitalism
• anti-Christianity [but apparently not antisemitism or Islamophobia! Does this include the majority of people in the world who are, you know, not Christians?]
• support for the overthrow of the United States Government
• extremism on migration [is Stephen Miller a leftwing terrorist now?]
• extremism on race [isn't this blasphemy against St. Charlie Kirk?]
• extremism on gender [wait: they're throwing the entire Christian Right under the bus? Including Amy Coney Barrett's weirdo Handmaiden's Tale Catholic sect?]
• hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family  [so, divorced people are now all Commie terrorists?]
• hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on religion
• hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on morality. 

Does this support-for-overthrowing-the-government criteria mean that Trump and the cop-killing mob he incited to attack the US Capitol on January 6, 2021 are all now defined as leftwing terrorists? Does that new definition override the pardons that the cult leader gave out to participants?

This is further proof that the ghosts of J. Edgar Hoover and Richard Nixon – and, of course, Roy Cohn - are still haunting the US.

C-Span reported: (2)

Does it amount to a new Red Scare? (3) Or maybe a Blue Scare? We’ll soon see.

Notes:

1) Klippenstein, Ken (2025): Trump’s NSPM-7 Labels Common Beliefs As Terrorism “Indicators”. Ken Klippenstein Substack 09/27/2025. <https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/trumps-nspm-7-labels-common-beliefs> (Accessed: 2025-28-09).

(2) President Trump Signs Executive Order on Organized Political Violence. C-Span YouTube channgel 09/25/2025. <https://youtu.be/t0G76CFFqvo?si=EN8U7nzhE_Uvq9Pl> (Accessed: 2025-28-09).

(3) “This Is the Third Red Scare:” Historian’s Warning for U.S. Free Speech. Amanpour and Company YouTube channel 09/26/2025. <https://youtu.be/sFkum56e5LA?si=Vgol9T4qFTPBgXbG> (Accessed: 2025-28-09).

The New Red Scare? Historian on McCarthyism and Parallels to Today. Amanpour and Company YouTube channel 03/25/2025. <https://youtu.be/pcuYybbehAo?si=Hmt5XIn35RtjyEIa> (Accessed: 2025-28-09).

Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski talks foreign policy – but faceplants on immigration

Interviews with sitting foreign ministers can be expected to provide a defense of their country’s official position and maybe some kind of “trial balloon” suggestion about a possible change of policy. It would be a real misunderstanding to take the interview content as some kind of disinterested journalistic reporting or scholarly observations. They are also often bland and boring to hear.

All but that last part applies to the interview that Dan Kurtz-Phelan just did for Foreign Affairs with Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski, who also has the distinction of having been married for three decades to historian and commentator Anne Applebaum. And Sikorski actually has some interesting observations here. The YouTube video also includes an AI-produced transcript that the listener came open. (1)

Sikorski talks about the Russian aerial provocations, the developing new European security architecture, and the challenges of dealing with the mercurial Donald Trump’s government. He uses diplomatic caution in answering the interviewer’s question about Polish nuclear weapons ambitions:

Kurtz-Phelan: There's been lots of speculation in the foreign policy crowd about the possibility that Poland would someday decide to acquire its own nuclear weapons. Is there any scenario where you can imagine taking that step?

Sikorski: No. No shift in NATO, no uncertainty about the alliance would prompt them. (10:00 in the video)

Things can change, of course.

Sikorski notes the challenge in the current European Union to pursue a common official foreign policy and creating a new European security architecture.

I think we've done better on defense. Germany, as you know, has changed its own constitution to uh generate a trillion euros, half of it for infrastructure, half of it for the feds.

[T]he European Union has passed a safe mechanism under which we will be spending 150 billion euros on defense including on collaborations with uh Ukraine. Unfortunately, Europe's defense budget, wonderfully called the European Peace Facility, is still blocked by a veto from Hungary. And we are still a confederation [the EU]. Which means that we don't have unity of command. So, on defense we've geared up.

Where we've done worse, I think, is on trade, because on trade. Because on trade, at that time, I was assuming we are a trade power equal to the United States. And actually Europe, unlike China, cracked under Donald Trump’s pressure.

Sikorsky basically ridicules Trump’s claim that European sales tax (VAT: value-added tax) is something aimed at disadvantaging the US.

He’s conciliatory about German defense spending – still a touchy subject in Polish politics - and notes that he thinks the conservative opposition to his government is getting more comfortable with that idea. Both Sikorski’s coalition, the ruling liberal-centrist Civic Platform (PO) and the rightwing, anti-EU authoritarian Law and Justice party (PiS), are distinctly anti-Russian in foreign policy. (2)

He makes a “military Keynesian” point that expanding defense spending could contribute significantly to the re-industrialization of Europe. (Even when this is true, it’s never an exclusively good thing to expand military spending.)

K-P: I think for the European populists, just like for American populists, migration is a is a more important issue. Have you seen a shift that you think will be sustained on the politics of migration in the block [the EU]?

S: We [the PO] pat ourselves on the back for winning our election in 23 by outflanking the populists on the right. Uh so we won on the back of a of scandals to do with issuing visas and I've personally mopped up those bad procedures and corrupt officials. And we've done a whole range of things to reduce uh both illegal and legal migration.

So, I've doubled the price of uh Polish visas. We've made it impossible to get a fake visa as a fake student. You know, we now verify whether people have the certificates to study in their own country, whether they can speak the languages of the of the tuition that they were supposed to take up.

And we have beefed up consular services in those countries that that have readmission treaties for with us, for example, so that we can return people whose contracts have ended.

We've also done something that nobody else in Europe dared to do. Um, we've passed a law which gives the government the right for 90 days at any one time to refuse asylum claims on our side of the border. Just not even allow people to apply.

I’m not an attorney or an expert on international law. But denying the right of refugees (or “migrants,” to use the rightwingers’ preferred term) who have crossed the border to apply for asylum is flat-out illegal under international law. It just is. Sikorski here is defending criminal conduct on the part of the government for which he is the foreign minister.

I would genuinely be curious to see an interview ask Anne Applebaum about the position her husband’s government is taking and which he defends. Because for European authoritarians, for American ones, for Indian ones, xenophobia is a core part of their political demagoguery. Unless the pro-democracy parties challenge it straight-on, it will in most if not all cases increase the credibility and effectiveness of the far right’s political narrative. (3)

Sikorski continues in this, well, demagogic vein: “You can still apply [for asylum] in the Polish consul or in Minsk or Moscow, but not having crossed the border illegally.” This is just insulting his listeners. He continues:

And we completed our big and beautiful fence [sic] on the border, 440 kilometers, a physical barrier, reinforced underground sensors, overground camera, a technical road, and it's now 98% effective. It cost us half a billion euros plus extra units of border guards, of riot police, and the army. Um and so we are now down to about 80 crossings per day.

It's still too many. And we've literally just the last 10 days had our border crossing with Belarus closed altogether to signal that that [border crossing] has to go down further. So we are contributing to our bit of the Schengen external perimeter. [He’s referring here to the Schengen area in which the country of first entry is responsible for checking passports.]

Because in Europe people value the fact that you can travel internally without passports [within the Schengen area].

But quite naturally [people] think that that system can only be held if the outside border is protected. And I imagine your advice to small-l liberal parties elsewhere would be to focus on the migration piece as the key.

Look, I'm of the view that you need to find a the right language to talk about migration, but also you need to to hear what people are saying in the United States, in Britain, in France, in in Germany, in Italy, and in Poland. They all tell us the same thing: fix migration or we will hire people who will do it for you.

So, it's either us doing it in in a humane way or populists doing it while dehumanizing migrants. Controlling migration is not racism. Countries have the right to decide what kind of migrants they need, at what volume, for how long, or how to make them into productive, loyal citizens. If you get it right, it can be mutually beneficial. If you get it wrong, you get fascism.

I’m sorry, that part is just rightwing doubletalk.

Somebody please ask Applebaum what she thinks about this. She probably will duck the question by saying (not unreasonably) that it wouldn’t be appropriate to comment on her Foreign Minister husband’s public statements. But some journalist should ask.

Look, nobody I’ve ever heard of except some crackpot anarcho-libertarian I once hear giving a speech to a Rotary Club meeting actually advocates for “open borders,” i.e., no international border regulations. The basic requirements of humane and practical border regulations that comply with international law are very well know. Heck, even the war criminal George W. Bush prosed one when he was President, which is own party rejected. Georgia Meloni, the neofascist Prime Minister of Italy and a Trump favorite, has also proposed what on its face sounds like a liberal and sensible immigration policy. (We’ll see what develops in practice.)

Minister Sikorski, do you really want to be taking an immigration policy stance that not only violates international law but puts you to the right of Shrub Bush and Italian neofascists on the immigration issue?

Notes:

(1) Radek Sikorski: Poland’s View From the Frontline of Europe. Foreign Affairs YouTube channel 09/25/2025. <https://youtu.be/HY3GasxGOpc?si=l2pB9cSWliJhJqNH> (Accessed: 2025-27-09).

(2) Krzysztof Katkowski discusses the positions of the Polish parties on Russia. Jacobin 10/14/2023. <https://jacobin.com/2023/10/poland-elections-lewica-razem-law-and-justice-far-right-ukraine> (Accessed: 2025-27-09).

(3) See: Biebricher, Thomas (2023): Mitte/Rechts.Die Internationale Krise des Konservatismus. Berlin: Suhrkamp.

Twin foreign policy disasters for Peace President Trump: Ukraine and Israel

Über-Realist John Mearsheimer talks about the bungling diplomacy of the Trump 2.0 regime on both Ukraine and the Middle East in this interview: (1)

Mearsheimer does process world affairs through his “offensive realist” viewpoint that focuses particularly on the dynamics of great-power competition.

But in this discussion, he focuses mainly on the immediate specifics of the diplomacy over Ukraine and Israel. He continues to emphasize his plausible argument that Ukraine is effectively losing the war, in the sense that there is no obvious practical prospect at the moment of Ukraine retaking large amounts of the territory Russia has occupied.

Crimea has been absorbed formally into Russia since 2014. And now Russia controls large parts of eastern Ukraine and they are likely to be in a position of control for years. If Biden had been willing and/or capable of developing some kind of armistice agreement after Ukraine’s 2023 counteroffensive stalled out, it might have been possible to limit further losses for Ukraine and establish some meaningful long-term negotiating framework.

But that would have involved some kind of de facto agreement by the US and Europe not to make Ukraine a part of NATO and formal security arrangements for a sustainable ceasefire. Some reductions of the Western sanctions on Russia would have had to be addressed, as well.

But that ship sailed long ago. As Mearsheimer emphasizes here, Trump’s latest statement seemingly reversing his previous policy or more-or-less backing the Russian position is really an attempt to wash his hands of the situation and avoid blame at the moment when there is a formal recognition that Ukraine has lost this round of the extended conflict with Russia.

It’s important to keep in mind, though, that “Peace” President Trump’s bragging about how quickly he would bring about an end to the Russo-Ukraine War was a complete and total flop.

The reality is that Russia has conquered large parts of Ukraine in an illegal invasion. Certainly, the exceptionally reckless approach of the Cheney-Bush Administration in pushing ahead with an explicit commitment in 2008 to make Ukraine a NATO member, even though Ukraine did not meet the requirements to begin a formal accession process, was a disastrous move.

But the genie isn’t going back into the bottle anytime soon. Not only Europe and the US but the world community in general has a stake in not recognizing Russia’s illegal annexations of Ukrainian territory. For Europe, it is important from their general security perspective to make a strong showing that they are not inclined to roll over in the face of Russian aggression against even non-NATO, non-EU countries. It would be much preferable if European leaders and policy analysts would avoid invoking the Munich Analogy, which tends to cast any practical concessions as Chamberlain caving to Hitler and making a much bigger war inevitable.

There’s also a practical side to European policy that is not entirely a happy one for Ukraine. The longer Russia is tied down in an active shooting war in Ukraine, the less likely it is to play dangerous provocative games to challenge the seriousness of NATO and EU members in responding to threats. This means that in grim practical terms, having an active war continue between Ukraine and Russia gives Europe more time to make major political and military adjustments to adjust to the Trump policy, which amounts to kissing off the concept that the US will actively participate in European defense. On the one hand, this is beneficial for Ukraine in holding off Russian gains. But it also means that it creates pressures for Ukraine not to accept a possible imperfect but beneficial end of the current conflict.

Unless Putin dies or decides to step down, any return of full sovereignty to Ukraine is likely to be off the table for Russia.

This situation calls to mind one of Hegel’s grimmer comments on the course of human affairs: “The history of the world is not the ground of happiness, because the periods of happiness are blank pages in it.” But he qualifies that immediately by adding, “the object of history is, at the least, change.” (2)

Deutsche Welle English also takes a look at Trump 2.0’s Ukraine policy in the context of Trump‘s drive to remake the US into an autocracy: (3) Erik Kirschbaum from the Los Angeles Times is one of the panelists who postures as a blustering hawk who mainly adds hot air to the discussion.

And as we head into the fourth quarter of 2025, Peace President Trump’s miserable failure in diplomacy over the Russo-Ukraine War, Trump has basically committed itself to support Netanyahu’s genocide in Gaza and his warlike actions against several neighboring countries. Elan Nechin writes in Haaretz about Netanyahu’s latest imagery of Israel as a modern-day Sparta:

Netanyahu's invocation of Sparta collapses the moment he steps off the plane in the United States. He arrives not as a great wartime leader, but as a supplicant, begging Trump – who's more interested in TV talk show hosts than charting a new path for the region – for unending support.

Without Trump, Netanyahu is exposed, a hollow strongman propped up by a single patron while the rest of the world, save Hungary and a few Pacific islands, makes clear what is right and what is wrong. Not even the American public is with Netanyahu. Polls increasingly show that they back a Palestinian state, and support for Israel is sliding fast. Netanyahu is so alienated and weak, on his way to meet Trump, that he even rerouted his flight to dodge European airspace. Some Spartan leader. [my emphasis] (4)

There is so far no sign that Trump is willing to put meaningful restraints on Netanyahu over anything he wants to do. And Israel cannot continue what it is doing today without massive American support. As Amos Harel observes:

Unlike the harsh criticism Netanyahu has faced from other leaders, there hasn't been even a hint of a crisis between him and Trump. The president has given Netanyahu full backing in all his moves, from the deliberate collapse of the previous hostage deal talks and the resumption of fighting in Gaza in March, to Netanyahu's August announcement instructing the army to capture Gaza City. Trump limited himself to what, for him, was a polite protest when Netanyahu ordered the September 9 assassination of Hamas' negotiating team in Doha. …

We've seen this before, with recurring speculation over pressure that Biden, and later Trump, would apply on Netanyahu over the past two years. The safe bet, therefore, remains the same: Netanyahu will continue to stall and drag things out, and hope that the cease-fire talks collapse again so the blame can be pinned on Hamas. [my emphasis] (5)

Notes:

(1) Prof. John Mearsheimer: Ukraine is Trump’s War. Judge Napolitano-Judging Freedom YouTube channel 09/25/2025. <https://www.youtube.com/live/dMtCZnq-zLI?si=2u__b2DL3V6PKZJA> (Accessed: 2025-26-09).

(2) Hegel, G.W.F. (2015): Gesammelte Werke 27:1, 54 (Nachschrift Hotho, 1822-23). Düsseldorf: Nordrhein-Westfälische Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Künste. My translation to Englsih.

(3) Trump the unpredictable: What's his real plan for Ukraine and for democracy? - To the Point. DW News 09/25/2025. <https://youtu.be/UKx2LnkCeAM?si=nSbrBYCEW7TlxYW-> (Accessed: 2025-26-09).

(4) Nechin, Etan (2025): Netanyahu Declares a Spartan Israel – and Then Runs to Trump Begging for Cover. Haaretz 09/25/2025. <https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2025-09-25/ty-article-opinion/.premium/netanyahu-declares-a-spartan-israel-and-then-runs-to-trump-begging-for-cover/00000199-6bbf-db6e-a5d9-ffffe07a0000?gift=bb91b01b8c4549218b10ba276e701fcf> (Accessed: 2025-26-09).

(5) Harel, Amos (2025): Trump's New Gaza Plan Has One Palpable Weak Point: It Clashes With Netanyahu's Promises to His Voters. Haaretz 09/26/2025. <https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-09-26/ty-article/.premium/trumps-new-gaza-plan-has-a-weak-point-it-clashes-with-netanyahus-promises-to-his-voters/00000199-825a-db6e-a5d9-d67e6cf70000?gift=4ef89b83c72342729e0cc481624d3d99> (Accessed: 2025-26-09).

Horst Wessel, celebrated by the Nazis as a martyr, has been coming up a lot the last few days

Numerous observers including Roy Edroso have been reflecting on the similarities between the celebration of the martyrdom of Charlie Kirk – whose Presidentially-sponsored memorial this past weekend was from any decent Christian standard was sacrilegious as well as the kind of hatemongering which was Kirk’s signature political function – has invited comparisons to the National Socialist cultish celebration of Horst Wessel.

Roy Edroso gives his own distinctive take in Worst Wessel.

The ever-sober Encyclopedia Britannica describes Wessel:

A perennial student and low-life bohemian, Wessel joined the Nazi Party in 1926 and became a member of the SA (Storm Troopers). In 1930 political enemies, possibly Communists, killed him in a brawl in his room in the Berlin slums. Nazi propagandists, led by Joseph Goebbels, elevated him to martyrdom. (1)

Lindley Hanlon described in 1975 how the Nazis in a 1937, after the Horst Wessel martyr image had been promoted for years, had developed the martyr cult to the point that “the cult of heroism surrounding Horst Wessel had been eclipsed by Hitler's own myth builders and their stress on formal structures and organization, on symbol and personality, on paramilitary organization of the masses, and ritual ceremonies dominated by Hitler.” (2)

If the Trump cult continues to use Kirk as such a martyr figure, that’s the likely course for the his martyrdom narrative to take.

Jay Baird describes the martyrdom image as the Nazis used it:

The development of the myth of resurrection and return must be viewed against the background of Nazi ideology and practice. The epic of the fighting, dying warrior who through his sacrifice won not only glory but eternal life struck a responsive chord in the period. Party leaders [symbolically] baptised their following in the blood of the fallen, and they inspired them with irrational motifs which, taken together, formed a coherent ideological structure. Based on the primacy of Aryan racial superiority and the theory of ’Jewish-Bolshevik subhumanity’, the Hitlerian world view proferred a heroic, elitist, warrior ethos and explained the battle for Germany and the soul of the Volksgeineinschaft by employing neo-romantic, quasi-religious themes. (3)

And today’s Trump-cult Christian nationalists certainly have a lot in content in their usage of the martyr theme, though Hitler’s National Socialism was not an explicitly Christian ideology As Baird observes:

[Joseph] Goebbels learned through his experiences as a graveside orator that through the proper use of propaganda, defeat can be transformed into victory. The homilies he delivered in Berlin cemeteries over the bodies of slain SA men [Brownshirts] celebrated the noble dead fighter theme, and occasioned an emotional response among those present which approached religious transcendence. Utilizing rhapsodic flights from reality, Goebbels merged Nazi myths with pagan warrior motifs, and shrouded the whole in the incense of mysticism.

With Trump himself, his thinking is so disjointed and he is so lacking in self-control on top of being about as impious a nominal Christian as it is possible to imagine that he can’t evoke “religious transcendence” beyond unquestioning adoration of his own reality-TV persona.

But Trump also has the performer’s feel for what works, and he understands the point of symbolism. As Baird writes, Goebbels “was convinced that generalities do not move the masses; only easily identifiable symbols would serve such a purpose.” And the image of the martyred Horst Wessel functioned well for that purpose.

But it did take some imagination and the gullibility of many of Hitler’s fans to make that work: “Goebbels delivered Wessel from a banal death in questionable circumstances to an ennoblement as a warrior hero, a prince among the Party’s immortals.” Baird writes, “Wessel was able to transform a small pack of intimidated, ragamuffin SA [Brownshirt] men [in his Friedrichshain district of Berlin] into a fighting corps of desperadoes.”

One wonders if some German liberal columnist of his day mourned Wessel as someone who “practiced politics the right way,” as Ezra Klein did for Charlie Kirk.

Russel Lemmons gives this description of how Goebbels used the theme of martyrdom in his propaganda paper, Der Angriff [The Attack]:

Der Angriff also had much to say about Nazi victims of political violence. They were ordinary people who found themselves in extraordinary circumstances and rose to the occasion. Horst Wessel, for example, had not intended to martyr himself for his cause. In the end, however, he was willing to do so if it came to that. Germany, not his own welfare, was his primary interest. Even on his deathbed [in Goebbels’ propaganda version], Wessel's foremost concern was the success of the movement. Those who remembered him, Der Angriff contended, would do him a great service by continuing his mission.

The paper consistently used Christian themes in portraying Nazi martyrs. They had died not to destroy Germany but to save it. They were "holy sacrifices." A storm trooper, like Christ, died so that others might live. ... As long as their ideas lived, these men would not truly be dead.

These themes were powerful propaganda weapons. They depicted Nazism as a dynamic movement. People were willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for its ideas. To espouse Nazism was, therefore, by implication to adopt a noble cause. [my emphasis] (4)

The LA Progressive compares Kirk and Wessel as far-right martyr figures in this report: (5)

Notes:

(1) Ray, Michael and Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica (2025): "Horst Wessel". Encyclopedia Britannica, 09/10/2025. <https://www.britannica.com/biography/Horst-Wessel> (Accessed: 2025-23-09).

(2) Hanlon, Lindley (2025): Film Document and the Myth of Horst Wessel: A Sampler of Nazi Propaganda. Film & History 3:Sept 1975). <https://doi.org/10.1353/flm.1975.a402696>

(3) Baird, Jay (2025): Goebbels, Horst Wessel, and the Myth of Resurrection and Return. Journal of Contemporary History 17:1982, 633-650.

(4) Lemmons, Russel (1994): Goebbels and Der Angriff, 79. Lexingtonn: University Press of Kentucky.

(54) How Charlie Kirk Echoes Horst Wessel. LA Progressive YouTube channel 09/21/2025. <https://youtu.be/9dETFTC2Ehs?si=BtOpxsxzpaWRZfel> (Accessed: 2025-24-09).