Tag: palestine

Trump orders review to identify, punish and deport antisemites — including students on visas

President Trump signed an executive order Wednesday instructing federal agencies to identify “all civil and criminal authorities” available to combat antisemitism — including finding ways to deport anti-Jewish activists who violated laws.

The order, first reported by The Post, requires agency and department leaders to provide the White House with recommendations within 60 days and outlines plans for the Justice Department to investigate pro-Hamas graffiti and intimidation, including on college campuses.

“Jewish students have faced an unrelenting barrage of discrimination; denial of access to campus common areas and facilities, including libraries and classrooms; and intimidation, harassment, and physical threats and assault,” the order says.

“It shall be the policy of the United States to combat anti-Semitism vigorously, using all available and appropriate legal tools, to prosecute, remove, or otherwise hold to account the perpetrators of unlawful anti-Semitic harassment and violence.”

The executive order calls for the deportation of resident aliens — including students with visas — who broke laws as part of anti-Israel protests following the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks that sparked the invasion of Gaza.

“[T]he Secretary of State, the Secretary of Education, and the Secretary of Homeland Security… shall include in their reports recommendations for familiarizing institutions of higher education with the grounds for inadmissibility under 8 U.S.C. 1182(a)(3) so that such institutions may monitor for and report activities by alien students and staff relevant to those grounds and for ensuring that such reports about aliens lead, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law, to investigations and, if warranted, actions to remove such aliens,” the order says.

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US Private Security Firm Now Manning Gaza Checkpoints

While Israeli hostages are being released, and the ink barely dry on the ceasefire agreements, American security company UG Solutions, staffed by U.S. Special Forces veterans, is now manning checkpoints in the Gaza Strip.

A small U.S. security firm is hiring nearly 100 U.S. special forces veterans to help run a checkpoint in Gaza during the Israel-Hamas truce, according to a company spokesperson and a recruitment email seen by Reuters, introducing armed American contractors into the heart of one of the world’s most violent conflict zones, reported Reuters.

UG Solutions’ role in the cease-fire deal has been reported, but the email disclosed previously unknown details, including the aim of recruiting 96 veterans exclusively with U.S. special operations forces backgrounds, as well as the pay and the types of weapons they will carry.

Reuters reported on January 7 that Emirati officials had suggested the use of private contractors as part of a post-war peacekeeping force in Gaza, and that the idea had caused concern among Western nations.

These are private companies, and not active-duty American soldiers; but, the risk of this deployment pulling the United States further into another Middle Eastern war remains.

These soldiers are essentially high-value targets for regional terrorists, and lightly defended at that.

“Of course there is a threat they will face,” said Avi Melamed, a former Israeli intelligence official, reported Reuters.

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Jordan, Egypt Reject US Plan To Resettle Gazans As Trump Doubles Down

After last Saturday President Trump floated a plan to ‘clean out’ Gaza by conducting a mass resettlement of Palestinians in neighboring countries, namely Egypt and Jordan, he’s now doubling down on the idea.

Egypt and Jordan are not happy, but are also feeling the pressure as a result, and it must be remembered that both are recipients of huge amounts of foreign aid each year – with Egypt receiving billions.

Israeli media underscores there’s been wall-to-wall firm opposition by Arab leaders: “US President Donald Trump dug in his heels Monday over a controversial suggestion that large numbers of Gazans take refuge in Egypt and Jordan, shrugging off wall-to-wall opposition to the proposal from Arab leaders.”

“Fresh off what he said were calls with Egyptian counterpart Abdel-Fatah el-Sissi and Jordan’s King Abdullah, Trump insisted both leaders would take in Palestinians from the war-ravaged territory and said the issue would be discussed with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when the two meet sometime soon, amid speculation in Israel that Trump’s gambit was being coordinated with Jerusalem,” the report details.

“Egyptian media on Tuesday cited government sources as saying that Trump and Sissi had yet to speak. If they did, Sissi’s office would issue a readout, the Egyptian officials told local media,” it continues.

This would involve these countries absorbing hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees – something which Jordan has already done historically over the last some seventy years.

Here are the latest remarks from Trump which are driving the controversy:

Asked about those comments, Trump told reporters on Air Force One Monday evening he would “like to get them living in an area where they can live without disruption and revolution and violence so much.”

“When you look at the Gaza Strip, it’s been hell for so many years,” Trump said. “There have been various civilizations on that strip. It didn’t start here. It started thousands of years before, and there’s always been violence associated with it. You could get people living in areas that are a lot safer and maybe a lot better and maybe a lot more comfortable.”

Interestingly, the tiny Balkan country of Albania has entered the discussion after an Israeli Channel 12 media report said that Trump was in talks with Albania for it to take 100,000 Palestinians from Gaza.

But Albania’s prime minister quickly batted this down, calling it false. “I haven’t heard something so fake in quite some time – and there’s been a lot of fake news lately! It is absolutely not true,” Prime Minister Edi Rama tweeted. If such talks actually did exist, the Muslim-majority population of this country would surely be outraged. 

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Biden Regime Reportedly Set to Send $50 Million in Taxpayer Money to Fund Condom Distribution in Gaza, White House Says

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) have identified a planned $50 million allocation by the previous Biden administration intended for condom distribution in Gaza.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt criticized this expenditure as a “preposterous waste of taxpayer money.”

“DOGE and OMB have actually found that there was $37 million that was about to go out the door to the World Health Organization, which is an organization, as you all know, that President Trump, with the swipe of his pen in that executive order, no longer wants the United States to be a part of. So that wouldn’t be in line with the President’s agenda,” Leavitt said during her first press conference.

“DOGE and OMB also found that there was about to be 50 million taxpayer dollars that went out the door to fund condoms in Gaza. That is a preposterous way taxpayer money. So that’s what this pause is focused on, being good stewards of tax dollars,” she added.

This comes after the Trump administration stated that a new memo from the Office of Management and Budget will temporarily halt grants and loans while reviewing whether the funding aligns with President Donald Trump’s executive orders.

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Trump Looking To Move Gazans To Indonesia, Albania, Pressures Jordan, Egypt

President Trump is moving forward with his plan to relocate Gaza residents displaced by the war with Israel after the Oct 7 attacks. The administration has contacted Albania and Indonesia and received a positive response. Both are Muslim countries. Albania took in thousands of Iranian resistance fighters — the PMOI/MEK after they were removed from Iraq.

The Trump team also continues to pressure Jordan and Egypt to take Gaza residents. So far, Egypt has publicly refused, even though the United States sends Egypt over a billion dollars a year in aid as part of a peace agreement with Israel in the past.

Trump told reporters last tonight, “I want them to live in an area where they can be without disturbances, revolution and violence. When you look at the Gaza Strip, it’s been hell for years. So I think we can get people out of there to live in areas that are much safer and perhaps much better and perhaps much more comfortable.

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Trump 2.0 and Palestinians: From Reversal to Repression and Deportations

In my new book, The Fall of Israel (2025), I examine the activities of all US postwar administrations regarding the Israelis and Palestinians. The first Trump administration did not just differ from its precursors. It turned upside down five decades of US policies regarding Palestinians. In the next four years, The Trump White House will build on this reversal.

The Great Reversal           

When the new administration arrived in the White House in early 2017, Trump made David M. Friedman US ambassador to Israel. Friedman advised and represented Trump and his organization in bankruptcies involving the tycoon’s Atlantic City casinos. As a revisionist Zionist donor, he had pumped millions of dollars into illegal, extremist West Bank settlements.

When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Israel would lift all restrictions on settlement construction in the West Bank, Trump looked the other way. In 2016, the number of Jewish settlers in the occupied territories of the West Bank exceeded 400,000. Under Trump’s “peace to prosperity plan,” all settlements would remain under Israeli sovereignty and not a single settlement would be removed. Today, thanks to Trump and Biden administrations, the number of those settlers exceeds 750,000.

Subsequently, the US recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, moving its embassy from Tel Aviv to the Holy City. In 2018, Trump ordered the closure of the PLO office in Washington, D.C. and canceled nearly all US aid to the West Bank and Gaza, plus $360 million in annual aid previously given to the UNRWA.

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New ICJ president a Christian Zionist influenced by End Times theology

Julia Sebutinde stood alone in rejecting South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice. Now the court’s president, the Ugandan judge suggests her motives for protecting Israel can be found in the Old Testament. 

With new countries joining South Africa’s case accusing Israel of committing genocide in the Gaza Strip, and a ceasefire potentially enabling war crimes investigators to gather fresh evidence of Israeli atrocities, a leadership shakeup at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) threatens to undermine the campaign for legal accountability. 

The ICJ’s President Nawaf Salam resigned on January 14, 2025 to become Prime Minister of Lebanon, and was succeeded by Justice Julia Sebutinde of Uganda. Many observers were stunned when Sebutinde voted “no” on all resolutions introduced by South Africa in January 2024, placing herself in opposition to all ICJ judges, including her Israeli colleague, Aharon Barak. 

The Ugandan judge rejected the court’s call for the Israeli military to halt deliberate assaults on civilians, end its policy of forced displacement, and cancel its planned invasion of Rafah. In a previous advisory case on the legal consequences of Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian Territories, Sebutinde insisted that Palestinians had not been subjected to any military occupation whatsoever. In fact, she concluded that Israel may have the right to maintain a permanent presence in the West Bank and the whole of Jerusalem on the basis of purely biblical claims.

Sebutinde’s opinion opened with a lengthy history of the Israel-Palestine conflict that blended well-worn Zionist propaganda with the Old Testament. In rejecting her colleagues’ ruling declaring Israel’s military occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem illegal, she resorted to accounts of the Jewish presence in the biblical land of Israel, omitting any mention of UN resolutions or international law. 

“There is substantial evidence that Jewish people lived in the region of ancient Israel between 1000-586 BCE. This period corresponds to the era of the United Monarchy under Kings Saul, David, and Solomon, and the subsequent divided kingdoms of Israel and Judah. The evidence includes archaeological findings in the City of David…” Sebutinde insisted. “The Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) offers detailed accounts of the history, culture, and governance of the Israelites during this period. While these texts are religious in nature, many scholars consider them valuable historical documents.”

Her opinion was so extreme, and so shot through with theological commentary, it prompted Uganda’s ambassador to the United Nations, Adonia Ayebare, to declare her “ruling at the International Court of Justice does not represent the Government of Uganda’s position on the situation in Palestine.”

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Trump Reverses Course In Gaza, Now Says He Wants To Move Residents, Egypt Refuses

President Trump stepped on a land mine yesterday when talking with reporters on Air Force One about the situation in Gaza.

The comments come after Hamas humiliated female IDF hostages yesterday by putting them on stage in a public act of vengeance.

Hamas has also refused to provide an accurate list of the remaining hostages in violation of the terms of the ceasefire. The agreement to end the conflict is now in jeapardy.

The President mentioned he has a plan to ask neighboring countries to take in the million and a half residents remaining in the bombed-out territory.

This is a shift from his previous pressure to allow Gazans to return to the northern sector since the ceasefire.

“I’d like Egypt to take people…You’re talking about probably a million and a half people, and we just clean out that whole thing and say, ‘You know, it’s over.”

“I spoke with the King of Jordan about the possibility of transferring Gazans to neighboring countries.”

“I told him to take more people because the Gaza Strip is in a real mess. I want Egypt to take in people too, and I will talk to Al-Sisi tomorrow.”

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When Israeli Warplanes Rain Death on Gaza, the Co-Pilot Is Uncle Sam

In recent weeks, political soothsayers have speculated about a wide variety of odious new policies the incoming Trump administration and its allies in Congress may or may not pursue. No one can predict with certainty which of those measures they will inflict on us and which they’ll forget about.  But we can make one prediction with utter confidence. The White House and large bipartisan majorities in Congress will continue their lavish support for Israel’s war on Gaza, however catastrophic the results.

Washington has supplied a large share of the armaments that have allowed the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) to rain death and destruction on Gaza (not to speak of Lebanon) over the past year and a quarter. Before October 7, 2023, when Hamas and other groups attacked southern Israel, that country was receiving $3.8 billion worth of American military aid annually. Since then, the floodgates have opened and $18 billion worth of arms have flowed out. The ghastly results have shocked people and governments across the globe.

In early 2024, the United Nations General Assembly and International Court of Justice condemned the war being waged on the people of Gaza and, in November, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights, and Médecins Sans Frontières all followed with determinations that Israel was indeed committing genocide.

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The Gaza Genocide: The Fall of Israel’s Immunity

A dramatic escape was cited by Israeli media as the reason that Yuval Vagdani, a soldier in the Israeli army, managed to escape justice in Brazil.

Vagdani was accused by a Palestinian advocacy legal group, the Hind Rajab Foundation, of carrying out well-documented crimes in Gaza. He is not the only Israeli soldier being pursued for similar crimes.

According to the Israeli Broadcasting Corporation (KAN), more than 50 Israeli soldiers are being pursued in countries ranging from South Africa to Sri Lanka to Sweden.

In one case, the Hind Rajab Foundation filed a complaint in a Swedish court against Boaz Ben David, an Israeli sniper from the 932 Battalion of the Israeli Nahal Brigade. He is also accused of committing war crimes in Gaza.

The Nahal Brigade has been at the heart of numerous war crimes in Gaza. Established in 1982, the brigade is notorious for its unhinged violence against occupied Palestinians. Their role in the latest genocidal atrocities in the Strip has far exceeded their own dark legacy.

Even if these 50 individuals are apprehended and sentenced, the price exacted from the Israeli army pales in comparison to the crimes carried out.

Numbers, though helpful, are rarely enough to convey collective pain. The medical journal Lancet’s latest report is still worthy of reflection. Using a new data-collecting method called ‘capture–recapture analysis’, the report indicates that by the first nine months of the war, between October 2023 and June 2024, 64,260 Palestinians have been killed.

Still, capturing and trying Israeli war criminals is not just about the fate of these individuals. It is about accountability – an absent term in the history of Israeli human rights violations, war crimes, and recurring genocides against Palestinians.

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