We're nearly 50 days into Trump's new 'Golden Age,' and yet, somehow, a large-scale war in the Middle East seems more likely now than at any other time since 2003. The obedient 47th President is determined to perform every trick that Benjamin Netanyahu and Miriam Adelson demand of him, regardless of whether or not their particular interests overlap with those of American citizens. Since reclaiming the presidency in January, Trump has delivered a total of $12 billion in military aid to Israel, invoking "emergency authorities" to bypass Congress and ensure Israel receives the 2,000-pound bombs and Caterpillar D9 armored bulldozers that the Biden administration had previously withheld. Indeed, Trump has already vowed to "send Israel everything it needs to finish the job" and the White House has come out publicly and expressed its support for Israel's illegal blockade of all goods and supplies into the Gaza Strip, a territory which has been utterly destroyed, leaving thousands dead and the survivors without resources like food, water and medicine.
Objective observers of the political scene are beginning to notice that America's foreign policy is, to a large degree, formed and directed by influential Jewish groups whose first allegiance is to the state of Israel.
Just hours before Trump's address to a joint session of Congress on March 4, a letter was issued by the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA) calling for increased American support for Israel's war agenda in the Middle East. Signed by 77 former U.S. generals who agree it's "time to let Israel finish the job against the Iranian axis," the letter calls on the American government to maximize support for Israel in any forthcoming operations against the Persian state. FoxNews.com reports:
"The retired generals and admirals are calling on the U.S. to provide Israel with munitions, weapons systems and 'support needed to ensure the effectiveness of its operations against this common threat.' They assert that by supporting Israel in its fight against a nuclear Iran, the U.S. would be protecting its own influence in the region. The Iranian regime was also recently accused of plotting to assassinate Trump, which the president said would lead to the Islamic Republic being 'obliterated.'"
JINSA is an extremely hawkish foreign policy think-tank dedicated to forging inseparable ties between Israel and America's defense establishment. Formerly known as the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, the group was founded, according to The Nation's Jason Vest, by "neoconservatives concerned that the United States might not be able to provide Israel with adequate military supplies in the event of another Arab-Israeli war." Influential members of JINSA, like Douglas Feith and Richard Perle, played significant roles in fomenting the catastrophic invasion of Iraq in 2003 by fabricating the outlandish WMD disinformation used as justification for deploying American troops. Twenty-two years later and the same group is at it again, applying maximum pressure to an obviously compromised Donald Trump in the hope that he'll activate the U.S. military for yet another series of costly wars in the Middle East. It's no coincidence that the US Army recently reported its highest recruiting numbers in 15 years, enlisting 10,727 new soldiers in December 2024 alone!
Remembering Rachel Corrie
With the drums of war beating louder with the passing of each day, the Trump administration is working diligently to ensure that any organized opposition to Israel will soon be verboten. On January 29, Trump signed an executive order "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 order "reaffirms" Executive Order 13899, signed by Trump in December 2019, which expanded Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act to specifically target the nonviolent Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement on college campuses by instructing those tasked with enforcing Title VI to consider the IHRA working definition of anti-Semitism, which happens to include criticism of Israel. To prove he's not bluffing, Trump has organized a Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism, headed by Leo 'Uncle Tom' Terrell, which has already opened investigations into nearly a dozen US colleges. In a move which civil rights groups say is "unprecedented" and "unconstitutional," the Department of Education announced this week it has canceled $400 million in federal funding to Columbia University, citing "relentless violence, intimidation, and anti-Semitic harassment" on campus, while affirming that "additional cancellations are expected to follow."
Ever since the 1960s, America's college campuses have been a hotbed of anti-war activism. For all of their other faults, youthful, energetic Americans of a liberal orientation are often endowed with an intense humanitarian spirit that is naturally averse to genocide and war. It's not uncommon that these people, and not the flag-waving MAGA yahoos, are the ones most willing to stand up to perceived injustices, even at the expense of their own lives.
One such person was Rachel Corrie, who, twenty-two years ago this month, was killed in cold blood by the Israeli army while she protested the destruction of Palestinian homes in Gaza.
Rachel was raised in Olympia, Washington. While attending Evergreen State College in the early 2000s, she learned about the Israel/Palestine conflict through a friend she met at school of Palestinian origin. Shortly thereafter she became, in her own words, a "committed peace activist," determined to do something about the grave injustice she rightly perceived as a humanitarian disaster. Rachel first linked up with a group called 'Olympians for Peace and Solidarity,' organizing peace events to help raise awareness of the Palestinians' plight, before joining the International Solidarity Movement (ISM). The ISM is a pro-Palestine organization founded in 2001 by Palestinian, American, and Israeli activists following the rejection of a United Nations proposal by the United States and Israel that sought to place international human rights monitors in occupied Palestinian territories. Since its inception the mission of the ISM has been to support the Palestinian cause through non-violent direct action initiatives, such as protests against the Israeli military in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
In January 2003, Rachel and other members of the ISM journeyed to the West Bank for what they described as a solidarity campaign. The group first stopped off in a town east of Bethlehem called Beit Sahour, before heading to Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip. They arrived in Gaza at a time when the Israeli military was engaged in a large-scale campaign of destroying Palestinian homes, oftentimes making use of Caterpillar D9 armored bulldozers paid for by the American taxpayer as their weapon of choice. A 2004 report issued by the United Nations established that between September 2000 and May 2004, 17,594 Palestinians had their homes destroyed by the Israeli army.
While in Rafah, Rachel stayed with a number of families, including a physician named Dr. Samir Nasrallah who lived in a modest two-story home near the Israeli border with his wife and their three children. In an interview conducted shortly before her death, Rachel spoke about some of the horrors she witnessed during her time in Rafah:
"In the time that I've been here, children have been shot and killed. On the 30th of January the Israeli military bulldozed the two largest water wells destroying over half of Rafah's water supply. Every few days, if not every day, houses are demolished here. People are economically devastated because the closure of the border into Egypt and the extreme control of the Gazan economy by Israel....I feel like what I'm witnessing here is a very systematic destruction of a people's ability to survive. And that is incredibly horrifying."
On March 16, 2003, just four days before the American invasion of Iraq, Rachel received a call from a fellow activist informing her that the IDF were preparing to raze Dr. Nasrallah's home to the ground. "The Israelis are back" the caller said, "Get over here right away. I think they're heading for Dr. Samir's house." Indeed, American-made bulldozers had placed Dr. Nasrallah's home in their sights, after having already destroyed the surrounding structures. "Almost every other structure in the area had been knocked down in recent months; Nasrallah’s abode now stood alone in a sea of sand and debris." [Source]
Rachel arrived at the site and met with a group of seven British and American ISM activists who were carrying bullhorns and wearing orange fluorescent vests for maximum visibility. An article on NPR.org described what happened when she confronted the bulldozer operated by two members of the IDF:
"Corrie, wearing an orange fluorescent vest and speaking through a bullhorn, was determined to stop them. Standing alone on a mound of earth in the path of the armored vehicle, she expected the Israeli bulldozer approaching her to come to a halt, as other bulldozers had done when faced with international protesters. But it kept going, and, as her fellow activists screamed and tried to stop it, the 23-year-old college student from Olympia, Washington, was crushed to death. The Nasrallah family's children watched in horror through a crack in their garden wall."
One of the eyewitnesses, a man named Joe Carr, gave the following account:
"Still wearing her fluorescent jacket, she knelt down at least 15 meters in front of the bulldozer, and began waving her arms and shouting, just as activists had successfully done dozens of times that day....When it got so close that it was moving the earth beneath her, she climbed onto the pile of rubble being pushed by the bulldozer....Her head and upper torso were above the bulldozer's blade, and the bulldozer operator and co-operator could clearly see her. Despite this, the operator continued forward, which caused her to fall back, out of view of the driver. He continued forward, and she tried to scoot back, but was quickly pulled underneath the bulldozer. We ran towards him, and waved our arms and shouted; one activist with the megaphone. But the bulldozer operator continued forward, until Rachel was all the way underneath the central section of the bulldozer."
Despite a promise by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to launch a "thorough, credible, and transparent" investigation, the military inquiry completely absolved the IDF of any wrongdoing and ruled that Rachel's death was an accident for which she herself was responsible. One witness interviewed by the Israeli military, a British nurse named Alice Coy, testified under oath that the soldier who interviewed her about Rachel's murder refused to even record her statement that she believed the bulldozers were planning to destroy civilian homes. The ruling was criticized by human rights groups Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and B'Tselem, as well as by Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, who told Rachel's parents that he didn't consider the investigation legitimate. Similar sentiments were expressed by the US ambassador to Israel, Dan Shapiro, who told Rachel's family that the US government did not believe the Israeli investigation had been "thorough, credible, and transparent." In spite of the critiques, Congressman Brian Baird, who represented Rachel's hometown of Olympia, Washington, was one of the only American politicians willing to draw attention to her murder. In March 2003, Baird introduced a resolution in the U.S. Congress calling on the U.S. government to "undertake a full, fair, and expeditious investigation" into Rachel's death. Unsurprisingly, no action was ever taken.
In 2005 Rachel's parents filed a civil lawsuit in the Haifa district court accusing the Israeli state of failing to conduct a credible investigation and for bearing ultimate responsibility for Rachel's death. The family sued for a symbolic $1 dollar, not seeking financial gain, but rather accountability for the death of their loved one. In August 2012, an Israeli court upheld the verdict of the military investigation, invoking a "combat activities" exception which states that military personnel cannot be held accountable for any physical or economic harm done to civilians in an area designated as a 'war zone.' In his verdict, Judge Oded Gershon described Israel's investigation as "appropriate" and accused Rachel and others in the ISM of 'protecting terrorists,' although Dr. Nasrallah and his family could hardly be said to fit that description. Gershon added that Rachel's death was "the result of an accident she brought upon herself." Following the trial, Corrie's family alleged that important evidence was withheld as part of an ongoing coverup. As reported by the Jerusalem Post: "Immediately after the trial ended in July, Corrie's family alleged that important evidence -- including several surveillance tapes that show color footage of events before and after the activist's death -- were withheld as part of a cover-up over the circumstances of her death. The color footage was used in a Channel 2 documentary, but the IDF has denied that it exists, the family claims."
On the basis of this withheld evidence, Mr. and Mrs. Corrie filed an appeal against the ruling in May 2014 which was ultimately rejected by the Israeli Supreme Court the following year. Today, Craig and Cindy Corrie continue to fight for Palestinian rights, founding the Rachel Corrie Foundation for Peace and Justice in 2003 to 'support grassroots efforts for peace and justice globally.' (Steven Plaut, a former columnist for New York-based newspaper The Jewish Press, once described Mr. and Mrs. Corrie as a "two-person anti-Israel propaganda SWAT team.")
The real struggle Americans face is not one between Democrats and Republicans, regardless of what the Alex Joneses of the world might contend. When human consciousness is captured by political parties -- as has happened to a large extent since 2016 -- people will frequently be found defending their worst adversaries due to the dictates of 'the party.' Many Americans imagine Donald Trump to be some kind of a Superhero engaged in a valiant struggle to save America and the Western world from a nameless, faceless globalist cabal. In reality, Trump is a belligerent oaf who seems hell-bent on driving the final nail into America's coffin by being a dutiful Step-and-Fetch for Netanyahu and the state of Israel. In a country full of chest-thumping MAGA Neanderthals, we need more people with the integrity of Rachel Corrie. Only with similar conviction and resolve can we ever hope to see the day that American sovereignty is restored and our nation once again perceived as a light unto the world. May God bless her memory!
