Palestinians may be killed at a slower rate than the genocide the Biden administration oversaw and funded — but they will be killed nonetheless, writes Laura Albast [photo credit: Getty Images]
The Biden-Harris administration oversaw and funded Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza over the past 15 months, while constantly toying with the public.
They sent out spokespeople – Mathew Miller, Vedant Patel, Sabrina Singh, John Kirby – to tell lie after lie; pathetically feigning sympathy for Palestinians between smirks. This was in an attempt to create an illusion about a ceasefire being in the works, to appease certain Democratic voters who were witnessing the live-streamed slaughter.
Donald Trump – who pushed through normalisation with the Israeli regime in his first term and is deeply tied to arch-Zionists – is a break with the hypocrisy of his predecessors.
His party is an explicitly anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab, and anti-Muslim organisation, shunning any notion of tolerance or diversity. His business interests – rather than being kept quiet – are openly tied to pro-Israel businesspeople (including his son-in-law’s family) or Israel’s partners in the Gulf.
While Biden cynically warned about “oligarchs” wielding power during his last presidential address – after four years of taking their orders and doing their bidding when it came to the Zionist project – Trump embraces plutocracy.
How will Emperor Trump run US Empire?
Upon his return to the White House, Trump has appointed a series of “special envoys” – many of them close friends – who will act as veritable shadow cabinet secretaries and ambassadors. They are utterly loyal to him.
One of them – Steve Witkoff, a millionaire land developer and Zionist – was dispatched to meet with Netanyahu and secure a ceasefire agreement. While some have attributed the deal to Witkoff’s involvement, others believe that the Israelis wanted to please Trump by ending the carpet bombing.
In any case, Trump may have delivered the ceasefire deal that the Democratic Party always could have put into effect. The incoming president didn’t want to inherit Biden’s legacy, and he most certainly did not want the news cycle to be focused on the Gaza genocide during his triumph. He wants the global media’s attention, forcing world leaders, viewers, and readers to orbit around him and the spectacle that is his administration.
The Senate will likely confirm Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, Trump’s pick for secretary of state and a staunch Israel supporter. During the hearing, he vowed to lift sanctions imposed by the Biden administration on Israeli settlers — not that they deterred settler violence.
In December of 2023, three months into the genocide, Rubio was confronted by a Code Pink activist. He parrotted debunked Israeli propaganda by accusing Hamas of hiding beneath hospitals and relieving Israel of any blame for its killing of more than 15,000 Palestinians at the time. He continuously referred to the civilian losses as ‘human shields.’ Rubio has long supported U.S. funding to Israel and opposed the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, introducing anti-BDS bills in 2019 and 2023.
The former governor of Arkansas, Mike Huckabee, will be Trump’s ambassador to Israel. He’s made several trips to Israel in the past and has close ties to the settler movement. He has referred to illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank as ‘communities,’ saying there is no such thing as settlements. Israeli settler leaders – including Smotrich – welcomed Huckabee’s appointment.
Huckabee ran to be the Republican nominee for President twice. In 2008, he said, “There is no such thing as a Palestinian,” indicating that Palestinians are “political tools to force land away from Israel.”
If anything, Huckabee’s record foreshadows a new phase in the battle for narrative on the global stage, given his tendency to utilise terminology meant to enrage, dehumanise, and distract.
Trump’s return also brings renewed fear among Muslims in America, as he vowed to reinstate the Muslim Ban on day one and has appointed Islamophobe Sebastian Gorka as deputy assistant to the president and senior director for counterterrorism. Gorka’s views on Islam pose a great danger to Muslim Americans and immigrants.
What the last 15 months have taught us is that arguing who is worse for Palestine – the Democrats or the Republicans – is a waste of time. They are essentially one and the same in their vision and support for the Israeli Zionist project: one needs to simply look up campaign finance records and follow the money.
Subscribe Now and Listen to our Podcasts OnPerhaps the only thing that the Republicans are honest about is their stance on Israel and Palestine. This is contrary to countless Democrats, who preached in favour of Palestinian rights when the death tolls became shockingly high but still voted to send arms to kill Palestinians in Gaza.
While Biden and Blinken occasionally hosted Palestinians for the sake of political optics, Trump has no trouble throwing around phrases like “bad Palestinian.” His base hardly cares about what goes on abroad, let alone in Palestine.
However, despite the Democratic establishment operating in lock-step with AIPAC, the majority of Democratic Party-aligned voters felt that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza as far back as May of 2024. Hence, while Trump wants to create the impression that his presidency offers stability and peace, he also can operate less carefully when it comes to his public support for Israel.
At a rally in DC one day ahead of his inauguration, Trump took credit for the ceasefire deal, calling it an “epic” agreement – playing into the American mentality of seeing events as mere victories and losses, rather than human tragedies – and as a “first step toward lasting peace in the Middle East.”
This speaks to the strategy that he carried out during his first administration: he wants to boast about grand achievements that his predecessors weren’t able (or were unwilling) to grasp. And, of course, he wants to achieve what the U.S. foreign policy establishment – Democratic and Republican – has always wanted: normalisation with Israel across the region, particularly with Saudi Arabia.
This desired solidification of the Israeli presence amounts to the same discounting of human life and suffering, much of it directly created by America’s carnage. Israeli soldiers will continue to kill Palestinians, whether with bullets to the head in the West Bank or by bombing them in Gaza.
Under Trump, they may be killed at a slower rate than the genocide the Biden administration oversaw and funded — but they will be killed nonetheless. The ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, the mutilation of their children, and the annexation of their land continue as always – a new face doesn’t change that.
The only thing that can change is the strategy of grassroots organisers, resistance groups, and the Palestinian leadership, in attempts to change the American public’s mind, rewrite the global narrative, and impose forms of pressure to achieve small, steady wins. Past ones include getting countries such as Norway and Spain to recognize Palestine as a state, lobbying Brazilian judges to investigate Israeli war criminals, or getting Palestinian voices on mainstream media platforms whenever possible.
All of this is going to become more difficult. The US establishment and media will now shift their focus to Trump, obsessing over him every morning, afternoon, and night, meaning that Israeli atrocities against Palestinians will receive even less coverage than before.
Less people may come to protests, out of the very real fear that Republican control of the security forces will bring about harsher violence, more arrests, and the fortification of a racist system that polices marginalised communities, with its agents training alongside Israeli Occupation Forces. The Democrats waged a war on Palestine solidarity, but the war isn’t over: only the commanders have changed.
There is no optimism with Trump’s arrival, but there’s also no hidden agenda. Under the Democrats, the movement had to react and pivot constantly, sifting through fake sympathy and real racism.
In the next four years, there will be a greater crackdown on pro-Palestine speech on college campuses, greater leniency with police brutality against communities of colour and protesters for Palestine, a definite scheme for stealing land in the West Bank, carte blanche for settler violence and settlement activity, and an absolute absence of new and trusted Palestinian voices in the mainstream.
The political battles are clear because they have been fought repeatedly for decades. It’s time the movement changes its strategy and expands its reach. It’s no longer just the students dissenting, but also the faculty. Being present in the halls of city councils and state assemblies, while lobbying for ceasefire resolutions, made a difference. Alternative media that centres the movement is rapidly growing, and complicit corporate media can perhaps be held accountable, for once.
Organising under a genocidal administration has prepared the Palestine movement to take on the battles under a fascist one.
Laura Albast is a Palestinian American journalist, translator, photographer, and media analyst based in Washington, DC. Her publications and appearances include The Nation, The Washington Post, Al Jazeera, Prism, The New Arab, TRT World, KPFA, and other outlets.
Follow Laura on X: @Lau_Bast
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Opinions expressed in this article remain those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The New Arab, its editorial board or staff.