During Trump 2.0, Medea Benjamin says the Palestine solidarity movement must find and expand the cracks in the pro-Israel war machine.
End Aid to Israel demonstration in Washington on Nov. 4, 2023, during the Israeli assault on Gaza. (Consortium News)
By Medea Benjamin
Z Network
As President Joe Biden greenlights another $8 billion in weapons to Israel in his last days in office and Secretary Blinken gives a parting New York Times interview in which he denies that a genocide is taking place in Gaza, many pro-Palestine activists are anxiously counting down the days until “Genocide Joe” and his crew exit the White House.
But what will activists have to contend with under the Trump presidency?
Donald Trump proved his pro-Israel agenda in his first term, by moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, supporting West Bank settlements, recognizing the Golan Heights as part of Israel, pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal and enacting the Abraham Accords to normalize relations between Israel and Arab states, while disregarding the plight of Palestinians.
Recently, Trump has said that the U.S. should let Israel “finish the job,” warned that there will be “all hell to pay” if the hostages aren’t released by the time he takes office, and threatened to blow Iran to smithereens.
Trump has signalled his intentions this time around by the people he has selected for key positions.
Mike Huckabee, his pick for U.S. ambassador to Israel, is a religious fanatic who doesn’t think Israeli settlements are illegal and says “There is no such thing as a West Bank. It’s Judea and Samaria [the territory’s biblical name, revived in Israeli propaganda].” He even insists there is no such thing as a Palestinian.
Elise Stefanik, Trump’s pick for U.S. ambassador to the U.N., used her position in Congress to stifle free speech on college campuses and advocates deporting pro-Palestinian protesters who have student visas.
Trump speaking at an event in Phoenix on Dec. 22, 2024. (Gage Skidmore, Flickr, CC BY-ND 2.0)
What about Congress? While the 118th Congress was overwhelmingly pro-Israel, the new one, with both the Senate and the House under Republican control, will be even more aggressively biased. Members want to pass a host of horrific bills that will further cement U.S. ties to the Israeli government, punish international actors that dare try to hold Israel accountable, and repress the domestic movement for Palestinian rights.
This legislation includes a bill that equates criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism; a bill that gives the Treasury Department the power to investigate non-profit groups for links to “terrorism” and then shut them down; a bill to sanction the International Criminal Court for issuing an arrest warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu [passed by the House on Thursday]; a bill to make permanent the U.S. ban on funding the relief agency United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA); and a bill to cancel trade agreements with South Africa because of its genocide case against Israel in the International Court of Justice.
And of course, we can’t leave out the challenges posed by three powerful forces: the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Christian Zionists and military contractors.
Best known is the lobby group AIPAC, which used its financial muscle in the recent elections to knock out two of the most pro-Palestinian members of Congress, Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman, leaving others terrified of becoming AIPAC targets.
Lesser known but enormously powerful are the tens of millions of Christian Zionists, who are driven by the radical belief that Israel is key to Jesus’ return to Earth after a bloody final battle of Armageddon in which only those who accept Jesus as their savior will survive. Christian Zionists — already numerous in Congress, the White House and even the military — will be emboldened by Trump.
The third powerful lobby group are the military contractors, which has more lobbyists than members of Congress. Thanks to the $18 billion that Congress allocated for Israel in 2024, weapons stocks have soared over the past year, dramatically outperforming the major stock indexes.
Counter Forces
But there are countervailing forces as well. The American public has become more and more sympathetic to Palestinians. A November opinion poll showed that, despite the pro-Israel bias of our government and corporate media, most Americans (63 percent) want a ceasefire and 55 percent think the U.S. should not provide unrestricted financial and military assistance to the Israeli government.
Please Support CN’s
Winter Fund Drive!
This is especially true among young people and among Democrats. And with a Republican in the White House, more Democrats in positions of power should be willing to oppose Israel’s actions since they will no longer be defying their own party’s president.
And it’s not just Democrats. Many Trump supporters oppose U.S. involvement in overseas wars, and Trump himself, on the campaign trail, repeatedly claimed that he wants to bring peace to the Middle East.
Worldwide, more countries are not only voting for a ceasefire at the U.N., but taking concrete measures to hold Israel accountable. The long list of countries and parties that have either submitted or announced their intention to join South Africa’s case at the International Court of Justice include Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ireland, Jordan, Libya, Maldives, Mexico, Namibia, Nicaragua, Palestine, Spain, Türkiye and the Arab League.
Countries that have either banned, limited or announced their intention to embargo arms to Israel include Italy, Spain, the U.K., Canada, Belgium, The Netherlands, Türkiye, Russia and China.
In the coming year, the Palestine solidarity movement must find and expand the cracks in the pro-Israel war machine. It must strengthen the spine of Democrats who live in fear of AIPAC and reach out to Republicans who oppose funding foreign conflicts.
The same arguments many Republicans make about defunding Ukraine must be applied to Israel. Activists must expand campaigns against companies supporting Israel’s genocide, as well as efforts at the state, city, labor, university, faith-based and sectoral level to condemn Israel’s actions and promote divestment. The recent resolution by the American Historical Association condemning “scholasticide” is a good example.
While activists are bracing for a torrent of Trump policies that will create even more global and domestic chaos, including increased attacks on pro-Palestine organizations and individuals, the U.S. movement must be as resolute as the Palestinians themselves, who have demonstrated that, no matter what Israel does to destroy them, they remain determined to resist.
The year 2025, with Donald Trump in the White House, will not be a time for despair or retreating in fear, but a time for action.
Medea Benjamin is the co-founder of CODEPINK and the co-founder of the human rights group Global Exchange. She has been an advocate for social justice for more than 40 years. She is the author of 10 books, including Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control; Kingdom of the Unjust: Behind the US-Saudi Connection; and Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Her articles appear regularly in outlets such as Znet, The Guardian, The Huffington Post, CommonDreams, Alternet and The Hill.
Views expressed in this article and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
Please Support CN’s
Winter Fund Drive!
Make a tax-deductible donation securely by credit card or check by clicking the red button:
A militaristic, pro-Israel, pro-genocide administration is being replaced by another militaristic, pro-Israel, pro-genocide administration. The fund-raising machines on the Democrat side go into ‘horror’ mode at the prospects of such a change. Send money now! We’ve just got to get the militaristic, pro-Israel, pro-genocide Democrats back into power to avoid the horrors that will come from militaristic, pro-Israel, pro-Genocide Republicans.
In fact, USA is a country ruled by the Zionists and the Christian-Zionists. And especially since 1945 this force has silenced all others inside the US. It is of little value whether it was Biden or it is Trump! The ruler remains the same. The alliance of the Zionists and the Christian-Zionists ruling class, which owns the Military Industrial Complex will go on using Tramp as they used Biden more or less the same way. The survival of any American president depends on a total subjugation to this alliance of Zionists and Christian-Zionists ruling elites. Even if they (presidents) themselves stand against Zionism. It is just like the Nazi’s political philosophy as the core concept of racial supremacy! It is even more brutal and inhuman and dangerous for the entire world. So with Trump resuming his presidential responsibilities for the second term the overall situations will never change. It can only expedite further and more dangerously.
Ah yes, those good old Christian Zionists. Those good old fundamentalist Christians. Opposing or not supporting Israel is standing in the way of God’s grand plan. Those who do not “accept Jesus as their savior” will not survive Armageddon, and are condemned by God to an eternity of torment in hell. Believing in the cruel God they believe in, it would make sense that they would be totally indifferent to the sufferings of the Palestinians.
As said by the American revolutionary writer Thomas Paine, “belief in a cruel God makes a cruel man”. (Or cruel woman. Or cruel person.)
I remember being exposed to this Zionist thinking when I was a college student in the early 1970’s and became briefly involved with the fundamentalist organization Campus Crusade for Christ. I first assumed that if they were about Christianity and Jesus Christ they had to be good people. Through them I was introduced to the recently deceased Hal Lindsey and his book The Late Great Planet Earth, and this business about the supposed “Rapture” that many Christians were excited about. Hal Lindsey was a quintessential Zionist Christian, and an adherent of that school of biblical interpretation known as dispensationalism.
I came to see that such thinking actually appealed to baser and really juvenile desires and aspirations, rather than nobler ones. I.e. be one of those “in the know” about how God’s plan is going to work out, and be one of those who are going to be “raptured” away while the rest of the world, those who are “unsaved”, will suffer through the “Great Tribulation”.
I detail my involvement with them and my thoughts about them in my write-up linked to by my screen handle.
Yes, those Christian Zionists …. who ignore and hate everything that Jesus Christ tried to teach.
As one example “Put thy sword away, for those who live by the sword will die by the sword.”
America, the Christian Nation that is doomed to die by the sword. It surely knows nothing besides living by the sword. But, these folk believe that as long as they kill everyone all at once, and burn Eden to the ground in a massive firestorm, then both God and Jesus will be very, very happy with them. Never mind that this same God once tried to tell them “Thou Shall Not Kill”
How long can a state, a National Security State survive w/o the support of its population? Some body said declines start slowly and then accelerate; financial, moral, military and social decline have all shifted gears here and we are headed towards catastrophe. Our leaders would be funny, amusing, if our lives weren’t at stake….not to mention the rest of the world and non-human life.
Medea, if you could encourage your protesters to look like average Americans, maybe fewer piercings if possible, maybe carry some American flags and concentrate solely on slogans that appeal to the average American worker falling off a cliff with their $17/hour wages, you’d easily get mass support.
The pro-Palestine cause should be endlessly linked to the black hole of American taxpayers’ money funneled abroad. Carry signs like, “DC politicians send $17 MILLION PER DAY to Israel but they won’t send a water bottle to North Carolina.”
When protests look like it’s a bunch of freedom fighters in Palestinian attire, the American people don’t pay attention. To be clear this is not a judgement of Americans- they’re too overworked and underpaid to even TRY to find legitimate news sources, let alone to attempt to learn about conflicts that they’ve been lied to about for decades. It’s not Trump voters’ fault, it’s not liberals’ fault, it’s ALL the politicans in DC’s fault for essentially stealing the resources of the American people for the exclusive benefit of a select few. This comment is just a practical reality and I wish the pro-Palestine movement would embrace it. You need strategy to win against the money interests working so hard to defeat you.
I live in an 80%+ Trump-voting county and every single one of my Trump-voting neighbors would agree that our tax dollars should be spent in the United States, NOT in every country except our own. Stop the money to wars, save millions of lives, and save the future of the American people.
Americans First!
… which is different in many more ways than just a single letter from “America First”.
But the admirable and most visible pro-Palestine activism, carried out by US students, was already destroyed in 2024. Medea writes that Elise Stefanik used her position in Congress to stifle free speech on college campuses. It wasn’t the dreadful Stefanik who did that, it was the disgraceful presidents of the universities.
The US gets nothing in return for the economic and military support that it provides to the ethno-supremacist apartheid nation of Israel. In fact, the U.S. suffers internationally on account of its close relationship with Israel because of its constant vetoing of UN Resolutions intended to punish Israel for its human rights violations.
There is no alliance, and Israel is not our ally. Its government does not behave as an ally does, it has never fought alongside US forces in any of our foreign wars. Its interests are not aligned with ours as an ally’s should be. There is no formal treaty and no binding obligations that require our governments to do anything for the other.
Pundits always grossly exaggerates the extent of the ties between our governments. Israel is routinely called our “most important ally” in the region, or even our “most cherished ally” in all the world. These are ideological assertions that are not grounded in reality. Dozens of other states all over the world are better allies to the United States than the “most cherished ally” is. And they don’t preside over an illegal occupation and decades of abuses and crimes against the Palestinian people living under Israeli occupation. Now being ethnically cleansed in a genocide with US supplied bombs dropped on refugee camps and hospitals.
The effect of this constant repetition is to make the US/Israel relationship to be extremely important to U.S. interests when it is not. It promotes an illusion of a common interest where no real common interest exists ~ and has now suckered the US into being complicit in a genocide.
The US taxpayers are having billions of their taxes stolen and given to apartheid Israel. Americans do not have Universal healthcare. But pay for Israel to have Universal healthcare. And the US is $35-trillion in Debt. The US and Israel have made themselves pariahs in the eyes of the World. This is not going to end well for the US or Israel. The US will survive. The same cannot be said for Israel.
George Washington, the first President of the United States, and sometimes called the “father of our country”, had some fatherly advice, and in this case some very good fatherly advice, for our young country:
hxxps://www.deism.com/post/famous-deist-george-washington
Thanks for all your tireless work throughout the long decades of endless war, Medea! You are the light in the world.
Hopefully Herr Drumph won’t scramble the military.
Believe our soldiers far more professional & the lesson of Kent State aftermath learned through intervening history…