Jan. 8, 2025 (EIRNS)—It is hard to fathom anything worse, anything more degrading to the human spirit, than the genocide on full display in Gaza, which has been underway—and getting worse daily—for more than a year. But now, the criminal gang running the Israeli government, on Malthusian policy commands emanating from London and Washington, have announced their intention to turn the West Bank into Gaza 2. An urgent warning came from one of Israel’s most prominent dailies, Haaretz, whose lead editorial on Jan. 8 is headlined “Israel Wants To Turn the West Bank into Rubble, Just Like Gaza”, and which warned: “The goal: to impose Greater Israel apartheid in the occupied territories. If they succeed, they will put an end to any future possibility of a two-state solution and sustainable life in the region.”
Further fanning the flames of war, the deputy commander of CENTCOM, Vice Admiral Brad Cooper, traveled to Israel last week to discuss increased arms shipments from the departing Biden administration, and improving readiness for a possible joint U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities—which could escalate to a nuclear showdown with Iran’s strategic ally Russia in the blink of an eye.
When might such an attack occur? Very possibly before Donald Trump is inaugurated on Jan. 20, just 11 days from now. To the surprise of many, Trump just sent an unmistakable message to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he is not pleased with his handling of the entire situation, including Israel’s military seizure of territory in southern Syria over recent weeks. Late on Jan. 7, right after his widely publicized Mar-a-Lago press conference, Trump posted on his TruthSocial account an October 2024 video of economist Jeffrey Sachs denouncing the role of the CIA and other U.S. and British agencies in Operation Timber Sycamore, the 2012-2017 operation to topple the government of Bashar al-Assad in Syria. Trump’s post included Sachs’s denunciation of Netanyahu’s role, including his comment that Netanyahu “is nothing if not obsessive, and he’s still trying to get us to fight Iran this day, this week.”
Is the incoming Trump administration planning to kick over the neocon gameplan for war in Southwest Asia, as well as in Ukraine? Will Trump move to derail decades of Anglo-American planning for war against Russia and China, and the bankers’ permanent bureaucracy in government that has enforced that policy? His nominations of Tulsi Gabbard for Director of National Intelligence, and of Kash Patel to head the FBI, suggest that could be the case.
All of that remains to be seen. As does the question of whether Trump’s headline-grabbing statements to the press about seizing Greenland, the Panama Canal, and Canada are just unpleasant negotiating bluster, or actually intended policy which disavows any national sovereignty other than that of the United States—an approach which is, of course, totally contrary to that of the Founding Fathers.
Amid all the unknowns, two things are clear. First: Trump himself is not aware of the tectonic changes that are taking place around the globe, let alone their cause, and which require a radically different American policy response. The nations of the Global South have announced the end of 500 years of colonialism, and are opting for cooperating with whatever countries are prepared to help them industrialize and develop. Today that means China and the Belt and Road Initiative, and it means the growing BRICS dynamic—which now represents 57% of the world’s population.
But there is no reason that the United States should not also play a leading role in this process of global, high-tech development. Such an approach is the only way to solve the migrant and drug problems, for example, as the Schiller Institute demonstrates in its pamphlet “Development Drive Means Billions of New Jobs, No Refugees, No War”.
Second: Precisely because the world is in such turmoil, there are tremendous political openings for organizing an in-depth change in policy. It is a moment for all layers internationally to mobilize, against the genocide(s) and in favor of a new international security and development architecture of the sort Helga Zepp-LaRouche has advocated.
In this time of transition, we were wise to recall that the American Presidency is not the Super Bowl, and politics is not a spectator sport. The coming days and weeks are a time for maximum political action and education as to the actual solutions required to the breakdown crisis of the trans-Atlantic financial system.
