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ONE of the vilest members of the broadly neo-fascist Netanyahu cabinet last Sunday flagged the establishment of a ‘migration administration’ to facilitate the expulsion of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip. Fresh from a visit to the US, Bezalel Smotrich, the Israeli finance minister, announced that the plan for an involuntary mass exodus was ‘taking shape’ in collaboration with the Trump administration.
It might be inspired by the Reich Central Office for Jewish Emigration established by Germans in the late 1930s, with headquarters in Berlin and key branches in Vienna, Prague and Amsterdam, aimed at the mass expulsion of Jews from Nazi-controlled territories.
The key personnel associated with this venture — its failure was followed by the ‘final solution’ of mass murder by industrial methods — included Adolf Hitler’s deputy Hermann Göring (who died by suicide after being sentenced to death at Nuremberg in 1946), Reinard Heydrich (assassinated in 1942 by the UK-backed Czech resistance), and Adolf Eichmann (tracked down by Israeli agents and hanged in 1962).
Hannah Arendt’s coverage of the Eichmann trial for The New Yorker spawned her famous quote about the banality of evil. Canadian poet/ singer/ songwriter Leonard Cohen’s response is less well known. After enumerating the characteristics of Eichmann’s physical normality as a human specimen, he wonders: “What did you expect?/ Talons?/ Oversize incisors?/ Green saliva?/ Madness?”
The attack on Heydrich led to the extermination by the Nazis of the inhabitants of Lidice, a village not far from the Czech capital, based on false information. Just six years later, a similar atrocity took place in the Palestinian village of Deir Yassin. It wasn’t the only massacre of villagers during the Nakba. Even in the immediate aftermath of the horrendous Judeocide in Europe, some prominent Jews had the courage to point out the parallels between Zionist and Nazi tactics. But Zio-nazism has flourished and emerged as the primary ideology of Israel’s ruling elite.
When will the Zionists face a Nuremberg?
It has been boosted by the US president’s dream of converting a Palestinian-free Gaza Strip into a Trump theme park. Donald Trump reposted a brief video on his Truth Social account not realising that it was a satire aimed at mocking his megalomania, but seems to have stepped back from his bizarre (and genocidal) vision of a Middle Eastern Riviera after pushback from allies such as Egypt and Jordan.
However, his approach to domestic and global affairs can leave you wondering whether at some point Gaza will trump the Panama Canal, Greenland or Canada as a possible imperialist acquisition.
His administration’s incoherent predilections are illustrated by its direct talks with Hamas in Doha on the one hand (accompanied by Trump’s death threats aimed at everyone in Gaza), and on the other by the detention of a Green Card-holding Columbia University graduate, who has been prominent among the protesters against genocide over the past 500 days. Mahmoud Khalil’s crime, evidently, is leading “activities aligned to Hamas”, which may result in deportation if the block imposed by a New York judge on Monday is ignored.
Trump has described this as the “the first arrest of many to come”, adding: “If you support terrorism, including the slaughtering of innocent men, women, and children, your presence is contrary to our national and foreign policy interests, and you are not welcome here.” By that token, no representative of the Netanyahu regime should be allowed to enter the US, and Trump alongside his cabinet and most of his supporters ought to be unwelcome in America. Perhaps even Adam Boehler, the US negotiator who has described some of Hamas’ demands as ‘relatively reasonable’, is destined for ostracisation.
Serial Israeli violations of the Gaza truce and a campaign of ethnic cleansing in the West Bank have elicited not even a token reprimand from Washington. Meanwhile, No Other Land has become possibly the first Oscar-winning documentary to remain undistributed in the US via the usual outlets. The Palestinian-Israeli joint venture’s win occasioned hearty applause even before the co-directors’ speeches — perhaps the most pertinent utterances at the Academy Awards since Vanessa Redgrave and Michael Moore expressed their views in 1978 and 2003 respectively.
The alternative Arab proposal for Gaza’s reconstruction has been favourably received by leading European nations, but what might come next is anyone’s guess. Meanwhile, it might behove America’s recent McCarthyites to glance at their constitution’s first amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
Published in Dawn, March 12th, 2025
