Commentary
Trump hosted the outlaw Netanyahu at the White House, the only ironclad alliance
If Netanyahu had a message for Trump, it was that the Israeli-American military-industrial complex must not be touched.
On Tuesday at the Oval Office, Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu and Donald Trump were the protagonists, with everyone else listening, quiet like schoolchildren, to the lecture delivered by the Israeli-American military-industrial complex, whether on tariffs, the Gaza war or negotiations with Iran.
This is the only unbreakable alliance we know of, able to weather all storms. There are historical ties, but also ties of blood and religion, since Trump's daughter, married to Jared Kushner, is a convert to Judaism. Thus, everyone listened in silence, from Trump's VP Vance to his cabinet – just like us Europeans, not only with nothing to say about the International Criminal Court's warrant for Netanyahu's arrest, but soon ready to welcome him, as Orbán's Hungary has already done.
We are in the wilderness and, as the saying goes, fear neither God nor man. And shame on us for it. Michele Giorgio's Tuesday article in il manifesto on the Red Crescent's call for an international investigation into the Israeli execution of 15 rescue workers in Gaza left buried under the debris was the only article on the subject to appear in Italian media. This was noticed and highlighted by RAI News’s press review.
That is one more despair-inducing sign of the fact that since October 7, 2023, we have become accustomed to violence, to the unstoppable cycle of revenge and bloodshed: we are no longer even able to bear witness to what is happening. And Palestinian journalists, who continue to be killed (three more on Tuesday, adding up to 210 since the beginning of the conflict) are another favorite target of Tel Aviv, which does not allow anyone to enter Gaza, just as it obviously blocks aid and targets civilians.
What’s more: Israel has seized a “buffer zone” where it has razed everything, which corresponds to at least 50 percent of the territory of the whole of Gaza, according to Yaakov Garb, a professor at Ben Gurion University. The army also controls two military corridors, Netzarim in the north and Philadelphi in the south, and is building a third, Morag, also in the south. In short, it is occupying and will continue to occupy the Strip, aiming to crush it in a vise.
“Mercy is dead,” as goes Nuto Revelli’s partisan song. From Netanyahu's trip to meet Trump, we have learned that there is only one law: their own. It’s unclear what the agreement is about the release of the Israeli hostages, but it is clear that either Tel Aviv's conditions are accepted or the conflict will continue, which means the target practice on Palestinians in Gaza and the genocide.
One glimmer of hope came from the conference call for a ceasefire put together by Macron, who was in Cairo on Tuesday, together with Trump, Egypt's Al Sisi and Jordan's King Abdallah II. But the only response that came from Washington was Netanyahu's unvarnished praise of Trump's “Gaza Riviera” plan that calls for the “voluntary” ethnic cleansing of thousands of Palestinians. “Trump is the greatest friend Israel has ever had in the White House,” the Israeli premier said; however, he is also selling Jews and Israel a dangerous lie, as Michael S. Roth points out in an op-ed in the New York Times: namely, that their defense must come through unrestrained violence and against all international and democratic law.
In reality, as we know and as a substantial part of Israeli society is aware, Netanyahu is first of all protecting himself and his own power, as the Shin Bet investigation that led to the arrest of two of his advisers accused of receiving money from Qatar as part of Hamas financing operations has shown. At the White House, Netanyahu did his international catwalk and also dictated the line on tariffs: the 17 percent tariffs imposed on Israel by Donald Trump will soon be eliminated in negotiations to get to a rate of zero.
The whole display was choreographed for those outside the supreme Israel-U.S. alliance. From the 1950s to the present day, Tel Aviv has received more than $260 billion in military aid from the United States; in the last year and a half alone, the aid has exceeded $20 billion. At the same time, Israel is at the forefront of military scientific-technological research, is one of the largest arms exporters and, at the same time, one of the largest customers of American companies like Boeing, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin and RTX (Raytheon Technologies). All of these companies are controlled by a global financial establishment: the international investment funds known as the “Big Three,” Vanguard, BlackRock and State Street, largely the same who have been financing Trump. The Israeli-American military-industrial complex is using the Palestinian Occupied Territories, but also Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Iraq, and Iran, as a testing ground for the weapons and surveillance technologies it exports around the world.
If Netanyahu had a message for Trump, it was that the Israeli-American military-industrial complex must not be touched. If anything, it must be put to use together, as in the case of a possible conflict against Iran, the Israeli PM's true obsession. On Saturday, Trump announced the launch of direct talks between Washington and Tehran on Iran's nuclear program, warning that if the talks are not successful, “it will be a bad day for Iran.” Tehran cannot have nuclear weapons, he added. Some have said that Netanyahu was taken by surprise at the news, but that is pure fiction: Israel is also sitting at that negotiating table, as they know very well in Tehran.
Originally published at https://ilmanifesto.it/genocidio-a-gaza-bibi-e-trump-fuorilegge-alla-casa-bianca on 2025-04-09