What is happening in America today feels disturbingly familiar. History has a rhythm, and the beat we are hearing now echoes that of the Weimar Republic (1919–1933)—a fragile German democracy that collapsed from within, paving the way for Nazi rule. It was a society where democratic institutions still stood, but moral restraint had vanished. When fear, grievance, and identity fuse with power, catastrophe is no longer an accident. It becomes policy.
Donald Trump’s posture toward the Middle East cannot be understood through the lens of conventional diplomacy. It was not strategy in the classical sense. It was ideology—shaped by donor expectations, personal alliances, and imperial ambition—operating without shame or pretense.
From the moment he entered office in 2017, Trump’s decisions were signals, not negotiations. The 2018 relocation of the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem—in open disregard of longstanding international consensus and decades of U.S. policy—was not diplomacy; it was a declaration. The 2019 recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights followed the same logic, as did the brokering of the Abraham Accords in 2020.
These moves were marketed as breakthroughs, but they were never acts of statecraft. They were ideological offerings—enabled by Arab leaders more invested in preserving their own political survival than in justice or dignity. From Jordan—a country whose population is over 60 percent Palestinian—to Egypt and beyond, normalization did not arise from popular consent. It came at the cost of leaders sacrificing their principles, and their people, for pennies of political expediency.
At the center of this convergence stood Jared Kushner—Trump’s son-in-law and chief architect of Middle East policy. An Orthodox Jew with familial ties to Holocaust survivors and documented financial connections to West Bank settlements, Kushner embodied the collapse of boundaries between belief, money, and policy. He was not a mediator. He was an emissary to the most uncompromising factions of the Israeli right.
Even personal faith became political currency.Trumps daughter Ivanka Trump’s conversion to Judaism further blurred the already fragile line between private conviction and public authority. In this administration, ideology did not whisper. It governed.
Trump’s loyalty, as always, is transactional. Those who finance his political resurrection expect returns. In March 2025, billionaire donor Miriam Adelson pledged over $100 million to his campaign. The returns are visible: silence on settlement expansion, unconditional support for annexation, and now, something even darker—open discourse around population removal.
What is unfolding globally is no coincidence. This logic of domination extends beyond Palestine. Look at Venezuela—a sovereign nation economically strangled and politically isolated by sanctions. Its president was kidnapped by the U.S. for drug trafficking, despite baseless allegations. Look at the casual revival of imperial language surrounding Greenland, with little regard for America’s longstanding NATO allies in Europe. And look at Canada, a long-term ally and neighbor, whose prime minister declared at Davos last week that American hegemony—and its moral authority—has lost its way, and that it is time to think about a world order without America.
The message is consistent: America has lost its moral compass. And the question remains: who is responsible?
As world-renowned American economist and political scientist Professor Jeffrey Sachs has asked:
“If you ask me, am I really sure why Netanyahu—who is an absolutely disgusting warmonger, who has dragged us into terrible wars, who is committing massive war crimes—why he gets 57 standing ovations in the U.S. Congress? Is it the AIPAC lobby? Blackmail? Direct bribes? Fear among American politicians? Is it the mainstream media, much of which is owned by billionaires with strong pro-Israel views? Or is it the influence of the Christian Zionist voter base, which is also a real force? To tell you the truth, none of it really adds up. This is not in America’s interest.”
Kushner himself removed any remaining ambiguity. Speaking at an event hosted by the Middle East Initiative at Harvard Kennedy School in February 2024, he described Gaza not as a homeland, not as a place of memory, suffering, and continuity—but as real estate.
“Gaza’s waterfront property—it could be very valuable. From Israel’s perspective, I would do my best to move the people out and then clean it up.”
Jared Kushner, who holds no official title but serves as one of Mr. Trump’s envoys for a Gaza ceasefire, said his “master plan” aimed for “catastrophic success.”
Now, at Davos, with a slide showing dozens of shiny terraced apartment towers overlooking a tree-lined promenade, he promised a Mediterranean utopia rising from Gaza’s scarred landscape. With Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu joining the so-called “Board of Peace”—also known as the “Board of Shitloads”—what is going to happen to Gaza is all too imaginable.
These words should chill anyone who understands history. They echo the language of every colonial project that ever reduced human beings to obstacles and land to opportunity. Displacement becomes “relocation.” Destruction becomes “cleanup.” Ethnic cleansing is rebranded as “development.”
For those who protest against these Zionist plots, the fear is not hypothetical. It is rational. It is the fear that, once Gazans are forced out, Benjamin Netanyahu will never allow them to return. Kushner himself admitted uncertainty: “Maybe, but I’m not sure there’s much left of Gaza at this point.” The implication is unmistakable: erase the place, then deny the people.
This is not peace-building. It is conquest—sanitized by economic language and shielded by power.
The tragedy is not only what is happening to Palestinians. It is what is happening to America. When a superpower abandons moral constraint—when it sanctifies domination through ideology, money, and grievance—it does not merely harm others. It corrodes itself.
This is how republics rot. This is how empires fall.
The Weimar Republic did not collapse overnight. It collapsed when power stopped pretending to be humane.
And today, the pretense is gone.
faznotes.com 
Leave a comment