Donald Trump's fanatical pro-Israeli appointments should terrify you

Some were beguiled by the idea that Donald Trump is a peace candidate - but his appointments underline a commitment to escalate Israel's genocidal onslaught.

Donald Trump recapturing the White House was never going to be a fun ride. But the appointments he has made should frankly be considered terrifying, both for the impact they will have on Americans - including many of those who voted for him - and, the people of Palestine, given the central role of the US in facilitating that genocide.

Trump understandably feels emboldened. He not only won 312 votes in the electoral college, compared to 226 for Kamala Harris, he also is the first Republican presidential candidate to win a higher share of the popular vote than his Democratic opponent since 2004, and only the second since 1992. Although - ludicrously for a supposedly highly developed nation - not every vote has been counted 20 days on, the final tally will leave him with around 50% of the total vote share.

Trump is more than aware that he won this victory while peddling more extreme and vengeful rhetoric than he did last time, surrounded by more radicalised figures. Back in 2016, his opponents could try and comfort themselves that this was an aberration, a glitch in the matrix. It is now clear that Trumpism represents an epochal shift, something a man branded a “fascist” by those who worked for him is surely keenly aware of.

That triumphalism is reflected in the extreme nature of the people he has proposed to fill his administration. In this carnival of horrors, let’s start with Mike Huckabee, the Republican former governor of Arkansas, who ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008 and 2016. He is on the hardcore religious right.

That matters, because in the US, it is evangelical Christians, not Jewish Americans, by quite a distance who are the most hardcore cheerleaders for Israel and indeed its most extreme elements. Indeed a poll a few months ago found that 30% of Jewish Americans thought Israel was committing genocide, rising to 40% among the under-45s.

Now, Trump has proposed Mike Huckabee as the new US Ambassador to Israel. Let’s start with this video from 2008.

“There is no such thing as a Palestinian”, Huckabee says. Let’s be clear, this is a genocidal perspective.

He uses this to justify illegal annexation and indeed ethnic cleansing. He’s even here criticising Israeli leaders at the time for not being extreme enough. What he’s suggesting here is Palestinians - many of whom have already been driven from their land in 1948 and in 1967 and indeed on other occasions, not least in Gaza today - should be permanently expelled. Saying they should go other Arab countries is like saying we should expel, say, French people to Germany or Italy because they’re all European.

He says here there’s no such thing as the West Bank, there is ‘Judea and Samaria’, which is the Biblical term used to justify expelling Palestinians from their homes on the grounds it’s supposedly God’s will.

He then says, contrary to what international law firmly adjudicates, that there is no such thing as an occupation, and dismisses the concept of ‘settlements’ - which are completely illegal under international law - instead rebranding them ‘communities’. Well, if someone stole his land and illegally settled people there, I doubt he’d be calling them ‘communities’.

As for the idea of no occupation, the West Bank has been subjected to the longest belligerent occupation in modern history. What does he think the armed presence of Israeli soldiers is - protecting 500,000 settlers in the West Bank and 220,000 in East Jerusalem - imposed against the will of 3 million Palestinians? This is, of course, consistent with the strategy of Israel’s cheerleaders: to gaslight and turn reality on its head.

Here’s another speech from 2015.

Clearly we are dealing here with an extreme Christian fundamentalist, who believes God justifies expelling indigenous peoples from their land and murderously stealing that land. If a Muslim fundamentalist used religion to justify egregious war crimes - well, we know what the commentary would be.

Huckabee also believes that if you oppose, say, Israel’s policies of apartheid, colonisation, ethnic cleansing and genocide, then you will be cursed by God.

It would be interesting to know where Palestinian Christians fit into this. During the mass expulsion of Palestinians during the Nakba of 1948, Christians represented 10% of the Christians. In Gaza today, Christians have been killed by the Israeli army - and their places of worship attacked. Is this the Christian God’s will, too, and are those Palestinian Christians cursed by him?

After being nominated as ambassador, he underlined that it is fanatical fundamentalism which underpins his understanding of Palestine’s future.

Just a little note here. This underlines how zealous support of Israel and believing in the innate equality and security of Jewish people do not go together. The Biblical prophecy Huckabee believes in is that all Jews must return to Israel, because that will then hasten the return of Jesus Christ, bring about Judgement Day, aka the apocalypse, and that Jewish people will then either convert to Christianity, or face extermination. And to think it’s those who think Jewish people should have equal rights and security wherever they live who get smeared as antisemtic. It’s enough to make you want to blaspheme.

Next up - Pete Hegseth, a Fox News presenter and Trump’s pick for defence secretary. He’s another far-right Christian zealot, with tattoos pointing to hardcore Christian nationalism, such as a Jerusalem cross on his chest as well as Deus Vult - ‘God wills it’ - which is a battle cry of the First Crusade. It is, as experts say, a call for religious violence, and he wrote in his 2020 book American Crusade that Muslims plan to outbreed native in inverted quotes Americans, and tha the US faces a cultural invasion that Christians should fight like 11th century crusaders. A curious comparison given the Crusaders were murderously invading foreign lands. He wants to release US soldiers accused of war crimes. He believes so called woke generals have left the military weak and effeminate and  questioned women being in combat roles

He was also investigated for alleged sexual assault in 2017. Let’s hear his views on Israel and Palestine.

Hegseth is someone who believes in the Israeli annexation of the West Bank and believes that, with Trump in charge, Israel should “do what needs to be done.”

Then there’s Mike Waltz, a Republican politician he has picked as national security advisor. Let’s have a listen.

Trump is the “best president for Israel”, Israel is the “best ally” the US has ever had and so on. Well, not much subtlety there is there.

Then there is Steve Witkoff, a real estate advisor with no apparent foreign policy expertise, appointed as Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East. He has spent vast sums of money supporting pro-Israel causes and raising money specifically for the Israeli military

When Biden did the barest of minimum - pausing the shipment of 2,000 pound bombs which have been used to slaughter so many Palestinian civilians - the New York Times reports that Witkoff used this as a fundraising opportunity for Trump. Indeed, he has lauded Trump as the strongest and most vocal supporter of Israel in generations.

And then there is Marco Rubio, US Republican Senator for Florida, who back in March was recorded being challenged by peace activists over his opposition to a ceasefire in Gaza.

Note that Rubio is regarded as a relative ‘moderate’ in this pack. He expresses here the common pro-Israel view that whatever war crime Israel commits is actually Hamas’ fault, giving Israel carte blanche to behave as it so wishes. He also falsely claims that the number killed of Palestinians by Israeli has been inflated, when actually all the evidence points to it being much much higher.

Now some liberals respond to this along the lines of ‘well, maybe people shouldn’t have been so hard on Joe Biden and Kamala Harris when the alternative is so much worse!’

Let’s be clear - the Democratic administration facilitated genocide and Biden will go down in history accordingly as a monster. It was under Biden that Gaza was wiped from the face of the earth and some of the most depraved and extreme crime of our age were committed in full public view, made possible with US weapons, aid and support.

What may well happen is those crimes will continue but without the occasional empty handwringing we saw before, which existed solely for domestic consumption. Take the West Bank, which faces being formally annexed and recognised as such under Trump. In all practical senses, the West Bank is already de facto annexed.

The fact is the US political establishment are all guilty. All of them must be held to account. But there’s no question that renewed horrors now face the Palestinian people under an administration filled with pro-Israel fanatics.