It’s been eight months since Zé Ninguém and I wrote our opinion piece about the catastrophic situation in the United States. We tried to get one of Brazil’s top three national newspapers, Folha de S.Paulo, to translate and print the article on its op-ed page. Unfortunately, we did not succeed. Because we are lazy, rather than write something new, we decided to recycle the piece as a way to launch Porcupine Press. (So please read it, if you haven’t already!)

Boy oh boy! A lot has happened since then – all of it bad. To use a popular American expression, “the shit hit the fan.” (Would “Deu merda” be the closest Brazilian expression?) Basically, it’s all been a continuation of the downhill slide we described in the op-ed – just more shit and worse shit. In this issue of the newsletter, we will update readers as to the most recent developments.

The collapse of democracy and civil society in the richest, most powerful country in the world, certainly has to qualify as one of the major stories of our time. If people in other countries are feeling anything close to the dismay, disgust, and bewilderment that many of us Americans are experiencing, I’d like to think that it could be people in Brazil.

Perhaps you disagree. It’s just that I’ve always been surprised and impressed by the influence and demand for American culture in Brazil – especially our exports in music, film, and television. And then there are the similarities between our two countries, to which we alluded in that op-ed. Our shared aspirations for democracy and social justice, in the face of tremendous levels of inequality; our diverse citizenries in terms of race, ethnicity, and country of origin; and the fact that both Brazil and the U.S. were born through the conquest of indigenous peoples, and forged in the moral abomination of slavery.

Here in the U.S., the powers that be would say that that last sentence is a bunch of “woke” bullshit. Do you have a similar word or phrase in Brazil? A more focused variant of “politically correct?” In English, “woke” is the opposite of “asleep,” but today the word is almost exclusively used by the political right as an epithet to express contempt for liberals. Americans began to use “woke” often, in its political sense, around 2014 during the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement. Initially, it was a positive Black political expression that signified a person was aware and concerned about the problems of systemic racism and police violence. Today, “woke” means you are a sanctimonious liberal who enjoys seeing White Americans get passed over so that unqualified Blacks can get hired into good jobs.

I think many Brazilians who read Porcupine Press will be surprised to learn the extent to which the legacy of slavery continues to negatively affect social equity and justice in the United States. I say this only because it constantly astonishes me. After all, it’s been over 160 years since America abolished slavery by ratifying the 13th Amendment. The Civil War ended the same year, in 1865. Brazil and the United States have taken very different paths in confronting the legacy of slavery. It is a fascinating subject we plan to explore through this newsletter, and one I trust will be of interest to readers.

The U.S. now has an openly racist president who hates Americans who talk about, quote, “how horrible our country is, how bad slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been.” Trumpism has destroyed the Republican Party and turned it into a cult. (Incidentally, readers in Brazil should know that a primary reason the Republican Party was founded, in 1854, was to oppose the expansion of slavery into the western territories.) Prior to Trump, Republicans had a coherent political ideology and agenda. They stood for limited government, capitalism, free trade, anti-communism, and a strong national defense. Today, Republicans stand for nothing – nothing except protecting corporate profits and the Ruling Class; facilitating corruption that helps the rich get richer, and that has shamelessly enriched Trump, his family, and his accomplices; and advancing white supremacy.

About That Fan, and All That Shit

The shit hit the fan when four things happened in rapid succession: 1) At the behest of Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, the United States carried out a massive, unprovoked, surprise military attack on Iran – starting a war that is illegal, immoral, irrational and stupid; 2) President Donald Trump posted an AI-generated image that depicted himself as Jesus Christ; 3) Trump disparaged and started a feud with Pope Leo XIV; and 4) Trump threatened to commit war crimes against Iran’s civilian population, and to annihilate a Persian civilization that began five centuries before the birth of Christ.

This is all very shocking, but it can’t exactly be described as unexpected. It’s just par for the course in our ongoing, beyond belief, national nightmare. Still, one does have to admit that the way these events played out was rather bizarre and extreme – even by Trump standards. The U.S. began the war on February 28. However, the action that galvanized these four events into a singular, “only in America” shitstorm, took place on Easter Sunday, April 5.

It was on that day, at 8:03 AM, that Trump celebrated the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead by sending out the following tweet (presented below exactly as it appeared):

“Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you bunch of crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell – JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah.”

This tweet received a tremendous amount of attention and coverage in the U.S. press – much more so than one of Trump’s usual “rage tweets.” Was this because the president was being so hateful and bellicose on the holiest day of the year for Christians? No. I don’t think so. As far as Trump is concerned, Easter is no different from any other day. In fact, he probably didn’t even know it was Easter the morning he fired off that tweet. He may have only realized it was a holiday after staffers told him he was scheduled to attend an Easter luncheon later that day.

Trump’s religious and Catholic followers have never seemed to care that the president has no interest whatsoever in the meaning or significance of Easter, much less in celebrating it as a joyous, hopeful holiday. Last year, on Easter Sunday 2025, Trump posted a long, vitriolic tweet that started off:

“Happy Easter to all, including the Radical Left Lunatics who are fighting and scheming so hard to bring Murderers, Drug Lords, Dangerous Prisoners, the Mentally Insane and well known MS-13 Gang Members and Wife Beaters, back into our Country.”

Well then. Maybe Trump’s Easter tweet got a lot more attention this year because some of his religious supporters thought the contemptuous, mocking sign-off – “Praise be to Allah” – might be perceived as disrespectful or, heaven forbid, even insulting, by the two billion people worldwide who worship Allah. Or perhaps they worried the president’s rhetoric could encourage MAGA adherents to commit hate crimes against American Muslims? Or maybe that, by using the holy day as an occasion to denigrate the second largest religion in the world, Trump was revealing his utter disdain for all religion?

Yeah, right. Are you kidding me! There are millions upon millions of Americans who feel gleeful and validated whenever Trump spews out his hateful, toxic, racist sewage. They eat it up! Last year, while the U.S. was prosecuting its genocidal campaign against Palestinians in Gaza, Trump gave the middle finger to Muslims worldwide by posting an astonishingly offensive, AI-generated video on Truth Social. (You can find it on YouTube by searching “Trump Gaza”.)

The video envisions Gaza under the control of the United States. It has been transformed from a bombed-out, rubble-strewn hellscape into a glitzy, futuristic, Las Vegas-style resort that is branded “TRUMP GAZA.” You see luxury hotels and casinos, a huge golden statue of Trump, bearded men belly-dancing, and Palestinian children jumping up like dogs to catch dollar bills, which are raining down from the sky. Elon Musk makes several appearances, and there is a scene of Donald and Bibi, both shirtless, sipping cocktails as they lounge beside a swimming pool.

What people in the MAGAverse love about this video is that, not only is it blasphemous in how it ridicules Islam. But it also effectively emasculates all Palestinian men. For Trump supporters, there are few things more pleasurable than the opportunity to taunt Muslims about their sexuality and masculinity. How can a man call himself a man when he can’t even protect his home, or his wife and children? Trump is in control, and there is nothing the Arabs can do about it.

So there’s really only one explanation left. The reason Trump’s Easter benediction attracted so much media attention is simple. It has nothing to do with his unabashed hatred and racism, nor his professed intent to commit war crimes. It is because the president used a naughty word.

And, remarkably enough, this does indeed seem to be the first time Trump has used the word “fuck” in an original tweet issued in his capacity as president of the United States. He no doubt says “fuck” all the time when he speaks in private, and he has retweeted stuff written by others that included the word. But this is the first time Trump has used “fuck” in an original presidential tweet, and it caught everyone off guard.

No doubt some of Trump’s religious supporters were offended that he used the F word, and it certainly didn’t help that he posted the tweet on Easter. But I think even many liberals, such as myself, were also taken aback. In fact, when I first heard about this tweet in the news, I thought it was fake – that it had to be a prank. This was only the second time that had ever happened to me. As you might imagine, it takes a lot for a Trump tweet to be so offensive, so outrageous, and so unexpected that you wonder if it’s even real. (By the way, that first time? It was when Trump tweeted, apropos of nothing, “I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT!”)

If I’m being honest, I have to confess that the Easter tweet scared me. Because, even by the unbelievable, demented standards Trump has established as the new norm for presidential behavior, this tweet seems to indicate his game is slipping. He’s becoming even more unhinged. Or to use another popular American expression, “he’s losing it.” Maybe I’m being paranoid. What do you think? Many people now take it for granted that Trump is an idiot manchild, a narcissistic sociopath, and a physically unfit, soon-to-be 80-year-old man whose faculties are in decline. Should we also be worried that, on top of all that, Trump seems to be coming apart at the seams – to be losing it? And that this man has sole authority to order the use of U.S. nuclear weapons?

OK, Let’s Get Back On Topic

Anyway, let’s take a closer look at those four components of the shitstorm, which we enumerated above. They reveal a lot about the Great Unraveling, which proceeds apace.

1) Operation Epic Fuck-Up. The U.S. government has named its war of choice “Operation Epic Fury” in order to emphasize that it is a very bold and very manly war. Presuming the indulgence of our readers, we are going to call the war Operation Epic Fuck-Up. Spoiler alert! The U.S. has already lost.

This is not a new war, but rather a resumption of the attack on Iran that Trump ordered last June as a favor to his friend, Bibi Netanyahu. (The American media has taken to calling the brief Israeli war against Iran, which the U.S. later joined, “the 12-day war.”) Immediately after Trump discharged his missiles and bombs, he held a nationally televised address to announce, “The (American) strikes were a spectacular military success. Iran’s key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated.” Understandably, many Americans remain confused as to why we needed to restart this conflict.

2) Donald Trump, the Anointed One. Trump doesn’t believe in God, but he thinks that if his supporters are stupid enough to be believers, then he wants to be God – or at least be acknowledged as belonging within the pantheon of gods. Trump’s followers have always been more than happy to oblige. People who attend his campaign rallies are frequently quoted in the press saying things like, “He’s definitely been chosen by God,” and “They’ve crucified him worse than Jesus.” They wear t-shirts printed with messages like, “For God so loved the world that he gave us DONALD TRUMP.”

Trump’s audacious claims to being both a peer and BFF of Jesus Christ really went into overdrive after the assassination attempt during his July 2024 campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. As Trump has humbly noted, “It remains my firm conviction that God alone saved me that day for a righteous purpose: to restore our beloved Republic to greatness and to rescue our Nation from those who seek its ruin.” The incident significantly improved Trump’s standing in the presidential election. In fact, less than three months later, in October 2024, the Trump campaign was back in Butler for a rally to celebrate the failed assassination attempt. Trump’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, gave a speech in which she declared, “This is no longer a fight between Republican versus Democrat, left versus right. It is good versus evil. . . If you had any question whether God exists, and he performs miracles, we got our answer here on July 13, right here in Butler.”

The shooter in Butler fired eight bullets over a period of approximately five seconds. God evidently had his hands full saving Trump, because one of those bullets struck the head of a 50-year-old man named Corey D. Comperatore. He died almost immediately in the audience stands while trying to shield his wife and daughters from harm. This makes no sense. As Lara Trump said in her speech, “(God) spared Donald Trump’s life because he was not finished with Donald Trump.” According to press reports, Mr. Comperatore was a man who actually believed in God and attended church.

By the way, you know that luncheon I mentioned Trump had to attend on Easter? Well, it turned out the event was not so much a luncheon, but rather more of a canonization ceremony. That’s right. The White House used Easter to publicly ordain Trump as The Holy Manchild – the living, human being on earth who most closely embodies the qualities and good looks of the anointed one, Jesus Christ.

The proceedings were led by the charismatic preacher and televangelist, Paula White-Cain. Some readers may recall Ms. White-Cain from our op-ed piece. She is one of the millions of white American evangelical Protestants who want to see that all Palestinians leave Palestine – either by their own volition or in a casket.

While the president stood behind her, smirking, Ms. White-Cain delivered the following invocation, which the White House livestreamed and posted on its website:

“Jesus taught us so many lessons through his death, burial, and resurrection. He showed us great leadership. Great transformation requires great sacrifice. And Mr. President, no one has paid the price like you have paid the price. It almost cost you your life. You were betrayed, and arrested, and falsely accused. It’s a familiar pattern that our Lord and Savior showed us. But it didn’t end there for him, and it didn’t end there for you. God always had a plan. . . And sir, because of His resurrection, you rose up. Because He was victorious, you were victorious. And I believe that the Lord said to tell you this: Because of His victory, you will be victorious in all you put your hand to.” (The audience applauds.)

She then directed the audience to pray both with, and over, the president. Watching Trump pretend to pray is truly an appalling spectacle. Usually the participants arrange themselves into a kind of rugby scrum, in which everyone is physically touching each other. That way each person is able to absorb and transmit the holy vibes that are presumably emanating from the president’s body. At the center of it all you will find the charlatan Trump, who is grimacing and appears to be deeply uncomfortable. He tries to keep his eyes closed, but usually ends up opening them while the prayer is in progress. During these awkward moments, I always imagine a cloud-shaped thought bubble above Trump’s head, like the ones you see in comic books. The lettering inside the bubble reads, “God! The shit I have to put up with.”

(To be continued . . .)

***

Dear readers, please keep an eye out for the next issue of Porcupine Press. As you may be aware, next month Americans will at long last be able to see a mixed martial arts fight take place on the grounds of the White House – the People’s House. This is not going to be some phoney, rehearsed wrestling match. It’ll be a real cage fight, and hopefully there will be blood.

I mention this only as a teaser, so that you eagerly await our next issue. Because as an appetizer to prepare you for the cage fight, in that issue we will be examining an all-American, smackdown battle: The Holy Manchild vs. The Holy Father (yes, that would be Pope Leo XIV). We will also evaluate how Trump is doing in his new role as a reluctant, yet resolute, Destroyer of Civilizations.

So stay tuned, and please tell all your friends and family about Porcupine Press. If we can reach the milestone of acquiring a free subscriber base of ten or more people, Substack will send a plaque I can hang on the wall of our newsroom.

Believe Your Ears

If Americans are unwilling to believe their own eyes, can they perhaps believe their ears? Mike Huckabee, Trump’s current Ambassador to Israel, has said, “There’s really no such thing as a Palestinian. That’s been a political tool to try and force land away from Israel.” Mike Johnson, the Republican Speaker of The House of Representatives, recently visited an illegal settlement in the West Bank. The Israeli press quoted him as saying, “Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) are the front lines of the state of Israel and must remain an integral part of it.”

And then there’s Itamar Ben-Gvir, who is currently Israel’s Minister of National Security. I live in New York City, so let me tell you the roundabout way many of us New Yorkers have come to know this nutcase. In New York, there used to be an infamous religious extremist named Baruch Goldstein who was born, raised, and educated in the Orthodox Jewish enclaves of Brooklyn. In 1994, Goldstein entered a mosque in Hebron, Israel, and opened fire on some 800 Palestinian Muslims who were praying during the month of Ramadan. He killed 29 worshippers and wounded 125 others, before he was beaten to death by the survivors. After this massacre, Itamar Ben-Gvir hailed Baruch Goldstein as a hero and proudly displayed a portrait of him on the wall of his living room.

Ben-Gvir actively supports using starvation to drive Palestinians out of Gaza. In 2015, he defended vigilante settlers who firebombed a Palestinian home and killed an 18-month baby and its parents. Because of Ben-Gvir’s support for settler violence and ethnic cleansing, he is currently prohibited by seven countries from entering their territory, including the United Kingdom, Canada and Norway.

We also can’t forget what Yoav Gallant said on 9 October 2023, when he was serving as Israel’s Minister of Defense: “I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel. Everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly.” When his statement was first reported, many people, including myself, dismissed it as an understandable outburst of anger immediately following the attacks of October 7th. Back then, we could never have imagined that Israel would partner with the United States to use starvation as a war strategy.

The Enduring Shame of Genocide

Today, it is generally agreed that the United States should have done more to oppose the Holocaust, in which approximately six million Jews were murdered during World War II. As early as 1939, the U.S. government and press were aware that Nazi laws were stripping Jews of their rights, and that growing numbers of Jews were being sent to concentration camps. Nevertheless, America maintained a restrictive, anti-Semitic immigration policy. In 1939, the MS St. Louis, a German ocean liner carrying over 900 Jewish refugees, tried to dock in Cuba and then, after being turned away, in Florida. Even though America’s annual immigration quotas for people from Eastern and Southern Europe had not yet been filled, the U.S. refused to allow the passengers entry. The ship was forced to return to Europe, and it is believed more than 250 of the passengers later died in the Holocaust.

The Nazi gas chambers operated from late 1941 through late 1944. By 1942, the U.S. government knew that Jews were being systematically exterminated in Europe. On 25 November 1942, The New York Times printed an article headlined, Himmler Program Kills Polish Jews, which reported on Nazi plans to murder the entire Jewish population of Poland. By summer 1944, U.S. bombers were regularly flying missions over the area of Auschwitz, yet military officials resisted multiple requests by advocacy groups to bomb gas chambers, crematoria, and the rail lines leading to concentration camps. The U.S. War Department said rescue missions would detract from the war effort, and that the surest way to save Jews was to defeat Germany as quickly as possible.

I must confess my ignorance: I never realized that Americans could have been aware of the Holocaust before the concentration camps were liberated. I went to The New York Times website and pulled up that 1942 issue, and was astonished by what I saw. The article was right there. Sure, it was on page 10, when it should have been on the front page beneath a huge headline. It was also rather short – less than a single column. But still, there it was, for all to see. And it was quite explicit. According to the Polish Government in exile, Himmler had put the extermination program into effect earlier that year, and 250,000 Jews had already been killed.

“The victims when caught are driven to a square where old people and cripples are selected, taken to a cemetery and shot there. The remainder are loaded into goods trucks (freight cars) at a rate of 150 to a truck that normally holds forty. The floors of the trucks are covered with a thick layer of lime or chlorine sprinkled with water. The doors are sealed. Sometimes the train starts immediately on being loaded. Sometimes it remains on a siding for two days or even longer. The people are packed so tightly that those who die of suffocation remain in the crowd side by side with those slowly dying from the fumes of the lime and chlorine and from lack of air, water and food.”

The United States has gone from being a nation that negligently ignored genocide during World War II to one that is willfully perpetrating it in Gaza. Perhaps it is best that Trump was forced to wait four years to retake the White House for his second term. Perhaps this interregnum was necessary so the American people could sink down to the point where we morally merited the leadership of this cretin and his ghastly coterie of accomplices.

I’ve often wondered whether Brazilians who are not proficient in English can appreciate the extent to which the United States is profoundly and irredeemably fucked. The extent to which we have become a failed nation. I say this because, can non-English speakers realize how scary it is for us Americans to hear our president talk?

It’s not the content of Trump’s speech that is the issue, although the "thoughts" he struggles to convey are invariably quite alarming. Brazilians can always find out what Trump is saying, or trying to say, through their domestic news media. No, it is how Trump speaks that is the scary thing. It’s his incoherent rambling, the non sequiturs, the whining and self-pity, the inability to fit words into sentences, his irrelevant digressions, and his mind-numbing, repetitive anecdotes and obsessions.

Don’t you need to be somewhat proficient in English in order to realize how crazed and abnormal this verbal diarrhea is? To understand that never, since our nation was founded 250 years ago, has there been a president so incapable of speaking English in a normal, articulate manner? Can non-English speakers viscerally realize one of the most stunning truths of our era? That the so-called “leader of the free world” is unbelievably, jaw-droppingly stupid! An idiot manchild!

So this is what I was thinking when I wrote this part of my opinion piece. I wondered whether I might induce Folha to print some of Trump’s verbatim public remarks – translated accurately into colloquial Portuguese. Such a transcript would necessarily be a bit nonsensical and incoherent. But still, if I succeeded, I would be performing a valuable public service. Brazilians would be able to experience the pain, embarrassment and horror that so many Americans feel every day we listen to the news!

Now to be clear, when you consider our president in isolation – absent the real-world consequences – he is not a scary man. If anything, Trump’s idiocy makes him seem comical. He is more cartoonish than any cartoon could be. He is a clown, a buffoon, a carnival barker.

What’s scary is that Americans re-elected him for a second four-year term. And here’s the really crazy part. It isn’t surprising that Trump won despite having been proved, beyond a reasonable doubt, to be a traitor, a rapist, and a felon. No, what’s shocking is that he was elected despite being so in-your-face stupid! And that – along with the evidence he is mentally ill – Trump’s unfitness for public office should be obvious to any sentient adult, regardless of ideology or personal politics.

Donald Trump is not the cause of America’s decline and failure; he’s merely a symptom.

PART 3

Experience America’s Agony; Just Listen to This Idiot!

Let me share some other related, disturbing things I’ve been seeing on television. Recently, the most corrupt president in U.S. history was in Aberdeen, Scotland, where he was using Americans’ taxpayer dollars to open his newest golf course. In addition to presiding over the ribbon-cutting ceremony, he attended to some other business during the five-day trip. At another one of his Scottish luxury golf resorts, in Turnberry, Trump met with the European Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen, to negotiate a tariff agreement. Before the meeting, they conducted a joint press event in the resort’s ballroom.

For us Americans, it’s always an excruciating and embarrassing experience to watch our president interact with adults. And especially with adults who lead other countries. Trump used the event to make the European press corps aware of the urgent and weighty concerns that occupy his thoughts.

Trump: (Welcoming the Madam President) “You know, we just built this ballroom, and we’re building a great ballroom at the White House. The White House has wanted a ballroom for 150 years, but they never had a real estate person. You know, nobody, no president, knew how to build a ballroom. But this just opened, you know, relatively short time ago. And it’s been quite the success. And, uh, I think I was just saying I could take this one, drop it right down there, and it would be beautiful. This is exactly what they’ve wanted. But it’s an honor to have you at the new ballroom at Turnbury, and thank you very much.”

Almost right away, a reporter asks, “Should Israel be doing more to allow food into Gaza?” Trump erupts in anger. He prefers to talk about other things.

Trump: “Well, you know, we gave sixty million dollars two weeks ago, and nobody even acknowledged it. For food. And it’s terrible! You know, you really at least want to have somebody say, ‘Thank you.’ No other country gave anything. We gave sixty million dollars two weeks ago for food, for Gaza, and nobody acknowledged it. Nobody talks about it. And it makes you feel a little bad when you do that, and you know you have other countries not giving anything. None of the European countries, by the way, gave. Nobody gave but us. And nobody said, ‘Gee, thank you very much.’ And it would be nice to have, at least, a thank you. And I took a lot of heat! You know, when I do that a lot of people aren’t happy about that because they say, ‘Well, why are we doing it, and nobody else?’ But I think we had a humanitarian reason for doing it.”

A reporter then follows up, asking Trump how he feels when he sees images of starving children. Trump avoids saying whether he feels any emotions when he sees children starving. However, he does smugly note that these types of images only serve to confirm his belief that, “that whole place is a mess.” Then, Trump pivots to the things he enjoys talking about – things like how all the leaders of Europe are jealous that he gets to parade around the world accompanied by such a sexy, choice piece of . . . country.

Trump: “And I think in many respects, we probably have the most successful, and I say it every time. Every leader, when I went to NATO the other day, every leader said, ‘You have the hottest country in the world!’ We are, we have, the hottest country in the world. We’ve taken in hundreds of billions of dollars. Uh, we have the highest stock market we’ve ever had. We have the best numbers we’ve ever had. But we have hundreds of billions of dollars pouring into our, our country. And I think it’s, uh, the hottest. And by the way, one year ago our country was dead. We had a dead country. Because of an incompetent president and incompetent Democrats. All they know how to do is talk and think about conspiracy theories and nonsense. If they’d waste their time talking about America being great again, it would be so much nicer, so much easier, be very successful. But we were a dead country and now we have the hottest country anywhere in the world.”

During all this time, Ms. von der Leyen cannot get a word in edgewise. And for that she is very grateful. She knows that everything this idiot says is lies and bullshit. For example, the amount of food and humanitarian aid the European Union and its member states have provided Gaza dwarfs what the U.S. has given. In January 2025, the European Commission announced a €120 million humanitarian aid package, bringing the EU’s total aid to Gaza to over €450 million since 2023. Since Israel partially eased its blockade of Gaza, in mid-May 2025, European countries that have conducted food airdrops include Spain, Germany, France and Belgium.

Also, the U.S. did not recently provide $60 million in funding! It authorized $30 million, which was matched by an additional $30 million from Israel. And these funds cannot be accurately described as supporting food aid. Rather, they support the operations of GHF, which is part of the deliberately designed architecture of genocide.

But Ms. von der Leyen wisely opts not to correct or interact with Trump. Doing so would risk provoking a man who has the impulse control of a toddler. Rather, she just sits back and maintains a stoic facial expression that masks her feelings of contempt and incredulity.

When this press event began, it was looking as though European nations were going to end up being slapped with a 15% tariff rate. (And that indeed is the outcome.) Of course, this is utter insanity. It will harm the economies of all involved. In the U.S., it will drive up inflation and worsen our staggering rates of income and wealth inequality. But still, for a while there, it was looking like Europe might face a tariff rate as high as 30%. Crazily enough, then, an outcome of 15% would widely be regarded as a win.

So just stay calm. Continue to praise and flatter the manchild. Above all, don’t get him angry!

OK readers, let’s get back to the press event. Now Trump brings up an irrelevant topic that nobody has even mentioned. For no reason whatsoever, he launches into an extended tirade about . . . windmills!

Trump: “We will not allow a windmill to be built in the United States. They’re killing us. They’re killing the beauty of our scenery, our, our valleys, our beautiful plains. And I’m not talking about airplanes. I’m talking about beautiful plains, beautiful areas in the United States. And you look up and you see windmills all over the place. It’s a, it’s a horrible thing. It’s the most expensive form of energy. It’s no good! They’re made in China, almost all of them. Uh, when they start to rust and rot in eight years, uh, you can’t really turn them off, you can’t bury them. They won’t let you bury the propellers, you know, the props, because they’re a certain type of fiber that doesn’t go well with the land. That’s what they say. The environmentalists say you can’t bury them because the fiber doesn’t go well with the land. In other words, if you bury it, it will harm our soil. The whole thing is a con job. It’s very expensive. . . I mean, today I’m playing the best (golf) course, I think, in the world – Turnberg. Even though I own it, it’s probably the best course in the world, right? And I look over the horizon and I see nine windmills, like, right at the end of the 18th (hole). I say, ‘Isn’t that a shame. What a shame.’”

(Believe it or not, I have greatly abridged this portion of Trump’s remarks. For example, I’m leaving out the parts about how windmills are driving whales crazy. You’re welcome.)

The following day, Trump meets with the Prime Minister of England, Keir Starmer. Along with the Prime Minister’s wife, Victoria, they stand outside the golf clubhouse and take questions from the press. A reporter asks Trump if he agrees with Netanyahu’s assessment that there is no starvation in Gaza. Trump listlessly replies, “I don’t know. Based on television, I would say not particularly, because those children look very hungry.” At this point, Prime Minister Starmer jumps in and says, with considerably more emotion, “It’s an absolute catastrophe.” He adds, “People in Britain are revolted at seeing what they’re seeing on their screens.”

Now please understand, this is a big moment for the United States. Trump is not a very complicated or articulate guy, so we’ve gotten accustomed to interpreting that hamster wheel that creaks around inside his head. He’s thinking, “Wow, Keir, that’s some pretty strong language you’re using there. Wait. . . is it possible Americans also feel revolted to see starving children? Maybe I should act like I care more about this.” And indeed, the American media treats Trump’s comments as if they are a major breakthrough. Trump has disagreed with his good friend, Bibi Netanyahu! Disagreed with the indicted war criminal who nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize! Trump is not disturbed by the real life catastrophe his policies have helped create. But thanks to the way images of starvation are playing out on television, the President of the United States has just experienced an epiphany: “Those children look very hungry.”

I think people in Brazil must wonder – How can it be that the President of the United States doesn’t give a shit that children are starving? Why is Trump unmoved by images of mothers who are so malnourished they cannot breastfeed their babies? Or of starving parents who carry the bodies of their dead children while they trek to GHF food distribution sites?

I think I know why. It’s the same reason that Trump’s best friend for 15 years, Jeffrey Epstein, was able to rape and sexually abuse hundreds of girls who were 14, 15 and 16 years-old. Was able to destroy their lives without the slightest tinge of remorse. The President of the United States is mentally ill and morally bankrupt. Like Epstein, Donald Trump is a narcissistic sociopath. He suffers from personality disorders that can be readily diagnosed by mental health professionals.

Many elected leaders and journalists are aware of this calamitous situation, but it is rarely acknowledged or discussed by the American public. Sociopaths believe they are entitled to whatever they desire, whether it be legal or not. They are incapable of the basic human emotion of empathy. In the case of Trump, his sociopathy was most conspicuous during the first term of his presidency – during the pandemic. Not once did he show even the slightest bit of sadness over the fact that COVID-19 was killing hundreds of thousands of Americans. The only emotion he could express was outrage that this goddamn disease was taking so much attention away from him. That it was rudely trying to damage his legacy!

In November 2020, when Biden just barely defeated Trump to win the presidency, the pandemic had begun to wind down. I have always thought that if Trump had only just faked it – just tried to pretend he gave a damn – he may well have won that second, consecutive term as president.

(To be continued, and concluded, in Part 4)

Zé Ninguém and I have long felt that the United States and Brazil share a lot in common when it comes to culture and politics. However, there is one big exception – and that is why we started Porcupine Press. Recently, each of our countries has had to endure a spectacularly and historically awful president. Both of these men were authoritarian wannabes who had nothing but contempt for democracy. After running for re-election and losing, they each organized a coup d’etat in a futile attempt to remain in office. In the U.S., nine people died as a result of the failed coup.

But in Brazil, you put your guy in prison. We re-elected our guy!

This op-ed concerns a truly horrific, unforgivable crime perpetrated by my country’s government. In the past, when a crisis like this happened, we had a functioning legislative branch – the U.S. Congress – that would conduct investigations. To determine the facts and pursue justice, Congress would form a committee, call witnesses, and compel them to testify. The proceedings would be broadcast nationwide on live television. Both of the major political parties – the Republicans and the Democrats – would buy into the process and cooperate in carrying it out. At the conclusion of the investigation, the committee would publish a final, bipartisan report that contained findings and recommendations.

During the 1970s, for example, there were at least six major investigations into such issues as President Nixon and the Watergate scandal, the abuses of intelligence agencies (plotting to kill foreign leaders, spying domestically on citizens), and the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Well, those halcyon days of accountability and truth-seeking are long gone. The demise of the bipartisan congressional investigation can be traced back to the early 2000s and the so-called “war on terror.” This was a time when the U.S. government approved and ordered the use of torture. The era represented a new low for my country. Sure, prisoner abuse and racism have always been part of America’s penal system, and our military has committed atrocities like the My Lai Massacre (and, more recently, the massacre of 168 girls at an elementary school in Iran). But this was the first time the U.S. officially practiced torture – with approval from government lawyers, and with various torture techniques being devised, refined, documented, and taught to U.S. personnel.

One of the first people we tortured to death, in December 2002, was a 22-year-old Afghan taxi driver named Dilawar. This innocent suspect was brutalized over five days at a detention facility inside the Bagram Air Base. Dilawar received more than 100 strikes to his legs, where soldiers would aim for the peroneal nerve behind his knee caps. Routinely beating Dilawar became something of a running joke. The Americans found it amusing that, after each blow, he would always scream out the word “Allah!” Medical examiners ruled the cause of death to be homicide. The autopsy report indicated Dilawar’s legs had “essentially been pulpified.” If he had been able to survive the ordeal, doctors would have had to amputate his legs.

During the early days of the war on terror, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) stupidly filmed the torture sessions it conducted at its secret facility in Thailand. Fortunately for the impunity of all involved, in 2005 the agency had the sense to destroy these videotapes – all 92 of them. Remarkably, the hundreds of hours of torture they captured had been inflicted on just two detainees: Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri. Indeed, CIA records reveal that during the month of August 2002, Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times! (FYI, the word “torture” is not part of the U.S. government’s lexicon. The term you should use is “enhanced interrogation.”)

But I digress. The point I’m getting at is this: Fittingly, it was America’s disgraceful use of torture that marked the beginning of the end for meaningful congressional oversight. In 2009, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence launched a formal, bipartisan investigation of the American detention and interrogation program. Over the next four years, investigators reviewed more than six million CIA documents and Committee staff began drafting what would become a 6,700 page report.

Unfortunately, the investigation coincided with a major development in American politics. On January 20, 2009, Barack Obama was inaugurated and began serving his four-year term as the 44th president of the United States – the first Black person ever to be elected and serve in this position. The religious right and the grassroots of the Republican Party reacted as you might expect.

By the time of late 2012, when the final report was nearly finalized, Republicans let it be known that they were no longer taking part in the investigation and would refuse to endorse the report’s findings. They were incensed that Committee Democrats thought enhanced interrogation looked a lot like torture. The interrogation techniques under investigation included waterboarding, sleep deprivation, stress positions, walling (slamming people into walls), confinement boxes, and face slapping. And worst of all, in addition to acting so smug and morally superior because of their opposition to torture, the Democrats believed enhanced interrogation was a useless method to obtain actionable intelligence! They thought that people who are being tortured will say whatever they think their torturers want to hear. To the contrary, Republicans were certain that enhanced interrogation had prevented terrorist attacks and saved lives.

So all that four years of work went down the drain. The Committee never released its final report, which remains a classified, top secret document to this day. And of course, no American personnel were ever prosecuted, reprimanded, or lost a vacation day because they facilitated or engaged in torture – or, if you prefer, “enhanced interrogation.”

That concludes this introduction. To summarize, the White House is occupied by a traitor who has betrayed the Constitution and the principles of the founders who framed it. Bipartisan congressional investigations are no longer possible due to the radicalization of the Republican Party, and to the MAGAverse and its renunciation of a shared reality. There will be no federal investigation into the Trump administration’s cover-up of Jeffrey Epstein and his international child sex trafficking ring. Nor of the extrajudicial killings of more than 150 people off the coasts of Latin America. Nor of the murder in January 2026 of two American citizens in Minneapolis who were peacefully exercising their right to freedom of speech. Nor of the illegal, unprovoked war the Trump administration recently launched in the Middle East without congressional approval.

And the U.S. Congress will never investigate how and why the United States committed genocide in Gaza.

PART 2

How Israel and the U.S. are Starving Gaza

With the full backing of the United States, Israel is now using starvation as a weapon of war. Currently, there are only two ways to leave the Gaza Strip by land: the Rafah Crossing into Egypt and the Kerem Shalom Crossing into Israel. Neither Egypt or Israel will permit Palestinians to use these exit points. The word that best characterizes this situation is “siege.” Under the terms of the Geneva Convention, a siege is a war crime if adequate humanitarian aid for civilians is not allowed to enter the besieged area. It is also a war crime to deliberately starve civilians.

Let’s review how Israel and the U.S. are conducting this depraved starvation campaign. First, Israel made it impossible for the United Nations to adequately provide food and other humanitarian relief through its agency, UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East). Over the past two years, the Israel Defense Forces has bombed 311 of UNRWA’s facilities (many on multiple occasions) and killed more than 300 of its staff members. Then it outright banned the organization from operating in Gaza. UNRWA has been operating in the Gaza Strip for 75 years (since 1950), and it currently provides aid to more than 80% of all Gazans. Everybody – humanitarian organizations, UN agencies, and the world’s nations – agrees that there is no other organization that can match or replace UNRWA’s scale, reach, and logistical capacity.

So why did Israel ban UNRWA? Israel says it discovered that 12 members of the agency’s staff took part in the October 7th attacks. Even if this allegation is true, one dozen staff members (whom the UN immediately fired before launching an internal investigation) represents but a tiny fraction of UNRWA’s 13,000 Gaza-based employees! Moreover, Israel made this allegation in January 2024, but then waited a full year – until late January 2025, right in the middle of its cease-fire with Hamas – to implement the ban on UNRWA operations. Why did they wait so long? Well, one reason just might be that, in January 2025, Donald Trump assumed the presidency for his second term in office. Although President Joe Biden provided unstinting support for Netanyahu’s war crimes, even he might have objected to a policy change guaranteed to spur the onset of famine. Also, to be really cynical, if the Israel government began enforcing the ban on UNRWA’s operations while it was actively at war killing Gazans, they could be accused of using starvation as a weapon of war!

So Israel began enforcing the ban on UNRWA on 2 March 2025, just two weeks before it broke the cease-fire. That same day, Israel also went much further by imposing a blockade on any type of humanitarian aid for Gaza by all other relief organizations (including food, medical supplies, tents and fuel). This total blockade – a truly horrific war crime – lasted for two and a half months, until May 19th. The new Trump administration offered no criticism or objections whatsoever. In contrast, European nations and UN officials warned the blockade would lead to famine and likely result in failure of the cease-fire.

And then, even more horrors. During May 2025, Israel and the U.S. unveiled a new organization with the Orwellian name, Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). Ostensibly created to provide food aid for Gazan civilians, the actual mission of the GHF seems to be to make life in Gaza even more cruel, surreal, and deadly. Before being banned, UNRWA operated 400 food distribution sites throughout the Gaza Strip, located in the areas where people lived. GHF replaced them all with a mere four distribution sites – and they were all located in the south, far from most communities. Three of the distribution sites were also situated in or near active combat zones. Thanks to the GHF, Gazans now faced a dilemma: they could either starve to death or risk being shot while making dangerous treks on foot over distances as long as 10 to 25 kilometers.

During the last few months, Israel has killed more than one thousand starving, emaciated and unarmed Palestinians while they tried to reach the four GHF food distribution sites! The Israeli military says it has fired “warning shots” to disperse crowds, but medical authorities say civilian fatalities are often due to direct gunfire hits to the torso. Civilians have also been killed by shells and missiles fired by artillery, tanks and even drones. The Israel Defense Forces are doing most of the killing, but there are credible reports that private contractors working for GHF have also shot aid-seekers. More than 80% of these contractors are Americans with prior military or police force experience, who were hastily recruited in the U.S. and deployed to Gaza using Israeli tourist visas.

Adding to the cruelty, there is no organized, orderly process for food distribution. The GHF sites open at varying times, and the food is often gone in less than 15 minutes. For this reason, many Gazans undertake their journeys during the middle of the night and camp on the outskirts of the distribution sites, so they can be close by when they open. This is especially dangerous, because Israeli soldiers are more likely to kill civilians at night by “mistaking” them for enemy combatants. When the distribution sites open, there is a chaotic free-for-all in which only the quickest, strongest and most aggressive can get to the boxes and sacks of food first. Many aid-seekers leave empty-handed. It has been reported that some American contractors laugh at the starving Gazans and refer to them as “the zombie hordes.”

Just who or what is the GHF? Good question! It is a private organization that was quickly cobbled together in 2024 by Israeli officials and American security contractors. Its creation, leadership and funding are shrouded in mystery. The only countries that will admit to supporting it are the United States and Israel, but the funding they have publicly acknowledged doesn’t come close to covering the organization’s total operating costs.

It is easier to say what GHF is not. It is not a reputable non-profit organization led and staffed by professionals with experience in international humanitarian aid or health care. It is not an organization that has the resources and capacity to prevent famine in Gaza. It is not an organization that operates with transparency and accountability to stakeholders. Indeed, the GHF is so dubious and questionable that even Switzerland turned down its attempts to open a bank account!

More than 170 charities and non-governmental organizations have called for GHF to be shut down, saying that it fundamentally violates humanitarian principles. “GHF’s militarized model, coupled with its close collaboration with Israeli authorities, undermines the core humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality, and independence.” Médecins Sans Frontières puts it more succinctly: “Humanitarian aid is being weaponised.”

And once again, there is this bizarre, recurring connection with religious zealots in the United States. It seems millions of American evangelicals are determined to see that Palestinians are forced to leave the West Bank and the Gaza Strip – dead or alive. The executive chairman of GHF is Johnnie Moore, an American evangelical leader who was co-chairman of the 2016 Trump campaign’s evangelical advisory board. He previously ran a faith-based public relations firm that represented many prominent evangelical leaders, including that previously-mentioned televangelist, Ms. Paula White-Cain. Moore has urged Trump to recognize Israeli sovereignty over Jerusalem, and he has regularly attended prayer meetings in the Oval Office.

It is instructive to note that if Israel and the U.S. really want to quickly kill every Palestinian in Gaza, all they need to do is shut off the water supply. Gaza gets its potable water through three pipelines from an Israeli water company. Children would begin dying first, after about three days, from severe dehydration. However, this war tactic would be unseemly and result in bad optics. There would be intense global condemnation, and some countries might even consider intervening militarily to deliver drinking water.

It seems that Israel and the U.S. have adopted a slower, more diabolical and sadistic approach by which to starve Gaza into death and submission. By creating what is effectively a genocidal organization in the GHF, they can maintain the pretense that they care about Palestinian life. That should be sufficient to keep the international community at bay. After many hundreds of people begin starving to death, perhaps Arab nations such as Jordan and Egypt will relent and agree to accept Gazans as refugees. This way, Israel and the U.S. can maintain control over the outcome.

And what will that outcome be? The Israeli political parties that keep Netanyahu in power want Israel to annex the Gaza Strip for Jewish settlers. This is also the outcome fervently desired by millions of religious nuts in the United States.

But what does Trump want? Well, Trump is a real-estate developer. He thinks the current situation in Gaza is utterly appalling and unforgivable . . . a total waste of 25 miles of sunset-facing beachfront property! He believes every Palestinian should be expelled from the territory, without the right of return. After all, why do they even want to live there anyway? As Trump has noted with astonishment, “They live like they’re living in hell. . . What do they have? It is a big pile of rubble right now.” To the visible shock and disbelief of his own staff, Trump announced during a press event that the United States should take control of Gaza. “We’ll own it and be responsible for dismantling all of the dangerous unexploded bombs and other weapons on the site. Level the site and get rid of the destroyed buildings. Level it out.” Capitalizing upon his real estate expertise, the Gaza Strip could then be transformed into what he termed “the Riviera of the Middle East.” Trump said, “I do see a long-term ownership position” for the United States. “Everybody I’ve spoken to loves the idea of the United States owning that piece of land. Developing and creating thousands of jobs with something that will be magnificent.”

(To be continued in Part 3)

I’m grateful they were willing to take a look at something. They opted not to use what I submitted, but I’m glad I acted on my impulse and walked into their building that day. I found the experience of writing my submission to be cathartic. The piece does run a bit long – especially compared to the average word count for this newspaper’s opinion columns. At least, this is how I’ve tried to console myself regarding the rejection.

I hope people might take the time to read my op-ed here. Sadly, it’s still relevant. Yes, even though Trump maintains he has “ended the war in Gaza, bringing, for the first time in 3,000 years, peace to the Middle East.”

PART 1 of 4

Dear Readers:

Please allow me to welcome you to the nightmare that is the United States during the Age of Trump. Out of concern for your mental health, we’ll limit this visit to a single aspect of our ordeal – How many of us Americans feel, about ourselves and our country, as a result of the war in Gaza.

If you are a film buff like me, you will find that Trumpism often makes you think about a classic American comedy – the Marx Brothers movie Duck Soup, from 1933. In a famous scene, the character Mrs. Gloria Teasdale (played by Margaret Dumont), referring to something she has just witnessed, exclaims in exasperation to Chicolini (Chico Marx), “But I saw you with my own eyes!” To which Chico replies, “Well, who you gonna believe, me or your own eyes!?”

In the news recently, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel took this page out of Donald Trump’s playbook. He said, “There is no policy of starvation in Gaza, and there is no starvation in Gaza.” Netanyahu was speaking at a religious conference organized by an American evangelical group and hosted by a well-known preacher named Paula White-Cain. (Ms. White-Cain is a “spiritual advisor” to President Trump. She has an office in the West Wing of the White House.)

Well, I choose to believe my own eyes. And the scenes of starvation I have been seeing on television make me feel angry and physically sick. I can’t bear to watch them. I reflexively must avert my gaze.

I’m no scholar or expert, but here’s my understanding of where the never-ending Middle East conflict currently stands. This war in Gaza was precipitated when Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israel. Early on the morning of 7 October 2023, Hamas fighters/terrorists invaded communities bordering the Gaza Strip and brutally massacred almost 1,200 men, women and children, while abducting 251 more as hostages. More than 800 of the Israelis killed that day were civilians, including young people attending an outdoor music festival. The rest were members of the security forces.

The Gaza Strip is the same size as Detroit, Michigan (365 square kilometers vs. 359 km²). Prior to the war, it was home to approximately 2.2 million Palestinians, about 44% of whom were aged 14 or younger. According to Israeli intelligence estimates, the population also included between 25,000 and 30,000 Hamas fighters. Almost two years have now passed since the Israeli military responded to October 7 by bombing and invading Gaza. With U.S. support, funding and arms, Israel has killed a grossly disproportionate number of Palestinians – more than 67,000 people. The great majority of those killed (more than 80 percent) have been innocent civilians, including women and children. There are still many bodies beneath the rubble that have yet to be counted.

As far as the U.S. government is concerned, it doesn’t matter whether these dead people were infants or seasoned Hamas fighters. My country believes that the life of any Palestinian is worth much, much less than the life of an Israeli. Prior to the war in Gaza, Israel would try to avoid killing civilians – for example, by striking militants when they were alone outdoors, away from their apartments and families. Today, however, Israel has relaxed its rules of engagement. When approving military strikes, it is now acceptable to kill as many as 20 civilians in order to target just a single fighter. And whereas Israel used to target commanders, today anybody associated with Hamas is fair game, including the lowest ranking fighters and even money changers on the street.

Actually, the precise calculus Israel uses to measure the low value of Palestinian life is another thing that doesn’t really matter. Over the past 22 months, their military has dropped tens of thousands of 1,000 and 2,000-pound bombs on some of the world’s most densely populated areas, including Gaza City, the Jabalia Refugee Camp, and Beit Lahia. Virtually every one of these bombs has been supplied by the U.S. and paid for by taxpayers like myself. (Since October 7, the U.S. has given Israel $22 billion worth of bombs, weapons and other military aid!) If you target militants by dropping a 2,000-pound bomb on a four-story apartment building, you are going to get a lot of dead civilians. (Or as the military prefers to say, “collateral damage.”)

In mid-January 2025, after 15-months of devastating fighting, Israel and Gaza agreed to a two-phase cease-fire. The first phase focused on a hostage-prisoner exchange and improving the distribution of humanitarian aid. Hamas released 33 hostages, as well as the bodies of eight dead hostages, in exchange for 1,904 Palestinian prisoners. (As a result, they now hold 48 hostages, of whom 20 are believed to be alive.) As agreed, the two sides then began to negotiate terms for the second phase of the cease-fire, which entailed releasing all remaining hostages in return for an end to hostilities, the withdrawal of Israeli military forces, and the release of additional Palestinian prisoners.

In light of the cease-fire, tens of thousands of displaced Palestinians began moving north from southern Gaza. They moved because they wanted to return to the homes they had been forced to flee; because food aid convoys were gaining access to Gaza City and nearby districts; and because Israel had pulled most of its ground forces out of northern neighborhoods, creating a perception of relative safety. Gazans believed the cease-fire had created “safe zones.” This proved to be a deadly error.

In the early morning hours of 18 March 2025, Israel broke the cease-fire by launching air and artillery strikes across the Gaza Strip. No warning or notice was provided. Negotiations for Phase 2 of the cease-fire were still underway. The result was one of the single most deadly days of the war. The slaughter killed at least 404 Palestinians and wounded more than 560. As usual, most of those killed were civilians, including 263 women and children. In Gaza City, many families were killed while sleeping in their apartments. Israel claimed it was targeting “reconstituted Hamas command posts.”

Israel gave the U.S. advance notice that it was going to break the cease-fire, and my government did not raise any objections. The Trump administration used the same lame excuse as Israel – the surprise attack was justified because Israel didn’t like the positions Hamas was taking during negotiations. One sticking point has proved to be especially problematic. Netanyahu refuses to end the war, even if Hamas returns all remaining hostages, and Hamas refuses to return the remaining hostages unless Israel agrees to end the war. Netanyahu wants Hamas to surrender unconditionally, and that’s not going to happen – even if Israeli soldiers trap, and threaten to shoot, the group’s last surviving fighter.

I suspect Netanyahu ordered the massacre because he never intended to negotiate Phase 2. Rather, he agreed to the cease-fire only to help out Donald Trump. This was a gift timed for Inauguration Day in the U.S., so that Trump could preposterously claim he had ended the Gaza war on the same day he assumed the presidency. Trump needed a quick victory. He certainly was not going to end the war between Russia and Ukraine on his first day in office, as he had long been bragging would happen. Trump returned Netanyahu’s favor five months later, on June 22, when he ordered the U.S. to drop its largest “bunker buster” bombs on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Israel had launched an unprovoked war against Iran, and by getting America to take part in the illegal war, Trump saved Bibi from being out on a limb alone.

So what exactly does Israel gain by refusing to end the war in Gaza? Nobody seriously believes that Hamas now poses a threat to Israel’s security, or will be able to for many, many years to come. Gaza is a post-apocalyptic hellscape, with districts completely flattened, infrastructure destroyed, and 50 million tons of rubble that could take a decade to clear. By this point, it’s obvious that continued fighting will not help get the remaining hostages back. It seems the only reason to keep the war going is to help Bibi remain in power and out of prison in Israel, which is where he belongs due to his corruption and fondness for Cuban cigars. Of course, there is another reason to keep the war going – to ethnically cleanse the Gaza Strip by killing every single Palestinian, or by forcing them to leave.