Israel’s plan to expand into an Eretz or “Greater” state incorporating large chunks of its neighbors’ land starts with eliminating the pre-1948 inhabitants of a place once known as Palestine. That nearly all of those who think of themselves as Palestinians must be killed or otherwise removed is perhaps reduced to an aphorism, like “Israel has a right to defend itself,” to absolve the Israeli state and its rampaging army of any guilt in the process. Indeed, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ability to avoid any serious consequences for his behavior is remarkable, and it generates further atrocities that might have been unimaginable when the fighting in Gaza started back in October. Al Jazeera has reported how Netanyahu is now pushing ahead to formalize what has been referred to as the “colonial project,” whereby “the appropriation of all Palestinian Lands will follow on… the outright exclusion of the Palestinian people from their homeland.” Bibi said in a speech to supporters that “These are the basic lines of the national government headed by me: The Jewish people have an exclusive and unquestionable right to all areas of the Land of Israel. The government will promote and develop settlement in all parts of the Land of Israel — in the Galilee, the Negev, the Golan, Judea and Samaria.”

Journalist Patrick Lawrence, writing at Consortium News, recently described how “Israel’s savagery in its determination to exterminate the Palestinians of Gaza — and we had better brace for what is next on the West Bank of the Jordan — marks a turn for all of humanity. In its descent into depravity the Zionist state drags the West altogether down with it.” Indeed, and the United States of America is the foremost great power to be reduced to the status of a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Jewish state, unable to advance its own interests when confronted by the juggernaut of the so-called Israel Lobby and associated Jewish and Zionist-Christian organizations that have corrupted and controlled American foreign as well as select domestic policies.

Witness what has occurred in the last several weeks when the international community has rallied to end the slaughter and deliberate starvation of largely defenseless Gazan civilians. First came a United Nations Security Council move by the United States, which introduced a resolution calling for, but not demanding, an immediate though possibly temporary cease fire in Gaza. When the resolution came up for a vote it was vetoed by Russia and China. There were several problems with the text as it inevitably sought to give Israel considerable flexibility in managing the situation. It included an admonition that the effort to secure a ceasefire must be “in connection with the release of all remaining hostages,” which is an Israeli demand with the willingness of Israel to participate at all very much dependent on the hostage issue. The resolution allowed the fighting to continue and it put control of the entry and distribution of urgently needed relief supplies under the ”security” management of the Israeli army. Then came a Russian and Chinese resolution, approved by all members of the council but the US which “abstained.” The US immediately declared the resolution to be “non-binding” and while the document was meant to permit a ceasefire through the end of Ramadan, it has yet to be enacted by Israel which continues to block food and medicine relief shipments and has focused its latest attacks on the few remaining hospitals, killing hundreds more Gazans. Even though the resolution demanded action on the ceasefire and access to relief supplies Israel has ignored it and so has Washington. As only the United States can compel Israel to change course the fact that it continues to fund Israel and provide it with secret shipments of planeloads weapons, without which Netanyahu would be unable to continue his war, speaks for itself in terms of who is controlling whom.

And don’t be fooled by President Joe Biden’s alleged pressure on Netanyahu to “protect civilians” even as Bibi draws up plans with his war cabinet to invade Gaza’s southernmost Rafah Region, where 1.5 million Palestinians have sought refuge and are now confronted by imminent death with no way out. Biden is responding to opinion polls in the US that indicate that more than half of Americans are opposed to what Israel is doing in Gaza and the percentage is steadily growing, so he is pretending to have humanitarian impulses and a conscience, neither of which is true, in a cynical effort to support his possible reelection.

To be sure both the White House and Congress, supported by the Jewish dominated media, are totally in Netanyahu’s pocket, something which he has admitted to publicly more than once, saying that the United States is “easily moved” by someone like him. But if one really needed proof positive about who is in charge in the US-Israel relationship, one need only look at the recent omnibus federal government budget bill of $1.2 trillion. Activist Pascal Lottaz has taken the time to go through the complete 1,012 page document detailing where the money goes and discusses his findings in a 9 minute podcast on YouTube. Lottaz has confirmed both the immediate cash payment of $3.8 billion in “tribute money” to Israel plus the already reported blocking of any federal government funding of United Nation Relief and Works Agency for Gaza (UNRWA) for at least a year. As UNRWA is the key humanitarian aid agency, the latter is a prohibition completely inconsistent with Biden’s expressed desire to confront the “surging” humanitarian aid crisis for the Gazans who are facing starvation in the context of an active genocide. The prohibition is in spite of the continuing lack of evidence to substantiate Israel’s claims of “terrorism support” leveled against the UN agency and despite the famine conditions already present in Gaza. In his review of the document, Lottaz has also discovered those and other specific benefits that involve Israel in 10 sections of the bill.

The bill also seeks to protect Israel from accountability under existing or new international law and to limit Palestinian efforts to resist or defend themselves. It requires any organization receiving US funding to show that it is actively taking steps “to combat anti-Israel bias” and it prohibits any funding to support Palestinian statehood unless it is shown that a list of specified conditions are met including satisfactory “cooperation with Israeli security organizations.” It prohibits any funding to the Palestinian Authority if Palestine is granted statehood status by the UN or any UN agency without Israel’s consent. It oddly prohibits any security support to the West Bank or Gaza unless it is shown that satisfactory steps are being taken by the Palestinian Authority to “end torture and other cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment of detainees.” It should be noted that the Palestinians, not Israel, are required to end abuse of detainees even though it is Israel that routinely engages in those practices. The detailed sections of the bill expanding on what is blocked or prohibited are as follows:

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I had an interesting discussion last week with a Washington-based political pundit who expressed some what I thought to be eccentric views on possible developments in the presidential campaign over the next six months. He said that that strange little man Jared Kushner is at it again engaged in secret meetings, but this time he is being promoted as a possible Vice-Presidential candidate to run alongside his father-in-law ex-president Donald Trump. Reportedly, he is being pushed by a number of hard right ardently pro-Israel Republican Senators, to include folks like Lindsay Graham and Ted Cruz, who are arguing that it would solve the loyalty issue for his father-in-law, a major concern for Trump given the perceived betrayal by ex-VP Mike Pence. Kushner would also be on the right side of a number of issues that Republican conservatives feel strongly about, most certainly including Israel. And, bear in mind, if a seventy-eight year old Donald Trump were to be re-elected and not finish his full term of office, Kushner would be his successor and the first Jewish president of the United States. You can bet that there are some people out there with long memories and deep pockets who might be longing for just that.

Now, given the fact that Kushner was Trump’s Senior Adviser and the one thing that nearly everyone agrees about the Donald was that his judgement on picking senior staff was flawed – one recalls names like Bolton and Pompeo – and would hardly be a credential for moving onward and upward, but it does nevertheless seem that some might actually be considering the possibility. And it is also true that Kushner brings almost nothing beyond name recognition to the ticket, but that is also the case for a number of other possible candidates for the position. Unlike most identified VP candidates, however, Kushner also would arrive with a considerable quantity of baggage. It is reported that when he was first named by Trump it proved to be difficult for him to get a security clearance, even with the president’s highly aggressive endorsement. This was possibly due to the activities of Jared’s father Charles Kushner who was a felon imprisoned in 2005-7 for business fraud to include illegal political contributions, tax evasion and witness tampering. The prosecuting United States Attorney for the District of New Jersey who handled the case was Chris Christie, later the governor of New Jersey and himself a presidential candidate. The witness tampering charge arose from Kushner’s retaliation against William Schulder, his sister Esther’s husband, who was cooperating with federal investigators against Kushner. Kushner hired a prostitute to seduce his brother-in-law, arranged to record a sexual encounter between the two, and had the tape sent to his sister. Donald Trump controversially pardoned Charles after the fact at the end of his term of office in 2020 together with a number of other Jewish businessmen who were on a list compiled by Jared.

Or, alternatively, the bad security review might have related to Jared’s family’s the Kushner Foundation which was funding completely illegal Israeli settlements in Palestine among its other activities. Since 2020, Kushner has also reportedly been heavily involved with Saudi Arabia, which has apparently benefited Kushner’s equity firm business interests to the tune of $2 billion.

Kushner and his wife might well be considered a footnote to history, minor players, but for the possibility that Jared might somehow connive his way into a position with real power if Donald Trump is re-elected, but he is in the news right now for other reasons. People forget that quite a lot of what goes on vis-à-vis Israel is driven by what might be called the “profit motive,” which admittedly might be considered a play on the word “prophet.” It all comes down to how much money will be generated once the Palestinians are kicked out of Gaza and the West Bank, just for starters. Kushner has recently revealed his own vision of successful conclusion of the war for Israel in an interview on February 15^th plus additional comments and it goes like this: the Gazans should be removed from their homes and those who are still alive and who have not been repatriated to other countries including Sinai in Egypt, might be allowed to reside in a suitable refugee camp style location in the Negev desert, inside southern Israel. How exactly they will survive in a desert is not clear as Israel has no excess water resources to “make the desert bloom” as the expression goes. As Kushner explains how “… getting civilians out of Rafah and potentially into Egypt, might be possible ‘with the right diplomacy,’” suggesting that he “would just bulldoze something in the Negev, I would try to move people in there,” adding “I know that won’t be the popular thing to do, but I think that’s a better option to do, so you can go in and finish the job.” In his comments Kushner also demonstrated that he is delusional, commenting that “I think Israel’s gone way more out of their way than a lot of other countries would, to try to protect civilians from casualties.” More to the point, one has to suspect that Kushner’s views might well reflect those of Trump, who has called on Israel to “finish it up [in Gaza] and do it quickly.”

Israel meanwhile, one supposes, can get international donors like the US to pay for the cleanup of Gaza and it could be developed to provide luxurious seafront properties for Israeli and international Jewish buyers, which would produce substantial income for the government and also for investors like Kushner. He said that “Gaza’s waterfront property, it could be very valuable, if people would focus on building up livelihoods.. If you think about all the money that’s gone into this tunnel network and into all the munitions, if that would have gone into education or innovation, what could have been done? It’s a little bit of an unfortunate situation there, but I think from Israel’s perspective, I would do my best to move the people out and then clean it up.”

It might seem like a screwy idea but it is certainly not beyond the rapaciousness and cruelty that the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is certainly capable of. And it would be a substantial step towards getting completely rid of the pesky Palestinians. There have been independent reports that real estate dealers in Israel are already framing tentative offers for dividing up the more desirable bits of Gaza land, particularly along the Mediterranean Sea. The sales would be for Jews only since part of the desirability of the ethnic cleansing would be to turn Israel into as close as possible an all-Jewish state, which is favored by most Israelis, including expectation of an influx of presumably wealthy diaspora Jews who opt to make their “Aliyah” in a more substantive way.

There have been some interesting developments over the past few days relating to Israel’s demonstrated subjugation of the government at all levels in the United States as well as its domination of the entertainment and news media. Nearly everyone now accepts that the current situation is not due to ordinary Americans actually liking what Israel represents and is instead rather a consequence of the US Israel lobby’s deep pockets and the corruption that can be bought by being willing to spend billions of dollars to support a single highly focused cause. And there is also the tool used frequently to keep potentially troublesome politicians in line, which is the willingness to do whatever is necessary to discredit and marginalize any and all critics of the Jewish state, to include the liberal often bogus claims of the alleged crimes of antisemitism and holocaust-denial to demonize those who are targeted.

Both current and previous Israeli Prime Ministers have boasted that they control the United States and the evidence is there that they can in fact do so. Most dispiriting in the Zionist induced sturm und drang which is a covert war of sorts directed against the United States Constitution has been the impact on the actual rights of all Americans, including freedom of speech. Last week South Dakota governor and Republican vice-presidential candidate hopeful Kristi Noem boasted of new legislation in her state that would criminalize antisemitism. As criticizing Israel is considered to be ipso facto antisemitism and criminalized as a so-called “hate crime” it means, as some have observed, that Americans in South Dakota and also in Florida (thanks to Ron DeSantis) can criticize their own country, but not the self-declared Jewish state. Paul Craig Roberts puts it another way, observing that “I find it extraordinary that Jews alone among all ethnicities can control what can be said about them. The real threat is not anti-semitism. The real threat is the destruction of free speech and the rise of status based law that protects some chosen ethnicities and persecutes others. What is really needed is an alliance against those who are destroying the foundations of truth, freedom, and accountable government.”

Last week there was also an interesting vote in Congress, blocking or forcing the sale of the Chinese social media and networking site TikTok, which has become very popular among young people worldwide. What was not much discussed in the media in the lead-up to the vote, which claimed the site was a “national security threat,” was who was pushing for the bill. In reality, the story within the story was again all about Israel. “We have a major TikTok problem” complained the grotesque Anti-Defamation League chief executive Jonathan Greenblatt, apparently freaking out because global youth aren’t buying Israel’s propaganda anymore since the site has something like a “memory” that directs readers and viewers to new information or videos that they had previously expressed an interest in. Many users were, per Greenblatt, interested in what is going on in Gaza and were receiving information hostile to Israel. The passage of the bill overwhelmingly, which was rushed through Congress, demonstrates yet again the Israel Lobby power. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) was reportedly heavily engaged in lobbying up until the voting took place. It unfortunately demonstrates how Israel is able to decide how Americans choose to communicate and socialize with one another and the world. Summarizing the Israel Lobby’s view on the issue was the ever-delightful ex-presidential candidate Nikki Haley who responded to the legislation with “We really do need to ban TikTok once and for all and let me tell you why. For every 30 minutes that someone watches TikTok every day they become 17% more antisemitic, more pro-Hamas based on doing that.” And there’s even more to the damage done. The bill doesn’t just ban TikTok. It also creates a new unilateral authority for any president to ban any app or website he or she deems to be a “national security threat” if its owned or controlled by a “foreign adversary,” which includes not just China but also Russia, North Korea, and Iran. Goodbye free speech and association!

So, in return for considerable pain and nothing tangible to benefit the United States and its citizens, Israel is celebrated as America’s best friend and closest all” while also getting a free ride of billions of dollars from the US taxpayer and complete political protection bestowed by the clowns that run Washington no matter what it does and how much damage it actually inflicts on American people or interests. Along those lines, the biggest story recently has been Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer’s denunciation of the Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a 40 minute speech delivered from the Senate floor followed up by an X tweet.

Schumer, who is the highest ranking elected Jew in the US government, accused Netanyahu of continuing the Gaza war and running it is such a fashion so as to demonstrate that he “has lost his way to allow his political survival to take precedence over the best interests of Israel.” Schumer observed that Israel’s government, whoever heads it, must make “course corrections” and that “[Netanyahu] has been too willing to tolerate the civilian toll in Gaza, which is pushing support for Israel worldwide to historic lows. Israel cannot survive if it becomes a pariah” among nations, which has already to a certain extent taken place. In light of that, Schumer recommended that “At this critical juncture, I believe a new election is the only way to allow for a healthy and open decision-making process about the future of Israel,” Schumer said in a speech, adding that it’s “a time when so many Israelis have lost their confidence in the vision and direction of their government.”

Schumer also criticized Netanyahu for rejecting the Biden administration’s proposal to discuss the establishment of a Palestinian immediately after the war ends. “As a lifelong supporter of Israel, it has become clear to me: The Netanyahu coalition no longer fits the needs of Israel after Oct. 7. The world has changed — radically — since then, and the Israeli people are being stifled right now by a governing vision that is stuck in the past.” He added that “As a democracy, Israel has the right to choose its own leaders, and we should let the chips fall where they may. But the important thing is that Israelis are given a choice. There needs to be a fresh debate about the future of Israel. In my opinion, that is best accomplished by holding an election.”

I recently returned from a twelve-day cruise to celebrate my wife’s seventieth birthday. I usually spend much of my cruise time in the ship’s bar instructing the bartender how to make a proper James Bond gin martini “shaken not stirred,” a successful endeavor which has transformed the alcohol culture on a number of vessels. Less fruitful, however, have been my efforts to teach the waitstaff to sing “The Whiffenpoof Song.” But be that as it may, this particular cruise came at a time when Super Tuesday primaries were taking place in the US as well as the State of the Union Address. In Europe the war in Ukraine appeared to entering a new phase with France threatening to send its poilus to fight Russians and Germans contemplating the use of long-range missiles against Moscow. Meanwhile in the Middle East the Gazans continue to be slaughtered by the Izzies, who are America’s perpetual best friend. Joe Biden, who is arming Benjamin Netanyahu, is perversely planning to build an artificial “humanitarian” food and supplies delivering “floating harbor” attached to a pier offshore of Gaza that will be finished and ready for use in two months after the last Palestinian has died from starvation or disease. And, by the way, it will be constructed by US military personnel who will no doubt be targeted and killed by the Israelis using American supplied bombs as a case of “mistaken identity,” just as they murdered those 34 sailors and crew on board the USS Liberty back in 1967.

All of this seemingly uncoordinated activity generates a bit of confusion, while voters far and wide are wondering if their government leaders are all on Chinese produced fentanyl. That said, a cruise ship is a wonderful place to experience unedited what people are thinking. Present are Americans and foreigners from a range of socioeconomic backgrounds who are easy to meet with casually if one takes advantage of the multiple largely unstructured dining, drinking and entertainment experiences available on shipboard as well as the mingling during excursions on land.

A retired Italian engineer from Udine with whom I was drinking an ombra prosecco explained how he was feeling intense disagio, translated as uncertainty or unease, over the state of the world and not just his own country, pointing to the terrible electoral choice coming up in the US in November as well as the tottering regimes and struggling economies in Britain, Germany, France, the Netherlands and throughout Scandinavia. Meanwhile all the politicians can talk about is more wars and the necessity of supporting clowns like Volodymyr Zelenksy and murderous thugs like the Israelis. There is increasingly no place to escape to.

Among the Americans, whom I assessed as predominantly well-off blue collar retired, many of whom haling from the Midwest or South, I did not spot a single MAGA hat or Biden-Harris t-shirt but did find that most people intended to vote even though they were completely fed up with the entire political process. Neither Trump nor Biden excited them in any way – nor did any of the non-major party hopefuls like RFK Jr. On the contrary, it seemed to most that the political class was out to punish the American people, a view that I heartily agreed with. Several Americans observed that if the current process whereby the US continues to go to war continues, the draft would inevitably be activated to fill the understrength ranks of the military, putting our children and grandchildren at risk. One woman commented that if there were a button that one could push in the voting booth that would get rid of all existing politicians she would push it. It reminded me of the William Buckley comment that “I would rather be governed by the first 2,000 people in the telephone directory than by the Harvard University faculty.” A wit subsequently quipped that the country might as a consequence well be run by several iterations of “Anthony A. Aardvark.”

The cruise also had a downside consisting of a glimpse of where corporate cruise-dom lines up on some international issues, which I only discovered subsequent to boarding. The ship we sailed on, part of the Holland-America fleet, would hold events on board in its shops sponsored by sellers of various goods and services. Nevertheless, given a genocide that is clearly taking place in a place called Gaza together with a right-wing government in place in Israel that has openly advocates for an Israel “cleansed” of Arabs that will be will be both de facto and de jure Jews only, I was surprised to see such a tone deaf event sponsored by the ship entitled “The Colors of Israel Exhibition and Sale.” My wife and I, who strongly support BDS (“boycott, divestment and sanctions”) when it comes to the Jewish state decided that a little intervention was definitely in order so we made up two posters that read “Boycott the Genociders” and we wandered down to the place where the event was to take place and took up position flanking the entrance. Two Israeli young males were nearby giving us furtive looks as they were starting to unpack whatever it was they were intending to sell. We threatened no one but almost immediately two ship’s crewmen dressed in uniforms I had not seen before on board appeared to tell us that they were security and that any political advertising or harassment of vendors was strictly prohibited. They then took our posters away “for destruction.” I observed to them that I was wearing a USS Liberty remembrance shirt, which most definitely had to be considered a political statement, and I politely asked if I should remove it. The two conferred for a while and agreed that I could keep my shirt on as long as I didn’t use it to threaten or intimidate anyone.

Later that afternoon we heard several times the ship public address system promote the presence of the Israelis and their wares, something that it normally did not do for individual vendors and which I found very strange. And there was more, two days later, when the ship sponsored a walk around the deck to raise money to send to support Ukrainian refugees, which was, of course, itself a political statement over the nature of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. Those who contributed $25 and would do the walk would get a free t-shirt indicating in large white on black letters that they had done the charity deed.

When I saw the announcement of the walk on the day before it was to take place, I contacted ship management requesting an interview regarding what was being done, observing that relatively few Ukrainian civilians had been killed and most refugees from that country were displaced voluntarily, with many being helped by foreign refugee assistance agencies and even governments. By way of contrast tens of thousands of Gazans, mostly women and children, have been killed already in what was clearly a genocide and others were unable to escape their death trap ringed in as they are by the Israeli military. I sought inclusion of some mention of the suffering of the Palestinian children in the walk, making it more truly a tribute to innocent victims in both theaters of conflict.

There have been several interesting developments relating to Israel’s ongoing destruction of Gaza and its people, but one might well question the motives of at least one of the principal players in the drama, namely Joe Biden’s United States government. Last Tuesday the United States, acting to protect Israel, vetoed a United Nations Security Council resolution, arguing that it would “jeopardize” the ongoing negotiations between the two parties to release the Israeli hostages and it wouldn’t be “conducive to a sustainable peace and would instead empower Hamas.” Thirteen of the fifteen members of the Security Council supported the resolution, Britain abstained, and US alone voted against it. It was the third humanitarian resolution incorporating a ceasefire vetoed by Washington over Gaza, each of which was intended by the White House to give Israel a completely free hand to deal with the Palestinians.

The resolution had been proposed by Algeria and it called for an immediate ceasefire and the expediting of emergency humanitarian assistance to the in-peril Gazan population. The UN has been warning that a humanitarian catastrophe that could kill hundreds of thousands is about to take place if nothing is done to reverse what is being called a genocide due to the deliberate employing of famine and disease, not to mention the killing of more than 30,000 Palestinians by the Israeli military aided and abetted by the US. After the UN vote, the Algerian ambassador to the UN said Washington’s lone opposing vote should be understood as “approval of starvation as a means of war against hundreds of thousands of Palestinians” and “ it “implies an endorsement of the brutal violence and collective punishment inflicted upon” those Palestinians in Gaza.” The Algerian resolution also came at a time when the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague is beginning its separate review of whether Israel has used the past month to mitigate or cancel its genocidal acts in Gaza

Opinion polls suggest that most Americans oppose what Israel and Washington are doing, but they have little ability to influence choices made by Congress and the White House, which are overwhelming inclined to defer to Israeli points of view due to the fact that they have been bought by the powerful Zionist Lobby in the US. Nota bene one of the biggest sellouts to Israel of all time, former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi who, with impeccable timing given both the Algerian proposal and the ICJ review, stated last week that Israel has not used any weapons provided by the United States in its military action against Gaza. She said “There’s nothing that we have sent since Oct. 7 that has contributed to this brutality. In the longer run, they are in a dangerous neighborhood.” That is, of course a complete lie, as the Biden Administration has carried out hundreds of airlifts of “emergency” weapons to the Jewish state, to include the 2,000 pound bunker buster bombs whose use against hospitals and other large buildings has been well-attested to by some of the eyewitness journalists, medical doctors and UN officials who have managed to avoid being targeted and assassinated by Israel.

What followed on the Monday announcement by US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield about the impending Algerian veto surprised many who were watching developments. The media were informed that Washington would be presenting its own rival Security Council draft resolution that would call for a temporary ceasefire and which also would advise Israel against launching a ground invasion of Rafah in southern Gaza over Ramadan, which starts on March 10^th, due to the fact that more than a million Gazans are trapped in the region with, quite probably, nowhere to go. The resolution calls for a “viable plan” for protecting civilians in Rafah, whatever that is supposed to mean, which Israel will presumably ignore, and it includes no sanctions if Israel refuses to comply. The US indicated that its draft document would be discussed in the UN over the next several weeks or more and might be subject to considerable editing, but it set no time table for initiating the temporary ceasefire apart from “as soon as practicable,” which is where a warning flag went up for me and others.

The resolution gives Israel considerable freedom of action without any bothersome timetable to worry about and “temporary” means it can resume military action when it wishes to do so and there is no threat of possible punishment if Israel does decide to invade Rafah and kills another 30,000 Palestinians while doing so. It is well known in Washington circles that follow foreign policy and Biden’s wars that the US doesn’t make any moves on the Middle East without complete prior consultation with the Israelis. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has even participated in Israeli War Cabinet meetings. Against those weak but positive moves spelled out in the resolution, there is the fact that Netanyahu and his political allies, long opposed to a two-state solution, have recently repeatedly rejected proposals for any Palestinian sovereign entity which means that the intention is to destroy and/or annex Gaza. Israel is in fact using its formidable lobby and international press/narrative control to work assiduously to isolate the Palestinians by blocking any recognition by individual countries or as a full member at the UN. The greatest effort is inevitably being directed at working to keep the United States under control. Both Blinken and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan carefully coordinate every step the administration takes with the Israeli Minister for Strategic Affairs and former ambassador to Washington Ron Dermer who reports directly to Netanyahu.