Now is the time to be reminded of George Orwell’s 1946 essay, “Politics and the English Language,” written during the World War II evacuations and expulsions that were occurring in Nazi-controlled Europe. In it, the famous socialist author writes: “Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry; this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers.”
In his address to the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations in Jerusalem on Feb. 18, 2024, Polish-descent Israeli Benjamin Mileikowsky (now Benjamin Netanyahu) war minister Israel Katz took a page straight out of Orwell’s playbook about the misuse of language, when he instructed the military to draft a plan to “allow voluntary departure” of Gaza residents from the enclave — days after President Donald Trump’s controversial proposal for the United States to “take over” the Gaza Strip and remove all the people living there.
Netanyahu announced that he was committed to Trump’s plan for the creation of a different Gaza, also promising that after the current war, “there will be neither Hamas nor the Palestinian Authority” ruling the territory. It was no off-the-cuff remark, and Netanyahu confirmed being aware of Trump’s proposal prior to the public announcement, saying, “This didn’t come as a surprise; we knew about it and discussed it beforehand.”
After meeting with the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), whose beneficence extends beyond the one-million dollar plus donation to (Secretary of State) Marco Rubio, Netanyahu said they had a “common strategy” for the future of the Palestinian territory, “We discussed Trump’s bold vision for Gaza’s future and will work to ensure that vision becomes a reality.”
Trump’s “vision” is not something off the top of Trump’s MAGA hat but a continuation of an age-old American strategy: having a proxy in the Middle East that keeps an all-seeing eye on the region’s oil and gas producers.
In true colonist fashion, Rubio had declared, “But right now, the only plan – they don’t like it, but the only plan is the Trump plan.” Earlier, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who hosted Netanyahu on Feb. 5, 2025, had said, “We’ve supplied munitions that were previously not supplied [and] that are useful in eradicating radical enemies, and we are committed to continuing to do so.”
The cat was let out of the proverbial bag by then-Senator Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. (later the 46th president of the United States) in his June 1986 speech on the Senate floor opposing the sale of arms to Saudi Arabia. Biden, whose close friendship with Netanyahu dates back decades and whose consistent support for Israel spans his entire half-century-long career in public life since winning his first national election to the Senate in 1972, said, “It’s about time we stop apologizing for our support for Israel, there’s no apology to be made. It is the best $3 billion investment we make. If there weren’t an Israel, the United States of America would have to invent an Israel to protect her interests in the region.”
Biden would go on to repeat this same colonialist remark when he met with Israeli President Isaac Herzog at the White House on Oct. 26, 2022.
In 1982, then-Senator Biden met with Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin amid its bloody invasion of Lebanon and expressed his support for the campaign, remarking: “If attacks were launched from Canada into the U.S., everyone here would have said, ‘Attack all the cities of Canada, and we don’t care if all the civilians get killed.’”
Whatever public objections Biden may have had to Begin’s settlement policy in the West Bank, he clearly considered Israel, like the United States, to be above the law, possessing the right to spill oceans of blood in asymmetrical conflicts throughout the Middle East.
The White House’s current occupant, America-firster Trump, is also guided by Biden’s unyielding pro-Israel stance. Saying the quiet part out loud as he is wont to do, Trump once quipped: “We contract [emphasis added] our foreign policy, and that is a dangerous situation. Do you think there’s any reasonable prospect that the Saudis are going to push Hamas to recognize Israel?” Echoing this policy preference from his erstwhile political rival, Biden, who had traveled to Jerusalem as an official U.S. international observer for Palestinian Authority elections in 2006, stated, “Israel cannot be expected to negotiate with a party that calls for its destruction, engages in terrorism and maintains an armed militia. Hamas must choose: bullets or ballots.”
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