Ethnic cleansing of Gaza and American genetics

When Donald Trump spoke about “controlling” the Gaza Strip, “owning”, making it American, displacing more than two million of its people, and working to turn it into the “Riviera of the Middle East”, under the pretext of the massive destruction it has suffered and the impossibility of living there, he was not just speaking as a real estate developer, nor even as a man suspected of having ties to the mafia, but as an imperialist and a blatant racist, embodying the hateful American history that the US is trying to deny or cleanse itself of.

It is known that Trump and his father, Fred, were involved in lawsuits filed by black Americans and state and federal agencies in the 1960s and 1970s, based on accusations of racism for their refusal to rent apartments in New York State to black citizens.

In the 1980s, the American media was full of investigative reports about the services provided by organised American mafia gangs to Trump’s real estate empire, which included skyscrapers in New York, casinos in Atlantic City, New Jersey, Philadelphia and Pennsylvania. These investigations resurfaced in 2015 and 2016. Trump is clearly incapable or rejects the idea of ​​distinguishing between being a President and being a businessman and real estate developer, as everything for him is related to profit and accumulating his wealth. The fact that he and his wife launched two digital currencies after winning the presidential elections in November 2024 confirms this.

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However, reducing all of America’s misfortunes to Trump is a flawed approach, as he is also the descendant and heir of a long history of genocide, racism and imperialism. Although America is torn between two views, one trying to cleanse itself of that history and acknowledge it, and the other trying to downplay or deny its occurrence, Trump embodies one of the ugliest examples of denial of that dark side of American history while, at the same time, reinforcing and practicing. Perhaps his repeated talk of his desire to annex Canada to the US, and to acquire Greenland, which is under Danish sovereignty, as well as the Panama Canal, in addition to his demand for rights to Ukraine’s natural resources, under the pretext of paying its military debts to his country, all confirm this.

With the arrival of the first white colonialists to what later became known as America, more than 400 years ago (1607), a bitter history of genocide against the indigenous population began, whether through direct killing and cultural genocide, the transmission of diseases to them, to which they were not immune, such as smallpox, or the seizure of their lands and their displacement from them. They also enslaved black individuals who were kidnapped from Africa and brought to America and discriminated against non-Protestant Christian sects, such as Catholics.

Even after the US gained independence 250 years ago (in 1776), many forms of genocide, enslavement and discrimination continued for more than a century and a half, with many forms of discrimination continuing in different forms and patterns. The same can be said about American imperialism, which began in 1840. It claimed to have ended at the beginning of the twentieth century, although the truth says otherwise, as it is still based on “social Darwinism” and claims of “American exceptionalism”.

The US expanded at the expense of Mexico, then some Latin islands and countries, such as Puerto Rico and Cuba, as well as in the Pacific Ocean, in islands such as Hawaii, Guam and Samoa. It had previously occupied lands in Asia, such as Vietnam and the Philippines, in Europe, such as Germany, and in the Middle East, such as Iraq and Syria. In other words, its present is also its past.

Back to Trump’s remarks about the Gaza Strip, last Tuesday (4 February, 2025), during his meeting with Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. These remarks should not be considered in isolation from the dark side of American history. Although some American media outlets are trying to describe Trump’s idea as madness, the fact that they are ignoring is that madness and criminality are an inherent characteristic of American imperialist foreign policy.

American critics of Trump’s statements about emptying Gaza of its inhabitants and developing it into real estate to be enjoyed by the world’s wealthy overlook the fact that the destruction of the Gaza Strip and the Israeli genocidal war against its people was enabled and fully supported by the administration of former President Joe Biden. Trump is only completing the mission, and both (Trump and Biden) are descendants and heirs of the same racist imperialist genocidal heritage.

Between 1830 and 1850, the US government displaced more than 60,000 Native Americans from the southern states and relocated them to “reservations” prepared for them in the state of Oklahoma, during which they, including women, children, the elderly, and the sick, walked 5,043 miles (8,116 kilometres) on foot. This human tragedy is known as the “Trail of Tears” in Native American history, as many of them died from cold, disease, hunger and exhaustion. That crime, just one of hundreds of others, was committed against the indigenous population over a period of 20 years, starting under the administration of Democrat Andrew Jackson and ending with Zachary Taylor of the Whig Party.

Hence, Trump’s talk of ethnic cleansing in Gaza is completely consistent with the history that is rooted in American genetics. Ironically, since moving to the White House less than three weeks ago, Trump has declared war on American schools and universities that dare to teach that dark history. Although Biden claimed to acknowledge this history, and the suffering of the indigenous and black populations during those dark American eras, he engineered an additional dark era in American history in the Gaza Strip. He proved that the only difference between him and Trump is that the latter calls things by their names, while Biden pretended to be civilised as blood dripped from his hands.

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This article first appeared in Palinfo.com on 8 February, 2025.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.