In Israel, the “true name” is increasingly being used to describe Israel’s "Far-Right” government, differing only in degree and personnel from previous “Far-Right,” and “less-right” governments, maintaining the repression of the conquered indigenous population going back to 1948. That “true-name” is of course “Fascist,” just a Arendt, Einstein, et al., noted of Menachem Begin back in 1950 in the NYT ad they published the accusation in.
This isn’t the headline I would have chose though. Mine would be "Point Your Compass Toward the Fascists, and the Fellow American Fascists who Support Them.”
Which anti-Trumpers do so much to distract us from with maintaining discredited stories of Trump/Putin, and distracting us from the “true” fascist partnership of Trump/Netanyahu, and the budding “Fascist International” they worked so hard to create with election interference, alliances, etc, with and for Bolsonaro, Modi, Duterte, Orban, our now allied “Polish Leader,” Duda, who was ready to name a US base in Poland "Fort Trump."
So in honor of the man who did more than anyone else to prepare kinetic war against Russia by East European proxies, while constantly demanding ever-greater NATO funding for its War Machine, “Trump’s War” is most appropriate, if we want to personalize by name our wars, as is the custom by the “Right” to distract rightful blame properly attributed to whem. As with WW I when it was “Conservatives” like Teddy Roosevelt and the Republicans of the East who hounded Wilson every day to get the US into WW I, continuing the overseas “Imperial Mission” they first set for the Republican Party in 1898, until he did. Though Fort Trump didn’t come to full fruition, until Trump’s provocations, and Biden’s continuation of them, eventually led to Russia’s “preemptive” invasion of Ukraine, though “Fort Trump” was put aside as a name.
But let’s give “credit” where it is actually due in naming the current U.S. War, WW III, as I’ve been calling it since the beginning, as the nation’s of the world have taken sides. Instead of “Biden’s War,” it should more correctly be called: Trump’s War,” as he set everything inmotion for the final kinetic war now taking place. The vast US military buildup, US withdrawal from remaining treaties (with SALT II being allowed under Trump to almost reach its “Expiration Date, after the previous Republican administration set all that in motion). Just like Hitler’s actions leading up to the invasion of Poland constitute the actual “beginning" of WW II, even if the arrival of German tanks in the Sudetenland wasn’t met by armed resistance, it nonetheless removed any geographic obstacles to Hitler’s takeover of Czechoslovakia. Just as the US sponsored 2014 coup in Ukraine was intended to capture the Sevastopol Russian Navy Base, the last obstacle to turning the Black Sea, into an American Lake (so let’s give all our so-called post-Cold War Presidents some credit for bringing WW III on, its been in the works ever since the Cheney/Wolfowitz Doctrine was declared, under Bush I). But Trump presided over the last stage as Russia knew the true intent he had in building NATO up so much, with "twisting of arms” so much by Trump and his henchmen for greater financial contribution by Europe to the US NATO Command. Whilst Trump took those “savings,” if he’d of gotten them, and lavished them on Trump’s “Axis of Fascism” partner, Netanyahu and the Israeli “Far-Right” in giving them everything they asked for within his immediate power to do so!
Adam Ayyad, left, was devastated by the death of his friend Omar Manna, right, last month. Omar was killed by Israeli forces as they were arresting his brother. (Photo from Twitter)
The dead include Palestinian political prisoners who died of “direct medical negligence” in prison, where 150 Palestinian children are also detained. But by far most were random victims of the systemic military violence needed to sustain a genocidal Occupation – especially since late 2021, when Israel further loosened its open-fire rules to pretty much, “Shoot what moves.” The killings began the first week of January – the father of an 18-month-old shot in the head, a man going to work run over by a settler – and didn’t stop. A 16-year-old shot in the eye, an 18-year-old shot walking home from school, a man shot dropping off his nephews at school, a 14-year-old shot running away from soldiers, a 16-year-old shot riding a motorcycle, a 17-year-old shot in his abdomen by “an exploding bullet that ruptured his blood vessels,” a 47-year-old widow and mother of six driving her car shot “on suspicion,” a 57-year-old with diabetes suffocated from tear-gas during a raid, two teens shot respectively in the chest and, when his friend came to his aid, in the back of the head. Shot hiking, looking for work, watching a protest, walking with friends.
Two 80-year-olds were killed: One run over by an Israeli truck, one after a patrol claimed he “resisted a check”; soldiers dragged, gagged, blind-folded, zip-tied and dumped him in a warehouse where hediedof a heart attack, his body left there. Seven-year-old Rayyan Sulaiman also died of a heart attack after soldiers chased him. Jana Majdi Zakarneh, 15, was shot twice in the face while playing with her cat on the roof of her house; Zaid Ghonaim, 15, was shot while hiding in a garage; among seven girls killed were Fulla al-Masalma, shot the day before her 16th birthday, and Hanan Khaddour, 18, shot walking home from school. At least five Palestinians died at the hands of not soldiers but settlers whose brutality is only growing. 12-year-old Ahmad Dawabsheh is the only survivorof a 2015 attack in which settlers fire-bombed his family’s home in the village of Duma, burning to death his mother, father, and 18-month-old brother Ali; today, settlers have attacked the village a dozen more times and Ahmad is still undergoing surgeries from a gruesome crime the uncle raising him bitterly blames on “not just one settler” but a murderous Occupation itself.
Its latest victim Adam Ayyad died when soldiers conducted a brutal early-morning raid on the Bethlehem-area Dheisheh camp to detain Adnan Ajouri. As they retreated, they fired tear gas, sound bombs and live ammunition at a group of furious, helpless young people who’d begun throwing stones; Adam was hit in the chest and died soon after, the third Palestinian killed in 2023. Hassan Manna, owner of the bakery where Adam worked, called him “a happy kid, with an electric personality” who’d been devastated by the killing of his friend Omar Manna, who also worked at the bakery, during another raid to arrest Omar’s brother. The two friends died within a month of each other.
After Adam’s death, a photo circulated on social media of a hand-written last will and testament his family reportedly found in his pocket. “I want to tell you martyrdom isn’t death – it’s an honor to yourself and the whole world,” he wrote. “Set your compass and point it toward the Occupation.”
Adam echoed the hope of recently killed resistance fighter Ibrahim al-Nabulsi that “the people will wake up.” “There were a lot of things I wished I could do,” he noted, “but we live in a country where realizing your dreams is impossible.” And where – unconscionably, inconceivably – 15-year-olds write their wills. May he rest in peace and power.
Abby Zimet has written Common Dream’s Furthercolumn since 2008. A longtime, award-winning journalist, she moved to the Maine woods in the early 70s, where she spent a dozen years building a house, hauling water and writing before moving to Portland. Having come of political age during the Vietnam War, she has long been involved in women’s, labor, anti-war, social justice and refugee rights issues.
