President Donald Trump wants
a Nobel Peace Prize, and his efforts toward peace in Ukraine, if
successful, could possibly help him earn one—but only if he also ends US
complicity in the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
Under Trump, as under former President Joe Biden, the US has served as
Israel’s partner in mass murder, annexation, starvation, and the
escalating torment of millions of Palestinians. The genocide can, and
will, stop if Trump wills it. So far he has not.
Israel is
committing genocide—everyone knows it, even its staunchest defenders.
The Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem has recently made a
poignant acknowledgment of “Our Genocide.” In Foreign Affairs, former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Jack Lew recently admitted that
extremist parties in Netanyahu’s government openly aim to starve
Palestinians in Gaza. Lew frames his piece as praise for the former
Biden administration (and for himself) for their supposedly valiant
efforts to prevent mass starvation by pressuring Israel to allow minimal
food entry, while blaming Trump for easing that pressure.
Yet the actual importance of the piece is that an ardent Zionist insider
certifies the genocidal agenda sustaining Netanyahu’s rule. Lew
recounts that in the aftermath of October 7, Israelis frequently pledged
that “not a drop of water, not a drop of milk, and not a drop of fuel will go from Israel to Gaza,” a stance that still shapes Israel’s cabinet policy. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) can use Lew’s article as confirmation of Israel’s genocidal intent.
The genocide in Gaza, coupled with the annexation in the West Bank, aims to fulfill the Likud vision of a Greater Israel that exercises territorial control between the Sea and Jordan.
This will destroy any possibility of a Palestinian state, and any
possibility of peace. Indeed, Bezalel Smotrich, the extremist minister
of finance and minister in the ministry of defense, recently vowed to “permanently bury the idea of a Palestinian state” while the Knesset has recently called for annexation of the occupied West Bank.
The US aids and protects Israel every day in these horrific crimes against the Palestinian people. The US provides billions of dollars in military support,
goes to war alongside Israel, and offers diplomatic cover for Israel’s
crimes against humanity. The vacuous mantra that “Israel has the right
to defend itself” is the US pat excuse for Israel’s mass murder and
starvation of innocent civilians.
Generations of historians, psychologists, sociologists, philosophers,
and inquiring minds will ask how the descendants and co‑religionists of
the Jews murdered by Hitler’s genocidal regime came to become
genocidaires. Two factors, deeply intertwined, come to the fore.
First,
the Nazi Holocaust lent credence among Jews to the Zionist claim that
only a state with overwhelming military power and ready to use it can
protect the Jewish people. For these militarists, every Arab country
opposed to Israel’s ongoing occupation of Palestine became a dire foe to be crushed by war. This is Netanyahu’s doctrine of violence, which was first unveiled in the Clean Break strategy,
and which has produced nonstop Israeli mobilization and war, and a
society now gripped by implacable hatred even of innocent women and
children in Palestine, Lebanon, and Syria. Netanyahu has dragged the US
into countless devastating and futile wars out of Netanyahu’s blindness
to the reality that only diplomacy, not war, can achieve Israel’s
security.
Second, this non-stop resort to violence reignited a dormant strain of
Biblical Judaism, notably based on the Book of Joshua, which presents
God’s covenant with Abraham as justification for genocides committed in
conquering the Promised Land. Ancient zealotry of this kind, and the
belief that God would redeem his chosen people through violence, fueled
suicidal revolts against the Roman Empire between 66 and 135 AD. Whether
the genocides in the Book of Joshua ever occurred (probably not ) is
beside the point. For today’s zealots, the license to commit genocide is
vivid, immediate, and biblically ordained.
Aware
of the danger of self-destructive zealotry, the rabbis who shaped the
Babylonian Talmud proscribed Jews from attempting to return en masse to
the promised land (Ketubot 111a). They taught that Jews should live in
their own communities and fulfill God’s commandments where they are,
rather than seeking to recapture a land from which they had been exiled
following decades of suicidal revolt.
Whatever the fundamental reasons for Israel’s murderous turn, Israel’s
survival among nations is at risk today as it has become a pariah state.
For the first time in history, Israel’s Western allies have repudiated
Israel’s violent ways. France, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada have
each pledged to formally recognize the State of Palestine at the
upcoming UN General Assembly in September. These countries will finally
join the will of the overwhelming global majority in recognizing that the two-state solution, enshrined in international law, is the true guarantor of peace.
The majority of the American people, are rightly revulsed by Israel’s brutality and are also turning their support massively to the Palestinian cause. In a new Reuters poll released
today, 58% of Americans now believe that the UN should recognize the
State of Palestine, against just 32% who oppose that. American
politicians will surely note the change, at Israel’s peril, unless the
two-state solution is rapidly implemented. (Logical arguments can also
be given for a peaceful one-state, bi-national solution, but this
alternative has essentially no backing among UN member states and no
basis in the international law regarding the Israel-Palestine conflict
that has developed over more than seven decades.)
This Israeli government will not change course on its own. Only the
Trump administration can end the genocide through a comprehensive
settlement agreed by the world’s nations at the UN Security Council and
UN General Assembly. The solution is to stop the genocide, make peace,
and salvage Israel’s standing in the world by creating a Palestinian
state alongside Israel on the June 4, 1967 borders.
For decades, the entire Arab and Islamic world has
supported the two-state solution, and advocated to normalize relations
with Israel and guarantee security for the entire region. This solution
is in full accordance with international law, and was again espoused
clearly by the UN General Assembly in the NY Declaration last month at the conclusion of the United
Nations High-Level International Conference on the Peaceful Settlement
of the Question of Palestine and the Implementation of the Two-State
Solution (July 29, 2025).
Trump has come to understand that to save Ukraine, he must force it to see reality: that NATO cannot expand to Ukraine as
that would directly threaten Russia’s own security. In the same way,
Trump must force Israel to see reality: that Israel cannot continue to
rule over the Palestinian people, murder them, starve them, and
ethnically cleanse them. The two-state solution thereby saves both
Palestine and Israel.
An immediate UN Security Council vote to grant Palestine permanent
membership in the UN next month would put an end to Israel’s zealous
delusions of permanent control over Palestine, as well as its reckless
territorial ambitions in Lebanon and Syria. The focus of the crisis
would then shift to immediate and practical issues: how to disarm
non-state actors within the framework of the new state and regional
peace, how to enable mutual security for Israel and Palestine, how to
empower the Palestinians to govern effectively, how to finance the
reconstruction, and how to provide urgent humanitarian assistance to a
starving population.
Trump can make this happen at the UN in September. The US, and only the
US, has vetoed the permanent membership of Palestine in the UN. The
other members of the UN Security Council have already signaled their
support.
Peace in the Middle East is possible now—and there is no time to lose.