Eugene Doyle: Trump and foolish old men who redraw maps

By
Dr David Robie
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26
911
Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu “erased” Palestine from the Middle East map figuratively
Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu “erased” Palestine from the Middle East map figuratively.  Hamas leaders also understood the message all too well. Image: www.solidarity.co.nz

David Robie also blogs at Café Pacific

COMMENTARY: By Eugene Doyle

It generally ends badly.  An old tyrant embarks on an ill-considered project that involves redrawing maps.

They are heedless to wise counsel and indifferent to indigenous interests or experience.  Before they fail, are killed, deposed or otherwise disposed of, these vicious old men can cause immense harm.

To see Trump through this lens, let’s look at a group of men who tested their cartographic skills and failed:  King Lear and, of course, Hitler and Napoleon Bonaparte, and latterly, George W Bush and Saddam Hussein.

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I even throw in a Pope.  But let’s start first with Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump himself.

Benjamin Netanyahu and a map of a ‘New Middle East’ — without Palestine
In September 2023, a month before the Hamas attack on Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu spoke to an almost-empty UN General Assembly.  Few wanted to share the same air as the man.

In his speech, he presented a map of a “New Middle East” — one that contained a Greater Israel but no Palestine.

In a piece in The Jordan Times titled: “Cartography of genocide”, Ramzy Baroud explained why Netanyahu erased Palestine from the map figuratively.  Hamas leaders also understood the message all too well.

“Generally, there was a consensus in the political bureau: We have to move, we have to take action. If we don’t do it, Palestine will be forgotten — totally deleted from the international map,” Dr Bassem Naim, a leading Hamas official said in the outstanding Al Jazeera documentary October 7.

Hearing Trump and Netanyahu last week, the Hamas assessment was clear-eyed and prescient.

Donald Trump
In defiance of UN resolutions and international law, he recognised Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, recognised the Syrian Golan Heights as part of Israel, and now wants to turn Gaza into a US real estate development, reconquer Panama, turn Canada into the 51st State of the USA, rename the Gulf of Mexico and seize Greenland, if necessary by force.

And it’s only February.  The US spent blood, treasure and decades building the Rules-Based International Order.  Biden and Trump have left it in tatters.

Trump is a fitting avatar for the American state: morally corrupt, narcissistic, burning down all the temples to international law, and generally causing chaos as he flames his way into ignominy.

The past week — where “Bonkers is the New Normal” — reminded me of a famous Onion headline: “FBI Uncovers Al-Qaeda Plot To Just Sit Back And Enjoy Collapse Of United States”.

The Iranians made a brilliant counter-offer to the US plan to ethnically cleanse Gaza and create a US statelet next to Israel — send the Israelis to Greenland! Unlike the genocidal US and Israeli leadership, the Iranians were kidding.

Point taken, though.

King Lear: ‘Meantime we will express our darker purpose. Give me the map there.’

Lear makes the list because of Shakespeare’s understanding of tyrants and those who oppose them.

King Lear
Trump, like Lear, surrounds himself with a college of schemers, deviants and psychopaths. Image: www.solidarity.co.nz

Kent: My life I never held but as a pawn to wage against thy enemies.

Lear: Out of my sight!

Kent and all those who sought to steer the King towards a more prudent course were treated as enemies and traitors. I think of Ambassador Chas Freeman, John Mearsheimer, Colonel Larry Wilkerson, George Beebe and all the other wiser heads who have been pushed to the periphery in much the same way.

Trump, like Lear, surrounds himself with a college of schemers, deviants and psychopaths.

Napoleon Bonaparte
I was fortunate to study “France on the Eve of Revolution” with the great French historian Antoine Casanova.  His fellow Corsican caused a fair bit of mayhem with his intention to redraw the map of Europe.

British statesman William Pitt the Younger reeled in horror as Napoleon got to work, “Roll up that map; it will not be wanted these 10 years,” he presciently said.

Bonaparte was an important historical figure who left a mixed and contested legacy.

Before effective resistance could be organised, he abolished the Holy Roman Empire (good job), created the Confederation of the Rhine, invaded Russia and, albeit sometimes for the better, torched many of the traditional power structures.

Millions died in his wars.

We appear to be back to all that: a leader who tears up all rule books.  Trump endorses the US-Israeli right of conquest, sanctions the International Criminal Court (ICC) for trying to hold Israel and the US to the same standard as others, and hands out the highest offices to his family and confidantes.

Hitler
“Lebensraum” (Living space) was the Nazi concept that propelled the German war machine to seize new territories, redraw maps.  As they marched, the soldiers often sang “Deutschland über alles” (Germany above all), their ultra-nationalist anthem that expressed a desire to create a Greater Germany — to Make Germany Great Again.

All sounds a bit similar to this discussion of Trump and Netanyahu, doesn’t it?  Again: whose side should we be on?

Saddam Hussein and George W Bush
When it comes to doomed bids to remake the Middle East by launching illegal wars, these are two buttocks of the same bum.  Now we have the Trump-Netanyahu pair.

Will countries like Australia, New Zealand and the UK really sign up for the current US-Israeli land grab?  Will they all continue to yawn and look away as massive crimes against humanity are committed?   I fear so, and in so doing, they rob their side of all legitimacy.

Pope Alexander VI
There is a smack of the Borgias about the Trumps. They share values — libertinism and nepotism, to name two — and both, through cunning rather than aptitude, managed to achieve great power.

Pope Alexander VI, born Rodrigo Borgia, father to Lucretia and Cesare, was Pope in 1492 when Columbus sailed the ocean blue.

1494. The Treaty of Tordesillas
1494. The Treaty of Tordesillas hands the New World over to the Spanish and Portuguese. Image: www.solidarity.co.nz

He was responsible for the greatest reworking of the map of the world: the Treaty of Tordesillas which divided the “New World” between the Spanish and Portuguese empires. Millions died; trillions were stolen.

We still live with the depravities the Europeans and their heritors unleashed upon the world.

I’m sure the Greenlanders, the Canadians, the Panamanians and whoever else the United States sets their sights on will resist the unwelcome attempt to colour the map of their country in stars & stripes.

History is littered with blind map re-makers, foolish old men who draw new maps on old lands.

Like Sykes, Picot, Balfour and others, Trump thinks with a flourish of his pen he can whisk away identity and deep roots. Love of country and long-suffering mean Palestinians will never accept a handful of coins and parcels of land spread across West Asia or Africa as compensation for a stolen homeland.

They have earned the right to Palestine not least because of the blood-spattered identity that they have carved out of every inch of land through their immense courage and steadfastness. We should stand with them.

Eugene Doyle is a community organiser and activist in Wellington, New Zealand. He received an Absolutely Positively Wellingtonian award in 2023 for community service. His first demonstration was at the age of 12 against the Vietnam War. This article was first published at his public policy website Solidarity and Café Pacific.

26 COMMENTS

  1. I’m not sure exactly how a people earn the right to land simply by soaking it in blood. In the case of the Palestinian Arabs, it is the blood of their victims killed in suicide bombings and random shootings and stabbings that have soaked the land. They can take no pride in these facts and it certainly doesn’t entitle they to any favours, in fact quite the opposite as we are witnessing in real time. The time is ripe for them to move far enough away so that they can’t harm anyone again.

    • Irony in the first degree. The first car bomb and letter bombings were done by Jews.
      Lets not talk about pesky little facts like videos on YouTube recorded over 100 years ago showing a vibrant Palestinian community pre Israel.

    • The Salesman I read your comment and it seems to be based on fact. Your opinion seems to have brought forward vitriol from others. Perhaps less throwing of words of strong negative emotions and more caring consideration from the ‘winning’ side would end what is an asymmetric war. Israel is showing itself to be an ass so perhaps the spelling needs to be changed for this one instance of incredible conduct. No special pleading excuses it.

    • My comment, by the way is meant to confuse and so break through the mind barrier to honest thought that pervades in the Israeli-Palestine enigma.

  2. “There is a smack of the Borgias about the Trumps. They share values — libertinism and nepotism, to name two — and both, through cunning rather than aptitude, managed to achieve great power.”
    I rather think that Trump owes his success not so much to cunning as to the moral degeneration of the American population as a whole – among both his supporters and his opponents. I am no historian but suspect that the same was probably true of the Borgias in Italy.

  3. Israeli snipers shooting children in the head is because of depraved people in the west like Xenophon and the salesman ,,,,

    https://youtu.be/MslskZT48ac?t=2087

    Kill em say the war criminal supporters,,, give em hell they encourage.

    ‘they (Israel and their supporters) accuse the Palestinians or Hamas of whatever they are guilty of a hundredfold themselves’ https://youtu.be/DVJJ-WN7OTY?t=210

    ‘They (Israel) claimed beheaded babies, that was Bullshit’,,, ‘no babies in ovens’ either.

    How many hundreds of babies and thousands of children has Israel killed ???

    ‘They (Israel) literally caught people raping Palestinian prisoners, and there was riots over that, but the riots weren’t because they were raping the Prisoners, the riots were because they felt like they had the right to rape the prisoners’ ….

    Meanwhile here’s the first identified Israeli victim of rape from Oct 7th ,,, https://youtu.be/MslskZT48

    Notice the slight difference …..

  4. I tend to think that the Trump phenomenon is due to people being exhausted by lying scheming politicians that promise everything and do nothing. Of endless beurocrats going to endless talkfest meetings that ultimately cost billions of dollars and nothing to show for it.

    The American people wanted a leader to grab problems by the scruff of the neck and to get things done and fast. Trump is not perfect, nobody is but in peoples eyes he gets things done.

    As for the Palestinians, it is often a stated rule the side losing a war lose their land. For the past 80 years the Palestinians are the losers and have torn up every peace treaty. They consistently don’t want peace, they want war. So here we are again the palistinians have lost. This time around they have lost the war they started on oct 7 2023 so they will now rightly else their land and be shipped off and forgotten to some hell hole of some destination. And its is justice for wanting war for the last 80 years.

    • Perhaps the approach of some decision and being able to achieve something echoes the work of now Christchurch mayor of getting onto a tractor two? years back as an individual action. He cleared a blocked water channel when there was flooding. People get tired of meetings etc and call for some actual, useful action. It may not be the best thing but it is an improvement for now, a band-aid for the present problems.

  5. Lear becomes tragic because he belatedly recognises (or half-recognises) the evil he has done. And he does it in the most extraordinarily powerful and moving language. That will never happen to Trump – Trump will remain merely disgusting to the end.

  6. 5 cents are no longer legal tender so useless like the second half of the comment about Palestinians wanting war for 80 years. If someone wants to take your home I hope you will put up a good fight if it belongs to you.

  7. “Trump is not perfect, nobody is but in peoples eyes he gets things done.” 5+cents+worth

    And Hitler made the trains run on time.

  8. “And Hitler made the trains run on time.”

    I thought it was allegedly Mussolini who did that. Though apparently it wasn’t true.

  9. “….An old tyrant embarks on an ill-considered project that involves redrawing maps.” Eugene Doyle

    If the aim is to redraw maps on the ground, and not just on paper, then, you will need a big pen.

    Will we see a mushroom cloud over North Gaza?
    (After the inhabitants have been given a warning to leave, of course)

    In a move that was resisted by the Democrats, Donald Trump has delivered Israel America’s largest most power non-nuclear bomb, the MOAB. (Mother Of All Bombs).
    Backed up by Trump’s ominous threat of “Hell in Gaza” if Hamas don’t release all the hostages.

    Why would a MOAB be used on Gaza?

    The MOAB is so powerful that, similar to a nuclear weapon,  a MOAB generates a distinctive mushroom cloud, more importantly it can crush underground tunnels.  The US military refer to the MOAB generated mushroom cloud as an added advantage in creating psychological terror. But the biggest advantage of a MOAB, is that the MOAB leaves no nuclear contamination, or fall out. allowing immediate ‘redevelopment’ of the land.
    On the legal front, unlike gas or nuclear weapons, MOAB is not an officially internationally designated WMD,
    In an obvious parallel to the Hamas tunnel complex, a MOAB was successfully used in Afghanistan to destroy a tunnel complex.

    https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/1151139/us-bombs-destroys-khorasan-group-stronghold-in-afghanistan/

    The destruction of the Khorasan tunnel complex is the only time that a MOAB has ever been used in combat.

    Donald Trump has repeated his intention to clear the whole of Gaza of its Palestinian inhabitants and rehouse them in Egypt and Jordan.
    Trump’s repeated intention to clear the whole of Gaza, hits up against the fact of the 300,000 plus Palestinians who have just voted with their feet and returned to North Gaza. Will they evacuate North Gaza for a second time, if they are warned to leave, or else, by Israel?
    According to some, if the Palestinians are delivered a ‘humanitarian warning’ to leave Northern Gaza, dropping a MOAB on those that remain will not be an act of genocide.

    Whether the people of the world or history will agree with them is another matter.

    • Why bother to come here and say that LLO. Why? Such one-liner stuff doesn’t valuably inform. Nice for you to share your nothing with us. It is a mass of similar nothings that get us into the morass the world is in – so let’s have more thought explained and less ass.

  11. After receiving the Green light from Trump to do whether they like with Gaza, The IDF debate amongst themselves whether to carry out a “full throated” genocide, in front of the whole world, and especially, in front of their Arab allies. Or should the IDF, just go with the slow strangulation they have been practicing for decades.

    The question the IDF is pondering is not; ‘Should we commit genocide?’, but instead is, ‘How should we commit genocide?’

    Friends of the IDF is a Zionist website.
    FIDF claim that the IDF have been fighting with one hand tied behind their back by the Biden administration. But, now they are free to do what they like with Gaza.

    The Trump administration has given Israel permission to remove all restrictions on the IDF and given the “Green Light” to the IDF to return to Gaza with full unrestrained violence.

    According to FIDF, the US has resumed shipping Israel ‘MK-84 Two Thousand Pound Bombs’, The Biden administration stopped shipping the 2,000-pound bombs to Israel, conceding they were causing too many civilian deaths in Gaza., These hugely destructive 2.000lb bombs are now arriving in Israel courtesy of the Trump administration.

    Palestinians who have returned to Northern Gaza say, “there is nothing left to destroy”.

    The only thing left to destroy are the people themselves.

    The debate inside the IDF goes something like this; ‘Should we reoccupy the Rafah Crossing and the Netzarim Corridor, and starve the Palestinians to death, or should we act on Trump’s “Green light” to launch a full scale military campaign of unrestrained mass slaughter and violent forced expulsion?

    And what would be the consequences of the that?

    “Phase Two is Simply Untenable”

    Beginning @22:05 minutes

    “If you listen to Former Defense Minister Gallant, who has recently come out and talked about what Israel’s plans had been for October 11, four days after the attack launched by Hamas, there was a plan to do even Graver damage….”

    @30:27 minutes:
    The president has essentially put on the table that Israel is going to be able to do what it wants to do in the Gaza Strip.
    It is going to be less inhibited because we’ve gotten the vast majority of hostages out, the women for example, the elderly, the ones that I think Israelis have been most concerned about.
    Now I think it’s an interesting question; ‘What does Israel do, when there are still some men of fighting age that were civilians when they were kidnapped, including also the IDF soldiers that are there?
    …..this war, which Israel I think has fought valiantly and and expertly, over the last year and four months, the Israelis were fighting with one hand behind their back,,,,,
    ….they were so fearful, they did not want to attack the tunnels because they knew that there would be some hostages that they could potentially gotten killed. If the Israelis go back in right now, and Donald Trump has given them a full green light to do so. And they’ve gotten the majority of the civilians out. What does that mean for Israel? Are we going to see some sort of, just a full throated campaign, waged by the Israelis? in other words no no hands tied behind their back any longer?
    It seems like, that’s what the president is giving Benjamin Netanyahu green light to do….
    …The IDF itself, may have reservations about such things, whereas the political Echelon may have no concerns whatsoever…..
    …When you finally have that opportunity right in front of you do you take it? Or do you continue to fight that war that is precision oriented? And just go back to controlling the Netzarim Corridor, go back to controlling the border areas around Gaza, control the Rafah Crossing, and continue to slowly degrade Hamas.
    Or, do you ramp up the war and try to bring it to a swift end?
    This is the crossroads that I think Israel will find itself right now. And it’s no longer being checked by the Biden administration.
    The Biden administration was telling Israel it couldn’t do a number of things, now they’re at this crossroads where they can really turn up the heat on Hamas, or continue the war largely as they were fighting it before…..
    …..that’s one aspect of this, but there’s also this Stephen. This gets back to the question of Saudi normalization and the peace agreements that Israel has with Jordan and Egypt and the UAE, how Israel conducts itself on the battlefield. And we’ve seen this all the way through how it conducts itself on the battlefield does play out in the regional diplomacy. And so if Israel wants to sustain some of these relationships, or develop them, it needs to be careful what the message is that it projects, with you know, with regard to its military operations in Gaza, or in Lebanon for that matter….
    …I think that is one of the reasons why the IDF may not want to go in a full-throated campaign that just flattens the Gaza Strip. But I cannot right now predict which way we go, but having a green light doesn’t mean that you always take it. Being given an opportunity to do something doesn’t mean that it’s wise.
    This is I think, as I understand it right now, part of the debate that’s happening within the Israeli security system…

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dkh2s9OSAbw

  12. Trump is pure evil. He even out does BiBi, IMO. Has anyone read the terms of his contract for peace (re: Rare earth minerals) with Ukraine?. its degenerate, in fact, as close to modern day slavery as can be conceived. i dont think there is another country on earth where a regime like the one proposed would be enacted.

    With Trump, I think each thing he does is way beyond the parameters of basic decency but with this new proposed agreement. He is plumbing the depths of venality. (See the Torygraph for the article). Its gobsmackingly awful.

    I said that Trump mark 2 would be very dangerous for the rest of the world but even I a dyed in the wool trump hater didnt foresee the depths of his depravity. He wants a strong and expanded Russian ally to counter China and doesnt care how many european countries fall under the jackboot? to get it. And he is so naive in thinking Putin can ever be a true ally.

  13. My concern is people see Trump as a politician. He is not. He’s a two bit fraudster salesman with multiple failures who was rescued by his father from going to war, a coward if you like. He is simply a bully, immoral and actually a poor excuse for a human being. But what does that say about the people of America?

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