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Jewish Voice For Peace protesters arrested in Trump Tower for opposing genocide
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We Will Not Comply

Freefalling through our authoritarian takeover, this week saw New York police in the grotesque faux-gold belly of the beast arrest 100 Jews of conscience chanting "Free Free Palestine" to protest the ICE abduction of a Palestinian peace advocate for likewise standing against Israeli genocide - both acts of Constitutionally-protected free speech this dark regime deems criminal. Jews on detainment for expressing the wrong political ideas: "We know our history, and we know where this leads. This is what fascists do."

The Jewish Voice For Peace protest - at the start of the Jewish holiday of Purim, which celebrates a long-ago, truth-telling queen who spoke out against another slaughter of innocents, in this case Jews - came after last weekend's nighttime arrest by ICE of Mahmoud Khalil, a 30-year-old leader and mediator of pro-Palestinian campus protests at Columbia University where he'd just earned a Master's degree in international affairs. The arrest was sinister: In newly released video recorded by his wife Noor Abdalla and shared by the New York Civil Liberties Union, burly plainclothes ICE agents confront Khalil in the lobby of his Columbia-owned apartment. They refuse to produce a warrant, say who they are or talk to the couple's attorney on the phone; they threaten both Khalil and his 8-months-pregnant wife before eventually handcuffing Khalil, forcing him into an unmarked car and driving away. "It was the most terrifying moment of my life," said Abdalla. "It felt like a kidnapping, because it was."

In these times, the arrest of Khalil, after a "vicious, coordinated" doxxing campaign by Zionist thugs, was shocking but not surprising. A Syrian-born Palestinian citizen of Algeria whose family fled both the Nakba and then the war in Syria, Khalil was well-respected for his thoughtful, judicious work, first in the UK embassy in Beirut and last year as a negotiator during Columbia's protests. Though he's a legal permanent resident of the U.S. with a green card and a wife who's an American citizen, he was evidently considered fair prey by a stupid, bigoted regime that declared on arrival, "To all the resident aliens who joined in the pro-jihadist protests, we put you on notice: we will find you, and we will deport you." After announcing Khalil had been "proudly apprehended" - he was in plain sight at Columbia - Trump brayed it was “the first of many to come” among "Hamas sympathizers on college campuses, which have been infested with radicalism like never before...(They) are not welcome here.”

For 38 hours after his arrest, neither his wife nor lawyers knew where Mahmoud was held; it turned out authorities had secretly transported him from New York to New Jersey, and then in the middle of night to an infamous immigration detention center in Louisiana, a common, toxic ICE move to find judges more supportive of Trump's anti-immigrant assaults. But they still face one problem: Khalil hasn't been charged with any crime, and from the start Trump lackeys have been flailing to find one. ICE agents who arrived at his home first announced they'd revoked his student visa; when they were told he had a green card, they said they'd revoked that, which is almost impossible to do. Now, seeking to prove he is, as charged, an anti-Semitic supporter of Hamas - a claim for which there is no evidence and which his lawyers call "false and preposterous" - they're scrambling to justify their wildly illegal actions by clutching at implausible tactics - terrorism to immigration to McCarthy-era fearmongering.

After a lame effort to base the arrest on a Homeland Security claim Khalil “led activities aligned to Hamas" - despite having no contact with them - Marco Rubio dug deep to find and cite a little-used provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act that the Secretary of State can deport "an alien whose presence or activities in the United States (would) have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences" for the U.S. Presented with this absurd notice in court in Louisiana, Khalil refused to sign it. Because irony is dead, the State Dept. may also use 1952's Red=Scare-and-anti- Semitic McCarran-Walter Act, which set quotas against "subversives" to keep out Jewish Holocaust survivors or "disruptors" suspected of being Soviet agents, to cancel visas of "pro-Hamas" foreign students like Khalil. Despite Jews fighting the law, Congress enacted it, making it almost impossible for Polish survivors to enter the U.S; those who did, like Jared Kushner's family, told US authorities they were German.

Khalil's lawyers say the government’s case has "no basis in law," and it's "chilling" they seek to deport someone because they disapprove of speech "absolutely protected" by the Constitution: "The government doesn’t get to decide what you can talk about ...If it's adverse to U.S foreign policy interests, it's still protected." They also challenge, on legal and moral grounds, the regime's brazen effort to use the Immigration Act's “foreign policy” provision in this life-and-death situation: "If the government thinks Mahmoud’s speech in favor of Palestinian human rights and to end the genocide is not only contrary to U.S. foreign policy, that is something in itself, but that that dissent provides grounds for arrest, detention and deportation...It's an astonishing claim.” They are now trying to get Kahlil back in New York from Louisiana, a move they call a “retaliatory transfer” to restrict his access to his lawyers and family. A New York judge temporarily blocked his deportation at a hearing that drew hundreds of demonstrators.

Still, Zionist forces remain hard at work. With polls showing U.S. support for a genocidal Israel at its lowest in 25 years, pro-Israel groups and lawmakers are fighting to stifle dissent, criminalize divestment efforts like BDS, further criminally blur the line between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, and delightedly deport the righteous likes of Mahmoud Khalil. Thus, the news that uber-Zionist Betar US, labeled a hate group by the Jewish ADL - for posts like their response to a list of thousands of children killed in Gaza: "Not enough. We demand blood" - has claimed credit for ratting out Khalil to the government. It also says it's compiled a thousands-strong “deportation list” of pro-Palestinian protesters on visas at Columbia and other schools, claiming to have "documentation" to support the claim they're “promoting the eradication, the destruction and the devolution of western civilization." Their former director charges Khalil is an "operative"; asked for whom, he said he hasn't figured that out yet.

Still, disappearing people now is evidently not enough, so a berserk regime keeps cracking down, with Dept, of Education plans to investigate over 50 universities for "racial discrimination." Trump keeps tormenting Columbia, maybe because its city keeps hating him. He's threatened to pull $400 million in contracts and "review" $5 billion more if it doesn't get pro-Zionist, cuts already affecting research at the medical school; his DOJ plans to probe if Columbia "was harboring or concealing immigrants (in) the US illegally" or committing "terrorism crimes”; ICE thugs are roaming the campus searching rooms and reportedly detained at least two more students. When the besieged school ignored the Do Not Obey In Advance memo and said it expelled, suspended or temporarily revoked the degrees of students who took over Hamilton Hall during April demonstrations, Khalil and seven other students filed a lawsuit to stop them from providing activists’ names to vengeful GOP lawmakers in D.C.asking for them.

Still, Trump pressed on. In "an extraordinary ultimatum," he demanded Columbia place its Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies programs under “academic receivership" for five years, ban masks that conceal identity or “intimidate others,” re-define antisemitism, abolish its discipline rules and "reform" admissions and international recruiting, adding, "We expect your immediate compliance." WTF. His minions are going with the rabid flow: Comic-book thug Tom Homan called Khalil "a national security threat," and Barbie Press Secretary said Khalil “distributed pro-Hamas propaganda, flyers with the logo of Hamas." His lawyers: "The reality is that Mr. Khalil completely, vehemently denies doing anything like that. He has absolutely no connections to Hamas whatsoever. (His) punishment should outrage anybody who believes speech should be free in the United States...If (he) is deported, no one can have any confidence in legal and constitutional protections as a line of defense against arbitrary state violence and punishment."

It was in the same belief Khalil's arrest marks a fascist escalation from which "there is no going back" that about 300 Jewish Voice For Peace activists, allies and Holocaust descendants flooded the public atrium at Trump Tower to protest against "a clear move from the playbook for authoritarian government we know all too well." Their calls: “Bring Mahmoud home now! Not In Our Name! Stop Arming Israel! Fight Nazis Not Students! Never again for anyone, never again is now!" and, stubbornly even as police continuously clambered up and down that damn gold escalator to thin and handcuff their red-shirted ranks, "Free, Free, Free Palestine!" They argued Khalil's arrest "does nothing to make Jews safer.“ They recalled the stories "we grew up on" of relatives abducted by the Nazis, authoritarian regimes targeting and scapegoating people, grieving families separated. They proclaimed, "We will not stand by" and "we will not be silent." And they chanted even as they were dragged away, "Come for one, face us all."

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protest outside EPA
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Lawsuit Aims to End 'Cruel War on Our Environment' by Trump and Musk

A leading conservation group filed suit Monday to stop U.S. President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk from "gutting" over a dozen of the federal government's environmental agencies and departments.

This isn't the Center for Biological Diversity's first lawsuit targeting Trump's Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency, but it is the first lawsuit in the country "challenging DOGE's efforts to eviscerate the agencies charged with protecting the environment, natural resources, and wildlife," according to a statement from the group.

The suit names as defendants the Environmental Protection Agency and departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Interior, and Transportation, as well as several entities under them: the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Federal Aviation Administration, Fish and Wildlife Service, Forest Service, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and National Park Service.

"The world's richest man has created an alternative power structure inside the federal government for the purpose of controlling spending and pushing out employees."

"Elon Musk and his hacker minions are tearing apart the federal agencies that protect our public lands, keep our air and water clean, and conserve our most cherished wildlife. The public has every right to know why they're waging this cruel war on our environment," said Brett Hartl, the center's government affairs director.

"Musk has shown that he can and will destroy a federal agency in a single weekend," Hartl added. "If his deranged antics are allowed to continue, we might never be able to fix the damage to America's environment."

The suit alleges "a flagrant violation of the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA), which requires transparency, open public participation, and balanced representation when the president or executive branch agencies establish or use nonfederal bodies for the purpose of seeking advice or recommendations."

Trump's executive order establishing DOGE directs all agencies to form teams, or what FACA calls advisory committees, controlled by Musk. The complaint argues that "defendants have failed to ensure that the DOGE teams comply with the balance and openness requirements of FACA."

"Mr. Musk and other billionaire and tech executives working with DOGE stand to benefit personally and financially from the DOGE teams' work, including by securing government contracts, slashing environmental rules that apply to their companies, and reducing the government's regulatory capacity and authority, including by targeting specific agencies, statutes, and spending decisions that affect their businesses," the filing warns.

The complaint notes recent reporting that "Musk is using his influence over the DOGE teams to rapidly consolidate control over large swaths of the federal government, sideline career officials, gain access to sensitive databases, and dismantle agencies and regulatory systems."

"Since President Trump assumed office—and without any congressional approval—the world's richest man has created an alternative power structure inside the federal government for the purpose of controlling spending and pushing out employees," the document adds. "Meanwhile, Musk has been named as a special government employee, which subjects him to less stringent rules on ethics and financial disclosures regarding his role overseeing DOGE and the DOGE teams."

The new case calling on the court to require compliance with FACA comes after the center filed another federal suit in Washington, D.C. last Thursday with the aim of using the Freedom of Information Act to unveil details about what Hartl said "should be called the Department of Government Evisceration."

It also follows U.S. Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), ranking member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, launching a probe last month into Musk's official title. The congressman demanded answers from the White House by this coming Thursday.

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President Donald Trump at the White House
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Call What's Coming the 'Donald J. Trump Recession,' Says Economist

As U.S. financial markets continued their downward spiral on Monday amid rapidly mounting concerns about the impacts of President Donald Trump's erratic and destructive tariff policies, one economist argued that the president has almost single-handedly engineered economic conditions that could result in a recession in the near future.

"Past recessions have been the result of policy errors or disasters," Dean Baker, senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, wrote Monday. "The most typical policy error is when the Federal Reserve Board raises interest rates too much to counter inflation. That was clearly the story in the 1974-75 recession as well as the 1980-82 double-dip recession."

"Then we have recessions caused by collapsing financial bubbles, the 2001 recession following the collapse of the stock bubble and the 2008-09 recession following the collapse of the housing bubble. And of course, we had the 2020 recession because of the Covid pandemic," he added. "But now Donald Trump is threatening us with a recession, not because of something that is any way unavoidable, but rather because as president he has the power to bring on a recession."

Baker pointed specifically to Trump's decision to impose sweeping tariffs on imports from Canada, Mexico, and China, which the economist estimates will cost Americans roughly $2,000 per household as companies push the costs of the tariffs onto consumers in the form of higher prices.

Retaliatory measures are also likely to inflict pain on Americans: On Monday, Ontario announced it would charge 25% more for the electricity it provides to Minnesota, New York, and Michigan in response to Trump's tariffs on Canadian imports, a move that's expected to hike electricity bills significantly for ratepayers in those states.

China, meanwhile, hit back at Trump Monday with an additional 15% tariff on U.S. farm products, including chicken, pork, soybeans, and beef.

Trump's tariff policies, and the widespread confusion surrounding their implementation, have sparked a sell-off on Wall Street and broader fears about the state of the U.S. economy as the labor market shows signs of stalling and consumer confidence plunges.

"While a recession may not be fully baked into the cards at this point, the risk is evident and it's almost entirely coming from Donald Trump's policies," Baker argued, noting that while the recession threat is "first and foremost" driven by tariffs, they "are just one possible route."

"The other is Elon Musk's DOGE team attack on the government. If there was ever any doubt, it is now clear that this outfit has nothing to do with increasing government efficiency," Baker wrote. "The direct impact of Musk's job cuts on both the budget and the economy is likely to be small. The bigger impact is the uncertainty they have created in large sectors of the economy."

"In short, Donald Trump has good reasons for telling us that his MAGA policies might give us a recession," he added. "It's hard to know how bad this recession would be, but it will definitely be the 'Donald J. Trump recession.'"

"Will the Trump slump turn into a recession? How will Trump lie and cheat his way out of it? Stay tuned."

Baker's assessment came a day after Trump declined to rule out the possibility of an economic recession in the U.S. this year and downplayed the effects of his tariffs, claiming without a shred of evidence that they will make the country "so rich you're not going to know where to spend all that money."

Trump previously insisted that the U.S. stock sell-off was attributable not to his chaotic tariff announcements, but to "globalists that see how rich our country is going to be and they don't like it."

Former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich wrote Monday that just seven weeks after Trump's inauguration, "the bottom is falling out" of the U.S. economy.

"Stocks are plunging. Treasury yields are falling. Consumer confidence is dropping. Inflation is picking up," Reich wrote. "The cost of living—the single biggest problem identified by consumers over the last several years—is going up, not down. Trump's tariffs on steel and aluminum, and his threatened 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico, are playing havoc with supply chains inside and outside America."

"Even before this Trump slump, only the richest 10% of Americans had enough purchasing power to keep the economy going with their spending. The bottom 90%—including most Trump voters—were barely getting by. The next eighteen months could be rough on millions of people," he continued. "Will the Trump slump turn into a recession? How will Trump lie and cheat his way out of it? Stay tuned."

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Former South African Ambassador Ebrahim Rasool
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Rubio Slammed for Expelling South African Ambassador Over Trump Criticism

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has faced a flood of condemnation since announcing on social media Friday that "South Africa's ambassador to the United States is no longer welcome in our great country."

"Ebrahim Rasool is a race-baiting politician who hates America and hates President Donald Trump," the secretary claimed. "We have nothing to discuss with him and so he is considered PERSONA NON GRATA."

In the post on X—the social media site owned by Elon Musk, Trump's South Africa-born billionaire adviser—Rubio linked to an article by the right-wing news site Breitbart about Rasool saying during a Friday webinar that the U.S. president is leading global a white supremacist movement.

As examples of Trump's "Make America Great Again" movement exporting its "supremacist assault," Rasool pointed to Musk elevating Nigel Farage, leader of the far-right Reform U.K. party, and Vice President JD Vance meeting with the leader of the neo-Nazi Alternative for Germany party.

Responding to Rubio on X, North Carolina State University assistant teaching professor Nathan Lean said: "Ebrahim Rasool is a man of genuine decency, moral courage, and is a friend. This makes me absolutely embarrassed to be an American. And it underscores that his critiques of white supremacy in the Age of Trump are perceived as threatening for one simple reason: He's right."

The Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) similarly responded: "Ambassador Ebrahim Rasool is a principled leader who fought alongside Nelson Mandela against apartheid and has dedicated his career to democracy, interfaith cooperation, and justice. Baseless attacks like this only serve to divide. We stand by him and his lifelong commitment to building a more just and inclusive world."

Laila Al-Arian, executive producer of Al Jazeera's "Fault Lines," declared that "this administration is virulently and unabashedly Islamophobic, not even trying to hide how unhinged they are as they go after people for speech."

Rasool previously served as ambassador during the Obama administration and returned to the role shortly before Trump began his second term. Earlier this week, Semafor reported on his difficulties dealing with the current administration:

He has failed to secure routine meetings with State Department officials and key Republican figures since Trump took office in January, Washington and South African government insiders told Semafor, drawing frustration in Pretoria.

Rasool is likely to have been frozen out for his prior vocal criticism of Israel, a South African diplomat, based in Washington, told Semafor. "A man named Ebrahim, who is Muslim, with a history of pro-Palestine politics, is not likely to do well in that job right now," said one of them. While South Africa brought a case against Israel to the International Court of Justice in December 2023, accusing it of genocide in Gaza, Rasool is nevertheless widely considered to be among the government's most ardent pro-Palestine voices.

South African political analyst Sandile Swana told Al Jazeera on Friday that the "core of the dispute" with the diplomatic was the genocide case against U.S.-armed Israel. In the fight against apartheid, the U.S. "supported the apartheid regime," said Swana. "Rasool continues to point out the behaviour of the United States, even now is to support apartheid and genocide."

Other critics also pointed to the ongoing court battle over Israel's utter destruction of Gaza and mass slaughter of Palestinians.

Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) national executive director Nihad Awad told Rubio: "Your declaration of Ambassador Ebrahim Rasool as persona non grata is a racist, Islamophobic, transparent act of retaliation for South Africa's opposition to Israel's genocide in Gaza."

Imraan Siddiqi, a former congressional candidate in Washington who now leads the state's branch of CAIR, said that "he stood up firmly against apartheid, so it's no coincidence you're punishing him in favor of an openly apartheid state."

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa's office said in a statement Saturday that "the presidency has noted the regrettable expulsion of South Africa's ambassador to the United States of America, Mr. Ebrahim Rasool.

"The presidency urges all relevant and impacted stakeholders to maintain the established diplomatic decorum in their engagement with the matter," the office added. "South Africa remains committed to building a mutually beneficial relationship with the United States of America."

The diplomat's expulsion follows Trump signing an executive order last month that frames South Africa's land law as "blatant discrimination" against the country's white minority. Writing about the order for Foreign Policy in Focus, Zeb Larson and William Minter noted that "his actions echo a long history of right-wing support in the United States for racism in Southern Africa, including mobilization of support for white Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) as well as the apartheid regime in South Africa."

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Troy Edgar testifies during his confirmation hearing
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DHS Official Explicitly Equates Protest to Terrorism in 'Stunning' Interview

In an interview with one of the top officials at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security on Thursday, NPR's Michel Martin sought to gain clarity about the agency's reasoning for arresting former Columbia University student organizer Mahmoud Khalil last week—but Troy Edgar provided no supporting evidence of specific offenses committed by Khalil, who has not been charged with a crime, and suggested his mere participation in "pro-Palestinian activity" was sufficient to order his deportation.

Edgar, the deputy homeland security secretary, repeatedly alleged that Khalil was in the U.S. on a visa, despite Martin correcting him and clarifying that the Algerian citizen is a legal permanent resident of the country with a green card—until it was reportedly revoked under the Trump administration's "catch and revoke" program targeting international students who protest the government's pro-Israel policy.

The Trump administration has accused Khalil, who is of Palestinian descent, of leading "activities aligned to Hamas" and protests where pro-Hamas propaganda was distributed, but officials have provided no evidence that he's provided support to Hamas or other groups designated as terrorist organizations by the U.S. government.

A White House official this week toldThe Free Press that Khalil is not being accused of breaking any laws, but is rather "a threat to the foreign policy and national security interests of the United States," and Edgar's comments to Martin offered further evidence evidence that DHS is working to deport Khalil without accusing him of a crime.

"He is coming in to basically be a student that is not going to be supporting terrorism," said Edgar. "So, the issue is he was let into the country on this visa. He has been promoting this antisemitism activity at the university. And at this point, the State Department has revoked his visa for supporting a terrorist type organization."

But Edgar was unable to point to specific "terrorist activity" that Khalil was supporting when he helped lead Palestinian solidarity protests at Columbia, where students occupied a building and displayed a banner labeling it Hind's Hall in honor of a six-year-old girl who was killed by Israeli forces in Gaza and negotiated with administrators to end the school's investment in companies that benefit from Israel's policies in Palestine.

"How did he support Hamas? Exactly what did he do?" Martin pressed.

"Well, I think you can see it on TV, right?" Edgar replied. "This is somebody that we've invited and allowed the student to come into the country, and he's put himself in the middle of the process of basically pro-Palestinian activity."

Martin then repeatedly asked whether criticism of the U.S. government, which is the largest international funder of the Israeli military and has backed its assault on Gaza, and protesting are deportable offenses.

"Let me put it this way, Michel, imagine if he came in and filled out the form and said, 'I want a student visa.' They asked him, 'What are you going to do here?' And he says, 'I'm going to go and protest.' We would have never let him into the country," said Edgar. "I think if he would have declared he's a terrorist, we would have never let him in."

Will Creeley, legal director at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), called the interview "stunning" and said Edgar's "conflation of protest and terrorism stopped me cold."

The interview, said Washington Post columnist Shadi Hamid, serves as the latest confirmation from the Trump administration that "Mahmoud Khalil's arrest has no basis."

The interview was released the same day that more than 100 people were arrested at a sit-in led by Jewish Voice of Peace at Trump Tower in New York City, demanding Khalil's release. His arrest has sparked outcry from progressives in Congress, local lawmakers including New York mayoral candidate and state lawmaker Zohran Mamdani, legal experts, and the human rights group Amnesty International.

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Israeli Environmental Protection Minister Idit Silman
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Israeli Cabinet Minister: 'Only Solution for the Gaza Strip Is to Empty It of Gazans'

Israeli Environmental Protection Minister Idit Silman argued Tuesday for ethnically cleansing the Gaza Strip of its Palestinian population so that the Jewish people can "inherit the land" many of them believe their deity promised them in biblical times.

"The only solution for the Gaza Strip is to empty it of Gazans," Silman—a member of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's ruling Likud party—said during an interview with Reshet Bet radio, according to a translation by Haaretz. "God has sent us the U.S. administration, and it is clearly telling us—it's time to inherit the land."

Last month, Republican U.S. President Donald Trumpproposed that the U.S. "take over" Gaza, remove it's approximately 2.1 million Palestinian inhabitants, and transform the coastal enclave into the "Riviera of the Middle East."

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said Sunday that the so-called "Trump Plan" is currently "taking shape."

"It could be in single-family homes or Trump-style towers, but we will definitely go back there."

Silman said during Tuesday's interview that "Gush Katif will return, there's no question about it," referring to a former block of 17 Israeli apartheid settlements in southern Gaza that were abandoned 20 years ago. "It could be in single-family homes or Trump-style towers, but we will definitely go back there. I see no other solution to terrorism. The answer to terrorism is sovereignty."

While proponents of the plan insist that Palestinians will leave Gaza voluntarily, critics counter that this notion is utterly divorced from reality, as most Gazans are descendants of people who fled or were ethnically cleansed from other parts of Palestine during the establishment of the modern state of Israel in 1948, and are loath to be subjected to yet another expulsion. Many elderly Gazans are survivors of what Palestinians call the Nakba, or "catastrophe," of 1948.

This isn't the first time that Silman has called for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. She made similar comments during a recent rally, and last September she also said that Israel is "on a path to inherit" the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. Israel has illegally occupied the territory since 1967, and hundreds of thousands of Jewish settlers have steadily usurped Palestinians by building and expanding apartheid colonies on their land.

"We will not 'conquer,'" Silman asserted last year. "Conquer is a progressive word that the progressives brought upon us. We inherit. Inheritance from the lord."

Silman rose to prominence after abandoning the previous Israeli coalition government, prompting a crisis leading to the 2022 election that gave rise to the current far-right administration.

Numerous Israeli politicians, military leaders, journalists, entertainers, and others have called for genocide in Gaza or the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from the territory. Statements from Netanyahu, members of his Cabinet, Knesset lawmakers, and others have been entered as evidence in the South Africa-led genocide case against Israel currently before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague.

More than 170,000 Palestinians are dead, maimed, or missing, and millions more forcibly displaced, starved, or sickened following 15 months of Israeli bombardment and invasion and more than 17 months of "complete siege" of Gaza, according to local and international agencies.

Palestine defenders argue the mass slaughter and annihilation of Gaza meet the definition of genocide under Article II of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. However, according to the United Nations Office on Genocide Prevention and the Responsibility to Protect, "To constitute genocide, there must be a proven intent on the part of perpetrators to physically destroy a national, ethnical, racial or religious group."

"The intent is the most difficult element to determine," the agency stressed. But critics say that comments like Silman's could make the ICJ's final decision much easier.

"Bolstered by the hubris of settler colonial power and the knowledge that it has killed, maimed, destroyed, expelled, humiliated, imprisoned, and dispossessed with more than seven decades of impunity and by the continued material and moral support of the United States, Israelis are explicit and unashamed about their genocidal intent because they have imagined and prosecuted a war against people who they see as colonized 'savages,'" Israeli Holocaust scholar and British law professor Penny Green wrote last year.

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