COLUMN: Trump and Netanyahu Are Playing God—and the World Is Watching Them Do It

Trump doesn’t see human beings—he sees real estate

When Donald Trump looks at Gaza, he doesn’t see families crushed under the rubble. He sees a waterfront. He said so. Publicly. Without shame. “Gaza could become the Riviera of the Middle East”—a statement made while the bodies had not yet been cleared away.

This isn’t insensitivity. It’s worse. It’s the logic of a real estate developer applied to genocide. Demolish the neighborhood, evict the residents, build high-rises. The fact that the “residents” are 2.3 million human beings doesn’t change the equation—it makes it worse, because it means the land will be cheaper.

There is something deeply obscene about the idea of building tourist complexes on the bones of children. And yet, that is exactly the project that has been announced.

Normalization as a bargaining chip

Trump’s “deal of the century” is based on a cynical calculation: give the Saudis what they want—nuclear technology, security guarantees, access to the U.S. market—in exchange for recognition of Israel. And the price of this transaction? The Palestinians. In their entirety. Their land, their water, their dignity, their very existence.

Mohammed bin Salman has accepted this deal. Not because he loves Israel. Not because he believes in peace. But because oil has an expiration date, and he needs to diversify his economy before the world stops burning fossil fuels. The Palestinians are the adjustment variable in this oil equation.

A Prime Minister Under Investigation

Benjamin Netanyahu faces charges of corruption, fraud, and breach of trust. Three charges that, in a normal country, would have led to his resignation. But Israel is not a normal country—it is a country where a man facing criminal charges can order the bombing of an entire people to stay in power.

The war in Gaza is not an act of self-defense. It is an act of political survival. As long as the bombs are falling, Netanyahu remains indispensable. As long as the nation is in a “state of emergency,” the trials can wait. As long as fear reigns, no one asks questions.

A man willing to sacrifice tens of thousands of lives to avoid a trial is not a war leader. He is a criminal who uses an army as a legal shield.

Annexation in Disguise

While the world’s eyes are fixed on Gaza, the West Bank is disappearing. Settlements are expanding. Roads are being cut off. Villages are being surrounded. De facto annexation has become outright annexation—and Trump has given his blessing by moving the embassy, recognizing the Golan Heights, and legitimizing every stolen square meter.

The settlers are no longer content just to build. They burn. They shoot. They drive shepherds from their ancestral lands under the protection of the Israeli army. Apartheid-era South Africa, at least, had the decency to lie about its intentions. Netanyahu, on the other hand, is annexing live on X.

Europe is looking at its shoes

Where is the European Union? Where are the sanctions? Where are the recalls of ambassadors? Where is even the slightest consequence for a state that violates the Geneva Conventions, international humanitarian law, and UN resolutions on a daily basis?

Nowhere. Europe has chosen its favorite historical stance: deep concern. It “deplores.” It “calls for restraint.” It “urges the parties.” And while it urges, children are dying. The diplomacy of press releases has become the most elegant form of complicity.

When an entire continent watches a genocide unfold in real time and chooses to issue a statement instead of taking action, that continent has forfeited the right to commemorate its own tragedies.

America as an Accomplice

The United States is not an accomplice. It is a co-perpetrator. Every bomb dropped on Gaza bears an American serial number. Every veto in the Security Council is a renewed license to kill. Every arms shipment is a signature at the bottom of an indictment that history will draft.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Special Envoy Steve Witkoff are not negotiating peace. They are negotiating the terms of Palestinian surrender. Every proposed “agreement” demands that the Palestinians renounce their land, their identity, and their memory—in exchange for nothing. Not even the dignity of a refusal that is heard.

The Mirror of Apartheid

It is no coincidence that South Africa is the one to have taken Israel to the International Court of Justice. This is not a symbolic gesture. It is an act of living memory. When South Africans see the checkpoints, the walls, the segregated roads, the travel permits, the home demolitions—they do not see a “complex conflict.” They see their own past.

Desmond Tutu said it before he died: “What I see in Palestine reminds me of what I saw in South Africa.” It was not a rhetorical comparison. It was a clinical diagnosis made by a man who had experienced apartheid firsthand.

South Africa doesn’t need anyone to explain what an apartheid regime is. It survived one. And when it says it recognizes the symptoms, the world would do well to listen.

The ICJ as the Last Line of Defense

The proceedings before the International Court of Justice are historic. Not just for the Palestinians—but for the very concept of international justice. If the ICJ finds that genocide has occurred and nothing happens, then international law will be nothing more than a decorative document. A framed parchment in the hallways of The Hague, which the powerful stride past with a smile.

And what if the ICJ does not find genocide? Then someone will have to explain how 50,000 deaths, an orchestrated famine, the systematic destruction of civilian infrastructure, and a total blockade do not constitute genocide. Someone will have to explain which definition of the word “genocide” excludes everything that is happening in Gaza.

The Architecture of Impunity

International law did not die a natural death. It was murdered—methodically, deliberately, by the very people who had built it. The United States sanctioned the International Criminal Court when it dared to investigate American and Israeli crimes. They threatened the judges. They froze assets. They turned a judicial institution into an enemy of the state.

And yet, the same United States invokes international law when it comes to Russia in Ukraine. The same legal framework is brandished as a sacred weapon or trampled upon as an obstacle—depending on whether the accused is an ally or an adversary.

A law that applies only to the weak is not law. It is domination in a judge’s robe.

The Gaza Precedent

If Gaza is allowed to happen, anything goes. If a state can destroy an entire population in full view of the world’s cameras, with the active complicity of the world’s leading power, without the slightest consequence—then the message is crystal clear. International law protects the powerful from the weak, never the other way around.

Every dictator in the world is taking notes. Every authoritarian regime is watching. Every vulnerable minority understands that the fine-sounding rhetoric about “human rights” is exactly that—rhetoric. Nothing more. And the next time a people is massacred, we won’t even be able to feign surprise.

Witkoff and Rubio: Negotiators or Liquidators?

Steve Witkoff is not a diplomat. He is a New York real estate developer, a personal friend of Trump’s, tasked with “negotiating” the future of millions of Palestinians. Putting a real estate developer in charge of negotiations on Gaza is like asking an arsonist to assess the damage.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has aligned U.S. diplomacy with the most extremist positions of the Israeli government—not those of the Israeli right, but those of the messianic far right that dreams of rebuilding the Temple on the ruins of Al-Aqsa. U.S. diplomacy no longer acts as a mediator; it facilitates annexation.

When the mediator shares the aggressor’s objectives, it is no longer mediation. It is a courtroom where the judge and the prosecutor are working for the same side.

Capitulation Disguised as an “Agreement”

Every American “peace proposal” follows the same pattern: the Palestinians are asked to give up everything in exchange for vague promises. Give up East Jerusalem. Give up the right of return. Give up territorial contiguity. Give up sovereignty over your resources. In exchange, you may, one day, get something resembling municipal autonomy under Israeli control.

This is not a peace agreement. It is an act of surrender drafted by the victor and presented as a “historic opportunity.” And when the Palestinians refuse—because refusing to be wiped out is a survival instinct, not obstinacy—they are accused of “rejecting peace.”

Palestinians Are Not Just Statistics

Behind the numbers—50,000 dead, 100,000 wounded, 2 million displaced—there are first names. Stories. Children who had drawings on the walls of their bedrooms. Doctors who performed surgeries without anesthesia. Teachers who taught classes in shelters. Mothers who counted the bombs to know if their children were still alive.

Every number is a face. And every face erased is a victory for those who want to reduce a people to a demographic statistic to be managed—or eliminated.

A child dying of hunger in Gaza carries the same weight as a child dying of hunger anywhere else. If this statement seems obvious to you, ask yourself why the world’s response suggests otherwise.

Dissenting Israeli Voices

It must also be said: not all Israelis support this policy. Organizations like B’Tselem document the crimes. Reservists refuse to serve in the occupied territories. Israeli intellectuals compare their own government to the regimes they fled. These voices exist—and they are systematically marginalized, accused of treason, and harassed.

The most devastating criticism of Israel does not come from the outside. It comes from within—from citizens who understand that the occupation also destroys the occupier. That the violence inflicted corrupts the one who inflicts it. That the colonial project will ultimately devour Israeli democracy itself—if it hasn’t already.

When the Victim Is Accused of Violence

The rhetoric of inversion is the most effective weapon in this war. The occupier presents itself as the occupied. The aggressor presents itself as the victim. The one with one of the most powerful armies in the world claims to be “defending” itself against a people with no army, no navy, and no air force.

And the world buys into this reversal. Because it is repeated endlessly, amplified by communication machines funded by billions of dollars, and relayed by media outlets that confuse “balance” with passive complicity.

Presenting a balance between the occupier and the occupied is not objectivity. It is a moral distortion disguised as neutrality.

The Exploitation of Anti-Semitism

To criticize the Netanyahu government is to be labeled an anti-Semite. To criticize the bombing of hospitals is to be labeled an anti-Semite. To criticize the longest military occupation in modern history is to be labeled an anti-Semite. This exploitation is an insult—not to Israel’s critics, but to the true victims of anti-Semitism.

Anti-Semitism is a real, historical, deadly scourge. Using it as a rhetorical shield to protect a far-right government that commits war crimes trivializes this scourge. It strips the word of its meaning. It insults the memory of those who perished precisely because the world looked the other way.

Genocide Live

For the first time in human history, a genocide is being documented in real time. Every bomb filmed on a cell phone. Every child pulled from the rubble shared on social media. Every mass grave photographed by satellite. There will be no “we didn’t know.” We knew. We watched. We scrolled.

And that may be the most terrifying thing about our era: knowledge without consequence. Knowing no longer leads to action. Information travels at the speed of light, while moral consciousness moves at a snail’s pace. We invented technology to see everything—and we use it to forget everything even faster.

The 21st century will not be judged by what it did not know. It will be judged by what it knew and by what it chose not to do.

The Names That Will Endure

Trump. Netanyahu. Rubio. Witkoff. These names will remain in the history books. Not as peacemakers—but as architects of destruction. And alongside their names will be those of European leaders who “deplored” the situation without taking action. Diplomats who “urged” without imposing sanctions. Citizens who changed the channel.

And in another column—the longest, the most painful—there will be the names of the 50,000 dead. Children who will never grow up. Doctors who died while treating patients. Teachers who died while teaching. Ordinary people who died because they were born in the wrong place, according to the wrong people.

What if it were us?

Imagine this. Your city bombed for months on end. Your hospital destroyed. Your children starving. Your home razed to the ground. And the whole world watching, “condemning” the violence, issuing statements—but doing nothing.

Imagine that the world’s leading power is supplying the bombs falling on your roof. Imagine that the president of that power looks at the ruins of your neighborhood and sees a real estate development opportunity. Imagine that your very existence is considered an obstacle to development.

If this scenario revolts you when you imagine it happening to yourself, then it should revolt you when it happens to others. Otherwise, what you’re feeling isn’t empathy—it’s complacency.

The Test of Humanity

Gaza is a test. Not a test for the Palestinians—they have already proven their resilience beyond anything that can be demanded of a people. It is a test for us. For our collective ability to distinguish right from wrong when wrong wears a suit and tie. For our courage to call things by their name when doing so comes at a cost.

We are failing this test. Every day that passes without action is a day of failure. And history does not forgive bystanders.

Calling Things by Their Names

We must call genocide genocide. We must call occupation occupation. We must call ethnic cleansing ethnic cleansing. And we must call accomplices accomplices—even when they sit in the White House or in European capitals.

Words are not bombs. But the right words have the power to shatter lies. And in a world where propaganda is industrialized, where disinformation is algorithmic, where moral inversion is a state strategy—the truth is an act of resistance.

You can destroy a city. You can starve a people. You can erase a map. But you cannot erase the truth—it always ends up breaking through the rubble, like those flowers that grow in the cracks of concrete.

What Remains When Everything Has Been Destroyed

Gaza will not disappear. The Palestinians will not disappear. Not because a treaty protects them—treaties have failed. Not because international law defends them—it lies in ruins. But because a people that has been resisting for 76 years cannot be erased by decree. Because memory is stronger than bulldozers. Because the children who survive will never forget.

Trump and Netanyahu think they’re playing God. But self-proclaimed gods always end the same way: caught up by the reality they tried to deny. South African apartheid seemed eternal—it lasted 46 years. The Berlin Wall seemed indestructible—it fell overnight. History never ends the way the powerful had planned.

And yet, every day of waiting is one day too many. Every hour of silence is an hour of complicity. The world knows. The world sees. The world chooses.

The question remains whether this choice will define us forever—or whether something, somewhere, can still be saved. Not by governments. Not by institutions. But by the only force that has ever changed the course of history: ordinary human beings who decide that enough is enough.

Signed, Jacques PJ Provost