Category Archives: War

UPDATED (1/11): VIDEO & ESSAY: Genocide Was Trump’s Gateway Crime. Why The Surprise Over His Vanquishing Of Venezuela?

America, Argument, Colonialism, Democrats, Donald Trump, Law, Logic, Middle East, Military, Morality, Natural Law, Neoconservatism, Palestinians, Populism, Propaganda, Pseudo-history, Psychology & Pop-Psychology, Republicans, War

“Trump is a second-rate gangster and he hates it. He wants to be Bibi.” ~ilana

“Surely, you don’t need mommy to tell you that murder is more than a secondary personality trait? It defines who a person is. It tends to crowd out all other positive attributes. If that’s not obvious, think of Oscar Wilde’s simple guidelines for cretins: ‘Murder is always a mistake. One should never do anything that one cannot talk about after dinner.'” ~ilana

NEW essay is “Genocide Was Trump’s Gateway Crime. Why The Surprise Over His Vanquishing Of Venezuela?“. It is now featured on the Unz Review, home of true dissidents from day one, and on LewRockwell.com, anti-war, anti-state, pro-markets .

Now on ILANAMERCER.COM

https://www.ilanamercer.com/2026/01/genocide-was-trumps-gateway-crime-why-the-surprise-over-his-vanquishing-of-venezuela/

Some choice excerpts (not contiguous): 

“The fuss and feathers over Trump’s foreign policy is silly, childish. It attests to what happens to the minds of men when they view the very public mass murder of The Other—committed by their Leaderas unrelated to their own moral integrity and future welfare: the brain goes to mush. Or perhaps it was the size of a lentil to begin with.

In the mind of the minimally moral, minimally compos mentis American—”America First” and genocide ought to be two mutually exclusive categories. 

Here’s a useful clue: If your politician of choice, going into an election, supports genocide or is silent about genocide; he’s not your friend. You ought to be smart enough, in possession of the very basic moral faculties—having reached a rudimentary development of conscience—to make that minuscule determination.

Has mommy not taught you that murder is wrong and that no mass murderer and congenital thief is your friend? Alas, the decay of the American Mind is such that Trump’s fans are apoplectic—and one or two has texted me in tears: “America First, Ilana; what-oh-what has happened to it?” …

….   That his phlegmatic followers now whinge and whine over Trump’s lackluster America-First focus is really quite puzzling, if not contemptible. It’s like complaining—not that serial killer Ted Bundy killed a lot; but that he was unpatriotic for driving around in a Volkswagen Beetle.

“Ever heard of a Chevy Tahoe, Ted? Boohoo, Bundy, why did you go to work in a Volkswagen, you traitor? Buy America, not German.

Bundy and Trump, Joe Biden and Bibi Netanyahu, and their minions, are murderers all. Murder is what defines them; it’s their defining feature. Except that the last three delegated mass murder to the mercenaries of a military. Bundy did the deeds himself.

Surely, you don’t need mommy to tell you that murder is more than a secondary personality trait? It defines who a person is. It tends to crowd out all other positive attributes. If that’s not obvious, think of Oscar Wilde’s simple guidelines for cretins: “Murder is always a mistake. One should never do anything that one cannot talk about after dinner.” …

…  “Genocide for Israel” is Trump’s de facto Middle East foreign policy.

Impoverished heroic Houthis of Yemen Trump has murdered beginning in 2018: The House of Trump in partnership with the House of Saud. Iranians Trump has helped murder. Somalis and Nigerians Trump has been murdering. Sailors in vessels, on the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific, no due process required: them, too, Trump has murdered. All this with nary a meaningful check on executive power from the dullards serving in the world’s “greatest” deliberative bodies, the US Congress and Senate.

And now Venezuelans, ordinary men and women, scan the skies nervously for the telltale metallic shimmer, wondering whether they are being simply surveilled from above, or targeted by Hellfire missiles. …

… Genocide, the crime of all crimes, was Trump’s gateway crime. Once you’ve crossed over to genocide, the world (and its people) is your oyster. …

… And his fans expected Trump to compartmentalize the killer-within and keep to his America-First promise? Are they dense? …

As to Venezuela: Trump knows nothing about the anti-imperial spirit of the Bolívar Revolution still animating Latin America. …  …  Trump’s handlers, only marginally smarter than he, tell him to say stuff that makes him seem in-the-know. So, Trump stammers about The Monroe Doctrine and the imperative to make errant Latin America submit to America (much like Arabia bows to Bibi).

Trump’s Other Handlers have yet to hand Trump his marching orders. But they’re happy. On Israel’s ILTV …”

…READ IT ALL NOW. “Genocide Was Trump’s Gateway Crime. Why The Surprise Over His Vanquishing Of Venezuela?“. It is now featured on the Unz Review, and on LewRockwell.com, anti-war, anti-state, pro-markets .

Now on ILANAMERCER.COM

I will update this post with a note on how you can–and really should—help a besieged dissident scribe (who is getting older and more tired).

*Screen picture on essay courtesy of antiwar.com

UPDATED (1/11): “Venezuela: Trump Is A Second-Rate Gangster, And He Hates It. He Wants To Be Bibi Netanyahu”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZ5NTiDCCEk

UPDATE 1/7: 

Do the right thing in support of much-besieged work which adheres to Christian duties flouted by your leaders.  And, do so publicly. Anon is fine. Here is an example of the kind of weasel letters I get (after each piece)—have got for decades—which, as nice as it is, does no good. Preaching to the choir is worse than useless:

——– Original Message ——–
Subject: Why the National Interest Standard is Fake & Gayhttps://www.ilanamercer.com/2025/12/why-the-national-interest-standard-feels-fake-gay-solidarity-with-palestine-is-libertarian/
Date: 2025-12-17 08:21
From: kathleen lips
To: ilana@ilanamercer.com

Ilana — This column is brilliant. Thank you for your courage and for saying so many things that many of us think but are afraid to utter in public.

You are a hero to millions of us.

— David

Here is how men and women WITH a backbone can stand up:

Comment (anon if you like) on the blog (not to me). Each blog post corresponds to an essay. For example:

https://barelyablog.com/why-the-national-interest-standard-is-fake-gay-solidarity-with-palestine-is-libertarian/#comments

At Ron Unz anon is fine:

https://www.unz.com/imercer/genocide-was-trumps-gateway-crime-why-the-surprise-over-his-vanquishing-of-venezuela/#respond

Do a book Review of last book (another is due please God in April):

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0974103926

ESSAY: Why The ‘National-Interest’ Standard Is ‘Fake & Gay’ & Solidarity With Palestine Is Libertarian

Argument, Crime, Criminal Injustice, Donald Trump, Foreign Policy, GAZA, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, libertarianism, Logic, Middle East, Natural Law, Neoconservatism, Palestinians, Political Philosophy, Reason, The West, War

NEW ESSAY IS “Why The ‘National-Interest’ Standard Feels ‘Fake & Gay’ & Solidarity With Palestine Is Libertarian.” It appeared on The Unz Review, where it was one of two featured articles to lead the page, and on LewRockwell.com, anti-state, anti-war, pro-market.

Now on ILANAMERCER.COM.

Excerpt: 

Stateside, people speak of genocide as though it were an item of foreign-policy, albeit—small mercies—an unwelcome foreign policy event.

Absurd, of course!

Whether such crass utilitarians like it or not, the Anglo-Israeli-American genocide in Palestine is a moral matter, not to be subsumed within the confines of foreign policy, but transcending it.

“Genocide for Israel” is Trump’s de facto Middle East foreign policy. Enmeshed, the American and Israeli cabal, two self-appointed world powers, are presently and shamelessly still engaged in genocide. Israel acts to “disappear” the Palestinians as individuals, as a people and as a polity. Trump, who respects Israel’s wishes to the letter, appoints people who do the same. He pursues and imposes policies that dovetail with what Israel demands.

Israeli-American devilry has entailed the decimation of Palestinian habitat, the salting of their earth for decades to come; the despoiling and theft of their rightfully owned resources, the elimination of their historical artifacts and records; of thousands of their bloodlines. Gone are Gaza’s institutions of law, of learning of healing; their churches, their mosques, their leadership.

All ongoing. We are 790 days into Israel’s relentless bloodletting.

Trump, corporate media and the political ring leaders sashaying up and down both aisles may call the “new” dispensation under which Palestinians live a “ceasefire.” In point of fact, the so-called ceasefire is just Trump’s “engineered new normal: a slow-paced genocide.” For Israel.

The future of Gaza, Trump has made clear, would “be pretty much up to Israel.” When Israel declared its intention to take over Gaza, Donlad Trump had shrugged and egged them on. “Ramp it up,” he whooped. Having long since slipped between the sheets with soulmate Bibi Netanyahu, Trump gave the Israeli prime minister the go-ahead to “fight and finish the job.”

Under Gaza’s weeping winter skies, massacres continue. Drones, killer quadcopters and other Israeli shelling implements come scudding at Gaza from the north all the time. The “destruction of remaining homes, property and land, and the prevention of the entry of food, humanitarian aid and basic infrastructure materials” had never ceased, only let-up slightly. Genocide hums along now at the rate of more than eight human beings murdered a day, and at more than 20 injured, also each day, attest the Euro-Med’s human-rights monitors, on the ground.

By no unfortunate coincidence, Trump had normalized this mindset during his first administration. I was hardly being a crusty cynic when, in a January 3, 2018 column, “How President Trump Normalized Neoconservatism,” I foresaw the vanquishing of Venezuela:

Neoconservatives are pleased with President Trump’s foreign policy.

A couple of months back, Bloomberg’s Eli Lake let it be known that he was in neoconservative nirvana: ‘… for Venezuela, [Donald Trump] came very close to calling for regime change. ‘The United States has taken important steps to hold the regime accountable,’ Trump said. ‘We are prepared to take further action if the government of Venezuela persists on its path to impose authoritarian rule on the Venezuelan people.’

‘For a moment,” swooned Lake, ‘I closed my eyes and thought I was listening to a Weekly Standard editorial meeting.’ (“How President Trump Normalized Neoconservatism,” Ilana Mercer, January 3, 2018)

“Onward to Venezuela!” I wearily wrote. It was not a mysterious sense of foreboding. I was just following facts.

Then, I watched the lies with fascination. Now, I know all the tricks. Of course I did not vote for the man in 2024. And, of course Trump was bound to normalize genocide for Israel, albeit at a slower pace. 

Another of Trump’s hombres is Florida Representative Randy Fine. No sooner did the “Hebrew Hammer,” as he fondly calls himself, advise the Palestinian collective to “starve away”—than Trump rushed to pose by Fine’s side. The pair of them, two mountains of flesh as soft as sin, giving themselves over with passionate intensity to criminal complicity. That was in July of 2025. Come October of 2025, Trump endorsed Fine’s  candidacy.

Having gotten their hostages back, the inviolable Israelis, for their part, have settled into a different rhythm of genocide. The only thing that has come to an end in Israel are mass hostage protests. Since the Israeli-dictated “ceasefire” took effect on 10 October, upwards of 352 Palestinians have been murdered by Israel and over  900 injured. “Gaza is a living necropolis,” reports the Glia organization, also on the ground in Gaza.

Having kept up its standards, the majority of the casualties inflicted by the “most moral army in the world” are women, children and the elderly. You might look at these two diminutive brothers, small for their ages (for obvious reasons), and think kids. IDF terrorists, with far greater acuity than you, were able to discern “two suspects who crossed the yellow line,” and were conducting “suspicious activities on the ground.” …

… The REST. “Why The ‘National-Interest’ Standard Feels ‘Fake & Gay’ & Solidarity With Palestine Is Libertarian” is on The Unz Review and on LewRockwell.com

Now on ILANAMERCER.COM.

HASBARA UPDATES (11/26): ON TOM WOODS TV: GAZA IN RETROSPECT: BLOCK V. MERCER

Argument, Crime, Foreign Policy, GAZA, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, libertarianism, War

ILANA MERCER: Israel, state and civil society, is a degenerate, genocidal entity engaged in an extermination campaign against Palestinian Resistance. Solidarity with this resistance-based society is the ONLY libertarian position.

I was hoping to refute many more Hasbara points. But Walter’s format of presenting a long lecture packed with many Hasbara points did not allow me to puncture his disquisition with counterpoints, so as to address each of his points.

Please post your comments to these two spaces:

  1. The Comments section of this Tom Woods TV debate:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0g2XEGSyDk
  2.  The Unz Review, without which there is no truly diverse, dissident writing, left and right. The comments space to post your thoughts is “On Tom Woods TV: Gaza in Retrospect, Block V. Mercer.”    https://www.unz.com/imercer/on-tom-woods-tv-gaza-in-retrospect-block-v-mercer/
  3. The blog Comment space is open to you, too.
    https://barelyablog.com/on-tom-woods-tv-gaza-in-retrospect-block-v-mercer/#comments

Many thanks,

ilana

UPDATES (11/21) from X:

https://x.com/UncleFlapjacks/status/1991917293572612546

https://x.com/DerekWheeler42/status/1991917079306322137

UPDATE (11/22): Thanks, Pilot Dave on LinkedIn, for taking the time to support.

UPDATES (11/26):   One of the fallacies I was hoping to get to dispute during the Tom Woods TV debate was this myth-history:

“…the departure and expulsion of roughly 900,000 Jews from Arab countries following the founding of the state of Israel.” (Ha’aretz, Nov. 26)

The Zionist Occupied Government (ZOG)has submitted the resolution for a “U.S. Bill [that] Proposes ‘Jewish Refugee Day’ Commemorating Expulsion of Jews From Arab Nations.”

“If approved, Nov. 30 would commemorate the departure and expulsion of roughly 900,000 Jews from Arab countries following the founding of the state of Israel. The holiday was first adopted by Israel in 2014.” (“U.S. Bill Proposes ‘Jewish Refugee Day’ Commemorating Expulsion of Jews From Arab Nations“)

News (10/4) & New Gaza Genocide Essay: The Coverup Begins. Johnny-Come-Lately Journos & Politicos Start Covering Keister

Foreign Policy, GAZA, Iraq, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Journalism, Logic, Media, Middle East, Propaganda, Reason, Terrorism, War

There was no need for the AWOL, Missing-In-Action Piers Morgan Media, which was never in Gaza, never stood up for Gaza, and never broke down barriers to reach and report about Palestinians sequestered in genocide. Thanks not to the MIA Media, but to Palestinian journalists, the living and the martyred, The Truth about genocide in Gaza continues to be conveyed faithfully and meticulously. ~ilana

New Essay is “Gaza Genocide: The Coverup Begins. Johnny-Come-Lately Journos & Politicos Start Covering Keister.” It is featured on The Unz Review, and LewRockwell.com,  anti-state, anti-war, pro-market.

And now on IlanaMercer.com

With the Genocide of Gaza accomplished; a convoluted coverup has begun. The Johnny-Come-Lately culprits, the professional liars in media, politics, in advocacy and in the tech industryalso the custodians of The Narrativehave commenced their dull recital of excuse-making.

A dull mediocrity which was fully behind Israel—or, alternatively, had confined itself to occasional quips about mass murder in Gaza being antithetical to the American “national interest”—is suddenly simulating belated passion for the truth. Or, versions thereof. All to sanitize their sins.

Having carved out “a place of massive impunity” for Netanyahu and his complicit countrymen, these sinecured, “credentialed” Western elites have duly begun to hijack storylines—even chronology—to absolve themselves of the genocide of Gaza. The same “perpetrator block,” wading in the blood of Palestinians, intends, for now, to remain mum about the territorial asphyxiation of Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. There, strategic adaptations of the Twenty-First Century Gaza Holocaust are rapidly and energetically underway. Pursuant to popular demand in Israel proper, Jewish-Israeli thieves and murderers are purloining Palestinian land and lives in the West Bank.

I had imagined that the media organ’s formulaic production had reached a nadir in Iraq, when my own passion burned as hot as a Babylonian kiln against that war. The “Truth” about Iraq, I had then observed incredulously, arrived officially only once the Empire’s agents declared it so, and released it in massaged, flattering form. And only as exigencies of power allowed. The sizeable dissident community did not rate a mention.

The current crop of Israel apostles who’ve connived and colluded to suppress truth include, broadly speaking, the Western news, commentary, advocacy and policy-making classes; the overarching tentacular corporate media and its clientele—the military-media-congressional-industrial complex, if you will. In a word, the international Imperial Comitatus: the foot soldiers who share in the loot or aspire to do so (like “Washington’s Arab puppets, whose sound and fury signify nothing”).

The international Imperial Comitatus make themselves known by affinity and affiliation, but mainly by what they do: They “ravage, slaughter, usurp … and where they make a desert, they call it peace.” Originally by Tacitus, the words were popularized by economist Jeffrey Sachs in an epic essay about these influencers, Israel’s co-belligerents.

Israel’s helpers had covered up the Crime of The Century, and now it could out. And although they’ve made excellent time—Palestinian erasure is near complete—these special interests wish, nevertheless, to salvage their standing in the world. They’re doing PR (public relations).

“Gaza panics the pro-Israel media,” said Owen Jones, a dogged British media critic. The genocide-era journalists are “creating a record that’ll allow them to say one day, ‘Here is proof that we denounced and tried to stop the genocide,’” remarked Laith Marouf, a Lebanese geopolitical reporter and commentator. They waited until now, because the genocide comported, broadly, with their worldview. “Media has manufactured consent for the genocide with atrocity propaganda,” seconds Hamza Yusuf, a British-Palestinian writer and journalist. “They did this.” “Western media is Israel’s Iron Dome,” averred Bassem Youssef, commentator, comic and former surgeon.

Although Israel’s abominations have been watched by humanity for the best part of two years; and despite Israel’s industrious, industrial-scale mass murder playing interminably, on a loop—the truth watered-down will only be permitted to come into being, officially, on the say-so of gatekeeping interests and personalities.

Such as Piers Morgan and the Missing-In-Action Morgan Media (shall we call it?).

And so, with pomp and Piers, forever slow on the uptake, those in control of The Storyline prepare to “excavate” a modified version of “the truth” about the Gaza Holocaust.

In attempting to clear his name, Morgan, a spirited evangelist for Israel’s right to practice state terrorism—he calls it “self-defense”—sounded the worst false note: the Iraq Defense: “nobody knew,” nobody could have known. (See “Iraq Liars And Deniers: We Knew Then What We Know Now,” May 22, 2015.)

The reason “nobody knew, or could have known” about a televised genocide, proclaimed the lemon-faced Piers with trademark verbose vacuity, is that there have been no “credible, international journalists” in Gaza!

Did you hear that? Palestinian journalists don’t count! In an instant, the MIA Morgan Media set about canceling the work done by the greatest journalists to have lived and died on the job. As you can see, society’s gate-keepers are also wretched human beings. To further their scheme and vanity, these power-brokers imply that absent their AWOL, MIA Media, we cannot and could not have known what was underway in Gaza.

The Missing-In-Action Media was never in Gaza, never stood up for Gaza, and never broke down barriers to reach and report about Palestinians sequestered in genocide. Now, the same Media asserts that we cannot know—could not have known—what was underway in the tiny Gaza Strip without them. Only Morgan and his ilk could have given us the goods on Gaza. …

…THE REST. New Essay is “Gaza Genocide: The Coverup Begins. Johnny-Come-Lately Journos & Politicos Start Covering Keister.” It is featured on The Unz Review and LewRockwell.com,  anti-state, anti-war, pro-market.

And now on IlanaMercer.com

Please share this work, follow and subscribe to it.

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Dare I say that there is a duty to support anti-genocide activists and intellectuals? There is! To the extent they say important things (and are not powerful celebs); those who do this work are often fired from positions held, shadow-banned and throttled on social media. Tech algorithms also ensure that we are hard to find on Google searches. As one wag (Bassem Youssef) put it, we have free speech, but no reach.

Above all, the duty stems from the fact that this is an American and western genocide.

Like it or not, Gaza is America’s genocide.

PLEASE DO YOUR PART.

October 4: A beautiful—beatific—-soul, Greta Thunberg, who has the courage few men and women possess. Detained and abused in detention by agents of The Demon State.

A good update is at Drop Site Daily.