America is barreling towards authoritarianism at such a breakneck pace that it should alarm every single one of us. But instead of meeting this moment with courage and integrity, the corporate media has utterly capitulated, stuffing money in Trump's pockets, spiking stories that might offend the regime, and firing journalists who refuse to go along and get along. That is not journalism. That’s complicity.
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The bottom line is that Palestinians have never been permitted the human right to make their own decisions; the results have been devastating both for them and for the region.
When President Donald Trump convened his so-called Board of Peace in Davos, Switzerland, a key item on the agenda was to endorse his son-in-law Jared Kushner’s extravagant (and, I might add, detached from reality) plan for a “New Gaza.” The rendering of Kushner’s scheme shows it to be more of a luxury resort for wealthy tourists than the foundation of a just future for the Palestinian victims of Israel’s genocide. But since the raison d’être of the Board of Peace was supposed to be dealing with the aftermath of Israel’s war on Gaza, the conversation, by necessity, had to address the needs of hundreds of thousands of now-homeless Palestinians.
Thus, Kushner presented a proposal for a model Palestinian community—the “New Rafah”—he intends to build to house Palestinians in Gaza. The plans for this New Rafah have been circulated since the meeting. Everything is covered: how Gaza’s economy will run; how its educational and health systems will create a new generation of hale and non-ideological Palestinians; and how the “new cities” will be laid out, function, and be governed. And everything has been calculated down to how many teachers, doctors, judges, religious leaders, and laborers will be needed per capita in each community.
If Kushner were preparing an owner’s manual for a complex piece of machinery or the instructions for installing and operating new software, this plan might seem flawless. But Palestine isn’t a video game, and Palestinians are human beings, not Lego pieces to be assembled, as per the instructions. Like every other people on Earth, Palestinians have emotional ties to their homes and families, and memories of the personal and collective injustices they have endured. This failure to consider the fullness of Palestinian humanity is the fatal flaw that will either stop the New Rafah before it begins or cause it to unravel soon afterward.
The refusal of those who have held power over Palestine to acknowledge the grievances and aspirations of its Indigenous Arab people isn’t new. In fact, it has defined their history.
Instead of acting to support Palestinians as their rights were systematically trampled, the US and other Western states have historically blamed Palestinians, while exonerating themselves and Israel.
For example, in 1919, when the British Lord Balfour was presented with the findings of the US-commissioned survey of Arab attitudes, which demonstrated their overwhelming rejection of his intent to grant the Zionist movement a homeland in Palestine, he famously responded, “In Palestine, we do not propose even to go through the form of consulting its inhabitants as to their wishes... Zionism… [is] of far profounder import than the desire and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who inhabit that ancient land.”
And Palestinians were not consulted when the United Nations drew up grossly unfair maps to partition Palestine into Jewish and Arab states. Those maps gave the Jewish community over one-half of the land (despite its being less than a third of the population). The maps were rejected by Palestinians because more than half a million of them were disenfranchised without any say in the matter. Nor did Palestinians receive support when 650,000 of their brethren were expelled from the newly created Israel in 1948, or when, after the Oslo Accords, neither the UN nor the US would hold Israel accountable for sabotaging the peace plan through settlement expansion, land seizures, the erection of a wall, and the deliberate obstruction of the development of a Palestinian economy.
Instead of acting to support Palestinians as their rights were systematically trampled, the US and other Western states have historically blamed Palestinians, while exonerating themselves and Israel. The result of this century of systematic abuse and denial of rights has been to create a Palestinian community that is justifiably embittered and losing hope. And when they express these feelings, their grievances are dismissed and they are told to just “deal with it”—something that would never be said to, for example, Israelis or the Jewish people. This is because US policymakers understand the full humanity of the Jewish community. They understand their history of the losses they have experienced and their need to be respected and heard.
What we are seeing in the wake of the genocide in Gaza and in the midst of the state-sanctioned ethnic cleansing and erasure of Palestinian communities in the West Bank is just the same story playing out one more time. Every effort is made to make Israelis feel secure, while Palestinians are expected to lose their homes, families, and memories, and be resigned to being moved about like pawns on a chessboard and be grateful to have the opportunity to live in a model city once they have been properly vetted, biometrically identified, and de-radicalized. The bottom line is that Palestinians have never been permitted the human right to make their own decisions. The results have been devastating both for them and for the region. The reason behind the wars that have been fought and the aberrant behavior of some elements of Palestinian society can be found in one simple fact: the refusal to allow Palestinians the freedom to determine their future in a manner that recognizes the fullness of their humanity.
We’ve polled throughout Palestine a number of times in the past few years, and what we’ve found is that Palestinians don’t want to live under the control of Israel or any other external powers. They want the Israeli occupation to end, national unity of all factions in all parts of their country, and to hold a national referendum to elect new leaders and develop a plan for governance that can move them toward freedom and independence. They deserve nothing less.
The office of Vice President JD Vance made multiple posts commemorating the Armenian genocide on Tuesday, but was forced to take them down because the Trump administration doesn't formally recognize that the genocide happened.
Vance's X account posted a photo of the vice president and his wife, Usha, attending a wreath-laying ceremony at a memorial in the Armenian city of Yerevan. The post said the Vances were there "to honor the victims of the 1915 Armenian genocide."
But the post was swiftly taken down, with a Vance spokesperson blaming it on a staff member.
"This is an account managed by staff that primarily exists to share photos and videos of the vice president's activities," they said. "For the vice president's views on the substance of the question, I refer you to the comments he made earlier on the tarmac in response to the pool's question."
This was referring to Vance's comments to reporters about visiting the memorial, which were posted by an official White House account. "I'm the first vice president to ever visit Armenia. They asked us to visit the site... I wanted to go and pay my respects."
Alex Galitsky, the policy director for the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) reacted: "This is brazen genocide denial. An insult to the memory of the 1.5 million victims of the Armenian Genocide—and an affront to a community that fought tirelessly for decades to ensure recognition of that crime."
Historians widely agree that the Ottoman Empire's systemic killing and deportation of mostly Christian Armenians during the First World War constitutes one of the 20th century's worst genocides. According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum:
There were approximately 1.5 million Armenians living in the multiethnic Ottoman Empire in 1915. At least 664,000 and possibly as many as 1.2 million died during the genocide, either in massacres and individual killings, or from systematic ill treatment, exposure, and starvation.
But the government of Turkey continues to adamantly deny the genocide committed by its predecessor state to this day. And due to Turkey's status as a NATO ally, US presidents dating back more than half a century have likewise refused to describe the historic crime as a "genocide."
This began to change in 2019, when Congress passed a historic resolution finally recognizing the genocide more than a century after it began. In 2021, then-President Joe Biden became the first US president to formally acknowledge the genocide without ambiguity.
But in April 2025, after President Donald Trump returned to office, he rolled this acknowledgment back, referring to the mass killing as a "great catastrophe" and "one of the worst disasters of the 20th century" while evading the term "genocide."
Julien Zarifian, a professor of US history at the University of Poitiers in France, wrote that "Trump's reversal seemed to make genocide recognition taboo not only in the White House, but in the whole executive branch."
The return to a denialist stance put the US back into line not only with Turkey, but with Azerbaijan, with which Armenia has been locked in conflict over the disputed Nagorno‑Karabakh region for decades.
In 2023, more than 100,000 Armenians—virtually the whole population—were forced to flee the territory in what has been described as an ethnic cleansing by Azerbaijan, which occupied large parts of the area.
While the US has remained formally neutral in the conflict, it has provided hundreds of millions of dollars of security assistance to Azerbaijan under presidents of both parties, which critics say has emboldened Azerbaijan to act more aggressively. Azerbaijan notably has the steadfast backing of Turkey in the conflict, as well as key US ally Israel.
Vance's visit to Armenia was the first leg of a trip that continued to Azerbaijan, where he met with its leaders to discuss ending the conflict and to shore up an agreement that would give the US greater access to the region's natural resources.
Last August, Trump boasted of brokering a “peace deal” between the two nations, but Azerbaijan had not signed anything—only agreed to further talks.
One of the provisions of the deal pushed by the Trump administration is that Armenia would drop any legal claims against Azerbaijan over its human rights abuses, which Just Security analysts David J. Simon and Kathryn Hemmer saidwould be "thereby depriving Nagorno-Karabakh’s 150,000 victims of justice."
During a summit with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, Vance laid on the flattery: "Other than President Trump, the only leader in the world that has really good relations with both the Turks and the Israelis is President Aliyev," he said. "That means one, the food must be really good here, or two, he must be really charming. I can confirm that he's very charming."
Gev Iskajyan, the advocacy director of ANCA, responded: "Vance thinks Aliyev is really charming. Especially when he’s committing war crimes, rigging his own elections, or ethnically cleansing an entire people."
The presentation on the future of Gaza given by President Donald Trump's son-in-law and adviser, Jared Kushner, in Davos on Thursday, offered what one journalist called "a sanitized, cosmetic image" of an exclave that, due largely to US policy, is actually "a place that needs immediate help and support for people who are on the verge of collapse."
Kushner presented a four-phase "master plan" illustrated by CGI-generated images of luxury apartments, data centers, and futuristic-looking skyscrapers.
In the "New Rafah," built over the southern town that the Israel Defense Forces razed last year and forced hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians to leave, Trump's so-called "Board of Peace" plans to build more than 200 education centers and over 180 cultural, religious, and vocational buildings.
The "New Gaza" plan seeks to build 100,000 permanent housing units in all as well as 75 medical facilities. A map presented by Kushner shows yellow "residential areas," bright pink zones set aside for what Kushner called "coastal tourism," sections of land dedicated to industrial data centers and "advanced manufacturing," and green sections for “parks, agriculture, and sports facilities."
The presentation showed that "the ethnic extermination plan is two-pronged: Kill as many as possible, then gentrify the rest out," said entrepreneur David Haddad.
Before Israel began its US-backed destruction of Gaza in 2023, which has killed more than 71,000 people, and destroyed more than 90% of housing units, the exclave's healthcare system included 36 hospitals, fewer than 14 of which were still partially functional as of October, when a "ceasefire" was agreed to and Trump began moving forward with his 20-point "peace plan."
The presentation Kushner gave Thursday was part of that plan, with four phases of transformation beginning with the opening of the Rafah crossing and moving northward through Khan Younis and Gaza City, with a seaport and airport also being built.
The master plan, said Kushner, is projected to cost $25 billion, and would ultimately result in "peace and prosperity" in Gaza.
“People ask us what our plan B is, we do not have a plan B. We have a plan, we signed an agreement, we are committed to making that agreement work,” Kushner said. “There’s a master plan. We’ll be doing it in phasing. In the Middle East, they build cities like this, in, uh, you know, 2, 3 million people. They build this in three years. And so stuff like this is very doable if we make it happen.”
International lawyer Itay Epshtain said that as with the "'peace to prosperity' fantasy," the so-called master plan "won't come to pass."
The proposal, he said, is "not anchored in law, nor in facts. Just glossy real estate pitch decks dreamt up by Jared Kushner. Meanwhile, real humanitarian relief, recovery, and peace for Palestinians are sidelined—sacrificed to delusions of grandeur and war profiteering."
At the "signing ceremony" for the Board of Peace—which includes no Palestinians and has no support from the United States' major longtime European allies—Trump said he approached the development of Gaza as "a real estate person at heart."
"It’s all about location, and I said, look at this location on the sea, look at this beautiful piece of property, what it could be for so many people,” Trump said. “It’ll be so, so great. People that are living so poorly are going to be living so well."
That outlook, said Hani Mahmoud of Al Jazeera, is one that views Gaza as a "future investment project."
"That’s the problem," said Mahmoud. "It is not being dealt with as a place where people are being killed and starved, and being pretty much cornered in every way possible by the acts that the Israeli military is conducting on the ground. The danger stems from the fact that Gaza is being discussed as an investment and a planning site, rather than as a place where people are being killed on a daily basis—largely ignoring the displacement, the genocidal acts, the starvation, and the misery."
Dilly Hussain of the UK-based news outlet 5 Pillars, said Kushner had proudly presented a plan for a "mega city built on the mass graves of Palestinians after a two-year genocide sponsored by the US."
"No accountability, just business as usual," said Hussain, "with the chief genocider [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu sitting on the 'Board of Peace.'"
