Egyptian and Greek mythologies mention a phoenix rising from ashes. Palestinians in Gaza have shown this is not entirely a myth. With the shaky ceasefire barely holding, hundreds of thousands of genocide survivors have emerged from the carnage in this land, whose civilization goes back 4,000 years, marching to north Gaza with hope, despite knowing that almost all their homes, roads, services, schools and hospitals have been wiped out. The real aspiration of most of them is to keep marching home, to where their families had been ethnically cleansed during the 1948 Nakba. Palestinians, it seems, have presciently responded to “Donald Trump’s plan” even before he spat it out.

Despite his sinister side, the US president has mastered the skill of dominating the airwaves and cyberspace through manufacturing dissent. With one outrageous statement after another, he has managed to preoccupy the minds of most nations, leaving almost everyone guessing what his next “unhinged” move may be. But he is not the first to indulge in pretending he is “crazy”. Richard Nixon did too. They subscribe to a “madman theory”, creating the perception of insanity, to achieve two simultaneous goals: throwing friends and foes alike off balance, to the edge, as a means of extracting from them prized concessions and normalizing the patently abnormal: an unmasked might makes right order.

Trump’s recent proposal to “take over” and “own” Gaza after forcibly displacing millions of Palestinians must be seen in this light. It has been widely condemned, even by despotic Arab regimes and Germany, with many describing it as “criminal”, “illegal”, “immoral”, “impractical”, or “destabilizing”. This global dissent inadvertently normalizes the idea, making it merely controversial, debatable, not categorically dismissible.

Inciting for the forced displacement of Palestinian genocide survivors constitutes a “continuation” of the genocide, as a Palestinian human rights organization puts it. Beyond depraved; it is sheer evil. It is a desperate attempt to normalize the commission of atrocity crimes and to achieve through US imperialist bullying what Israel’s military prowess has utterly failed to accomplish........

© The Guardian