Trump and Netanyahu Continue Pushing
The Ethnic Cleansing of Gaza
Derek Albert Schurbon / AntiWar.com
(April 16, 2025) — It’s difficult to describe how deranged reality has become.
On Monday, the leaders of the two governments most responsible for a seemingly endless stream of horror – the US and Israel – sat down for a press briefing in the Oval Office, casually discussing how valuable Gaza is to them and how they want to take it over and control it. As though they’re not the ones primarily responsible for the massacres happening there.
We are witnessing the deliberate annihilation of a people, while those carrying it out pretend it’s just an unfortunate natural disaster – some heavy sustained winds blowing through the area. They want us to believe they’ll be the ones to bring ‘peace’ and ‘freedom’ to the land and people they are actively decimating.
As if to say:
“Here, just drink this and don’t think about it too hard — it’ll all be over soon. We’re the good guys doing good things and that’s all you need to know.”
All while they keep piling onto the body count.
Just about all I’ve been seeing are truckloads of shredded or beheaded children, families crushed or buried beneath bombed buildings, medics and rescue workers executed, journalists targeted and burned alive, the murder of a 14-year-old American citizen – even mounds of flesh that no longer resemble human beings. All of it carried out by the US and Israel.
That 14-year-old boy was killed, and the journalist set on fire, on the same day Trump and Netanyahu sat down to talk about taking the land, while they continue lying about it all and blame everything on Hamas.
This is the kind of terror that most people in the West could never fathom through their comfort and convenience. Imagine everything you know for miles is a grey hollowed-out moonscape. Many people you know have been slaughtered, including friends and family. And after 18 months of this, you’re still being deliberately bombed – because the governments behind it want the “very valuable” and “incredible piece of important real estate” that you live on.
The reporter who prompted these responses from Trump and Netanyahu is an IDF reservist who “might be called up in a month.” He asked whether the IDF “fighting to get into the Gaza Strip” or “blocking humanitarian aid” was a more “effective pressure point” to get Hamas to make a deal. This entire framing ignores that it was not Hamas, but the US and Israel who torched the ceasefire agreement. The soldier was asking which war crimes are more effective for carrying out this campaign of genocide and ethnic cleansing.
It’s madness – the way they use language to evade responsibility. They implement the passive voice and use abstractions like “unfortunate events” – sanitizing their war crimes to make it sound like they aren’t the ones doing the killing.
It really is an art form to dance around with language in this way. Saying it would be a “good thing” to have a “peace force” like the US and Israel “controlling and owning the Gaza Strip,” while they intentionally kill and displace the civilian population to acquire what they freely admit is “an incredible piece of important real estate,” is actual madness.
They talk about making Gaza a “freedom zone… where people aren’t going to be killed every day,” while actively denying Palestinians freedom and killing them every day. They say they want a “free zone” while forcibly maintaining “kill zones.” They’re calling Gaza a “hell of a place” while they “unleash hell” on that place.
It’s one of the most grotesque campaigns of gaslighting imaginable. “All I hear about is killing,” is a shocking thing to hear from the people doing the killing – literally openly bragging about bombing civilians. And what we doknow about is a severe under-reporting of what’s actually going on.
They talk about it all openly, evading any culpability or condemnation. No accountability. No shame. Just the artful sale of war crimes to the American public, who, unfortunately, are the ones paying for this.
This is not just a humanitarian crisis – it’s a moral collapse and a psychological assault on the public’s grasp of reality. Americans are being lied to constantly. We’re told our government is pursuing peace while we fund its atrocities; told we’re helping people while they are bombed to death; told our leaders are solving problems when they’re the ones creating them.
It’s the kind of cognitive dissonance you’d feel if someone spoke about wanting to create a nonviolent, peaceful environment while you visibly witnessed the hand behind their back choke a child or bash someone’s face in. That’s the level of reality distortion we are fed on a daily basis. It’s no wonder American’s struggle with mental well-being when they’re forced to ingest a fiction from a broken, oppressive, and murderous system.
No one should get to stand for ‘peace’ and ‘freedom’ while committing the world’s worst crimes. You don’t heal land by scorching it. And you aren’t saving lives by incinerating them.
The truth is as simple as it is horrifying: the US and Israel won’t stop and fix it, because they want the land. That’s it. It really is that simple. They just need a nice way to sell it to you and make you feel good about it, while keeping you blind to what they are actually doing.
Again, this is about an “incredible piece” of “very valuable” and “important real estate” that they want for themselves and are willing to turn it into a “demolition site” full of “kill zones” in order to get it.
They do not care about the people on that land.
They care about owning the land. It’s that simple.
Hamas is not the reason – they are the excuse.
Netanyahu even admitted as much long before October 7, 2023, ever happened.
These are war criminals discussing war crimes and how profitable it will all be for them. And you are paying for it.
This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal.
~ US airmen Aaron Bushnell, in his last moments (Source)
Derek Albert Schurbon is an independent citizen journalist with a focus on US foreign policy and narrative manipulation – writing on topics helping us to move in a brighter direction, collectively awaken, and create a healthier world. Derek also works in the behavioral/mental health field and teaches mindfulness meditation for mental and emotional well-being, and cutting through biases and inner and outer false narratives. You can find Derek at: writing: derekalbert.substack.com; meditation: takebackyourmind.online.
