Trump's messianic allies lead the charge against Gaza
While the American Jewish community can be highly critical of Benjamin Netanyahu (and in fact votes overwhelmingly Democratic), this fundamentalist movement has supported the current Israeli government unreservedly in its war against Gaza. Even before Trump's re-election, Christian Zionists lobbied Congress to intensify US military support for Israel's ground offensive in Gaza, even as they suspended aid to the Ukrainian resistance for several months in 2024.
Pastor with little 'humanitarian' spirit
The US president appointed his business and golf partner Steve Witkoff as special envoy to the Middle East, but he also tasked him as a personal emissary to Vladimir Putin, thereby distracting him from the Israeli-Palestinian issue. Furthermore, although a ceasefire went into effect in Gaza on January 19, on the eve of Trump's return to the White House, Witkoff failed to prevent Israel from resuming hostilities on March 2, and has not succeeded in negotiating a suspension of fighting since.
These repeated failures by Trump's main Jewish adviser have left the field open to Christian Zionists whose messianic convictions align them more closely with Netanyahu's supremacist allies than with the Israeli prime minister himself. Pete Hegseth, who Trump managed to install at the head of the Pentagon, previously invoked "the miracle of the re-establishment of the temple," echoing Israeli messianic figures who dream of destroying Muslim holy sites in the occupied part of Jerusalem to build the Third Jewish Temple on top of the ruins.
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LeMonde
18 minutes ago
- LeMonde
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France 24
19 minutes ago
- France 24
White House starts TikTok account as platform in US legal limbo
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LeMonde
2 hours ago
- LeMonde
'Russia has no reason to scale back its ambitions in Ukraine and beyond'
Since Donald Trump was inaugurated in January, a series of intense diplomatic maneuvers – full of announcements, reversals and behind-the-scenes strategies – have unfolded without producing a resolution to the war in Ukraine. The successive diplomatic meetings between Trump and Vladimir Putin in Alaska [on August 15], followed by a meeting with Volodymyr Zelensky in Washington and then talks with European leaders [on August 18], raise the question: Has a breakthrough become possible? The answer remains unclear. Despite all parties praising the quality of the discussions, no specific details of a possible settlement, its terms or its timeline have been revealed to date. Meanwhile, the idea of an unconditional ceasefire has dropped from the agenda, and Russia has continued bombing Ukraine without losing favor with the American president. In Alaska, Putin emerged as the main political beneficiary of the meeting. Welcomed with unprecedented honors by Trump, he scored a symbolic victory: To both his electorate and the international community, he did not appear as a pariah but as an indispensable peacemaker. Beyond the staging, the Russian president largely imposed his approach. Now, Trump no longer supports an immediate ceasefire, as Kyiv and Brussels had demanded, but instead a "comprehensive agreement" with vague terms that would include recognition of Crimea as part of Russia, as well as the four regions in eastern Ukraine; the exclusion of Ukraine from membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO); the recognition of Russian as a second official language in certain regions; and the return to favor of the Orthodox Church under the Moscow Patriarchate. In exchange, Putin now appears to grudgingly accept the principle of Western security guarantees for Ukraine. Whether this major shift is genuine, however, remains to be seen.
