Despicable: Hell To Pay

Just as I begin to seriously consider the possibility of Trump playing 4D chess, he comes out with another … well:

Trump Warns Hamas Of "Hell To Pay" If Hostages Aren't Freed Before Inauguration

It's no secret that President-elect Donald Trump is firmly in support of Israel, despite that after a year of Israeli war in Gaza the civilian death toll is in the multiple tens of thousands. Trump has stacked key national security positions with pro-Israel hawks.

This is why it comes as no surprise that he's already talking tough, threatening escalation if Hamas and Palestinian militants in Gaza don't immediately free the remaining Israeli hostages. "Everybody is talking about the hostages who are being held so violently, inhumanely, and against the will of the entire World, in the Middle East - But it’s all talk, and no action!" Trump began a post on his Truth Social.

He is warning that there will be "hell to pay" if Hamas doesn't release the captives. "Please let this TRUTH serve to represent that if the hostages are not released prior to January 20, 2025, the date that I proudly assume Office as President of the United States, there will be ALL HELL TO PAY in the Middle East, and for those in charge who perpetrated these atrocities against Humanity," Trump continued in the statement.

He then warned in the stern statement [emphasis ZH]:

Those responsible will be hit harder than anybody has been hit in the long and storied History of the United States of America. RELEASE THE HOSTAGES NOW!

Given broad swathes of Gaza have already been pulverized into dust, it's hard to see how the Strip could be hit any harder, also given US-supplied bunker buster bombs have been used against dense urban areas.

…

Note that Trump doesn’t say, ‘Hell to pay in Gaza.’ He says, “ALL HELL TO PAY in the Middle East,” which is a somewhat large region with a lot of people. During the campaign Trump claimed that he wants to get along with Iran, but we know that Trump’s Jewish sponsors have long propagated the lie that Iran is a terrorist state. Will Trump fulfill Netanyahu’s dream and attack Iran, claiming that is responsible for Hamas—despite years of Israeli funding of Hamas? Is Trump really planning to go after all Islamic terror groups? The most brutal of these groups—which target Christians—are actually heavily funded and trained by the US and Israel—as we’re seeing once again in Syria, with a resurrected version of ISIS.

That Trump should use such rhetoric—without once mentioning justice for Palestinians or condemning Jewish supremacist racism and state sponsored terrorism and genocide—is simply despicable. A significant part of his appeal was, in fact, the desire of many Americans for an end to foreign wars and justice in our foreign policy. And now he speaks of targeting the most vulnerable population on earth with HELL TO PAY—meaning, utterly disproportionate violence?

America had plenty of problems before 9/11, but the GWOT pretty much put paid to the America we thought we knew—MISSION ACCOMPLISHED? The Patriot Act and so forth, leading to our National Security surveillance state, our Forever Wars, and arguably enabled the Covid Hoax and other exercises in societal control.

For Trump to ask the American people to trust him—after running on a peace platform—is asking too much. What happens if his big stick bluff is called? Will he really attempt to unleash “all hell” in the name of America? Knowing as we do how he obtained his campaign funding, why should we be complicit in this? This is not MAGA.