Colonial racism helps explain the Trump administration's adulation of Israeli violence against Palestinians. In good colonial fashion, Israel relies on laws that grant full rights to some, while justifying the repression (not to mention genocide) of others. Israeli violence, like the Barbadian slave code, always claims to "restrain the disorders, rapines, and inhumanities to which [Palestinians] are naturally prone and inclined."
South Africa, of course, is still struggling with its colonial and post-colonial legacy -- including decades of apartheid, which created political and legal structures that massively privileged the White population there. And while apartheid is now a past legacy, ongoing attempts to undo its damage like a January 2025 land reform law have only raised President Trump's ire in ways that echo his reaction to even the most modest attempts to promote "diversity, equity, and inclusion," or that dreaded abbreviation of the Trump era, DEI, in American institutions ranging from the military to universities.
Israel, though, remains a paragon of virtue and glory in Trump's eyes. Its multiple legal structures keep Palestinians legally excluded in a diaspora from which they are not allowed to return, under devastating military occupation, with the constant threat of expulsion from the occupied West Bank and Gaza, and in occupied East Jerusalem, where they are Israeli residents but not full citizens and subject to multiple legal exclusions as non-Jews. (Donald Trump, of course, had a similar fantasy when he imagined rebuilding Gaza as a Middle Eastern "Riviera," while expelling the Palestinians from the area.) Even those who are citizens of Israel are explicitly denied a national identity and subject to numerous discriminatory laws in a country that claims to represent "the national home of the Jewish people" and to which displaced Palestinians are forbidden to return, even as "Jewish settlement is a national value."
Good Discrimination, Bad Discrimination
Lately, of course, right-wing politicians and pundits in this country have been denouncing any policies that claim special protections for, or even academic or legal acknowledgement of, long marginalized groups. They once derisively dubbed all such things "critical race theory" and now denounce DEI programs as divisive and -- yes! -- discriminatory, insisting that they be dismantled or abolished.
Meanwhile, there are two groups that those same right-wing actors have assiduously sought to protect: White South Africans and Jews. In his February executive order cutting aid to South Africa and offering refugee status to White Afrikaner South Africans (and only them), Trump accused that country's government of enacting "countless" policies designed to dismantle equal opportunity in employment, education, and business." No matter that such a view of South Africa is pure fantasy. What he meant, of course, was that they were dismantling apartheid-legacy policies that privileged Whites.
Meanwhile, his administration has been dismantling actual equal opportunity policies here, calling them "illegal and immoral discrimination programs, going by the name 'diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).'" The difference? President Trump is proud to kill policies that create opportunities for people of color, just as he was outraged at South Africa's land reform law that chipped away at the historical privilege of White landowners there. His attack on DEI reflects his drive to undo the very notion of creating de facto equal access for citizens (especially people of color) who have long been denied it.
Trump and his allies are also obsessed with what his January 30th executive order called an "explosion of antisemitism." Unlike Black, Native American, Hispanic, LGBTQIA+, or other historically marginalized groups in the United States, American Jews -- like Afrikaners -- are considered a group deserving of special protection.
What is the source of this supposed "explosion" of antisemitism? The answer: "pro-Hamas aliens and left-wing radicals" who, Trump claims, are carrying out "a campaign of intimidation, vandalism, and violence on the campuses and streets of America." In other words, the ever-present barbarian threat is now embodied by "aliens" and "radicals" who challenge Israeli colonial violence and a US-dominated global order.
And -- this is important! -- not all Jews deserve such special protection, only those who identify with and support Israel's colonial violence. The American right's current obsession with antisemitism has little to do with the rights of Jews generally and everything to do with its commitment to Israel.
Even the most minor deviation from full-throated support for Israeli violence earned Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer the scorn of Trump, who called him "a proud member of Hamas" and added, "He's become a Palestinian. He used to be Jewish. He's not Jewish anymore. He's a Palestinian." Apparently for Trump, the very word "Palestinian" is a slur.
Israeli Violence Is "Stunning," While Palestinians Are "Barbaric"
The American media and officials of both parties have generally celebrated Israeli violence. In September 2024, the New York Times referred to Israel's "two days of stunning attacks that detonated pagers and handheld radios across Lebanon" that killed dozens and maimed thousands. A Washington Post headline called "Israel's pager attack an intelligence triumph." President Joe Biden then lauded Israel's assassination of Hezbollah's Hassan Nasrallah in September as "a measure of justice" and called its assassination of Hamas's Yahya Sinwar a month later "a good day for Israel, for the United States, and for the world." On Israel's murder of the chief Hamas negotiator, Ismael Haniyeh, in the midst of U.S.-sponsored ceasefire negotiations in August, Biden could only lament that it was "not helpful."
Compare this to the outrage professed when Columbia Middle East Studies professor Joseph Massad wrote, in an article on Arab world reactions to Hamas's October 7th attack, that "the sight of the Palestinian resistance fighters storming Israeli checkpoints separating Gaza from Israel was astounding." For that simple reflection of those Arab reactions, Columbia's then-President Minouche Shafik denounced him before Congress, announcing that she was "appalled" and that Massad was being investigated because his language was "unacceptable." He never would have gotten tenure had she known of his views, she insisted. Apparently only Israeli violence can be "stunning" or a "triumph."
Meanwhile, at Harvard on October 9th, Palestine solidarity student groups quoted Israeli officials who promised to "open the gates of hell" on Gaza. "We hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence," they wrote. Despite the fact that multiple Israeli sources were saying similar things, Republican Representative Elise Stefanik posted: "It is abhorrent and heinous that Harvard students are blaming Israel for Hamas' barbaric attacks." Note the use of the word "barbaric" from the slave code, repeatedly invoked by journalists, intellectuals, and politicians when it came to Hamas or Palestinians, but not Israelis.
In November 2024, when the U.S. vetoed (for the fourth time) a U.N. Security Council resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, the world was aghast. The U.N. warned that, after a year of Israel's intensive bombardment and 40 days of the complete blockade of humanitarian supplies, two million Palestinians were "facing diminishing conditions of survival." The U.N. Director of Human Rights Watch accused the U.S. of acting "to ensure impunity for Israel as its forces continue to commit crimes against Palestinians in Gaza." The American ambassador, however, defended the veto, arguing that, although the resolution called for the release of Israeli hostages in Gaza, it did not provide enough "linkage." And of course, U.S. arms, including staggeringly destructive 2,000-pound bombs, have continued to flow to Israel in striking quantities as the genocide continues.
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