Transcript:

U.S. President Donald Trump has once again issued a threat to the Palestinian resistance movement, Hamas, and in fact all the people of Gaza to release all Israeli captives in the territory. In a social media post on Wednesday, Trump said once again “there will be hell to pay” if captives are not released. Now Hamas spokesperson Abdul Latif Alkanu said on Thursday that “Trump's repeated threats against our people represents support to Netanyahu to evade the Gaza ceasefire agreement and tighten a siege and starvation against our people.” Hamas said threats will not work against Palestinians. In fact, the ceasefire was working and is the only way that the captives will be released. Now Donald Trump's threats and the occupation utilizing those threats as cover to renege on the Gaza ceasefire is a pressing issue of today's spotlight program and now for our guests Kevin Barrett from Saida, Morocco, and Sakina Datu, journalist and writer joining us out of London.

Hello, Dr. Kevin Barrett. Welcome to the program, sir. We're gonna start with you. Trump also said in the last couple of days, to the people of Gaza, “a beautiful future awaits you, but not if you hold the hostages. If you do, you are dead. Make a smart decision.” Now the same government's complicit in ruining your homeland, killing over 50,000 of your people, annihilating everything, all the infrastructure that you've grown up through and lived upon for many decades, is promising you a beautiful future—the same guy that's threatening you with complete dispossession and ethnic cleansing of Gaza. Your initial thoughts.

Kevin Barrett: Well, the headline of the article I just published in Crescent International Magazine was that Trump is the ugly American on steroids. There's a stereotype of the ugly American, kind of the brutal, uncultured, uncouth, loud-mouthed ignorant slob who, if he gets a few drinks in him, is aggressive and extremely obnoxious. This obviously doesn't describe all Americans, but it describes, unfortunately, more than enough of them, including Trump. In fact, Trump is completely obviously just out of control.

And these obnoxious genocide threats are obviously illegal under international law. He's basically threatening to kill everybody in Gaza and finish the job, which means finish the genocide. He’s essentially threatening genocide. And that's really about the most extreme case that we can think of with regard to the kind of discussions people have had around the responsibility to protect or R2P concept, which is that when there's the imminent danger of an atrocity, even something much less than a genocide of the kind that we're seeing in Gaza, that force is required to stop it. And so that means that Trump has really put himself in the crosshairs of anybody in the world who believes in enforcing international law. He's made himself basically what Hitler would have been if Hitler were everything that they said he was, which he wasn't. But Trump is.

And in fact, half the American public basically sees Trump that way. And half of the European public or more sees him that way. And the whole Global Gouth sees that this genocide has put the United States so far on the wrong side of history that not only is that Zionist settler colonial project now doomed, with six billion people in the Global South determined to make sure that these genocide perpetrators meet their comeuppance and that this experiment be terminated with extreme prejudice, but the United States itself is now in the crosshairs of those 6 billion people too. And nobody more than Donald Trump is right there sitting in the center of this genocide machine, blabbering these disgusting threats.

Now, having said that, let me say there's always the slight chance that Trump is doing the sort of thing he did with North Korea during his first term, threatening fire and fury and brimstone like the world has never seen, basically threatening to drop nuclear bombs on North Korea. And then the next thing you know, he's shaking hands with its leader. And he's best friends with the leadership there.

The U.S. is now secretly—but not so secretly anymore, since it got leaked—negotiating with Hamas directly for the first time. So there's always the chance that Trump is using some kind of bizarre negotiating strategy where he pretends to be an unhinged genocidal psychotic. And in reality, that's a smokescreen for him doing something completely the opposite of what he seems to be doing based on what he's saying. And let's hope and pray that that's the case.

All right, thank you, Dr. Barrett. And Sakina Datu, thank you for your patience. Welcome to our spotlight program here. I hope you're safe and doing well out there in London. Now, Trump, Sakina, the same man who's been pushing for permanent dispossession of Gaza, is making threats of hell to pay. What is a bigger hell to pay than losing Gaza altogether when it comes to Palestinians? And two, how do Trump's threats, from your perspective, impact the occupation's adherence to the parameters of the Gaza ceasefire?

Sakina Datu: I think, you know, Donald Trump has…I’m tempted to say that he's actually gone crazy. But I do think that there's probably a strategy he's thinking about, and that's giving him credit for having any kind of intelligence, saying something else but planning something else. Because we've heard about the secret talks that he's having with Hamas. We've seen what he's done with Zelinski. It can very well happen with Netanyahu. It is not far-fetched to think that. He can turn the tables any time.

But having said that, Trump is not the main person making the decisions at the White House. We know that the entire team around him are hardcore Zionists. It is actually them calling the shots. But still, I think this threat that he has given is an empty threat. I don't think practically there is a possibility of US, for example, putting boots on the ground. Yes, of course they continue to give arms to Israel and encouraging them to keep on committing a genocide. But we have already seen a genocide happen. We are already seeing (genocide moving to) the West Bank.

And the Palestinians have sat through all this and they've made it very clear that they're not going anywhere. So short of him really putting the boots on the ground and forcefully removing people, I don't know how this can happen. And when you talk about putting the boots on the ground, when you're talking about the Israeli army, for example, these are diaper armies. These are very good at just sitting on their machines and throwing drones and killing children and women. But if they are forced, to meet the resistance or to meet Palestinians, they will not be able to survive.

So I think that Trump likes to make waves. He likes to give these statements that are very controversial. It makes people react. For example, when he threatened to build his Riviera in Gaza for the first time, we saw the Arabs coming together and actually sit down and think of a future. And I think that is what he was aiming to do. Even though he has rejected that proposal, I think his way of governing is just to create waves and to start making people think about different possibilities.

On the other hand, Trump is creating enemies everywhere, from Mexico to Canada to Europe. Everywhere, people don't like him. So the issue of him threatening Hamas, that he is going to create yet another genocide, at this stage, it just doesn't look like a real threat.

And Dr. Barrett, why, when you have a plan to avoid a further bloodshed, more death, more destruction, and it's being implemented and it's working, why would you want to interrupt it with threats, with a push to extend the first phase to 50 more days? When everything wasn't working smoothly, there was violations, but by the Israeli side, your ally in Tel Aviv was the one that violated the ceasefire since January 19th, every single day, not the Palestinian resistance. How does Donald Trump not understand his role here? His interjection in this process is not benefiting the captives and it is not benefiting the ceasefire.

Kevin Barrett: I don't think that Trump understands the situation much. And so he's basically, as the other guest said, taking orders from people around him who are hardcore Zionists. allied with the coalition that's currently ruling, which is the most extremist genocidal government in the history of the Zionist entity, which is saying something. And so I think that it's clear that Netanyahu does not want the ceasefire process to continue smoothly. He wants to end it because his messianic millenarian maniacs in his cabinet, people like Smotrich and Ben-Gavir, are going to step down if the ceasefire holds. If it continues into its second and third phases and then peace returns, that would mean the end of the extremists' plan to try to murder seven million Palestinians and drive the survivors out. Of course, that's not realistic. But they imagine that their warped version of God is somehow going to help them accomplish this massive genocide of all the Palestinians.

I think Netanyahu is too smart to actually believe that that's going to happen. Or I should say maybe too secular in terms of the way he thinks. But he's stuck, because if he were to allow the ceasefire to continue and to work the way it's supposed to work, then he'll lose his cabinet, which means he'll lose his office and peace will break out. And suddenly there will be inv...