The new civilizing mission of the Trumpian West (Part 2): a self-satisfied messianism in the service of Big Business.
Why should the government of the Jewish state listen to the criticisms and warnings of one of the greatest thinkers of the 20th century, Edgar Morin? Because it is foreseeable that Israel’s current policy — a state that still remains a mere “drop in an Arab ocean” — could end up like the Ukrainian “liberation” struggle. After Trump, the West could treat Israelis the way Ukrainians were treated after Biden. That is why the true friends of both Ukraine and Israel are those who have warned them, and continue to warn them, against this realistic prospect.
During his first presidential campaign, Donald Trump criticized a “rigged” system dominated by money and presented himself as an independent actor: “I don’t need anybody’s money. I use my own money. I don’t use lobbyists. I don’t use donors, I don’t care. I’m really rich[1].” Of course, these were partial truths that helped the candidate Trump win over a majority of Americans who, like most Europeans, despise their political structures that serve the oligarchies that finance them.
Under these conditions, the least costly solution consists in entrusting power to oligarchs, with all the risks that this entails. For Western democracy is precisely based on an expensive system of lobbying financed by generous patrons, attentive to return on investment. In terms of return on investment, among Trump’s donors (who were indispensable to him, as to any other candidate), one particularly demanding and impatient “mega-donor” stood out: Sheldon Adelson.
On the one hand, Adelson expected Trump to quickly deliver on his personal goals, considering this a fair return for his generous funding. On the other hand, the realization of these goals had the potential to give a certain coherence — initially quite “empty” — to Trump’s Middle East policy.
So who was Sheldon Adelson (died in 2021)? An ultra-conservative self-made man, a billionaire at the head of a casino empire stretching from Las Vegas to Macau and Singapore, who had already had the opportunity to play a kingmaker role in Israel.
On the one hand, Adelson expected Trump to deliver his personal objectives quickly, considering this a fair return on his generous funding. On the other hand, the realization of these objectives had the potential to give a certain coherence — initially quite “hollow” — to Trump’s Middle East policy.
So who was Sheldon Adelson (died in 2021)? An ultra-conservative self-made man, a billionaire at the head of a casino empire stretching from Las Vegas to Macau and Singapore, who had already had the opportunity to play a kingmaker role in Israel.
There, in 2007, he founded the free daily tabloid Israel Hayom (where return on investment is generally fastest). He recruited several well-known journalists and entrusted editorial leadership to his second wife, Miriam, who is Israeli. The newspaper quickly became the most widely circulated in the country and, through an uninterrupted series of front-page endorsements of Benjamin Netanyahu, helped facilitate his return to power in 2009.
This success gave Adelson, in 2015, the idea of purchasing the Las Vegas Review-Journal in the United States, using fictitious ownership names. During the 2016 Republican primaries, all seventeen candidates found themselves at the same address of the newspaper’s true owner, making a pilgrimage to Las Vegas, where they were questioned by this powerful casino magnate acting in the role of a banker. This generous patron demanded that each of them, in exchange for his financial support, make concrete commitments with defined deadlines.
Creation of a new American Middle East policy
These commitments were closely aligned with the wishes of the Likud party, Benjamin Netanyahu’s party. First, the idea of a Palestinian state had to be cut off at the root, as Adelson considered the “two-state solution” a stepping stone toward the destruction of Israel and the Jewish people. Second, Jerusalem had to be recognized as Israel’s “eternal capital.” Third, the United States had to withdraw from the Iran nuclear agreement signed by Barack Obama in 2015. Finally, the indigenous populations of the region — the Palestinians, whom Sheldon Adelson called an “invented people” — were to receive no concessions or funding whatsoever.
His ruthlessness quickly became apparent, the same ruthlessness that, according to the text, characterizes Israel today. Due to the failure to meet the commitments made, the casino magnate later stopped funding the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). This once-powerful lobby had erred by providing funds to the Palestinian authorities at the request of former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
To prevent this from happening again, Adelson founded his own right-wing Israeli-American Council (IAC). This organization, through European Jewish communities, strongly influenced the strengthening of the radical Islamophobic right in Europe. Moreover, influential European Jewish figures — such as in France, which is home to the largest Jewish community in Europe — were encouraged to create a new radical right centered on Islamophobia (Éric Zemmour’s party, Reconquête, or “Reconquest”). Based on the conspiracy theory known as the “great replacement” of Europe’s population, these new radical right movements promote a global version of this thesis: a process by which an opponent’s argument is replaced with another thesis arbitrarily attributed to them.
To immigrants from the Middle East is attributed the intention of deliberately entering Europe — rather than as a consequence of the bloodshed caused by foreign powers in their region — in order to “replace” the local population through sheer numbers. Moreover, indigenous populations in the Middle East are accused of protesting against the effective colonization of their territories. Whether on their own land or on others’, they are treated as barbarians whom “chosen peoples” (Protestants and Jews) are called upon to civilize — that is, to steer away from Islamic religious fanaticism through a Jewish fanaticism that has itself largely contributed to producing it.
Trump’s messianism in the service of Big Business
In this context, during the 2016 Republican primaries, Sheldon only threw his support behind his second attempt (after his first candidate, Marco Rubio, was eliminated from the race) at backing the Republican candidate capable of implementing his project. The casino king had previously closely followed Donald Trump’s disastrous incursion, as a New York property developer, into his own territory — Las Vegas and Atlantic City. The venture ended in six highly publicized bankruptcies, and Adelson thus knew both sides of the coin of the success Trump claimed for himself. The “undisputed king of reality TV” was at the same time a businessman constantly short of cash and capable of monetizing anything.
The casino king therefore bet on Trump and, together with the Republican Party, reportedly gave him around 426 million dollars between 2016 and 2020[2]. The investment proved profitable, and the United States underwent a shift in its Middle East policy.
Traditional diplomatic channels, particularly the State Department — long accused by its critics of being a den of “Islamophiles” — were, during Trump’s first term, replaced by a small circle of presidential advisers linked to his family business interests and hostile to the idea of a Palestinian state[3]. Jared Kushner, the omnipresent son-in-law of the U.S. president and senior adviser, was tasked with coordinating the Middle East initiative. Jason Greenblatt, former legal director of the Trump Organization, was appointed “Special Representative for International Negotiations,” in charge of the Israeli-Arab file. David Friedman, a lawyer who had skillfully handled Trump’s successive bankruptcies, was appointed ambassador to Israel, declaring that “Israelis have as much right, if not more, than Palestinians to settle in Judea and Samaria” — the term used by Israelis for the West Bank.
A key figure in Trump’s messianism, his son-in-law Jared Kushner is the son of Charles Kushner, a real estate developer often in conflict with the law and so close to Netanyahu that he hosted him during private visits to the United States. Long before marrying Ivanka Trump, Jared already embodied a system tainted by corruption and privilege, in which he himself struggled to find his place.
The young Jared had been placed in a difficult position when he was put in charge of the family business on the eve of the 2007 financial crisis, while his father was serving a prison sentence for illegal campaign financing, witness tampering, blackmail, and other offenses. He overpaid for the New York building “666 Fifth Avenue.” Deep in debt, his company Kushner Enterprises relied on Qatar to save it from this burden. When negotiations failed, Jared Kushner supported the Saudi-Emirati blockade of Qatar. The pressure had the intended effect: the Kushner family’s finances were saved.
Later, as a political novice entrusted by his father-in-law Trump with numerous missions and eventually the Middle East portfolio, he succeeded in establishing privileged relations with two powerful leaders of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (Mohammed bin Salman — “MBS” — and Mohammed bin Zayed — “MBZ”), themselves connected to influential networks of diplomats and businesspeople. This multiplied exchanges of mutual services, leading MBS to say that Jared Kushner “had him in his pocket,” and Trump to conclude that he had “saved MBS’s skin,” protecting him despite his involvement in the assassination following the dismemberment of journalist Jamal Khashoggi[4][5].
This is how the Abraham Accords were concluded in a “transactional” manner, signed by Israel in September 2020 with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco, and whose stated aim was “to increase stability, security, and prosperity in the region.” In these agreements, the Palestinian issue is not mentioned, because it was not appropriate to refer to the “Kushner doctrine.”
If there is such a thing as a Kushner doctrine, it could be summarized as the exclusion of Palestinians from negotiations, even though they represent slightly more than half of the population of historical Palestine. The main architects of the Abraham Accords have explained in detail the reasons for their success. Kushner suggested that resolving a conflict is not fundamentally different from a real estate transaction. To “change the course of history, one only needs to think differently,” Trump’s son-in-law claimed, earning him praise as a “genius” from his father-in-law.
Indeed, Jared’s entry into the political sphere allowed him to generate considerable profits. Thus, Affinity Partners, the investment firm he founded after Trump’s defeat in the 2020 election, received 2 billion dollars from the Saudi sovereign wealth fund, the Public Investment Fund controlled by MBS[6]. Riyadh thus became an essential diplomatic “Mecca.”
The Biden administration not only maintained this new U.S. Middle East policy, but also attempted to leverage it by seeking to integrate Saudi Arabia into the Abraham Accords. This was accompanied by the project for a new secure trade route, IMEC (G20, September 2023), competing with China’s Belt and Road Initiative, bypassing the Suez Canal and ending in Gaza, linking India and Europe, and passing through pro-American Arab states as well as Israel with Gaza and the West Bank (hence the importance of the Abraham Accords).
Biden’s plans were disrupted by Hamas’s attack on Israel and Netanyahu’s retaliation, which reduced Gaza to ruins.
Trump’s messianism in the service of Big Business
In this context, during the 2016 Republican primaries, Sheldon only threw his support behind his second attempt (after his first candidate, Marco Rubio, was eliminated from the race) at backing the Republican candidate capable of implementing his project. The casino king had previously closely followed Donald Trump’s disastrous incursion, as a New York property developer, into his own territory — Las Vegas and Atlantic City. The venture ended in six highly publicized bankruptcies, and Adelson thus knew both sides of the coin of the success Trump claimed for himself. The “undisputed king of reality TV” was at the same time a businessman constantly short of cash and capable of monetizing anything.
The casino king therefore bet on Trump and, together with the Republican Party, reportedly gave him around 426 million dollars between 2016 and 2020[2]. The investment proved profitable, and the United States underwent a shift in its Middle East policy.
Traditional diplomatic channels, particularly the State Department — long accused by its critics of being a den of “Islamophiles” — were, during Trump’s first term, replaced by a small circle of presidential advisers linked to his family business interests and hostile to the idea of a Palestinian state[3]. Jared Kushner, the omnipresent son-in-law of the U.S. president and senior adviser, was tasked with coordinating the Middle East initiative. Jason Greenblatt, former legal director of the Trump Organization, was appointed “Special Representative for International Negotiations,” in charge of the Israeli-Arab file. David Friedman, a lawyer who had skillfully handled Trump’s successive bankruptcies, was appointed ambassador to Israel, declaring that “Israelis have as much right, if not more, than Palestinians to settle in Judea and Samaria” — the term used by Israelis for the West Bank.
A key figure in Trump’s messianism, his son-in-law Jared Kushner is the son of Charles Kushner, a real estate developer often in conflict with the law and so close to Netanyahu that he hosted him during private visits to the United States. Long before marrying Ivanka Trump, Jared already embodied a system tainted by corruption and privilege, in which he himself struggled to find his place.
The young Jared had been placed in a difficult position when he was put in charge of the family business on the eve of the 2007 financial crisis, while his father was serving a prison sentence for illegal campaign financing, witness tampering, blackmail, and other offenses. He overpaid for the New York building “666 Fifth Avenue.” Deep in debt, his company Kushner Enterprises relied on Qatar to save it from this burden. When negotiations failed, Jared Kushner supported the Saudi-Emirati blockade of Qatar. The pressure had the intended effect: the Kushner family’s finances were saved.
Later, as a political novice entrusted by his father-in-law Trump with numerous missions and eventually the Middle East portfolio, he succeeded in establishing privileged relations with two powerful leaders of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (Mohammed bin Salman — “MBS” — and Mohammed bin Zayed — “MBZ”), themselves connected to influential networks of diplomats and businesspeople. This multiplied exchanges of mutual services, leading MBS to say that Jared Kushner “had him in his pocket,” and Trump to conclude that he had “saved MBS’s skin,” protecting him despite his involvement in the assassination following the dismemberment of journalist Jamal Khashoggi[4][5].
This is how the Abraham Accords were concluded in a “transactional” manner, signed by Israel in September 2020 with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco, and whose stated aim was “to increase stability, security, and prosperity in the region.” In these agreements, the Palestinian issue is not mentioned, because it was not appropriate to refer to the “Kushner doctrine.”
If there is such a thing as a Kushner doctrine, it could be summarized as the exclusion of Palestinians from negotiations, even though they represent slightly more than half of the population of historical Palestine. The main architects of the Abraham Accords have explained in detail the reasons for their success. Kushner suggested that resolving a conflict is not fundamentally different from a real estate transaction. To “change the course of history, one only needs to think differently,” Trump’s son-in-law claimed, earning him praise as a “genius” from his father-in-law.
Indeed, Jared’s entry into the political sphere allowed him to generate considerable profits. Thus, Affinity Partners, the investment firm he founded after Trump’s defeat in the 2020 election, received 2 billion dollars from the Saudi sovereign wealth fund, the Public Investment Fund controlled by MBS[6]. Riyadh thus became an essential diplomatic “Mecca.”
The Biden administration not only maintained this new U.S. Middle East policy, but also attempted to leverage it by seeking to integrate Saudi Arabia into the Abraham Accords. This was accompanied by the project for a new secure trade route, IMEC (G20, September 2023), competing with China’s Belt and Road Initiative, bypassing the Suez Canal and ending in Gaza, linking India and Europe, and passing through pro-American Arab states as well as Israel with Gaza and the West Bank (hence the importance of the Abraham Accords).
Biden’s plans were disrupted by Hamas’s attack on Israel and Netanyahu’s retaliation, which reduced Gaza to ruins.
Kushner’s Vision for Gaza
Thus, while Trump was campaigning for re-election, Kushner, in February 2024, during the massacre and destruction taking place there, confidently presented his “vision” for Gaza’s future. He praised the supposedly “very valuable” potential of Gaza’s “waterfront assets” (the Gaza Strip is said to sit atop 1.7 billion barrels of oil) and suggested that Israel should relocate civilians to the Negev (the sparsely populated, desert southern half of Israel) until the Gaza Strip had been “cleaned up.” He added: “I’m not sure there’s much left of Gaza at this point. If you think about construction, Gaza really has no historical precedent. It was the result of a war.”[7]
This “vision” of Kushner’s was foreshadowed by the reflections of Friedman, Trump’s bankruptcy expert turned ambassador to Israel, who viewed the resolution of the Palestinian question as a process of liquidation. He argued that people, throughout history, have understood nothing about international relations, because only “hammer diplomacy” — which he practiced as ambassador to Israel — can bring peace to the Middle East.[8]
It is therefore easy to imagine Donald Trump’s anger when, after being forced to leave the White House in 2020, he discovered that the first foreign leader to congratulate his rival Biden was none other than Benjamin Netanyahu. Trump then cut off all communication with him and accused American Jews, who had voted overwhelmingly for the Democrats, of “not loving Israel enough,” insisting that “the Jewish state never had a better friend in the White House.”
Only after negotiations with representatives of the widow of casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, Miriam Adelson — upon whom Trump bestowed the Presidential Medal of Freedom — were the desired results achieved.
She declared herself prepared to do for Donald Trump’s re-election everything her husband had done to secure his first term. She also made it clear that, in return, she expected the annexation of the West Bank.[9] This provides a clear indication of the future direction of Trumpian diplomacy in the Middle East. Trump is, after all, known as a man who keeps his word.
What did Sheldon Adelson demand from Trump during his first term?
Adelson demanded that, on the very first day of taking office, after signing an executive order reversing key decisions of the Obama administration, Trump announce the transfer of the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem.[10] Faced with opposition from parts of the American political establishment, including Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Secretary of Defense James Mattis, Adelson had to wait.
Trump did not announce recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital until the end of 2017, as part of a “new approach to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.” Then, in order to ensure the irreversibility of the decision, the U.S. government sold the ambassador’s luxurious residence in Tel Aviv to a Trump campaign-financing organization for the modest sum of $67 million. The official inauguration of the new embassy took place on May 14, 2018, on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the creation of the State of Israel, in the presence of Sheldon and Miriam Adelson as well as Protestant pastors such as Robert Jeffress and John Hagee, who had moved without hesitation from antisemitism to Islamophobia and the most radical forms of Zionism.[11]
These leading figures of Christian Zionism, who inspire great enthusiasm among Trump’s electoral base, delivered the opening and closing prayers of the ceremony. On that occasion, Pastor Hagee, founder of Christians United for Israel, declared that God had granted Israel a “miraculous victory in 1967” — referring to the occupation of East Jerusalem and the West Bank.
On the same day, massive Palestinian demonstrations, followed by a bloody Israeli crackdown (58 Palestinians killed), erupted across the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, leading to the breakdown of negotiations with the U.S. government. This served as a pretext for implementing additional measures aimed at further weakening and humiliating the Palestinian side: reductions in economic and humanitarian aid, the termination of funding for UNRWA, the closure of the PLO office in Washington, and the closure of the U.S. Consulate General in Jerusalem, which had previously managed relations with the Palestinians.
At the same time, concessions in favor of Israel multiplied. The United States recognized Israeli sovereignty over Syria’s Golan Heights, and Secretary of State Michael Pompeo, closely aligned with Christian fundamentalists, definitively broke with Washington’s long-standing position by declaring that “the establishment of Israeli civilian settlements in the West Bank is not, per se, inconsistent with international law.”
“Chosen Peoples” and “Subhumans”
Thus, what is conceived by the Las Vegas casino magnate, who himself had run-ins with the American justice system, ultimately comes to pass. This is certainly not the work of the “finger of God,” but rather of the “finger of casino capitalism” at its height: a “casino economy that is in reality mafioso and detached from reality; very poor in terms of security and distributive justice, but effective in terms of American values of efficiency and freedom” (Casino Capitalism, Susan Strange, 1986). Having reached its peak, this economic model can only choose among several possible paths of decline.
It appears to have taken a detour under the cover of a new ideology of “chosen supermen” and “subhumans, herds, or masses” — popular masses who may be physically and morally healthy but are regarded as intellectually deficient, incapable of autonomous moral and rational judgment. Nazi theory described as “subhumans” those masses who are not free because they are subject to religions, political ideologies, worldviews, and various gurus; in that sense, it would include not only radical Muslims but also certain Christian and Jewish currents.
In any case, it is possible to foresee that the new narcissistic American messianism, like Nazism before it, will be permeated by a herd morality that crushes all who do not submit to it — Muslims, Christians, and Jews alike — in a flood of blood and tears.
For this reason, it is not too late to listen to the position on the war being waged by Israel in Gaza expressed by the person whom the author of this essay considers the greatest living sociologist and philosopher, Edgar Morin, who pushed the boundaries of complexity in the social sciences. Born into the Jewish tradition and now 102 years old, he still has the strength to raise a cry to the heavens:
“I am astonished and outraged by the fact that those who represent the descendants of a people persecuted for centuries for religious or racial reasons; that the descendants of this people, now holders of state power in Israel, can not only colonize an entire people and drive them from their land with the intention that this be permanent; but that, after the massacre of October 7, they have carried out a genuine mass slaughter against the population of Gaza; and that they continue to do so relentlessly, targeting civilians, women, and children.”[12]
Bibliography
[1] STONE, Peter, “Sheldon Adelson to Donate $100 Million to Trump and Republicans, Fundraisers Say,” The Guardian, February 10, 2020.
[2] ALTERMAN, Eric, We Are Not One: A History of America’s Fight Over Israel, Basic Books, New York, 2022.
[3] WONG, Edward, and LAFRANIERE, Sharon, “Tillerson Says Kushner Bypassed Him and Mattis to Make Foreign Policy,” The New York Times, June 27, 2019.
[4] EMMONS, Alex; GRIM, Ryan; SWISHER, Alex, “Saudi Crown Prince Boasted That Jared Kushner Was ‘In His Pocket’,” The Intercept, March 21, 2018.
[5] WOODWARD, Bob, Rage, Simon & Schuster, New York, 2020.
[6] SWAN, Jonathan; KELLY, Kate; HABERMAN, Maggie; MAZZETTI, Mark, “Kushner Firm Got Hundreds of Millions from Two Persian Gulf Nations,” The New York Times, March 30, 2023.
[7] WINTOUR, Patrick, “Jared Kushner Says Gaza’s ‘Waterfront Property Could Be Very Valuable’,” The Guardian, March 19, 2024.
[8] FRIEDMAN, David, Sledgehammer: How Breaking with the Past Brought Peace to the Middle East, Broadside Books, New York, 2022.
[9] SLYOMOVICS, Nettanel, “Trump Is Desperate for Miriam Adelson’s Cash. What Will She Expect in Return?”, Haaretz, June 3, 2024.
[10] RAVID, Barak, Trump’s Peace: The Abraham Accords and the Reshaping of the Middle East, Yedioth Ahronoth Books, Tel Aviv, 2022 (U.S. edition: 2023).
[11] “There Can Be No Peace Before the Coming of the Messiah,” Le Monde diplomatique, September 2002.
[12] MORIN, Edgar, interview published by Middle East Eye: https://www.middleeasteye.net/fr/actu-et-enquetes/le-philosophe-edgar-morin-se-dit-ahuri-et-indigne-par-le-carnage-commis-par-israel.
