Benedictus Qui Venit in Nomine Domini, Hosanna in Excelsis, part twenty-eight

This series, which began in October of 2023 after the Hamas terrorist attack upon Israeli citizens that provoked the subsequent disproportionate response by the government of the Zionist State of Israel by blowing up Gaza City to smithereens and engaging in massive genocide against innocent human beings living in Gaza, has emphasized the simple truth that there can never be any genuine peace in the world when men are at war unrepentantly with Christ the King, the Prince of Peace, by means of their sins. It is impossible for men to know anything about peace among nations when they promote actions contrary to good of souls in defiance of the binding precepts of the Divine and Natural Laws.

Yet it is, of course, that naturalists of various kinds—egotists, narcissists, ideologues, nationalists, secularists, militarists, racialists, and non-Christian religious zealots—have long believed that “they” have had the “solution” to create a false peace on their own self-serving terms. They have gone by different titles (caesars, emperors, generals, tsars, commissars, chairmen, kings, princes, dukes, prime ministers, chancellors, presidents, etc.) but they have all failed spectacularly even if they have engineered an “imposed” order by brute force, such as had the Roman emperors for over half a millennium, the Protestant Revolution’s bloody overthrow of the Social Reign of Christ the King in England, Ireland, and Scotland in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, The anti-Theisitic French Revolutionaries and Napoleon Bonaparte for around twenty-five years, the empires of Great Britain, France, Germany during the era of colonialism, Adolph Hitler for twelve years, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics for seventy-four years, and the ongoing totalitarian “orders” imposed by the Red Chinese, the Cuban Communists and, among others, the brutal hereditary order that exists in North Korea.

At the present time, though, the there is arising the movement of Pax Americana, based solely upon the personal vicissitudes of President Donald John Trump, whose Trump Organization is busily filing trademark applications to protect the names “Donald John Trump, Donald J. Trump. DJ Trump, Donald Trump, DJT, and Trump for use on airports and train stations (Trump Organization files to trademark Donald Trump's name on airports), in association with the messianic Greater Israel project of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose conception of the messias is identical with that held by many of leaders of Jews during Our BlessedLord and Saviour Jesus Christ’s life here on earth, namely, that of a political messias would restore “Israel” to its “rightful” place territorially and politically. Netanyahu’s “messias” is to manifest himself thunderously out of mountainside and will be acknowledged for his potency, contrasting, course, the humility, poverty, and self-abnegation of the Prince of Peace Himself, Who came to us in anonymity to preach His Gospel of true peace—the peace of souls—and to die in ignominy to redeem our souls and thus make it possible to have eternal life with the Most Blessed Trinity in an unending Easter Sunday of glory in Paradise.

To be sure, various presidents of the United States of America (Theodore Roosevelt, Thomas Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, George Herbert Walker Bush, and George Walker Bush) have sought impose a “Judeo-Masonic” “new world order and/or an American “exceptionalist order” during their presidencies, leaving aside the brutal order imposed by the mass murdering Abraham Lincoln upon the Confederate States of America (see Abraham Lincoln—War Criminal), during their presidencies that many of their successors used as a wedge against the advance of Communism during the Cold War.

However, I do not think that it is an exaggeration to state that no president, with the possible exception of the sanctimonious anti-Catholic believe in secular liberal “democracies” as the antidotes to the influence of Catholicism in Europe and Latin America, has posited himself personally as the singularly most important “champion of peace” in the world.

Thus, I am going to provide you with some excerpts from President Donald John Trump’s address to his so-called “Board of Peace” yesterday, Thursday, February 20, 2026, Thursday after Ash Wednesday, that are remarkable for their hubris, shameless self-promotion, and abject narcissism that made it appear that he believes himself to be a veritable secular “prince of peace” who is endowed with omniscience, wisdom, and infallibility:

President Donald Trump: “First year, like, probably no other ever in our country, because we settled eight wars, and, I think, a night to come. It turned out to be a tougher one. I thought that was gonna be the easiest one.

But with war, you never know what’s easy and what’s not so easy. But we’ve had a great relationship, and I’ve become friendly with so many of the people. And I appreciate you being here.

These are great people. These are great leaders, and the people that are watching by closed circuit and open circuit in many cases. They’re so proud of it.

They want it to be open. But they become incredible friends of mine. And, you know, we, we built our country in my first term, and now we’re at a point that the United States has never seen before.

We broke 50,000 on the Dow. They said that would take four years. We broke 7,000 on the S&P.

They said, you couldn’t do that within four years, it would be impossible. And when I came in, they were all saying, If he could get to anywhere close to 40, 45,000, it would be amazing, achievement over four years, well. We hit 50,000 in the first year.

And we had 7,000, which was actually tougher to do, according to the Wall Street geniuses. We hit 7,000 in the first year. They said it could take four or five years, they’d be very happy.

It would have been a great job. We did it in one. But we’re doing a great job. (Board of Peace Full Transcript By President Donald Trump: Thursday, February 19, 2026.)

Interjection Number One:

Everything is “transactional” for Donald John Trump. He bases his international policies largely, although not exclusively, on whether he “likes” this or that leader, especially if this or that leader has said flattering things about him or his administration’s policies personally and most especially if they have been willing to engage in business enterprises that benefit him, his family, and his political and business associates:

President Trump’s determination to blow up the current global order has spawned a cottage industry devoted to explaining his view of how the world works and America’s role in it.

Professors and pundits have invoked great-power politics and ruthless realism, as well as previous presidents and authoritarian strongmen. But there is a new theory gaining attention. It argues that Mr. Trump’s reign most closely resembles that of 16th-century royal families like the Tudors and the Hapsburgs.

A key feature of this “neoroyalist” approach is that global economic policymaking is based on personal, family and business ties rather than national interest, competitive advantage, shared prosperity or long-term growth.

Forget James Monroe, Metternich or Machiavelli. Think Henry VIII and Emperor Charles V.

The term neoroyalism to describe Mr. Trump was coined by two political scientists, Abraham L. Newman at Georgetown and Stacie Goddard at Wellesley College.

In the United States, “foreign policy has become a tool to channel money and status to Mr. Trump and his closest associates,” the two explained in a recent opinion essay in The New

York Times. “Rather than compete with rivals, Mr. Trump is willing to collude with them in order to advance his court’s parochial interests.”

The royalist reference has resonated because it captures the president’s imperious style of governing, his policy reversals and his contempt for longstanding international rules — not to mention his admiration for the British monarchy.

The theory has much in common with the kind of crony capitalism practiced by authoritarians like Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines and Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.

Both describe a system built around a clique of business and political elites who use economic policy for personal gain.

Filipe Campante, a professor at Johns Hopkins University, argues that Mr. Trump’s approach is bad for the economy.

Policymaking is “no longer about being more competitive in the marketplace, but about connections,” Mr. Campante said.

The winners are “not necessarily the people who would have the best ideas or the best projects,” he said, a situation that impairs “growth and productivity and prosperity.”

Those who are not part of the president’s coterie, or who oppose him, are threatened with punishment and exclusion from government contracts, regulatory approvals and other bounty.

After Elon Musk started criticizing the president last spring, Mr. Trump threatened to cut government ties with Mr. Musk’s vast business empire.

“The easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts,” Mr. Trump wrote on Truth Social.

Policy decisions driven primarily by personal profit or pique undermine growth. The Nobel in economic science in 2024 was awarded for research that showed how concentrating power, resources and opportunities in the hands of a small political elite limits development and prosperity.

A recent case is the unusual deal to establish a U.S. version of TikTok, the social media app created by the Chinese company ByteDance. A law prompted by national security concerns and backed by Republicans and Democrats had required TikTok to shed its Chinese ownership or shut down.

But the new arrangement, blessed by the administration, allows the platform, on which Mr. Trump has more than 16 million followers, to keep operating in the United States.

The biggest investors in the new TikTok entity include allies and business partners of the president’s family or his inner circle:

The software giant Oracle, co-founded by Larry Ellison, a close Trump supporter; MGX, an Emirati investment firm that has done a deal with the Trump family’s cryptocurrency company; and Silver Lake, which has teamed up with the private equity firm founded by the president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.

Deals allowing Nvidia to sell chips to China, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, and extending military guarantees to Qatar, also fit the neoroyalist pattern.

This personalist economic policy extends beyond business. Mr. Trump acknowledged that he had raised Switzerland’s tariff to 39 percent from 30 percent because its former president Karin Keller-Sutter “just rubbed me the wrong way.”

He said he had imposed 50 percent tariffs on Brazil because the government refused to halt the prosecution of his political ally, the former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, who was found guilty of plotting a coup.

Self-interested policymaking creates uncertainty and hampers investments as rules that govern decisions and contracts are scrambled.

And it makes it more difficult to get things done.

Traditional channels of communication with foreign powers have often been ineffective because so much decision-making power resides with the president’s clique.

Instead of bureaucracies, there is a royal entourage, Mr. Newman of Georgetown said.

When Mr. Trump was considering whether to officially join the presidential race in 2015, he started a men’s cologne brand called Empire. Because, he explained, “every man has his own empire to build.”

Mr. Trump’s financial empire and those of his closest allies are thriving. So far, his family empire is estimated to have made at least $1.4 billion. (‘Neoroyalism’ and What It Says About Trump.)

The American economy is doing better than is reported in the mainslime media, but the Trump family finances are doing better than the whole country combined. Whatever this is, it is no way to conduct foreign policy as a president’s self-interest is not synonymous with the true national interest unless one believes mistakenly and very delusionally that it is.

Proceeding on to several other excerpts from President Donald John Trump’s rambling, blustering, and self-congratulatory remarks while omitting some of his personal boasts that are so cartoonish that he plays to a caricature drawn of him by his political enemies that his very words and actions prove to be true:

But we have some other work to do, and we’re getting it done. Gaza is very complex. It’s been amazing.

I want to thank Steve and Jared for an amazing job. Marco’s over there watching everybody’s Fantastic and JD. What a job they were all doing.

This is a team. I think it’s the best team ever assembled. And you see that by the results.

So today’s a tremendous honor. welcome you all to the United States Institute of Peace for the inaugural meeting of the Board of Peace. Very important. I believe it’s the most consequential board.

Certainly, in terms of power, and in terms of prestige, there’s never been anything close, because these are the greatest world leaders, almost everybody’s accepted, and the ones that haven’t will be. Some are playing a little cute. It doesn’t work.

You can’t play cute with me. But they’re playing a little bit, but, uh, they’re all they’re all journeying. Everybody, most of them very immediately.

A few that we really don’t want, because they’re trouble, take care of them. But this is the most prestigious board ever put together. And I’ve seen some great corporate boards.

Great guy. So I want to thank the many leaders and dignitaries who have traveled great distances and lengths for the important gathering that we’re at right now. This building was built for peace, and nobody knew what to name it, and then Marco named it after me.

I had nothing to do with it. I swear I didn’t. I swear, I had no idea.

They said, There’s a surprise coming. I didn’t know that surprise. I thought they were gonna give me a lot of money or something, maybe cash.

Could always use some extra cash. But I came, and they stopped the beautiful beast. I got out very safely, I’m sure.

And looked up, and there it said, That is Donald J. Trump on the building. And when I say, uh, that that was had nothing to do. nobody believes that that’s okay, but I appreciated it.

I was Marco and JD, and a group got together, and they did that, and I just thought it was very nice. And it makes me work harder. We’re gonna have to work harder.

We gonna have to make this building much more important. They built, it’s brand new. They built it for peace, but nobody occupied it.

Nobody knew what the purpose of it, but the architecture is so beautiful, and it was with the meeting rooms, the reception rooms. It’s really amazing. Who would think that it was built without anybody in mind or anything in mind?

And then the State Department took it over. They liked it. Marco came over one day, he saw this, he said, This building is great.

And he actually claimed it, right? He claimed it. And that’s what he does.

Where is Marco? Marco? Is that true?

You claim this building, you took it away from about five groups that wanted it. That was done very quickly, very methodically. But it was really, really built so beautifully and such a beautiful building.

But we worked together to ensure the brighter future for the people of Gaza, the Middle East, and the entire world. I think that the Board of Peace, ’cause it’s mostly leaders and unbelievably respected people, but mostly leaders of Middle Eastern countries, countries from all over the world, and they’ve been very generous with money also. And the United States, which I’ll say in a moment, is also very generous with money, because there’s nothing more important than peace.

And there’s nothing less expensive than peace. You know, when you go to wars, it costs you 100 times what it costs to make peace. We, uh, cover men at the end, right there?

The smiling because you learned that after 30 years of fighting, right? 30 years of fighting, we got it done. I want to thank you very much.

And Israel, as you know, with, you could say, Israel in numerous countries, if you want to really know the chance, but Israel and Iran, and we’ll see where that goes. But when you think of Israel, we have done the biggest thing of all, we have peace in the Middle East right now. That’s bigger than people said it couldn’t be done for 3,000 years.

I’ve been talking about Middle East. They said it couldn’t be done. And you look at what’s happened in Gaza. (Board of Peace Full Transcript By President Donald Trump: Thursday, February 19, 2026.)

Interjection Number Two:

“There’s nothing more important than peace”?

Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ came to bring peace to the souls of men, not a false peace as the world understands it in purely naturalistic terms:

Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, do I give unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, nor let it be afraid. (John 14: 27.)

Fear not therefore: better are you than many sparrows. 32 Every one therefore that shall confess me before men, I will also confess him before my Father who is in heaven.  33 But he that shall deny me before men, I will also deny him before my Father who is in heaven.  34 Do not think that I came to send peace upon earth: I came not to send peace, but the sword.  35 For I came to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law.

 36 And a man's enemies shall be they of his own household.  37 He that loveth father or mother more than me, is not worthy of me; and he that loveth son or daughter more than me, is not worthy of me.  38 And he that taketh not up his cross, and followeth me, is not worthy of me. 39 He that findeth his life, shall lose it: and he that shall lose his life for me, shall find it. 40 He that receiveth you, receiveth me: and he that receiveth me, receiveth him that sent me.

 41 He that receiveth a prophet in the name of a prophet, shall receive the reward of a prophet: and he that receiveth a just man in the name of a just man, shall receive the reward of a just man.  42 And whosoever shall give to drink to one of these little ones a cup of cold water only in the name of a disciple, amen I say to you, he shall not lose his reward. (Matthew 10: 31-42.)

There is no true without Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and His true Church.

As Pope Pius XI noted in his first encyclical letter, Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio, December 23, 1922:

The inordinate desire for pleasure, concupiscence of the flesh, sows the fatal seeds of division not only among families but likewise among states; the inordinate desire for possessions, concupiscence of the eyes, inevitably turns into class warfare and into social egotism; the inordinate desire to rule or to domineer over others, pride of life, soon becomes mere party or factional rivalries, manifesting itself in constant displays of conflicting ambitions and ending in open rebellion, in the crime of lese majeste, and even in national parricide.

25. These unsuppressed desires, this inordinate love of the things of the world, are precisely the source of all international misunderstandings and rivalries, despite the fact that oftentimes men dare to maintain that acts prompted by such motives are excusable and even justifiable because, forsooth, they were performed for reasons of state or of the public good, or out of love for country. Patriotism -- the stimulus of so many virtues and of so many noble acts of heroism when kept within the bounds of the law of Christ -- becomes merely an occasion, an added incentive to grave injustice when true love of country is debased to the condition of an extreme nationalism, when we forget that all men are our brothers and members of the same great human family, that other nations have an equal right with us both to life and to prosperity, that it is never lawful nor even wise, to dissociate morality from the affairs of practical life, that, in the last analysis, it is "justice which exalteth a nation: but sin maketh nations miserable." (Proverbs xiv, 34)

26. Perhaps the advantages to one's family, city, or nation obtained in some such way as this may well appear to be a wonderful and great victory (this thought has been already expressed by St. Augustine), but in the end it turns out to be a very shallow thing, something rather to inspire us with the most fearful apprehensions of approaching ruin. "It is a happiness which appears beautiful but is brittle as glass. We must ever be on guard lest with horror we see it broken into a thousand pieces at the first touch." (St. Augustine de Civitate Dei, Book iv, Chap. 3)

27. There is over and above the absence of peace and the evils attendant on this absence, another deeper and more profound cause for present-day conditions. This cause was even beginning to show its head before the War and the terrible calamities consequent on that cataclysm should have proven a remedy for them if mankind had only taken the trouble to understand the real meaning of those terrible events. In the Holy Scriptures we read: "They that have forsaken the Lord, shall be consumed." (Isaias i, 28) No less well known are the words of the Divine Teacher, Jesus Christ, Who said: "Without me you can do nothing" (John xv, 5) and again, "He that gathereth not with me, scattereth." (Luke xi, 23)

28. These words of the Holy Bible have been fulfilled and are now at this very moment being fulfilled before our very eyes. Because men have forsaken God and Jesus Christ, they have sunk to the depths of evil. They waste their energies and consume their time and efforts in vain sterile attempts to find a remedy for these ills, but without even being successful in saving what little remains from the existing ruin. It was a quite general desire that both our laws and our governments should exist without recognizing God or Jesus Christ, on the theory that all authority comes from men, not from God. Because of such an assumption, these theorists fell very short of being able to bestow upon law not only those sanctions which it must possess but also that secure basis for the supreme criterion of justice which even a pagan philosopher like Cicero saw clearly could not be derived except from the divine law. (Pope Pius XI, Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio, December 23, 1922.)

It is possible to sum up all We have said in one word, "the Kingdom of Christ." For Jesus Christ reigns over the minds of individuals by His teachings, in their hearts by His love, in each one's life by the living according to His law and the imitating of His example. Jesus reigns over the family when it, modeled after the holy ideals of the sacrament of matrimony instituted by Christ, maintains unspotted its true character of sanctuary. In such a sanctuary of love, parental authority is fashioned after the authority of God, the Father, from Whom, as a matter of fact, it originates and after which even it is named. (Ephesians iii, 15) The obedience of the children imitates that of the Divine Child of Nazareth, and the whole family life is inspired by the sacred ideals of the Holy Family. Finally, Jesus Christ reigns over society when men recognize and reverence the sovereignty of Christ, when they accept the divine origin and control over all social forces, a recognition which is the basis of the right to command for those in authority and of the duty to obey for those who are subjects, a duty which cannot but ennoble all who live up to its demands. Christ reigns where the position in society which He Himself has assigned to His Church is recognized, for He bestowed on the Church the status and the constitution of a society which, by reason of the perfect ends which it is called upon to attain, must be held to be supreme in its own sphere; He also made her the depository and interpreter of His divine teachings, and, by consequence, the teacher and guide of every other society whatsoever, not of course in the sense that she should abstract in the least from their authority, each in its own sphere supreme, but that she should really perfect their authority, just as divine grace perfects human nature, and should give to them the assistance necessary for men to attain their true final end, eternal happiness, and by that very fact make them the more deserving and certain promoters of their happiness here below.

It is, therefore, a fact which cannot be questioned that the true peace of Christ can only exist in the Kingdom of Christ -- "the peace of Christ in the Kingdom of Christ." It is no less unquestionable that, in doing all we can to bring about the re-establishment of Christ's kingdom, we will be working most effectively toward a lasting world peace. (Pope Pius XI, Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio, December 23, 1922.)

Donald John Trump is one of many self-promoting fools who think that he can everything without the Prince of Prince and His Catholic Church.

Moreover, his boasts of peace in Gaza are also delusional as there is no cessation of Israeli bombing of the territory and his grandiose plans to rebuild Gaza are for the benefit of the wealthy, not for the people who lived there, many of whom after being displaced time and time again by the Zionist racialist who have a contempt for Arabs, Christians and Mohammedans alike, and are now homeless and displaced once again for the benefit Donald John Trump’s, Jared Kushner’s, and Steve Witkoff’s plans to make a fortune off their “visions” that have been born of the Zionists’ physical destruction of Gaza and a massive genocide against its people:

US President Donald Trump has declared the three-month “ceasefire” in Gaza a great success, and now wants to move on to phase two of his so-called “peace plan”.

What does success look like? Israeli soldiers have killed more than 460 Palestinians since October, including at least 100 children.

Israel has levelled another 2,500 buildings, the last of the few that were still standing.

And amid a continuing humanitarian catastrophe engineered by Israel through its blockade of food, water, medicines and shelter, at least eight babies are known to have frozen to death as winter temperatures plummet.

Marking the transition to the new phase, Trump announced last Friday a “Board of Peace” to determine the enclave’s future.

“Peace” here is being used in exactly the same Orwellian sense as “ceasefire”. This is not about ending Gaza’s suffering. It is about creating Big Brother-style narrative control, selling as “peace” the final eradication of Palestinian life in Gaza.

The narrative spin is that, once Hamas is disarmed, the board will take on the job of Gaza’s reconstruction.

The implicit assumption is that life will gradually return to normal for the survivors of the two-year genocide Israel has carried out – though no western leader is acknowledging it as a genocide, or cares to find out how many Palestinians have actually been killed in the onslaught.

But, as we shall see, peace is definitely not what the board is aiming to achieve. This is a cynical exercise in smoke and mirrors.

The term “board” hints not only at Trump’s preference for the language of business over politics. It alludes too to the business opportunities he intends to make from Gaza’s “transformation”.

His plan is to strip the United Nations – and thereby the international community – of any oversight of Gaza’s fate.

We are back to the time of viceroys. Colonialism is again out and proud.

Lab rats

Trump’s “Board of Peace” has much grander ambitions than simply managing Gaza’s takeover. In fact, the enclave and its future is not even mentioned in the board’s so-called “charter” sent out to national capitals.

In a leaked invitation to the president of Argentina, Trump referred to the board as a “bold new approach to resolving global conflicts”.

The charter says it will be “results-orientated” and have the “the courage to depart from approaches and institutions that have too often failed”.

Some of us have long warned that Israel and the US view the Palestinians as lab rats, both for testing weapons and surveillance technologies and for changing the norms developed after the Second World War to safeguard against the return of fascist, militaristic and expansionist ideologies.

The critical legal and humanitarian architecture put in place in the post-war era included the UN and its various institutions, including the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Israel and the US stress-tested this system to destruction from the very start of the two-year genocide in Gaza, as Israel carpet-bombed the enclave’s homes, schools, hospitals, government buildings and bakeries.

Trump’s second presidency has pushed this agenda into overdrive.

‘War is peace’

Only this month the White House announced that the US was pulling out of 66 global organisations and treaties – some half of them affiliated with the UN.

Meanwhile, the judges and prosecutors of the ICC have been under draconian US sanctions for issuing an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defence minister, Yoav Gallant. The ICJ, which is investigating Israel for genocide, appears to have been cowed into silence.

Trump’s kidnapping of Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro and his imminent seizure of Greenland are evidence enough that the already dysfunctional, international “rules-based order” is now in tatters. Both the UN and Nato, the West’s so-called “defence” alliance, are on the ropes.

The US president hopes his “Board of Peace” will deliver the knockout blow, supplanting the UN and the system of international law it is there to uphold.

The reconstruction of Gaza may be its first task, but Trump has much larger aspirations.

The board stands at the heart of a new world order being shaped in Trump’s image. Billionaires and their hangers-on will openly decide the fate of weak nations, based on the power elite’s naked, predatory instincts to make money.

In a petulant letter sent to Norway’s prime minister at the weekend, Trump advised that, after being passed over for the Nobel peace prize: “I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace.” What in that case, one might wonder, is the point of a “Board of Peace”?

The answer is that Orwell’s moment is truly upon us: “War is peace.”

Finishing the job

Trump, of course, has sat himself atop this new imperial business venture, an updated East India Company – the gargantuan, militarised corporation licensed by England’s Queen Elizabeth I that went on to pillage much of the globe for more than two centuries, spreading death and misery in its wake.

As chairman, Trump hand-picks the other members – he is reported to have sent out invitations to some 60 national leaders. He can terminate their participation whenever he sees fit. He decides when the board sits and what it discusses. He alone has a veto.

His term as chair, it seems, may extend even beyond his time as US president.

Members are granted a three-year term. A permanent seat at Trump’s new alternative to the UN Security Council can be bought for $1bn in “cash funds”.

Hungary’s far-right leader Viktor Orban was among the first out of the blocks. He was joined by Netanyahu on Wednesday. Other early participants include the United Arab Emirates, Vietnam, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Morocco, Belarus and Argentina.

Russia’s Vladimir Putin is reported to be considering a place at the top table.

The significance of this is not lost on the diplomatic community. One told Reuters: “It’s a ‘Trump United Nations’ that ignores the fundamentals of the UN charter.”

Similarly, in a desperate attempt to hold the line, the French foreign ministry issued a forlorn statement that “reiterates [France’s] attachment to the United Nations charter”.

But the founding UN document, with its formal commitments to non-aggression, self-determination, multilateral obligations and the protection of human rights, has been put through the White House shredder.

Gangsters have no time for rules.

For decades, Israel has been dreaming of this moment: of taking a wrecking ball to the UN and its legal and humanitarian institutions.

With a record number of UN resolutions against it, Israel believes the world body has too often limited its room for manoeuvre. Now it will hope Trump frees it to finish its long-cherished plan of eradicating the Palestinian people from their homeland.

As if in celebration, Israeli bulldozers swept into occupied East Jerusalem on Tuesday to demolish the buildings of Unrwa, the UN refugee agency that has served as the main aid lifeline for Gaza’s people.

Unrwa called Israel’s action an “unprecedented attack” and one that “constitutes a serious violation of international law and the privileges and immunities of the United Nations”.

Don’t hold your breath waiting for the “Board of Peace” to raise any objections.

Decades to rebuild

Trump’s sidelining of the UN means its assessments of the realities facing Gaza, after Israel’s two-year campaign of genocidal destruction, can be quietly shunted into the shadows.

Trump has set a five-year timeline for Gaza’s transition. But the figures simply don’t add up.

The world body has warned that, even if Israel stops its blockade tomorrow, it will take decades to reconstruct Gaza, effectively from scratch, to house those of its 2.1 million inhabitants who survive.

According to estimates from the UN Development Programme, on the best-case scenario it could take seven years to clear some 60 million tonnes of rubble. Other surveys by the UN suggest a more realistic timetable of 20 years, with 10 years to clear unexploded ordnance.

The UN’s trade and development arm further warns that Israel has erased 70 years of human development in Gaza, and destroyed nearly 90 percent of cropland, leading to “the worst economic collapse ever recorded”.

Gaza’s schools, universities, hospitals, libraries and government offices are all gone. And Israel’s so-called “Yellow Line” that divides Gaza into two has annexed in all but name almost 60 percent of what was already a tiny territory, one of the most densely populated on the planet.

The fact is that these enormous hurdles to restoring life in Gaza to anything approximating “modernity” barely register in Trump’s peace plan. There is a good reason for that: strip away the fanfare and the plan has nothing substantive to say about the welfare of Gaza’s population.

Or to put it more bluntly, Trump’s Gaza’s plan is not interested in Gaza’s population because it does not envision them being present in the enclave for much longer.

Israel’s barely veiled goal over the past two years has been the wholesale ethnic cleansing of Gaza. The carpet bombing was intended to make the territory entirely uninhabitable.

Trump’s plan does not conflict with that ambition. It complements it. His “Board of Peace” is the means to arrive at the final destination willed by Israel.

Deepen complicity

The first practical function of the “Board of Peace” will be to entrench the complicity of western and Arab states in Israel’s eradication of Gaza. None can wriggle out of their responsibility for what follows.

Real decision-making powers, however, will reside not in the Board but in an executive body comprising seven figures close to Trump. The “Board of Peace” will presumably be expected to sign off on – and fund – whatever they decide.

This “Founding Executive Board”, like the “Board of Peace”, will have no Palestinian representatives.

Instead, Palestinians will be present only on a technocratic, dogsbody committee, called the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza. It will oversee the administration of day-to-day affairs in the so-called Red Zone, where Gaza’s people are penned up, in place of Hamas.

Finally an “International Stabilisation Force”, a revamped UN peacekeeping force, will be led by a US major-general, and presumably partner closely with Israel’s genocidal army.

Even assuming that Trump has the Palestinians’ welfare at heart – he doesn’t – no progress can be made by any of these bodies until Israel gives its approval.

In the meantime, their role will be to provide a veneer of legitimacy for further inaction, while more of Gaza’s survivors die from the Stone Age conditions engineered for them by Israel.

‘Real-estate dispute’

Note well the three real power brokers appointed to the “Founding Executive Board”: Jared Kushner, Steve Witkoff and Tony Blair. Gaza’s fate is effectively in their hands.

It was Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and scion of a real estate business family, who way back in February 2024 – long before Trump took office – framed Israel’s genocide in Gaza as “a real-estate dispute”.

It was then that Kushner first publicly floated the idea of developing the enclave into a “very valuable” waterfront property, once it had been “cleaned up”.

Steve Witkoff, a New York real estate mogul and Trump’s special envoy, has spent long months with Kushner – as Israel has been busy clearing out Old Gaza – working on a 40-page prospectus for their proposed New Gaza.

In October, on the US TV news show 60 Minutes, panic was etched on Kushner’s face as Witkoff observed that the pair had been working on a “masterplan” for Gaza’s reconstruction for two years – long before Gaza was levelled by the Israeli military.

He added: “Jared has been pushing this.”

Witkoff’s slip suggested Trump’s team had known from the outset of Israel’s bombing campaign that the intention was to eradicate the whole of Gaza rather than just Hamas. They therefore began working on a business plan to cash in on the carnage.

Through a so-called GREAT Trust – an oh-so-clever acronym for Gaza Reconstitution, Economic Acceleration and Transformation – they have reimagined the enclave as a glitzy seaside resort and a tech hub generating billions of dollars in annual revenue.

A surreal video Trump posted on social media nearly a year ago gave an early idea of what the pair may have in mind. It showed the US president and Netanyahu sipping cocktails on sun loungers in their swimwear amid high rises on Gaza’s ethnically cleansed beachfront.

Gaza’s population – impoverished and malnourished by decades of isolation and blockade, even before the genocide – is viewed as an obstacle to the plan’s realisation.

The enclave’s Palestinians must first be resettled elsewhere, on terms that are as yet unclear, seemingly even to the plan’s formulators.

Cosying up to dictators

Also popping up on the Executive Board, like a bad penny, is Tony Blair, the former British prime minister who misled Parliament and the public to make the case for joining President George W Bush’s illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003.

A subsequent, long, violent US-led occupation resulted in the collapse of Iraqi society, a vicious sectarian civil war, the development of an extensive US torture programme, and the deaths of more than a million Iraqis.

Those seem like exactly the kind of qualifications Trump needs from someone overseeing his Gaza plan.

His administration is therefore selling Blair as a safe pair of hands, a statesman apparently well-acquainted with navigating the yawning gap between the imperious demands of Israel and the forlorn hopes of the Palestinian leadership.

Blair’s skill set, we are assured, will be critically important as the board turns its attention to rebuilding Gaza.

In fact, the last person Gaza needs is Blair, as he proved during his disastrous eight-year stint as special envoy to the Middle East, shoe-horned in by the US in 2007 on behalf of a little-missed, defunct international body known as the Quartet.

At the time, most observers mistakenly assumed Blair’s mandate would be to revive a moribund “peace process” between Israel and the Palestinians.

But Blair avoided bringing any diplomatic pressure to bear on Israel and remained silent about what was then a newly instituted blockade of Gaza in 2007 that rapidly eviscerated its economy and left much of its population destitute and poorly fed.

Seizing Gaza’s gas

One of his key battles as envoy was lobbying Israel – over the Palestinians’ heads – to let a British-led consortium drill for natural gas in Gaza’s territorial waters, where large reserves are known to exist.

According to reports, he sought to entice Israel into approving a $6bn deal by promising that the pipeline would head directly to Israel’s port of Ashkelon. Israel would be the only customer permitted to buy the Palestinians’ gas and could therefore dictate the price.

Israel, preferring to maintain its chokehold on Gaza’s people, refused.

Blair claimed he promoted the Gaza gas project at the behest of the Palestinians. But even the supine Palestinian leadership of the Palestinian Authority, based in the West Bank, had no love for him. In 2011 Nabil Shaath, then one of Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas’ most trusted advisers, observed of Blair: “Lately, he talks like an Israeli diplomat, selling their policies. Therefore he is useless to us.”

Another official called him “an obstacle to the realisation of Palestinian statehood”.

Like Blair, Trump has no interest in the Palestinians ever benefiting from their own resources. But doubtless he will be keen to leverage the former UK prime minister’s “experience” as envoy to assist in plundering its gas fields.

The centrality of Israel to Blair’s moral worldview was underscored in a comment by him in 2011 about the Arab Spring, in which peoples across the Middle East tried to liberate themselves from the toxic grip of tyrants. The former British prime minister chiefly saw these democratic uprisings as likely to “pose a problem for Israel”.

Trump’s new world order

Blair has denied any personal dealings with Kushner and Witkoff’s Gaza Riviera plan – now sometimes referred to as the Sunshine Project – of luxury beachfront resorts and a “smart manufacturing zone” named for billionaire Elon Musk.

But a version leaked last July suggests his fingerprints are all over the plan, including a proposed “voluntary relocation” scheme to buy out Palestinian landowners with minor sums to leave Gaza.

It emerged that two key members of his think tank, the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, had been liaising behind the scenes with Israeli businessmen and the Boston Consulting Group on the project.

This week a statement from the institute welcomed Blair’s role on Trump’s Executive Board, noting: “For Gaza and its people, we want a Gaza which does not reconstruct Gaza as it was but as it could and should be.”

It is hard to believe that Blair’s “should” connotes anything other than Israel’s dream of a Palestinian-free Gaza and Trump’s vision of Gaza as a playground for the rich.

The template for a new Trumpian world order is being crafted in Gaza. The US president’s road to the takeover of Venezuela and Greenland is being paved in this tiny Palestinian territory.

Feckless European leaders, like Britain’s Keir Starmer, who helped arm Israel and provided it with diplomatic cover as it levelled the enclave, were the ones who emboldened Trump.

Those now trying to assert the primacy of international law and the “rules-based world order” – whether in Greenland or Ukraine – were the ones who helped Washington destroy that order. They are now suffering from a severe case of buyer’s regret. (Trump’s ‘Board of Peace’ Is the Nail in Gaza’s Coffin.)

The key question facing the Board of Peace is whether it legitimately engages with Palestinian self-determination, a Washington, DC-based expert has told Al Jazeera.

Hady Amr, the former US special representative for Palestinian affairs, laid out a litany of problems with the board as it currently stands, including its deriving legitimacy from the UN “while at the same time undermining it”, the lifetime appointment of Trump as chairman and the notable absence of democratic states or elected members.

“It’s more control architecture than peace architecture,” he said.

But the crux of the matter is the relationship between the Gaza Committee and the Palestinian Authority.

“Peace requires justice, and until the underlying injustices are addressed, we’ll clearly never get to peace,” Amr said. Achieving that, he added, will require reuniting “Palestinian governance under one Palestinian self-determination – which is what the Palestinian people want.”

• United States President Donald Trump hosted the inaugural meeting of his Board of Peace, where he committed $10bn for Gaza’s reconstruction and said countries had pledged $7bn more, plus troops for an eventual 20,000-troop International Stabilization Force (ISF).
• ISF forces will first deploy to Rafah, General Jasper Jeffers said, and later fan out across five different “sectors”.
• The board plans to build 100,000 homes in Rafah, with $5bn dedicated to infrastructure, before expanding to a total of 400,000 homes.
• Demonstrators in Washington, DC, rallied against Israel’s participation and Palestine’s exclusion from the board, as critics pointed out the scant details for key parts of the plan.
• Meanwhile, in the Gaza Strip, at least two Palestinians were wounded by Israeli fire.
• Israeli forces and settlers also carried out raids across various parts of the occupied West Bank, shooting at least one man, arresting Palestinians and storming homes, amid a widely-condemned formal bid to effectively annex large areas of Palestinian territory.

We now have a response from Hamas regarding today’s inaugural meeting of the Board of Peace.

In a statement, spokesperson Hazem Qassem said the board members’ true test “is their ability to compel the occupation to cease its violations of the ceasefire, to fulfill its obligations, and to initiate a genuine relief effort and reconstruction”.

“The experience of the past months since the ceasefire came into effect confirms that the occupation disregards such positions as long as they are not accompanied by real pressure,” he added.

Any genuine effort to achieve stability in Gaza, the statement concluded, “must address the root cause of the problem: the occupation, ending its aggressive policies, and enabling our Palestinian people to attain their full and undiminished rights”.

Al Jazeera’s team on the ground in the Gaza Strip, citing a source at al-Shifa Hospital, reports that a Palestinian was wounded by Israeli drone fire beyond the boundaries of the yellow line, which separates areas of the Strip still under Israeli military control.

In Khan Younis, Wafa news agency reports, one person was shot by Israeli forces. The news agency cited sources at Nasser Hospital.

Israel’s daily attacks on Palestinians in Gaza have not stopped, even as countries assembled today in Washington, DC, to decide the fate of a “post-war” Strip.

The UN’s humanitarian arm has reported that Israel denied 16 facilitation requests for humanitarian missions since February 1, putting it on track to reject a similar number of requests as it did in January, when the total came to 32.

Seventy-five requests were accepted and went ahead on the ground, OCHA said, while another 34 were impeded – meaning they were blocked or delayed on the ground.

Israel has also been systematically preventing thousands of Palestinians who are looking to exit Gaza via the Rafah crossing to Egypt for medical care, with just 260 patients leaving Gaza since the first day of reopening two and a half weeks ago – a small fraction of the roughly 18,500 people who desperately require evacuation. (Board of Peace Updates: Trump says Gaza war ‘over’ despite Israeli attacks.)

Donald John Trump has delusionally declared the Gaza War over even though it is not as the murderous Israelis continuing their killing whenever and wherever they want as they continue to block humanitarian aid to the Palestinians who seeking refuge in the city of Rafah and also into Egypt. This is monstrous, and Donald John Trump has not a qualm of conscience about any of what Israel is doing right at this present time.

Donald John Trump does not care about the suffering people of Gaza nor does he have courage or even the ability to lay the blame for its territorial destruction squarely at the feet of Benjamin Netanyahu and his racialist band of Zionist murders, who blown up statues of saints, and attacked Christian shrines and churches while, as mentioned before, subjecting Gazans to a modern genocide in which he, Donald John Trump, has been complicit.

And while President Donald John Trump is discomfited by illegal plans of the Israelis to annex the West Bank (see Trump opposes Israeli annexation of occupied West Bank: White House), where many of the Holy Land’s remaining Christians have lived for a long time and where the very birth place of Christ the King is located in Bethlehem, in complete violation of the 1993 Oslo Accords that cost then Israeli Prime Mister Yitzhak Rabin his life when he assassinated by a Zionist zealot who was opposed to the Oslo Accords, Yigal Amir, on Sunday, November 4, 1995:

While the world remains fixated on the devastation in Gaza and escalating regional tensions, the Israeli government has quietly executed a “legal coup” in the occupied West Bank, drawing condemnation from Palestinians.

Late on Sunday, Israel’s security cabinet ratified a series of decisions pushed by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and Defence Minister Israel Katz. The new measures, which aim to expand Israel’s power across the occupied West Bank, will make it easier to seize Palestinian land illegally.

“We are anchoring settlement as an inseparable part of Israel’s government policy,” said Katz.

Experts say it will fundamentally alter the civil and legal reality of the territory, removing what the Israeli ministers termed “legal obstacles” that have existed for decades against the expansion of illegal settlements in the occupied territories.

The Palestinian presidency called the decision “dangerous” and an “open Israeli attempt to legalise settlement expansion” and land confiscation. President Mahmoud Abbas’s office called on the United States and the United Nations Security Council to intervene immediately.

On Monday, eight Muslim-majority countries denounced Israel for trying to impose “unlawful Israeli sovereignty” in the occupied West Bank.

Palestinian officials and legal experts warn that this package effectively terminates the 1993 Oslo Accords, stripping the Palestinian Authority (PA) of its remaining civil powers and legislating the de facto annexation of the West Bank.

The real estate war

At the heart of these decisions is a strategic assault on land ownership laws that have been in place since 1967, when Israel occupied Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem and subsequently annexed these territories.

The Israeli cabinet approved the cancellation of a Jordanian law that historically prohibited the sale of land in the West Bank to non-Arabs. Simultaneously, the government decided to lift the secrecy on land registry records in place since the Ottoman period.

According to Amir Daoud, director of documentation at the Wall and Settlement Resistance Commission, this move is designed to create an “open market” for settlers. By exposing the identities of Palestinian landowners in the registry, settlers and real estate companies can now target specific individuals for pressure, extortion, or entrapment to force land sales.

“This government puts settlement expansion at the centre of its policy,” Daoud told Al Jazeera Arabic. “By facilitating the leak of Palestinian land to settlers, they are adding a new layer of apartheid.”

The Yesha Council, a gathering of illegal settlements, celebrated the decision as the “most important in 58 years”, stating that the Israeli government is now declaring, in practice, that “the land of Israel belongs to the Jewish people”.

Breaching Areas A and B

Perhaps the most aggressive shift in the new directives is the authorisation for Israeli forces to conduct enforcement and demolitions in Area A and B zones, which under the Oslo Accords, are supposed to be under Palestinian civil and security control.

Area C, which is under total Israeli control, constitutes 60 percent of the West Bank. More than 700,000 illegal Israeli settlers live in Area C and occupied East Jerusalem across more than 250 illegal settlements.

To bypass international law, Israel has introduced a new legal mechanism: the “Protection of Antiquities and Environment”.

“Israel has erased the distinctions between Areas A, B, and C,” Daoud noted, explaining that this policy was financially primed three years ago when the cabinet allocated 120 million shekels ($39m) to “protect Jewish heritage sites” in the West Bank.

Municipal apartheid

The decision also institutionalises a system of “municipal apartheid” in key Palestinian cities, removing them from PA jurisdiction.

• Hebron: Planning and construction powers have been stripped from the Palestinian municipality and transferred to the Israeli Civil Administration. A “separate municipal entity” will be created for the Jewish settlers in the heart of the city to manage their affairs independently, bypassing Palestinian mechanisms entirely.
• Rachel’s Tomb (Bethlehem): The site has been removed from the jurisdiction of the Bethlehem municipality and placed under direct Israeli administration for maintenance and services.

Adel Shadid, an expert on Israeli affairs, warned that these administrative changes have profound religious and political implications.

“The Ibrahimi Mosque is no longer treated as a Muslim holy site managed by the Palestinian Awqaf,” Shadid told Al Jazeera Arabic. “Its management has been transferred to the Jewish Religious Council in Kiryat Arba. Israel has effectively Judaized its identity by law, not just by force”.

In 2010, the Israeli government had already proclaimed the Ibrahimi Mosque located in Hebron as a “Jewish Heritage site”.

Pre-empting Trump

The timing of this “legal overhaul” is not accidental. According to Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper, Smotrich and Katz pushed to ratify these decisions immediately prior to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s upcoming visit to the United States.

Analysts believe Israel’s far-right government is racing against time to establish irreversible “facts on the ground” before October elections for the Israeli parliament or Knesset, and amid fears that US President Donald Trump might shift his stance on annexation.

James Moran, a former adviser to the European Union, believes the intent is clear.

“Smotrich was quoted saying: ‘We will continue to kill the idea of a Palestinian state,'” Moran told Al Jazeera Arabic from Brussels. “This decision shows there is absolutely no intention for a just solution”.

Netanyahu has repeatedly said that he is against the formation of a sovereign Palestinian state. He has worked to undermine the Oslo Accords that called for the so-called two-state solution. Several Western governments, including France and the United Kingdom, last year recognised Palestinian statehood. But they have done little to deter Israel from expanding illegal settlements on Palestinian lands – the biggest stumbling block in the realisation of a Palestinian state.

Moran argued that international condemnations are no longer sufficient. “It is time for sanctions,” he said, suggesting that the EU should consider suspending trade agreements with Israel, given that a third of Israel’s trade is with the bloc.

Violence unleashed

On the ground, the cabinet’s decisions were interpreted by the settler movement as a “green light” for total impunity.

Al Jazeera Arabic’s correspondent in Hebron, Montaser Nassar, reported an immediate spike in violence following the announcement. “What is happening on the ground is the true translation of these decisions,” Nassar said.

Within hours of the ratification:

• Settlers raided the Al-Rashaydeh Mosque east of Bethlehem, stealing its contents and causing severe damage.
• In Bani Naim, east of Hebron, settlers brutally beat an 80-year-old disabled Palestinian man.
• Demolition notices were handed to Palestinians in Berin (east of Hebron), while demolitions were carried out in Bedouin communities in the northern Jordan Valley.

Dalal Iriqat, a professor of diplomacy and conflict resolution, warned that the situation has moved beyond the point of political manoeuvring.

“We are witnessing the institutional and legal annexation of the West Bank,” Iriqat told Al Jazeera Arabic.

“Israel is imposing a reality of ‘Greater Israel’ and apartheid. If the international community does not move from statements to action, the situation on the ground will explode.” (Israeli plans deepen de facto annexation of occupied West Bank.)

No Catholic can turn a blind eye to the Israeli hatred against Christains, Catholics and Orthodox alike. The Israeli targeting of Christian churches and institutions of mercy is no accident as contemporary Talmudists and Zionists have the same contempt for the Prince of Peace’s followers as the Biblical Jews had for Him when He walked amongst them and as they arranged for Him to be arrested, tried, condemned, scourged, crowned with thorns and Crucified:

The significance of Jewish teachings – known severally as the Talmud, the Midrash, and the Torah – may not be immediately obvious. Yet, on closer examination, this Jewish tradition of learning has exerted a powerful anti-Christian influence in our modern world. From wars through war crimes and the subversion of Christianity to support its horrendous crimes, the hatred of Christ and Christian values has combined with the liberal-global tradition to produce much of the hell on earth we inhabit today.

In recent days, a video from 2023 has resurfaced in which the president of the European Commission explains the idea of the Europe she leads: “Europe is the values of the Talmud,” she says, claiming the central text of Rabbinic Judaism records the “Jewish sense of personal responsibility, of justice—and of solidarity.”

Ursula von der Leyen spoke in 2022 at Ben Gurion University in Israel. What was she talking about – and why does it matter?

What is the Talmud?

The Talmud – meaning “study” or “learning” – is the written oral tradition of Rabbinic Judaism, second only in its significance to the Old Testament in Jewish “religious” teaching.

The Talmud began around the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 AD and has been formalized into Jewish religious law—or halacha—“the laws of Jewish life” that “governs daily Jewish practice.”

Today, many in Israel, including in its government, call for this to be the law of the state of Israel. Yet its influence has shaped our world far beyond the undefined borders of the Zionist state.

Its teachings inform the political decision-making of Israeli, American, and now European leaders, legitimizing regime change wars abroad and sanctifying the persecution of Christians – such as the “ancient Jewish custom” of spitting on Catholic priests, Christians, and churches in the birthplace of Christianity.

So, what are the values of the Talmud, whose inspiration guides the “religious” and secular Zionists of today?

Sanctifying desecration

Von der Leyen accepted her honorary degree with praise for Yitzhak Rabin, the former prime minister of Israel. A religious Zionist assassinated him, and his life was threatened by current National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir – who attacked Rabin’s car weeks before he was murdered.

Ben-Gvir is also the man who defended the routine spitting on Catholic monks and priests, committed by “religious” Jews.

As Haaretz reported in 2023, a “prominent Jewish settler” said, “It’s a good time to mention that spitting near priests or churches is an ancient Jewish custom, and there’s even a special blessing in Jewish law that should be recited when you see a church.”

This custom comes from the Talmud. It was observed in Jerusalem in May 2023, where naive Evangelical Christian Zionists were spat upon by a mob led by the deputy mayor of Jerusalem, Arieh King.

He said, “It is the duty of every Jew to save all Jews from descending into the Christian cult … we came here to protest in front of them.”

King led protesters in “chanting insults, spitting on participants and smashing windows at the center” which hosted a prayer meeting, as Haaretz recorded, while “hundreds of Christians attended the event, including Evangelical supporters of Israel.”

A question to Grok 3 on the phenomenon of Evangelical Christian Zionism, which many Christians consider to be heretical, returns the following:

Regarding the conversion of Jews to Christianity, beliefs vary among evangelical Christian Zionists. A significant subset, influenced by dispensationalism, holds that the return of Jews to Israel sets the stage for apocalyptic events, including a period of tribulation described in the Book of Revelation. Some interpret passages like Romans 11:25-26 (“a partial hardening has come upon Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in, and so all Israel will be saved”) to mean that a mass conversion of Jews to Christianity will occur either before or during Christ’s return. In this view, the Second Coming involves Jesus reigning from Jerusalem, often after a battle at Armageddon, and many believe that Jews will recognize Jesus as the Messiah at that time.

However, not all Christian Zionists emphasize conversion as an immediate goal. Some, like Pastor John Hagee of Christians United for Israel, focus on supporting Israel out of a perceived biblical mandate without actively pushing for Jewish conversion, arguing that their support is a way to honor God’s covenant with Abraham’s descendants.

Bethlehem Palestinian Christian Pastor Munther Isaac charges that “the Christian Zionism movement weaponizes the Bible and says John Hagee and others are engaged in a political movement that leads to great suffering for the Palestinians.” In a YouTube interview, he responding to a question about what he would say to Hagee if he met him, he said that he

…would call Hagee to repent from his obsession with power, with a militant solution to everything, and his unwavering and uncritical support to an apartheid regime, for his constant dehumanization of Palestinians and for refusing to open his eyes to the suffering of Palestinians for 75 years. I would challenge him to rediscover the way of Jesus, the way of peace, the way of compassion. I don’t recognize the Gospel in many of these leaders, who openly have called for Israel, some of them, to turn Gaza into a parking lot. It is shocking to us how distant they are from the very same teachings of Jesus…That is why we talk about the weaponization of the Bible.

On October 4, 2023, “religious” Jews were filmed spitting on Christians in Jerusalem during a parade for the Jewish festival of Sukkot.

In February 2024, the Catholic abbot of the Dormition Abbey in Jerusalem was filmed being spat on and attacked by “religious” Jews, who cursed “f****ing Jesus” as they did so.

Abbot Schnabel said in an interview following the attack that he is “spat on practically daily.”

The author of this custom, known as “The Maharil,” is described as “the foremost Talmudist of his generation” by the Jewish Virtual Library.

Yet spitting on Christians is not the only anti-Christian message it teaches.

The cursing and damnation of Christ

Just as the “religious” Jews cursed “Yeshua” when spitting on the abbot, the Talmud refers to Christ as Yeshu.

Why does it do so?

The three consonants j s (shin) v, with which the name Jeshu was written, are here explained as being the first letters of the three words: /=jimmach, sh = sh’mo, v = v’zichro, i.e., may be blotted out his name and his memory.

The very name of Christ is expressed as a curse in the Talmud, as the Lutheran Bernhard Pick explained in his 1910 essay, “The Personality of Jesus in the Talmud.”

Pick examines the traditional Talmud, which he says has been censored “by the Jews themselves” to remove the most damning passages about the Lord. “In our days, such accusations against the Talmud were impossible because all these offensive passages have been removed … by the Jews themselves.”

This, he says, is “a fact only very often overlooked by controversialists. In the Jewish year 5391 (i.e., A.D. 1631) a Jewish synod held at Petrikau, in Poland, issued a circular letter to the effect that all such passages in the Talmud which refer to Jesus, etc., should be omitted in the future.”

In brief, the Talmud says Jesus Christ was a bastard, His mother a whore, and He was a sorcerer in league with the devil who died the deserving death of a common criminal.

Organizations such as Los Angeles-based “Jews for Judaism” say the passages cursing Christ are misinterpreted or point to omissions from texts, which Pick reminds us were removed by “the Jews themselves” to appease Christians.

It is to be remembered that the Talmud also says it is just for Jews to deceive non-Jews and that legal disputes should always be framed to exonerate Jews of wrongdoing.

A 2009 book documenting the mention of Our Lord, titled “Jesus in the Talmud,” states:

The Talmudic stories make fun of Jesus’ birth from a virgin, fervently contest his claim to be the Messiah and Son of God and maintain that he was rightfully executed as a blasphemer and idolater.

They subvert the Christian idea of Jesus’ resurrection and insist he got the punishment he deserved in hell – and that a similar fate awaits his followers.

What punishment does the Talmud say Christ received in hell?

He is in the “Tzoah Rotachat” for eternity – “boiling in excrement.”

The Zionist mindset

The Talmud directly inspires the Zionist mindset of the government of Israel. Its finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, says the “Greater Israel” project to expand Israel’s borders through war – with the direct assistance of the United States – is prophesied in religious texts.

“It is written that the future of Jerusalem is to expand to Damascus,” he says.

Where is it written? The Greater Israel movement arose to claim Israel should retain all the territory it took in the 1967 Arab-Israel war – its goals in annexing the West Bank and Gaza promoted by Smotrich today.

In addition, it draws on interpretations of the Old Testament to say Israel has a right to annex parts of Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Egypt, and Jordan. There are at least three versions of “Greater Israel” in the Bible, but Smotrich does not explain to which of these writings he refers.

Smotrich uses this heresy to justify his plan – currently underway – to violently annex the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and promote the extermination or expulsion of the entire population of Gaza.

The project of “Greater Israel” has been served by the “regime change” or “forever” wars urged by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the United States Congress in 2002, and pursued on the Jewish traditional principle of “striking your enemy first” – the concept of “pre-emptive war.”

The “interpretations” of the Old Testament form the Midrash Raba, which, along with the Talmud, the Hebrew Old Testament, and the five books of Moses, comprise the traditions of Jewish teaching known as the Torah, but which by no means do all Jews interpret or accept in the same way, disregarding many of the worst, horrific Talmudic teachings.

The Midrash Raba has inspired the doctrine of pre-emptive war, pursued by Israel “since day one,” and injected into the national security strategy of the United States in 2002 – following the advice of Netanyahu.

A million historic Christians with their roots in the time of Christ have been killed as a result of this warmongering, inspired by the “religious” teachings which shape Israeli and U.S. policy.

How do these teachings justify these actions? The Talmud provides more insights.

“The best of Gentiles [non-jews] should all be killed”, it says in Soferim 15, “even if we are not in war.”

Further, the Talmud states, “God has permitted all the possessions of the Gentiles to the Jews” – meaning land and property of non-Jews can be seized under Halachic Law, which many in the Israeli government say should be the legal code of the state of Israel.

Netanyahu has made much use of the Hebrew name “Amalek” – a term meaning the enemies of Israel – who are, as former IDF Chief Yoav Gallant said of the Gazans, “human animals.”

The Talmud says that non-Jews are not human.

“Goyim [Gentiles] are considered beasts, and only Jews are human.” (Bava Metzia 114b). This explains how the state of Israel can justify its horrific crimes against the non-Jewish population, as well as those against the United States – such as in the USS Liberty attack or the theft of U.S. nuclear material and secrets. (The 'Judeo-Christian' lie is destroying the Christian West.)

The Talmudic and Zionist hatred for Christians is palpable, it is ongoing, and it is relentless. Yet is that so-called “Christian Zionists” give their full support to the murderous policies of the Zionist State of Israel because of their own heretical beliefs about Divine Revelation.

There is no such thing as Judeo-Christian “values,” but there is no such thing as a generic Christianity as, to quote Father Frederick William Faber. “Where there is no Mass there is no Christianity,” a truth that Father Robert Mader reiterated seventy years later:

That we are vitally permeated with the actual presence of our King is characteristic of our religion. Catholicism is not merely a marvellous teaching, a wonderful moral system, an unexcelled organization. It is more. It is the real, living, present Jesus with His Mystical Body, i.e., the faithful united with Him. It is not so much a theory as it is something living. A Catholicism that would not be united with Jesus would be nothing but a phantom in the mist, a soulless shell with another name and another outlook than its own.

That is why it is perhaps dangerous to faith if we use misunderstood words like Christianity and Catholicism somewhat too often. Let us repeat: Catholicism is not a theory, not a teaching, Christianity is the invisible but truly living presence of Christ among us, the Kingship of Jesus. To be Catholic means to stand in vital communication, through faith, hope and love, with the invisibly present Redeemer, the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

Thus it is that there, where Jesus is not present in the Host and no living communication with Him takes place, there can be no living Christianity. In that moment when Luther rejected the Sacrament of the Altar and therewith Christ present, he rejected Christianity.

Christianity equals Christ with the Christians! What does Jesus do when He is with the Christians? The same thing he did for three years in Palestine: be King. We often have no real concept of the life and the effectiveness of Jesus in the tabernacle. We think that because our eyes and ears are too weak to observe the divine-human activity of Jesus in the tabernacle, only the stillness of death reigns there. That is a gross deception.

His activity depends neither upon the greatness of his work room nor the loudness of sounds. What gigantic work is done by sun and nature, although no eye and ear can observe its progress! The Jesus of the tabernacle is the same as the Jesus in the Gospels, the same in Holiness, in Might, in Wisdom, in Omniscience, in Mercy and in Love. St. Paul writes in Hebrews (13:8) that "Jesus Christ, yesterday, and to-day; and the same for ever."

So what is Jesus doing in the tabernacles? He exercises His priestly office. The King prays. He holds perpetual adoration. He holds services in the name of the parish. He celebrates the Holy Mass. The visible Mass is over with the Ite missa est. The invisible Mass continues day and night since Jesus is present in the tabernacle, as an offering of praise and thanks and reparation. The parish priest is obliged by canon law to "read" Holy Mass for the congregation every Sunday. That is called "application." Jesus does more than the visible priest. He prays and makes application for HIs people continually.

What else Jesus do in the tabernacle? He exercises His office Shepherd. He does pastoral care of souls. The King keeps watch. The eyes of the Good Shepherd never sleep. They see everything that happens in the parish, in the houses and in the hearts. The eyes of the Good Shepherd take note of every longing for help and every danger. The Heart of the Good Shepherd beats for all with unending love, and that is the soul of pastoral work.

What else does Jesus do in the tabernacle? He exercises the preaching office, a preaching that penetrates deeper than just to the ears and without the preaching of the clergy in the pulpit remains nothing but sounding brass and tinkling cymbal. The King speaks. The angels are His parish helpers. They visit the individual souls of the parishioners on assignment from the Saviour and with the power of the Holy Spirit. That proves what ought to be proven: that Christianity is not empty theory. Christianity is Christ with the Christians! The King lives!

Christianity should not be anything for us than it was for the Apostles: a living relationship to Jesus present. This personal relationship expresses itself in faith, hope and love for Jesus the King. Above all it is the Christian with Christ through love! Take for example in thought. Love expresses itself in its domination of the entire world of our thoughts. The world of thoughts usually is preoccupied with business, pleasure, the latest sensation, exaggerated worries and often just dirt. It is materialistic, money-grabbing, sensual, alcoholic, worldly. It is the thought of a baptized heathen. If we want to call ourselves Christians, then we ought to think of nothing but Christ Who is present among us. Neither work nor politics, neither the press nor sports ought to occupy us in the least in comparison to the occupation of our memory and our understanding by Jesus. That's Christianity!

The same applies to the world of feelings. Measure your temperature in Church, near to Jesus. It is much lower than when you are in a theater, a restaurant, in the office. That's not normal. You must have a heart defect. And today it seems that cardiac defects have become the mass epidemic of Christianity. We love everything, only not for Jesus. I repeat: that's not normal! A patient whose temperature has sunk so low is very ill. Christianity is the Christian with Christ. Not only with his thoughts and his feelings, but in all his doings must he be with Him. The church, the house where Jesus lives, ought to be a stronger attraction for every genuine Christian than any other house in in town, even during the week. Tell me where I can find you most often, and I will tell you who are are.

We want to be Christians again! Yet a little while, and we shall see Jesus. The Invisible will become visible. The hidden King of the tabernacle is Judge over punishment or reward for eternity! The great movement of decision over heaven and hell has come. What is heaven? The place of blessed happiness in love. It is clear that whoever does not know the great law of Christianity, the law of love between the Christian and Christ, cannot enter into heaven. Not want to love Christ, Who is Love, is the sins of sins! Whoever does not love will be damned. We want to become Christians again. We want to love again, love and die for Christ the King. (Father Robert Mader, Cross and the Crown, edited and translated by Dr. Eileen Kunze, Sarto House, 1999, pp. 92-94.)

As we know, the ineffable Sacrifice of the Cross is not offered universally today as it was when Father Mader wrote eighty-five years ago. Our Lord is not present in His Real Presence in most tabernacles in the world today. The new religion wrought by conciliarism has reduced the days of mandatory fast and abstinence during Lent to two, Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. That’s it. Forty days of Lent. Only two days of mandatory fast and abstinence under penalty of sin. A religion that eschews the necessity of fasting and abstinence during Lent has nothing to do with Catholicism. Nothing. The lack of sacrifice in the conciliar sect has led to a loss of faith in the souls of millions and to the actual celebration of sin in one conciliar-controlled parish, school, university and seminary after another. The “popes” of the conciliar sect have celebrated “religious liberty” and the “separation of the Church and State,” which were the goals of Protestantism and Judeo-Masonry, and had already produced a mess in the world by the time that the “Second” Vatican Council took place.

Father Mader explained how things had degenerated in his own time from 1914 to 1934 because nations had revolted against Christ the King and His true Church:

What happened? World War I began in 1914. In the whole world there was no Catholic government. All of them without exception had become more or less liberal. It seemed as though Jesus Himself had become "liberal" in order to punish the nations. He did not "interfere in the political affairs of the nations." He apparently did what all the popular assemblies and the newspapers had been demanding of Him for more than a hundred years. And now look at the paradox! The nations which had been liberal for a century and which had given themselves liberal constitutions and elected liberal representatives now accused God of committing a crime, because He did not want to interfere in politics! If one is liberal, then one has no right to accuse God of non-intervention. If the liberals want to be consistent, then they have to keep silence on our question.

A word to the sentimental souls: The World Wars and the revolutions with all their injustices that cry to heaven and their cruelties are supposed to be proof that there is no God, and that Jesus is a failure. Answer: The world has not only become unbelieving and liberal; it is godless. Of course there have always been godless individuals. But it has been reserved to modern times to raise godlessness to public power. And what is worse, godlessness had turned into actual glowing hatred of God. It became a fury. Mankind fell upon God in order to strangle Him, kill Him and eradicate Him.

Whoever casts a glance into the secrets of modern Freemasonry knows that we are not exaggerating. Freemasonry is the secret government behind most of the earth's governments. What we are experiencing since the French Revolution is the radical, implacable, irreconcilable war against God, the revolution of earth against heaven.

If this is the case, what did God have to do? All graces had been thrown to the wind, all warnings were ridiculed. The world had become unteachable and incapable of conversion. God's mercy and patience were taken as an excuse for more impertinence and new ridicule. And it must be emphasized that we stood it! We watched the outbreaks of hatred against God and had no laws and no courts with which to defend the rights of God and His Christ. We made ourselves accomplices. (Father Robert Mader, Cross and the Crown, edited and translated by Dr. Eileen Kunze, Sarto House, 1999, pp. 63-64.)

The same can be said of Catholics here in the United States of America. We have been accomplices to placing the godless in power, those who curse and who revile their opponents as they seek to revenge every slight and injustice, whether real or imagined. We have trusted in the ability of politics to keep “bad guys” out even though anyone who does not acknowledge Christ the King is advancing evil whether or not they realize it. Even fully believing Catholics

Following the destruction of Jerusalem, the Romans covered the places of hallowed memory to the Christian with rubble. The cave of the Holy Sepulchre was buried under such rubble, and over as well Golgotha pagan images and temples were erected in honor of Venus and Jupiter. For this reason the Christians did not go there anymore, in order not to be mistaken for idol-worshippers. Emperor Constantine ordered the temples and images torn down and the rubble carried away. After long and hard work the cave of the Holy Sepulchre was found. Not found away three crosses with nails were discovered, and along with them the superscription, which, however, lay separate from the cross.

Without doubt one of the these must be the Cross of the Savior, but there was no certain sign that would differentiate it from the crosses of the two thieves. This was given when a mortally il woman was suddenly cured by touching the true Cross. The Holy Cross was then encased in silver and precious gems, and a church was built over it, which according to Emperor Constantine's order was to be more magnificent than anything ever seen before. In memory of these events, the Church recalls the Finding of the Most Holy Cross on May 3, in order that on every day until the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross (September 14), land and people with be blessed with a splinter, a particle of the Cross.

We have every reason to remember these events. Christianity is the religion of the Crucified One. In his first letter to the Corinthians the Apostle of the Nations, St. Paul, declares: "For I judged not myself to know anything among you, but Jesus Christ, and him crucified (1 Cor. 2:2). St. Paul's preaching, no matter how many-sided it appears, always returns to the central Sun of Christendom: Jesus on the Cross, King of the World! Everything else is either a ray from this Sun, or it is nothing. In the Crucifix lies our entire dogmatic and moral theology, our entire teaching on faith and morals, our catechism. The Cross is our library. Every other book has value only inasmuch as the spirit of the Cross speaks in it.

Modernists have attempted to ban the old preaching of St. Paul, the Gospel of the Cross, to oblivion. The Cross means the teaching of the necessity of sacrifice and of grace, and this now lies under the rubble on which a new paganism has erected once again the pagan images and temples of Jupiter, Mercury, Venus and Bacchus--in other words, the absolutist state, capitalism, immorality, and addiction to pleasure. A certain superficial Christianity, which puts more value on being modern than on being Catholic and Biblical, and for which the imitation of the spirit of the times is more understandable than the imitation of Christ, has made itself a willing accomplice.

We have lost the Cross. We have a Christianity that no longer understands sacrifice and there is no Christianity or only a soulless version of Christianity. We need Constantines and Helens who will once again dig out the the Cross from under the rubble and make it their shrine and their sign, and who believe that the King's throne is the Cross.

The crucified King! In the family we must have a Finding of the the Most Holy Cross! The modern family has lost the crucifix, and in its place it has raised up the political hero, the artist, old pagan gods, nudity and the prostitute. The crucifix does not fit into the modern home. The modern living room preaches money-grabbing, pride, vanity, lasciviousness, laziness. The modern living room is the exaltation of the seven deadly sins. At least one is honest enough to feel the Cross no longer fits into this milieu and has got rid of it because in the long run the crucifix can only remain there where the spirit of the Crucified One remains, and the spirit of the Crucified is no longer there.

The spirit of the Crucified is the spirit of love and sacrifice, but the spirit of the modern family is the spirit of selfishness and enjoyment. The speech of the Crucified says: First the others, I come last! The speech of selfishness is: First I, then again I, the others come last! The Christian family is built on the notion of sacrifice and devotion. The concept of the Christian father is: Work from morning to evening for others. The concept of the Christian mother is: Care for others! Let the self always come last! The concept of the Christian child is: Respect, love, obedience. Father and mother first, only then I!

The notion of sacrifice is dying out in the modern family. The modern family is built upon the law of egotism. The modern family takes as its motto: "As much enjoyment and as little sacrifice as possible!" This is the source of Malthusianism. That is where characterless education comes from. And that is the doom of the family. Only the Cross and its sermon of self-discipline, self-denial and devotion can save the dying family. . . .

If one knows Who Jesus is: the Creator and the Conserver, the Savior, the Owner of the earth, then one must regard the liberal sin, that of fundamental social refusal to recognize the spiritual monarchy of Christ over society, as the most grievous sin committed since Good Friday. It is deicide, God-murder, committed in the name of law and of Satan, true Antichristianity. Cardinal Mercier therefore rightly called the official apostasy of the nations the greatest crime of our times.

At present this is the situation of the Sign of the Son of Man. They do not want it to shine in the heavens. Just like back then on Good Friday: We will not have Him reign over us! (Father Robert Mader, Cross and the Crown, edited and translated by Dr. Eileen Kunze, Sarto House, 1999, pp. 117-119.) 

Yes, the overthrow of the Social Reign of Christ the King wrought by the Protestant Revolution and institutionalized by the religiously indifferentist Judeo-Masonic civil state of Modernity is indeed the “most grievous sin committed since Good Friday.” The world today like the Jews of Jerusalem on Good Friday “will not have Him reign over us.”

Donald John Trump will not have Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ reign over him or his decisions, certainly not as he contemplates a massive military attack upon the Islamic Republic of Iran upon the arbitrary decision alone, without any Congressional authorization whatsoever, can decide whether Iran can develop nuclear weapons or even possess ballistic missiles that are capable of attacking Israel, which is perfectly able to defend itself with its own arsenal of over two hundred nuclear warheads.

The impending war will be undertaken for only one reason: for the sake of Benjamin Netanyahu’s Greater Israel project, and no believing Catholic who has read this commentary with care thus far can possible conclude that this is something that is done at the behest of those who deny Our Lord’s Sacred Divinity pleases Him in the slightest. American Catholics must stop thinking and emoting as jingoist Americans but as Catholics, who take seriously the following words of Pope Saint Pius X in Singulari Quadam, September 12, 1912:

These are fundamental principles: No matter what the Christian does, even in the realm of temporal goods, he cannot ignore the supernatural good. Rather, according to the dictates of Christian philosophy, he must order all things to the ultimate end, namely, the Highest Good. All his actions, insofar as they are morally either good or bad (that is to say, whether they agree or disagree with the natural and divine law), are subject to the judgment and judicial office of the Church. (Pope Saint Pius X, Singulari Quadam, September 24, 1912.)

Catholics must be conscious at all times of how their actions look in light of eternity, and this means that we must bound to consider the use of military force as an absolute last resort, not a first resort to be used in a preemptive manner when no direct, imminent threat exists to the security of the United States of America and, in the case of Iran, one of the principle reasons that its leaders hate this country, apart from Mohammedans own basic of infidels, is because of the many ways in which the government of the United States of America have aided and abetted the Israeli seize of Palestinian property in 1948, the detention centers erected thereafter, the constant warfare against Arab and Arab self-determination.

Sure, the Mohammedans in Iran, whose own souls are captive to the devil by means of Original Sin just as are the Jews themselves, thus predisposing them both to hate and kill their “enemies,” have recently killed over forty thousand of their own citizens who were protesting their regime.

What business is this of the United States of America as this is what Mohammedans do?

As I have noted so many times in the past, a coalition of Catholic nations, if such existed in this world today, which it does not, would have a justification to resort to the use of force against the United States of America solely for its indemnification of the daily slaughter of the innocent preborn by chemical and surgical means. Donald John Trump’s refusal to enforce the Comstock Law has resulted in the executions of more innocent human beings by means of the mifepristone, the human pesticide, than were killed recently by murderous Mohammedan thugs in Iran.

You doubt my word?

Please re-read Donald John Trump's Genocide.

No Catholic who reads this should not conclude that there is no equivalence between what the Iranians have done to their own people and what we do to innocent babies unless the humanity of those babies does not matter.

Who can say what kind of government will emerge in Iran after weeks of sustained strikes result, for the sake of argument, of the end of the mullahs’ rule in what was Persia?

Oh, who is ruling Iraq after the mess our policies created there from 2003-2011as thousands of Americans were killed and maimed while hundreds of thousands of Iraqis were killed and three-fourths of the Chaldean Rite Catholic population were forced to flee the homeland of their ancestors?

Who is ruling Afghanistan now?

Isn’t it the Taliban?                                

What does Donald John Trump care about this?

Nothing as he in infallible although his “Board of Peace” is a perverse farce as he plots a war that may result in the needless loss of many American lives to benefit the murderous agents of Zionism in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv:

I always heard peace in the Middle East is impossible. And it turned out not to be. And we do have some work to do with Iran.

They can’t have a nuclear weapons, very simple. They can’t have, you can’t have peace in the Middle East if they have a nuclear weapon. And they can’t have a nuclear weapon, and they’ve been told that very strongly. (Board of Peace Full Transcript By President Donald Trump: Thursday, February 19, 2026.)

Interjection Number Four:

Donald John Trump believes that the Zionist State of Israel determines what constitutes peace in the Middle East, but to the extent that two sets of adherents of false religions whose souls are slaves to the devil by means of Original Sin and their own Actual Sins have been at war, whether overtly or covertly by Iranian-sponsored terrorists, is directly traceable to the Zionists’ defiance of the rights of Christ the King by violently establishing state in the Holy Land where He—and no one else—Sovereign.

For those who have forgotten, therefore, perhaps it is wise to review the precepts of the Just War Theory as applied to the current war drums that are being beaten by founder, chairman, and sole-decision maker of the very misnamed Donald J. Trump Board of Peace.

War Must be Just, and to be Just There Must be a Casus Belli

As has been noted so many times before on this website, the Just War Theory, which was expounded at first by Saint Augustine and then by Saint Thomas Aquinas eight centuries later with variations of it having been formulated over the centuries, requires a reason for engaging in armed conflict. What follows is an attempt to apply the principles of the Just War Theory to the present circumstances in the Middle East.

1. There must be a wound to justice that poses a real and imminent threat to the good order of nations and/or to the territorial integrity or well-being of innocents by an aggressor. The threat must be real, not imaginary, not concocted for political purposes. In this instance, there was no real and imminent threat to the legitimate national security of interests of the United States of America. The State of Israel is threatened, but not the United States of America, and the State of Israel has more than enough means to defend itself without the loss of American lives and American taxpayer dollars to enable them to continue to treat non-Jews as subhumans

2. All peaceful means to avoid armed hostilities must be exhausted. Diplomatic efforts to avert war must be genuine. It was the authority of the Vicar of Christ himself during the Middle Ages and various times thereafter who attempted to broker disputes in order to avoid war. In this instance, Donald John Trump has decided that the Islamic Republic of Iran cannot have nuclear weapons even though it is a sovereign country. He is not saying this to the totalitarian monsters of the so-called People’s Republic of China nor to Vladmir Putin’s Russian Federation. Once again, this is all about what the leaders of Israel believe is best for their county, and the United States of America cannot act arbitrarily about which country can possess what weapons. It is quite immoral to appear to open to negotiations when one’s only goal is to wage an full-scale war upon a sovereign nation and thus put innocent civilians in harm’s way.

3. A duly constituted authority must make the determinations concerning the waging of war. This means that a legitimate governing authority guided by right intentions and right principles must be in charge of the decision-making process. Contrary to what he believes, Donald John Trump is supposed to make decisions in accord with the constitutional oath of office he took on January 20, 2025, the Feast of Saints Fabian and Sebastian:

1. I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

2. No Catholic can criticize former President Joseph Autopen Robinette Biden, Jr., for refusing to enforce the just immigration laws passed by the Congress of the United States of America to produce the sort of demographic changes that would solidify hard-core Marxists control of all branches of the Federal government and many state and local governments (see Why Exactly Did Biden & Co. Destroy the Border?) while serving as mindless cheerleaders as Donald John Trump, following the example of almost every president after Franklin Delano Roosevelt, may act preemptively without any kind of Congressional Declaration of War or even the fig leaf of an extra-Congressional resolution authorizing military action if it comes to this within the next week or ten days. He has NO AUTHORITY FOUNDED IN THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA TO DO THIS, and, although Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Woodrow Wilson effectively “suspended” legitimate constitutional liberties during the War between the States and World War I, respectively, there is constitutional provision making it possible for any president to “suspend” the Constitution and then to act as he pleases as though the other two branches of the Federal government are subordinate to the executive branch, which they are not.

4. The goals of war must be well-defined and have a reasonable chance of being realized. In other words, there must be a reasonable chance for success in the pursuit of narrowly defined goals. Goals are to be defined narrowly so as to limit the harm caused by a needlessly protracted war, yes, even when a nation is prosecuting a just cause. Can anyone, including President Donald John Trump himself, explain precisely what the goals of military action against Iran are?

   1. Nuclear disarmament?

   2. Ballistic missile disarmament?

   3. Regime change?

   4. All of the above?

   5. No military action can be undertaken even if there is a casus belli, which there is not in this instance if commanders are not given a clear set of achievable goals to pursue.

5. The good end being sought must not be outweighed by the foreseen evil to be done. This is known as the Catholic principle of proportionality, which states that a good end can be rendered unjust to pursue if a judgment is made that the amount of the foreseen evil to be done in the prosecution of a just war will cause greater evils than the one the war is being waged to eradicate. As noted earlier, no has any idea what a postwar Iran will look like, who will govern it, or if, despite the president’s assurances to the contrary, American troops may be necessary on the ground to occupy, “pacify” and reconstruct any part of the Iranian infrastructure that might be damaged or destroyed during a putative American military strike. Moreover, it is entirely possible that Iranian-based sleeper cells will undertake terrorist actions on their own accord against Americans around the world, especially here in the United States of America as no one knows how many terrorists walked through the southern borders during the disastrous four years that President Joseph Robintte Autopen Biden, Jr, and Kamala Word Salad Harris were in office. One commentator put matters this way:

Will bombing Iran trigger a wider war? That’s a serious question the White House and the American public should consider.

Johnson predicts the United States will hit Iran next week. For the duration of this week, he said, “they’ll keep up the pretense of a negotiation.”

A few questions the American people should consider as this plays out. Is the United States genuinely dedicated to reaching a peaceful resolution? Is it reasonable to ask a sovereign country to give up the option of nuclear energy on its own soil completely, or demand that it basically cripple its ballistic missile program in a world filled with enemies? And is there any reason outside of “might makes right” that justifies the United States being the arbiter of who gets to have dangerous weapons and who doesn’t? Lastly, how does going all the way to the other side of the planet to attack another country align with the Founding Fathers’ foreign policy of nonintervention? (Diplomacy or Deception? U.S. Builds Firepower While Iran Fortifies.)

6. As far as is possible, noncombatants must never be deliberately targeted in warfare. The United States has a mixed record when it comes to the realization of this part of the Just War Theory. Our military forces have tried to use remarkable restraint in many instances. Other times, however, they have not. William Tecumseh Sherman used raw terrorism against civilian population centers as he cut a swath of fiery destruction from the Atlantic Ocean to Atlanta during the War between the States. The government of the United States of America aided the anti-Catholic Masonic revolutionaries in Mexico. Dresden, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki (the latter two of which were known to contain the highest concentrations of Catholics in Japan) were bombed during World War II. Something less than laser precision caused thousands of civilian casualties during the Gulf War and during our long and immoral presence in Afghanistan, which commenced on October 7, 2001, and during and after the American invasion and occupation of Iraq on March 20, 2003. In the present instance, I do think that President Trump would seek to limit damage to civilians as far as possible if he orders an attack on Iranian military and governmental command facilities, but there are intangibles that no one can predict once military hostilities begin. Despite the president’s desire to limit civilian casualties, though, he would be personally responsible for them by undertaking a constitutionally unauthorized military for the benefit of Israel and Israel alone.

7. A just cessation to hostilities must be realized as soon as possible. Once again, the record of the United States’ own record in this regard is very mixed. The dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was done so as to force an unconditional surrender from Japan, something that the Soviets insisted on in the Potsdam Conference as their condition for entering the war against Japan (so that they could recover claims lost in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05.) Japan was willing to surrender conditionally. It is not clear in the present instance who in Iran would have the authority to surrender or whether “moderate” elements of the current regime might sue for peace. As we have seen in Gaza, destruction for its own sake is never justifiable.

Mind you, this is my own application of the principles of the Just War Theory to the possibility of sustained American military strikes upon the Islamic Republic of Iran. Others will come to different conclusions.

However, it is a fact that President Ronald Wilson Reagan bitterly regretted sending American Marines into West Beirut on May 17, 1983, as part of a peacekeeping agreement for ending then Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin’s siege, directed by then Israeli Defense Minister Ariel Sharon, with the merciless shelling of West Beirut that began on June 7, 1982, in an effort to root out the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Authority located there and to kill its leader, Yassir Araft, with whom the aforementioned Yitzhak Rabin, prompted by then President William Jefferson Blythe Clinton, reluctantly shook hands at the end of the ceremony during which the PLO and Israel signed the Oslo Accords at the White House on September 13, 1993.

The presence of the Israeli Defense Forces in West Beirut prompted Iranian-backed and financed terrorists to attack Beirut, Lebanon, on Sunday, October 22, 1983, killing two hundred forty-one Americans who were in the service of the armed forces of the United States of America. Another fifty-eight Frenchmen who were in the service of the armed forces of the French Republic also were killed. Reagan regretted doing Menachem Begin’s bidding, and it is truly tragic that President Donald John Trump is willing to send more Americans to die for the establishment of a Christophobic “Greater Israel.”

Thomas Woodrow Wilson wanted to make the world “safe” for the demigod of democracy.

Donald John Trump wants to make the Middle East safe for Israel, which will then continue to annex the West Bank attempt to drive the remaining Christians from there by means of the unjust seizures of their homes and businesses, persecution, including random killings as are happening at this time, and a general harassment for which the Zionists are well known.

Amorality can have no part in the life of a Catholic, and anyone who thinks that Donald John Trump is governed by any kind of generic Christian morality has a selective memory because the man has frankly said that he has his own “morality” in his “own mind” as I remind you of what he said and my reaction to do it over a month ago now:

Asked in a wide-ranging interview with The New York Times if there were any limits on his global powers, Mr. Trump said: “Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.” (Trump Addresses Venezuela, Greenland and Presidential Power.)

So, let’s get this straight.

Donald John Trump, who has never been a paragon of virtue in his own personal life nor in much of his professional life as a businessman, believes in his “own morality” that is constrained neither by any belief in, no less any knowledge of, the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law, the former of which is known by Divine Revelation and the latter of which is knowable, albeit imperfectly given the vagaries of the darkened intellect and weakened will, by reason alone unaided by Divine Revelation.

The pagan orator Cicero put the matter this way in his Republic:

True law is right reason conformable to nature, universal, unchangeable, eternal, whose commands urge us to duty, and whose prohibitions restrain us from evil. Whether it enjoins or forbids, the good respect its injunctions, and the wicked treat them with indifference. This law cannot be contradicted by any other law, and is not liable either to derogation or abrogation. Neither the senate nor the people can give us any dispensation for not obeying this universal law of justice. It needs no other expositor and interpreter than our own conscience. It is not one thing at Rome, and another at Athens; one thing to-day, and another to-morrow; but in all times and nations this universal law must forever reign, eternal and imperishable. It is the sovereign master and emperor of all beings. God himself is its author, its promulgator, its enforcer. And he who does not obey it flies from himself, and does violence to the very nature of man. And by so doing he will endure the severest penalties even if he avoid the other evils which are usually accounted punishments. (Cicero, The Republic.)

Cicero had it almost entirely correct. Almost. He was wrong in asserting that the natural law does not need any "other expositor and interpreter than our own conscience." He lived before the Incarnation and before the founding of the true Church upon the Rock of Peter, the Pope. Cicero thus did not know that man does need an interpreter and expositor of the natural law, namely, the Catholic Church. Apart from this, however, Cicero understood that God's law does not admit of abrogations by a vote of the people or of a "representative" body, such as the Roman Senate in his day or the United States Congress or state legislatures, et al. in our own day.

Pope Pius XI explained in Divini Illius Magistri, December 31, 1929, the Natural Law is authoritatively explicated by Holy Mother Church even though it can be known by human reason and is thus not, unlike the Divine Positive Law, her exclusive possession:

The Church does not say that morality belongs purely, in the sense of exclusively, to her; but that it belongs wholly to her. She has never maintained that outside her fold and apart from her teaching, man cannot arrive at any moral truth; she has on the contrary more than once condemned this opinion because it has appeared under more forms than one. She does however say, has said, and will ever say, that because of her institution by Jesus Christ, because of the Holy Ghost sent her in His name by the Father, she alone possesses what she has had immediately from God and can never lose, the whole of moral truth, omnem veritatem, in which all individual moral truths are included, as well those which man may learn by the help of reason, as those which form part of revelation or which may be deduced from it  (Pope Pius XI, Divini Illius Magistri, December 31, 1929.)

Writing in Humanum Genus, April 20, 1884, Pope Leo XIII explained what must happen when men and their nations adhere to false Judeo-Masonic principles of jurisprudence that admit of no laws above human laws as the foundation of genuine justice according to the truths of the supernatural and natural order:

But the naturalists go much further; for, having, in the highest things, entered upon a wholly erroneous course, they are carried headlong to extremes, either by reason of the weakness of human nature, or because God inflicts upon them the just punishment of their pride. Hence it happens that they no longer consider as certain and permanent those things which are fully understood by the natural light of reason, such as certainly are -- the existence of God, the immaterial nature of the human soul, and its immortality. The sect of the Freemasons, by a similar course of error, is exposed to these same dangers; for, although in a general way they may profess the existence of God, they themselves are witnesses that they do not all maintain this truth with the full assent of the mind or with a firm conviction. Neither do they conceal that this question about God is the greatest source and cause of discords among them; in fact, it is certain that a considerable contention about this same subject has existed among them very lately. But, indeed, the sect allows great liberty to its votaries, so that to each side is given the right to defend its own opinion, either that there is a God, or that there is none; and those who obstinately contend that there is no God are as easily initiated as those who contend that God exists, though, like the pantheists, they have false notions concerning Him: all which is nothing else than taking away the reality, while retaining some absurd representation of the divine nature.

When this greatest fundamental truth has been overturned or weakened, it follows that those truths, also, which are known by the teaching of nature must begin to fall -- namely, that all things were made by the free will of God the Creator; that the world is governed by Providence; that souls do not die; that to this life of men upon the earth there will succeed another and an everlasting life.

When these truths are done away with, which are as the principles of nature and important for knowledge and for practical use, it is easy to see what will become of both public and private morality. We say nothing of those more heavenly virtues, which no one can exercise or even acquire without a special gift and grace of God; of which necessarily no trace can be found in those who reject as unknown the redemption of mankind, the grace of God, the sacraments, and the happiness to be obtained in heaven. We speak now of the duties which have their origin in natural probity. That God is the Creator of the world and its provident Ruler; that the eternal law commands the natural order to be maintained, and forbids that it be disturbed; that the last end of men is a destiny far above human things and beyond this sojourning upon the earth: these are the sources and these the principles of all justice and morality.

If these be taken away, as the naturalists and Freemasons desire, there will immediately be no knowledge as to what constitutes justice and injustice, or upon what principle morality is founded. And, in truth, the teaching of morality which alone finds favor with the sect of Freemasons, and in which they contend that youth should be instructed, is that which they call "civil," and "independent," and "free," namely, that which does not contain any religious belief. But, how insufficient such teaching is, how wanting in soundness, and how easily moved by every impulse of passion, is sufficiently proved by its sad fruits, which have already begun to appear. For, wherever, by removing Christian education, this teaching has begun more completely to rule, there goodness and integrity of morals have begun quickly to perish, monstrous and shameful opinions have grown up, and the audacity of evil deeds has risen to a high degree. All this is commonly complained of and deplored; and not a few of those who by no means wish to do so are compelled by abundant evidence to give not infrequently the same testimony. (Pope Leo XIII, Humanum Genus, April 20, 1884.)

Yes, there is no “knowledge” of what constitutes justice and injustice in a land that gives full rein to blasphemy and sacrilege, a land where innocent human life is still being extinguished under cover of the civil law by chemical and surgical means.

Truth exists, either in the nature of things or as it has been revealed positively by the true God of Divine Revelation, the Most Blessed Trinity, through His true Church, the Catholic Church. Truth does not depend human acceptance for its binding force or validity, and truth in the supernatural realm and/or in the realm of the natural moral law is no more “imposed” upon anyone than are physical laws such as the “law of gravity.” One who attempts to defy the law of gravity will suffer the consequences for doing so, and those who defy the Divine and Natural Laws suffer consequences both in this life and, if they die having not repented of their sins and confessed them to a true priest in the Sacred Tribunal of Penance, for all eternity in hell.

Donald John Trump, like so many of his predecessors, including the Autopen himself and the man under whom he served as vice president, Barack Hussein Obama/Barry Soetoro, is a law unto himself who even believes that “international law” is what he says it is:

“I don’t need international law,” he added. “I’m not looking to hurt people.”

When pressed further about whether his administration needed to abide by international law, Mr. Trump said, “I do.” But he made clear he would be the arbiter when such constraints applied to the United States.

“It depends what your definition of international law is,” he said.

Mr. Trump’s assessment of his own freedom to use any instrument of military, economic or political power to cement American supremacy was the most blunt acknowledgment yet of his worldview. At its core is the concept that national strength, rather than laws, treaties and conventions, should be the deciding factor as powers collide. (Trump Addresses Venezuela, Greenland and Presidential Power.)

Not looking to hurt people?

Go tell that to the Palestinian people in Gaza who have been subjected the genocidal actions of the Zionist State of Israel, which has received massive funding from the United States of America.

Go tell that those who have been blown to smithereens off the coast of Venezuela on the suspicion of running drugs to the United States of America.

Go tell that to the babies who are still being killed by the human pesticide because President Donald John Trump has continued the policies of President in Name Only Autopen not to enforce the provisions of the Comstock Law barring the mailing of contraceptive and abortifacients.

Not looking to hurt people?

There is no such thing as one’s “own” morality. (From Trump Boasts of Having His “Own” Morality in His Own Mind.)

There is no other peace plan for the Middle East than that to be found in a conversion of everyone there to the Catholic Faith as justice is done to the aggrieved Palestinians without vengeance and as the then former Mohammedans and Talmudic Jews forgive each other as they had been forgiven in the Baptismal font. Our Lady's Fatima Peace Plan, Heaven's Peace Plan, is what the world needs, which is why the devil has used his minions in the counterfeit church of conciliarism to deconstruct and minimize the importance of this peace plan as these revolutionary minions laud Talmudism and heap honors upon those who are steeped in this false, blasphemous religion.

We must, for our own parts, fulfill Our Lady's Fatima Peace Plan in our own lives, especially as we make reparation for our own sins and those of the whole world by offering one Rosary after another to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through her own Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart. All human "peace plans" to produce "peace" in the Middle East have come to naught. Only Our Lady's Fatima Peace Plan can succeed, which is why we must be earnest about fulfilling it in our own lives on a daily basis so that we will be counted as faithful disciples of Christ the King, praying as many Rosaries each day as our states-in-life permit.

Our Lady's Most Holy Rosary turned back the Mohammedan fleet at the Battle of Lepanto and turned back the Mohammedans at the Gates of Vienna and drove the Soviets out of Austria, as well as keeping Dutch Calvinists from invading Lima, Peru, and Manila in The Philippines. Our Lady's Most Holy Rosary can help us be her Divine Son's true "peacemakers" as we pray for the conversion of all non-Catholics, including Talmudists and Mohammedans, while we make reparation for our own sins at the same time that have made us, truth be told, monsters in our own right in our various rebellions against the Most Holy Trinity.

As we pray for the success of the current negotiations to prevent the scenarios discussed in this commentary, may Our Lady send us the graces to pray daily that everyone in the world, including in the Middle East, will exclaim una voce dicentes:

Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus Dóminus, Deus Sábaoth. Pleni sunt cæli et terra glória tua. Hosánna in excélsis. Benedíctus, qui venit in nómine Dómini. Hosánna in excélsis.

May Our Lady, to whose Immaculate Heart the cause of world peace has been entrusted by her Divine Son, help us to be at peace always with her Divine Son by making a good, integral Confession of our sins to a true priest (if one is available where one lives in this time of apostasy and betrayal) and to be earnest in our efforts to reform our lives as we grow in our love for her and her Most Holy Rosary with every beat of our hearts, consecrated as they should be to her Divine Son’s Most Sacred Heart that her own Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart.

Immaculate Heart of Mary, triumph soon.

Vivat Christus Rex!

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us!

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.

Saints Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, pray for us.