US President Donald Trump met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at his Mar-a-Lago estate on Monday, delivering a tirade of threats to escalate war throughout the Middle East.
Speaking after the meeting, Trump declared that the US would “wipe out” any resistance in Gaza. “If Iran is trying to build up again,” he added, semi-coherently, “we’ll knock the hell out of them.”
The Washington Post reported Monday that strikes against Iran were a major topic of discussion at the meeting, with Netanyahu seeking US approval for renewed attacks on Iran’s ballistic missile program.
Trump’s threats come seven months after the United States bombed three Iranian nuclear facilities. On June 22, 2025, seven US B-2 stealth bombers dropped 14 Massive Ordnance Penetrator bunker-buster bombs—30,000-pound weapons, the most powerful non-nuclear munitions ever used in combat—on Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan. For 12 days prior, Israel had carried out an assault on Iran that killed over 400 people and wounded more than 3,000.
The meeting in Mar-a-Lago was a gathering of war criminals. The International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu in November 2024 on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including “starvation as a method of warfare” and “murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts.” Domestically, Netanyahu is on trial for bribery, fraud and breach of trust in three separate corruption cases.
In his meeting with Netanyahu, Trump reiterated his calls for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, telling reporters that if Palestinians “were given the opportunity to live in a better climate, they would move,” adding, “They’re there because they sort of have to be.”
He warned that “there will be hell to pay” unless Hamas ceases any resistance to the US and Israel, threatening to “go in and wipe them out.”
In January, Trump told reporters that the United States would “clean out” Gaza’s 1.5 million people. In February, standing beside Netanyahu in Washington, he declared the United States would “take over” and “own” the territory, leveling it to build the “Riviera of the Middle East.” The Israeli government has since established a “Voluntary Emigration Bureau” to administer the ethnic cleansing plan.
Since the start of the Gaza genocide in October 2023, over 71,000 Palestinians have been killed, including more than 20,000 children. On August 22, famine was officially declared by the UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification—the first famine ever confirmed in the Middle East—which called the hunger crisis “entirely man-made.” The healthcare system has collapsed. Every university has been leveled. The population has been bombed, starved, denied medicine and driven from their homes repeatedly for over two years.
Under these conditions, Trump speaks of Palestinians “wanting” to leave—as though a population being systematically exterminated were freely choosing to abandon their homeland rather than being expelled through murder and starvation.
The “ceasefire” announced in October has given the capitalist powers’ stamp of legitimacy to the permanent Israeli occupation and annexation of a large portion of Gaza, coupled with daily mass killing and the deliberate starvation of the population.
Trump declared on Monday that “Israel has lived up to the plan, 100%.” In fact, according to a statement issued Sunday by Gaza’s Government Media Office, the Israeli military has committed 969 ceasefire violations over the 80 days since the agreement took effect, killing 418 Palestinians and wounding 1,141. The violations include 289 incidents of direct gunfire against civilians, 455 shelling attacks on unarmed civilians and their homes, 54 military incursions into residential areas, and 162 cases of demolishing homes and civilian facilities.
Israel has failed to comply with the minimum agreed quantities of humanitarian aid. Only 19,764 aid trucks have entered Gaza over 80 days, averaging 253 per day instead of the agreed 600—a compliance rate of roughly 40 percent. Only 425 fuel trucks have entered, averaging five per day instead of the agreed 50. The office reported acute shortages of food, medicine, water and fuel.
The “ceasefire” has served as the framework for Israel’s continued expansion in the occupied territories. Defense Minister Israel Katz has pledged that Israel will “never leave” Gaza and will resettle its northern areas. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has proposed annexing 82 percent of the West Bank to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state. In October, the Knesset voted to advance an annexation bill. Under these conditions, the capitalist media has declared that there is “peace” in the Middle East.
Trump’s meeting with Netanyahu takes place amid a growing global military escalation by the Trump administration. On December 9, Trump told Politico that Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s “days are numbered” and refused to rule out sending US troops. Since September, US forces have murdered at least 104 people in 28 strikes on civilian boats.
Around Venezuela, the Trump administration has assembled the largest US military mobilization in the Caribbean since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Trump declared a “total and complete” blockade of Venezuelan oil tankers on December 16 and claimed to have struck a “big facility” inside the country. The administration has made clear its intention to overthrow the Maduro government and seize control of Venezuela’s oil reserves as part of Washington’s drive to establish “American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere.”
The Democratic Party has systematically enabled Trump’s global onslaught. In December, 115 House Democrats—including Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Minority Whip Katherine Clark, and Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar—voted for a $901 billion defense authorization, $8 billion more than Trump requested. Twenty-seven Senate Democrats supported it. In April, Senate Democrats overwhelmingly rejected resolutions to restrict arms sales to Israel. Both parties represent the interests of the same ruling class, and no faction of the political establishment opposes the global expansion of American militarism.
In the year 2025, capitalism has normalized genocide. The capitalist media has proclaimed “peace” under conditions in which an entire population is being relentlessly starved, bombed and displaced.
Throughout the past two years, millions of people have taken to the streets in mass protests against the Gaza genocide. Demonstrations on every continent demanded an end to the slaughter. Yet despite this unprecedented outpouring of opposition, the capitalist parties have only normalized genocide. The protests have been ignored, suppressed and criminalized. All efforts to pressure the political establishment—through elections, through lobbying, through appeals to international law—have led nowhere. Biden armed the genocide; Trump has embraced it openly.
The lesson of 2025 is that the fight against war and genocide cannot be waged through the institutions of capitalist rule. What is necessary is the independent political mobilization of the international working class against the capitalist system itself.
The same ruling class that is exterminating the Palestinians is attacking workers’ living standards, dismantling democratic rights and preparing for wider wars. Opposition to the genocide in Gaza is inseparable from the struggle against exploitation and inequality in every country. Only the working class, organized independently of both capitalist parties and united across national borders, has the social power to halt the drive toward barbarism.