Analysis: Marco Rubio’s Israel Stop Reeks of Colonization
The Secretary of State is known for conveniently ignoring the past in certain cases and presenting narratives that lack important context
While foreign policy negotiations to end the war resulting from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine stole the limelight in the news cycle, Secretary of State Marco Rubio stopped by Israel on his way to Saudi Arabia for those negotiations, and his comments while there are concerning. Like the story about Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth seeking unilateral power to conduct drone strikes, this one is getting very little attention.
For Palestinians and their neighbors, colonization is about to get much more aggressive in the region as the Trump administration attempts to administer its final solution in Palestine: the complete ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and the erasure of Palestine. During multiple press conferences, Rubio referenced Trump’s plan with the support of Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar, Israeli President Isaac Herzog, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“The President has also been very bold about his view of what the future for Gaza should be – not the same tired ideas of the past but something that’s bold and something that frankly took courage and vision in order to outline,” Rubio said during a press conference with Netanyahu. “And it may have shocked and surprised many, but what cannot continue is the same cycle where we will repeat over and over again and wind up in the exact same place.”
Netanyahu reaffirmed his mission to follow through on Trump’s proposed idea to force the native inhabitants off their land and bring the North African colonialist project to a close – a proposition Palestine’s neighbors and most of the world have rejected. It’s also a violation of International Law, an issue that neither Trump nor Netanyahu seem concerned with.
“I want to assure everyone who is now listening to us: President Trump and I are working in full cooperation and coordination between us,” said Netanyahu. “ We have a common strategy and we can’t always share the details of this strategy with the public, including when the gates of Hell would be opened, as they surely will if all our hostages are not released, until the last one of them.”
Netanyahu of course focused on Iran. This serves two purposes. First, it takes attention away from the atrocities committed by Israel over the last 16 months. Secondly, it flips the conversation about aggressors on its head and serves to deny how the war against Palestinians began more than 80 years ago.
“Today, Secretary Rubio and I had a very productive discussion with our staffs on a number of issues. None of them are more important than Iran. Israel and America stand shoulder-to-shoulder in countering the threat of Iran. We agreed that the ayatollahs must not have nuclear weapons, and we also agreed that Iran’s aggression in the region has to be rolled back. Over the last 16 months, Israel has dealt a mighty blow to Iran’s terror axis. Under the strong leadership of President Trump and with your unflinching support, I have no doubt that we can and will finish the job.”
In a separate press conference with Foreign Minister Sa’ar, Rubio again ignored history to present a narrative that benefits the U.S.’s imperialist views. His statements are a token of how history is portrayed in the West. It ignores the initial aggression and presents the “chosen people” as the good guys. His comments highlight how religion has historically been weaponized to commit genocide and is not much different than referring to Indigenous people as “savages” during the colonization of the Americas.
“I said at the outset that not only are we reminded of the depravity of mankind, but we’re also reminded of the human spirit and what it’s capable of achieving. From that moment emerged a nation-state, a home for the Jewish people in a land ancestral and ancient, who their ties to it cannot be questioned. And it is a nation-state that from the day of its very birth was surrounded by those who sought to destroy it from the very minute, from the very moment, and sadly that has not changed.”
Rather than openly address any questions about the forced displacement of millions of Palestinians, Most of Rubio’s responses to questions immediately shifted over to “terrorist groups” and Iran. He referred to all of Israel’s neighbors as aggressors to seemingly try to paint them as inherently antisemitic, an anti-Arab and Islamophobic trope that is often the basis for false accusations of antisemitism.
“And I would make the broader point – I made it earlier with the prime minister in our appearance before the media there – at the core of all of these challenges, whether it’s Hizballah or Hamas or the terrorist groups that strike from – when Assad was in Syria and what we see even confronting America in Iraq, the Houthis, there’s one thing. What’s behind all of it? Iran. Iran. And by Iran, I mean the regime.”
One thing has been made abundantly clear in Rubio’s visit to Israel: they’re not joking about the world’s richest country and largest superpower gleefully being a part of a genocide and openly promoting it on the world’s stage. At a time when Republicans are flooding the news cycle with nonsensical drivel, this seems to be one of the more extreme policies they intend to pursue in their quest to bring white nationalist ideas to the rest of the world — by force.
What makes that even clearer is Vice President J.D. Vance’s speech in Germany. He not only espoused many white nationalist talking points about “threats from within” and bogus claims of “censorship” in cases where hate speech is met with backlash, but he also met with the leaders of Germany’s AfD Party which is widely regarded as an anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, extremist organization who proposes normalizing Germany’s relationship with Russia.
Sound familiar? Of course, it does. That’s why Vance met with them.
Unsurprisingly, when Rubio sat for an interview with Margaret Brennan at CBS News on Sunday, he went out of his way to defend Vance’s speech and his meeting with far-right extremists in Germany. While Vance’s comments highlight just how high up white nationalism goes in the U.S. under Trump, Rubio's response shows us just how unapologetic they are about it.
“The point of his speech was basically that there is an erosion in free speech and intolerance for opposing points of view within Europe, and that’s of concern because that is eroding – it’s not an erosion of your military capabilities,” Rubio said. “That’s not an erosion of your economic standing. That’s an erosion of the actual values that bind us together in this transatlantic union that everybody talks about.”
Rubio’s dog whistle about “values that bind us together in this transatlantic union” (read: whiteness) bolsters my reporting on how Trump’s appointees to critical agencies like the Department of State, Department of Defense, and Department of Homeland Security are bringing white nationalist policy ideas to government — including to their sub-agencies such as Customs and Border Patrol (CBP), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) among many others.
While some have been dismissive about high-level white nationalist infestation of federal agencies, this is a critical issue that should not be ignored as the power it creates is dangerous.
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No offense, but is Marco Rubio considering himself white? Last I saw, he was a brownish man. Betrayals by Latinos are so sad.
They do only fall short of saying the words "white nationalist agenda" don't they?!