The Shift: Trump’s war crimes

Michael ArriaMarch 25, 2025

Donald Trump at a United Nations event on Religious Freedom Monday, Sept. 23, 2019, at the United Nations Headquarters in New York City. (Photo: Shealah Craighead / White House)

On Tuesday the Israeli government broke the ceasefire and began bombing Gaza once again. The attacks targeted a number of residential at killed at least 400 people, most of them children.

Reporting from Gaza City, Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud said that Al-Ahli Hospital had been overwhelmed with mass casualties and that entire families were arriving dead.

“Last night’s attacks prove again that there is no safe place across Gaza,” said Mahmoud. “People had gone back to bombed homes and evacuation centers, thinking it was going to be safe due to the ceasefire, but that was not the case. They were killed inside these very places.”

“Israeli forces have signed a death warrant for Palestinian children in Gaza as they carry out nonstop attacks, continue to destroy civilian infrastructure, and prevent any humanitarian aid from reaching Palestinians in need,” said Defense for Children Palestine’s Ayed Abu Eqtaish in a statement. “This is nothing short of genocide.”

At our site, Tareq Hajjaj reported on a child who watched their mother burn to death before dying himself:

On Tuesday night, in the Qarara area east of Khan Younis in southern Gaza, brothers Muhammad and Ibrahim Hamidi decided to take their children and flee to a less dangerous location east of the city. The sound of heavy gunfire from tanks stationed near their home after a brutal night of nonstop shelling and bombardment pushed them to head toward the Mawasi area of Khan Younis, the same coastal stretch of land that had served as a so-called “safe zone” throughout the war.
The brothers arrived and set up their tents. In the middle of the night, Muhammad heard the sound of bombing. He emerged from his tent, hundreds of meters away from his brother Ibrahim’s. He was rushing toward the sound of the bombs to help people who had been hit — a common sight in Gaza — but he didn’t expect that the bombed tent would belong to his brother.
“I ran out, thinking the bombing might have targeted a family we know. When I arrived, I found my brother lying on the ground, covered in blood, and his wife holding their child, both of them on fire,” Muhammad Hamidi told Mondoweiss. “My nephew was lying on the ground, injured in his head and back, and looking at his mother. She was engulfed in flames with his younger baby brother. Then my nephew turned his head toward his father, who was bleeding after the missile struck his head.”
With deep sadness, Muhammad says that in his final moments, his three-year-old nephew watched his mother and brother burn. “The child was helpless,” he said.

Israeli officials say that the country was given permission by the Trump administration to attack Gaza. “All those who seek to terrorize not just Israel but also the United States of America, will see a price to pay,” said White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt on Fox News. “All hell will break loose.”

Just two weeks before the bombing, Trump publicly demanded that Hamas release all the hostages or face annihilation. “I am sending Israel everything it needs to finish the job, not a single Hamas member will be safe if you don’t do as I say,” he posted to Truth Social.

Hamas insists that it abided by the terms of the original deal and that Israel had decided to remove itself from Phase Two of the negotiations.

“Hamas adhered to the agreement until the last moment and was keen to continue it, but Netanyahu, looking for a way out of his internal crises, preferred to reignite the war at the expense of the blood of our people,” said the group in a statement.

Israel has continued to kill Palestinians since the ceasefire was negotiated, but this week’s carnage puts Trump’s fingerprints firmly on the genocide alongside Biden’s. The administration’s green light didn’t just results in hundreds of deaths, it also tanked the negotiation process and opened the door for further calamity.

I have seen commentary suggesting that Trump is led astray by Netanyahu, or forced into a wider war that goes against his own interests.

One example is a post from Cato Institute fellow Jon Hoffman.

“By ceding the initiative to Netanyahu, Washington has locked itself into a cycle of policies contrary to American interests,” he writes. “American support for Israeli policy has pushed the Middle East to the brink of region-wide war on several occasions since the war in Gaza began, resulting in an enduring U.S. war footing in the region in pursuit of no plausible political or military objectives. American troops in the Middle East have come under fire repeatedly, and Washington has spent billions of taxpayer dollars on Israeli and U.S. military operations, all failing to achieve their goals while producing new problems in their wake. Indefinitely subsidizing Israel’s unrealistic aspirations is strategically imprudent for the United States.”

Most of what Hoffman says is undoubtedly true, but what constitutes “plausible political or military objectives” under the Trump regime is an open debate.

Shortly after Trump was elected, I asked Jadaliyya co-editor and Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies fellow Mouin Rabbani:

We should look not only for changes in U.S. policy, but also focus on the continuities. If you look at the major initiatives that Trump took during his first term, many of them can be seen as a logical culmination of administrations past. They often, for example, relied on pre-existing, bipartisan congressional legislation. Similarly, Biden simply picked up where Trump left off. I think the discussion we had about annexation is a good indication of this.
Secondly, I think the Century Foundation’s Aaron Lund recently made a very perceptive point, that given the chaotic nature that is rightfully expected of the next administration, policy may well be made by individuals appointed to various portfolios rather than centrally directed from the White House. Here it becomes interesting, of course, because the Trump coalition consists of different interest groups. You have the Adelson crowd, you have the Christian Zionists, you have the isolationists. So it’ll be interesting to see if this simply results in total chaos, or if it ultimately results in anything that can even remotely be considered a coherent policy, and then we’ll have to see what that is.

Yemen

Recent U.S. war crimes aren’t limited to Gaza.

Last weekend Trump ordered attacks on Yemen, a country that is already torn apart by war. In a post on Truth Social, the president claimed that Ansar Allah, which is also referred to as “the Houthis,” are “funded by Iran.”

Trump didn’t mention Israel, but the attacks came just days after Ansar Allah announced the return of a naval blockade targeting Israeli ships.

The Yemeni Health Ministry says that more than 50 people killed in U.S. airstrikes and over 100 were injured. “The majority of them were children and women,” a health ministry official told Drop Site News.

“Scenes filmed inside Saada hospital revealed a chaotic environment, with medical staff rushing injured people, including children and women, on stretchers into hospitals and through corridors,” wrote journalist Shuaib Almosawa in the same piece. “Severely injured children were screaming, some with faces bloodied and burned. Others were covered with dust and blood, suggesting they had been pulled from the rubble. A few small victims were charred beyond recognition.”

Trump says the attacks were in response to Ansar Allah attacking U.S. naval vessels in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, which had been a response to U.S. support for the genocide in Gaza.

In response to Trump’s move, Ansar Allah announced that they launched missiles at the USS Harry Truman and other ships. The United States says that none of its vessels were hit.

“We affirm that this aggression will not deter the Yemeni people from continuing to support Palestine and fulfilling their religious and humanitarian duties in supporting the people of Gaza, their resistance, and their heroic fighters,” said Ansar Allah in a statement.

This is probably a small detail in the scheme of illegal things currently being carried out by the Trump administration, but it’s unconstitutional for president to engage in acts of war without authorization from Congress.

You used to see a fair number of Democrats (and even some old-school Republicans) to criticize this kind of thing, but there hasn’t been much to report on that front.

At The Intercept, Aida Chavez has a post drawing attention to the silence.

“In Washington, the revived Yemen war could also create an awkward situation for Democrats,” Chavez writes. “Previously, Democratic opposition to the U.S. involvement in the war hadn’t swept the party but was a growing force. During Trump’s first term, Democrats were vocally against the U.S. supporting the Saudi-led coalition that was bombing Yemen and passed the Yemen war powers resolution in both chambers of Congress with bipartisan support.”

“Once Biden started his tit-for-tat retaliations against the Houthis amid Israel’s war on Gaza, however, many Democrats backed off their opposition to the Yemen war,” she continues. “Now, Democrats have a choice: They can rally their caucus against Trump’s reckless escalation and take a stance for more restrained foreign policy, or they can back the president’s reinvigoration of the idea of being the world’s policeman.”

One former Democrat who used to bring up Yemen was Tulsi Gabbard. Just a few years ago she was chastising the U.S. government for supporting a “genocidal war” on the country.

Now, as part of the Trump administration, she dutifully supports the effort. “Trump has taken decisive action or our own safety, security and prosperity,” he told a reporter.

So much for Gabbard representing a restrained foreign policy at odds with previous administrations.