When President Donald Trump abruptly announced that he wants the United States to take control of the Gaza Strip, it caught even his most fanatical Christian Zionist supporters by surprise, but they quickly found ways to justify the proposal.
On the "WallBuilders Live" radio program today, hosts David and Tim Barton and Rick Green were at a loss to explain how taking over Gaza was in the interest of the United States, much less how Trump even has the constitutional authority to do such a thing. But that didn't stop them from scrambling to cook up some justification for it, with self-proclaimed "Constitution Coach" Green suggesting that the Trump administration could cite Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution which gives Congress the power to "define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offences against the Law of Nations."
"If anything was an offense against the nations, it was the attack on Oct. 7 that Hamas did," Green said. "So, the defining offenses against the laws of nations clause may be one of the things that Trump brings up as he talks about why we're going to go into Gaza."
Green is, of course, offering up an obvious misinterpretation of this clause in a desperate effort to find some constitutional justification for Trump's proposal, as the provision was clearly created to give Congress the power to punish piracy and other crimes upon the high seas, not to give the United States to power to seize foreign territory whenever anything bad happens there.
Green and the Bartons were not the only ones trying to find novel ways to justify Trump's proposal. Appearing on the "FlashPoint" program last night, right-wing activist Floyd Brown hailed the brilliancy of Trump's plan to expel all the Palestinians who are living in Gaza in order to turn it into a tax-free utopia for Americans.
"I think it's Donald Trump's bid to build a Dubai-like city on the Mediterranean," Brown said. "The Gaza Strip has been a pain to the nation of Israel since the time of Samson. Process that. From the time of the Judges on, this place has been a problem for Israel and Donald Trump is saying, 'We're going to put an end to it.' He's going to bring the bulldozers in [and] he's going to ship the people out. And that's, I think, an important message. The Palestinians aren't going to live there anymore."
"Gaza has been a toxic mix of terrorism and just agony for everybody that's been there," Brown added. "Donald Trump, the real estate man, says, 'We are going to remake it and we're going to make it a free city.' It'll probably be a tax free city. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of Americans don't move there."
How exactly Trump will manage to transform a region that has been, as Floyd himself said, a toxic mix of terrorism and agony for thousand of years into an American paradise, was left unexplained.
Never one to be outdone, MAGA pastor and Trump cultist Shane Vaughn rushed to post a video on Facebook claiming that the Gaza Strip already belongs to the United States.
Vaughn has long insisted that the United States emerged from the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel, meaning that the current residents of Israel are merely "Jews," whereas the Founding Fathers were the true "descendants of the tribes of Israel."
"Donald Trump is God's anointed," Vaughn said. "It wouldn't shock me at all if he took over Gaza Strip. Where did that thought come from? I'm going to tell you where it came from: The Word of God."
"Do you know that that strip of Gaza, do you know who that belonged to thousands of years ago?" he continued. "No, not the Jewish people. The problem with most patriots and most Christians is they do not know the difference in Jews and Israelites. Jewish people are not the same as Israelites."
"Thousands of years ago, [there were] 12 tribes of Israel," Vaughn asserted. "Ten of those tribes separated from the two tribes. Those two tribes are known as the Jewish people. The other 10 tribes are known as Israel. Israel doesn't live in Israel. Jews lived in Israel. Israel was scattered all over the world, primarily the United States of America, Great Britain, and the Commonwealth nations. So who was it that lived at the Gaza Strip? Israel, not Jews. Israel. Now, who is the leader of Israel? Donald Trump."
