Donald Trump’s AI-generated vision of Gaza – complete with golden statues of himself, bearded belly dancers, and a triumphant song declaring, ‘Trump Gaza, number one!’ – landed like a slap across the face of polite Western discourse. The reactions were swift and predictable. Outraged commentators called it tasteless, delusional, the fever dream of a man obsessed with his own mythology. Newspapers mocked its crudeness, its cartoonish spectacle, its lack of realism.
Yet, in all the ridicule, something crucial was missed. This wasn’t just Trump being Trump. This was Trump speaking Arabic again – not linguistically, but in the deeply symbolic, visually driven language of Middle Eastern power. The video was not a policy document. It was not a peace proposal. It was an assertion, a piece of brash visual propaganda in the same spirit as the region’s own power plays – where images speak louder than statements, and dominance is declared not through words, but through spectacle.
Trump’s video was not a policy proposal but a fantasy of submission
Nowhere is this language more evident than in the carefully orchestrated prisoner handovers that have become a central theatre in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
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