{"id":312068,"date":"2026-01-19T12:01:05","date_gmt":"2026-01-19T12:01:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=312068"},"modified":"2026-01-17T07:17:11","modified_gmt":"2026-01-17T07:17:11","slug":"from-gaza-to-venezuela-the-us-has-been-unmasked-as-the-serial-villain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2026\/01\/from-gaza-to-venezuela-the-us-has-been-unmasked-as-the-serial-villain\/","title":{"rendered":"From Gaza to Venezuela, the US Has Been Unmasked as the Serial Villain"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The path to Caracas \u2013 and potentially next to Colombia, Cuba and Greenland, other targets of Donald Trump\u2019s colonial greed \u2013 was paved in Gaza.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

6 Jan 2026\u00a0<\/em>–\u00a0For decades, the United States and Israel have stuck closely to their respective, scripted roles in the Middle East: the job of good cop and bad cop.<\/p>\n

The charade has continued despite Washington\u2019s active participation in Israel\u2019s 25-month slaughter<\/a> of Gaza\u2019s people \u2013 and a dawning realisation among ever-larger sections of western publics that they have been duped.<\/p>\n

Here is my first prediction of 2026: this law enforcement role-playing is going to continue even after the Trump administration\u2019s outrageously illegal abduction<\/a> of Venezuela\u2019s president, Nicolas Maduro, at the weekend, and Trump\u2019s admission<\/a> that the US attack was about grabbing the country\u2019s oil.<\/p>\n

The path to Caracas \u2013 and potentially next to Mexico, Colombia, Cuba, Greenland and Canada, other targets of Donald Trump\u2019s greed \u2013 was paved in Gaza.<\/p>\n

It is worth standing back, as one year ends and another begins, to consider how we got here, and what lies ahead.<\/p>\n

The central conceit of the good cop, bad cop narrative is that both the US and Israel are the ones upholding the law and fighting the criminals.<\/p>\n

Unlike the Hollywood version, neither of these real-world cops is in any way good. But there is a further difference: the spectacle is not intended for those the pair confront. After all, the Palestinians know only too well that they have been suffering for decades under the boot of a lawless, joint US-Israeli criminal enterprise.<\/p>\n

No, the intended audience are the onlookers: western publics.<\/p>\n

Ban on aid groups<\/strong><\/h3>\n

The US \u201chonest broker\u201d myth<\/a> should have perished long ago. But somehow it persists, despite the evidence endlessly discrediting it. And that is because western capitals and western media keep propping the myth up, treating it as a plausible description of events it simply cannot explain.<\/p>\n

Nothing has disrupted the official \u201cpolicing\u201d storyline in Gaza, supposedly against Hamas \u201claw-breaking\u201d.<\/p>\n

It is now echoed in Trump\u2019s outlandish claim that his self-declared oil grab in Venezuela is really about bringing Maduro to justice for supposed drug trafficking \u2013 or \u201cnarco-terrorism\u201d as the administration prefers to call it.<\/p>\n

Why has Gaza dropped off the front pages? Only because the \u201cgood cop\u201d declares it has brought hostilities from the \u201cbad cop\u201d to an end.<\/p>\n

Last week, Trump publicly applauded Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida residence, for sticking to the president\u2019s so-called \u201cpeace plan\u201d. \u201cIsrael has lived up to the plan, 100 percent,\u201d Trump declared<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The reality, however, is that Israel violated the \u201cceasefire\u201d nearly 1,000 times<\/a> in the first two months after it was supposed to go into effect, in mid-October. Israel continues to kill and starve the people of Gaza, if at a slower rate.<\/p>\n

Last week Israel announced it was banning 37 humanitarian organisations from Gaza, including Doctors Without Borders, which supports one in five emergency hospitals beds in the strip. The group noted<\/a> that Israel was \u201ccutting off life-saving medical assistance for hundreds of thousands of people\u201d.<\/p>\n

The ceasefire is just the latest storyline in a two-year piece of theatre.<\/p>\n

Horrifying dream<\/strong><\/h3>\n

While western capitals and the media stubbornly adhere to the good cop, bad cop narrative, western publics have started waking from it, as if from a bad dream.<\/p>\n

The mass demonstrations of two years ago may have gradually shrunk in numbers, but only after western politicians and media waged an aggressive war of attrition and campaign of vilification against them. Public exhaustion has set in.<\/p>\n

The cause of the disbelief and anger that spurred millions to take to the streets, and to campuses, remains unaddressed. Western powers are still colluding deeply in Israel\u2019s crimes. The public\u2019s initial outrage has slowly hardened into a burning resentment and disdain towards their own political and media establishments.<\/p>\n

That mood intensifies each time western officials, unable to win the argument, resort to force.<\/p>\n

Britain illustrates especially starkly the authoritarian, repressive trends visible across the West.<\/p>\n

There, protests against genocide have been designated \u201chate marches\u201d<\/a>. Slogans in solidarity with the Palestinians are now grounds for arrest<\/a> for antisemitism. Journalists critical of the government have been arrested<\/a> or their homes raided<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Support for practical action to stop the genocide, by targeting the weapons factories supplying Israel with killer drones, is now classed as terrorism<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The government is flaunting its indifference \u2013 again backed by the media \u2013 as anti-genocide activists risk death to protest the outlawing of Palestine Action<\/a> and their abusive treatment<\/a> by prison authorities, in the biggest UK hunger strike<\/a> since the IRA\u2019s<\/a> nearly half a century ago.<\/p>\n

To no effect, a group of United Nations legal experts \u2013 called special rapporteurs \u2013expressed<\/a> grave concern last month at the UK\u2019s flouting of international law in its treatment of the hunger-strikers, who face prolonged detention on remand in violation of British law.<\/p>\n

Just before Christmas, the world\u2019s most famous environmental campaigner, Greta Thunberg, was arrested<\/a> in London by the Metropolitan Police for holding a sign drawing attention to the plight of those prisoners.<\/p>\n

This has been a process of escalation, of upping the stakes. First, opposition to Israel\u2019s apartheid rule over Palestinians was conflated with antisemitism. Now opposition to Israel\u2019s genocide of Palestinians is conflated with terrorism.<\/p>\n

Scrapping jury trials<\/strong><\/h3>\n

The task of western establishments \u2013 and their media \u2013 has been to shore up a patently duplicitous narrative to excuse their complicity in the Gaza genocide: that the more vocal the criticism of Israel, the more evident the antisemitism.<\/p>\n

The implication is clear. The correct response to that genocide is silence.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, domestic courts in the UK \u2013 led by a judiciary highly unrepresentative of wider British society \u2013 are unlikely to hold the line against this all-out assault on law, morality and basic logic.<\/p>\n

The test will be a ruling by the High Court, expected soon, on the legality of the British government\u2019s decision to outlaw Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation \u2013 the first time a direct-action group has been proscribed in British history.<\/p>\n

Worryingly, the judge hearing the case \u2013 who, in approving the judicial review, had indicated a degree of scepticism about proscription \u2013 was removed<\/a> from the hearing at the last minute and without explanation. He was replaced<\/a> by a new panel of three judges who have a track record of demonstrating more deference to the British state.<\/p>\n