Trump Gaza: Fake Paradise, Real Tragedy

In these days, as the situation in Gaza continues to be fraught with violence and profound challenges, US President Donald Trump chose to share an AI-generated video depicting “Trump’s Gaza” – a utopian vision of a future Gaza Strip, filled with luxury hotels, gold statues, and swimming pools. The video, accompanied by a song praising Trump as a savior (“Donald Trump will set you free”), presents a simplistic, disconnected, and troubling worldview that deserves deep critical examination.

What makes the video completely unrealistic is its absolute disregard for the multifaceted nature of Gaza’s population with its historical, social, and ideological aspects. The AI video completely ignores this reality, as well as the armed struggle for self-determination. Instead of addressing these intricate dynamics, the video offers a ridiculously simplistic solution: turning Gaza into a kind of Middle Eastern “Disneyland,” as if changing the physical appearance of the place would magically solve all its deep-rooted problems.

For Trump, Gaza’s rehabilitation translates solely to the physical dimension – to a real estate project. The video presents a fantasy where with a wave of a magic wand, all difficulties and conflicts turn into American dreams with stereotypical Middle Eastern touches. This is a flattening of nuanced reality into a “Las Vegas-style” solution – flashy, devoid of content, and disconnected from reality. This approach reflects a complete lack of understanding of regional dynamics, rich history, and the genuine challenges facing any future solution for Gaza.

The use of AI technology to create this fake vision marks a worrying development in modern politics. In an era where “alternative reality” can be convincingly created using technological tools, the danger of emotional manipulation of the public increases. The video doesn’t present a real political plan or roadmap to peace, but a digital illusion designed to evoke positive emotions while completely ignoring the intricacies of the situation. This phenomenon is especially dangerous when it comes from the leader of the world’s strongest superpower, who has enormous influence on Middle East policy.

One of the most disturbing elements in the video is the idea of turning a conflict-ridden area into a “tourist candy.” This approach not only ignores the layered reality of the situation in Gaza but also proposes building a “golden future” without addressing the deep roots of the conflict, the reality of terrorism, Hamas’s ideology, and other challenges facing any future solution. This is inherently childish, treating serious problems as if they can be solved through money and development alone, without addressing the deep ideological, religious, social, and political layers that fuel the conflict.

At the heart of Trump’s video lies a patronizing and insulting assumption: Gazans are incapable of imagining a different future for themselves. None of them are connected to the internet, have never encountered Western culture, and don’t dream of a different life. This is a digital version of classic Orientalism: the “enlightened” West needs to show the “primitives” what “civilized” life looks like.

But the true depth of the problem extends beyond jarring patronization. Trump fails to understand an important historical lesson that Afghanistan painfully taught the Western world: culture is not a consumer product that can be imported, and a state is not just a territory. After years of American investment, trillions of dollars, and building Western infrastructure, it took the Taliban just a few days to regain control of the country. Implanting Western models on ground not ready to receive them is a recipe for failure.