Victor Yong Jen Ong: Jailed for Israeli advocacy

The (U.S.) president has taken advantage of Israeli security matters…

The sensibilities of the world have shifted toward a more apparent pushback against white supremacist thinking in recent years, particularly with Trump’s second, even if non-consecutive term in the White House.

His treatment, or rather maltreatment of undocumented and documented migrants has ripped the country cleanly in two, with cosmopolitan Americans infuriated by his racism but helpless as a silent majority. And that majority could be shrinking due to fears of reprisal by more socially militant followers of Trump’s unique MAGA dream.

It is a dream meant to mislead, because nothing about Make America Great Again has succeeded in making the nation great, despite almost six years of going at it with Trump at the helm.

The president has in addition taken advantage of Israeli security matters to mislead the American public at home, in effect causing much of the world to link Trump’s fascism to the needs of the Jewish people.

Today America isn’t stronger or greater. The U.S. dollar performs weaker against various currencies. American buying power overseas is changing, and not for the better. The imbalance in spending is more lopsided than ever: Iran isn’t being affordably transformed back to Persia anytime soon, even while medical care is denied to the average American and the homelessness crisis rivals that of the proverbial Third World.

Trump’s version of white supremacy has brought confusion and chaos to the Persian people…

Trump’s refusal to allow Israel to govern her own affairs in the immediate neighborhood has only heightened tensions regarding the Jewish people, who are now at even bigger risk of racial annihilation by newer generations of young people with painful testimonies of loss. This century is far from over, and yet Trump has laid the groundwork for more Hitlers to rise. Fearsome demagogues are made in the crucible of war and disenfranchisement.

Trump’s version of white supremacy has brought confusion and chaos to the Persian people; where there used to be a large groundswell of support for Western intervention among the masses, that love is being eroded, likely deliberately, by Trump’s imprecise war on the entire Iranian nation. The U.S. president has successfully turned civilian friends into generational foes for the next four or five decades.

America took away Iran’s chances of becoming a friend and partner of Israel. Without a say in her own sovereignty, Israel has been blocked from using her own air force on most occasions, as America intervenes with seemingly the best intentions. Precision is lost, cowboy trigger-happiness takes over, and the needless pain and suffering brew new hatreds and fiercer nationalisms.

Malaysia, so far away from the Mediterranean and Hormuz, that it should find more ease reaching out to Hawaii, has not connected with Pacific countries at all. Instead, Malaysia’s dearest concern is Palestine, and not the Solomon Islands, East Timor, or Papua New Guinea.

I was charged and sentenced at a show trial lasting five minutes, with police documents that made false claims of sedition or treason…

Malaysia has not come away immune from the chaos of the Middle East. While the former Malaysian province of Singapore, now an independent republic for over sixty years, has an Embassy of Israel downtown which certain sections of society are trying to shutter, the situation in Kuala Lumpur is markedly worse.

In Kuala Lumpur and other cities such as Johor Bahru, Iskandar Puteri, and Malacca, being Jewish is a veritable crime. In suburban Iskandar Puteri, a school was banned from operating when the state government discovered Jewish students there. Federal and state officials added that their presentation of American or European passports wouldn’t save them from deportation.

A consulate or embassy would be most unthinkable. This was what I learned in 2023, when Malay Muslim businessmen in Kuala Lumpur demanded my arrest for links to Israeli diplomatic efforts. The Royal Malaysia Police sent officers to my home, who arrested me without a warrant, threatened to thrash my residence unless I gave up computing equipment, took my phone and notebook computers away, and later fabricated a warrant at the prison complex.

I was charged and sentenced at a show trial lasting five minutes, with police documents that made false claims of sedition or treason. The sitting federal government was a nominally moderate Muslim coalition. Future governments with an openly conservative stance could prove much worse. In 1969, conservative forces in Malaysia including operatives from the ruling party massacred six hundred Malaysians of Chinese origin, simply because we were racially different from the regular Malay Muslim.

I have been out on bail for over two years, but not my information. Instead of hacking my devices, the local officers undertook a simpler method: extracting passwords from me under duress. The reason modern Malaysia could descend into a situation of threats of police brutality and unlawful imprisonment wasn’t because the people wanted Palestine.

As of July 2026, very few Malay Muslims know Palestinian Arabic, much less Levantine Arabic, and even the most vociferous supporters are seldom able to name Ramallah as the provisional seat of government. Islamist Malaysians voice their love for Palestine as an extension of their opposition to the English language, American cultural hegemony, and the educated Chinese class in Malaysia.

It is not about the establishment of a unified State of Palestine. Rather it is pushback against Trump’s white supremacy and American exceptionalism, typified by ostensible privilege, fairness of skin tones, and access to educational and economic resources. While there are broad sections of Caucasian society that are poor or impoverished, the Malaysian fundamentalists cannot or will not observe it for themselves. To them, America represents success at the expense of many for the few, and Chinese ethnic success in Malaysia does not help the Muslims feel any safer.

In Kuala Lumpur and other cities such as Johor Bahru, Iskandar Puteri, and Malacca, being Jewish is a veritable crime…

On a walkabout in the Singapore Botanic Gardens recently, a Ukrainian artist told me there was no real way to diffuse the phenomenon of Aryan superiority even if I tried my best. If I succeeded, the world would stop spinning, she explained.

Is she correct, I continue to wonder. The global economy does rely on strongman politics like Trump’s. His is a perfect blend of race nationalism and trade protectionism. As he succeeds, other nations begin to copy him. They too begin to throw people out who do not fit the mold through roundups and deportations. These less-than-white nations also speak now of the merits of starting a civil war within their own borders. Factories and industries turn inward and xenophobic antagonism against imports reaches fever pitch.

If this is what is required for the world to keep spinning, that we may have a world economy of suspicion and reluctant deals, and of cloistered nations and reduced interracial cooperation, then it’s spinning for the wrong reasons.