By Tisaranee Gunasekara –

“Stupidity has come back as a king – no; as an emperor…” ~ Aldous Huxley (Eyeless in Gaza)

Most of the business of the United Nations are so routine they barely make the news. Like the UN Commission on the Status of Women’s annual vote on Agreed Conclusions. For 30 years, the vote had been a mere formality. Consensus was the name of the game. After extensive deliberations, delegates would agree on a final document. Those member countries with reservations would abstain.

Year 2026 was different. At first, normalcy prevailed. After extensive deliberations, member countries arrived at a consensus. Then Trump America struck. The US first tried to defer consideration of the Agreed Conclusions, then tried to get it withdrawn entirely. When both efforts failed, and with just days to go before the annual vote, the US tabled 8 written amendments. The amendments were rejected soundly, with only three countries voting for them, the US, Chile, and Pakistan.

When the 2026 Agreed Conclusions were formally presented, 37 nations (including Sri Lanka) voted for them. 6 nations abstained. Donald Trump’s America was the only country to vote against them (even Saudi Arabia, hardly a champion of gender equality, opted to honour the UN tradition by abstaining). The outcome was greeted with a standing ovation.

In 1984, during a conversation with the then Israeli representative to the UN, Binyamin – Bibi – Netanyahu, the last Chabad-Lubavitch Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, called the United Nations, ‘The House of Darkness’. Donald Trump would agree. Since becoming president, he had made systematic moves to disengage with the UN system. The UN, in its conception and sometimes in its workings, is a semi-antithesis of the world Donald Trump wants to create – a place where might is always and every time right, and America, as the mightiest nation on earth, can do whatever it likes, even when it is in a minority of one. (In Donald Trump’s perfect world, all the delegates who voted for the Agreed Conclusions against US wishes would be abducted and taken to some American prison in chains).

If Venezuela was the overture of this coming world, Iran was supposed to be its first act, not a forever war, but a violent excursion, short, fast, and cheap. Had Iran keeled over like Venezuela, the US might be in Cuba already. Given the claims made by Donald Trump and his adherents, who knows what would be next. Greenland most probably, then Mexico, Canada, Iceland…

Iran’s Islamic regime is as murderously intolerant as its monarchic predecessor (Teheran’s Evin Prison is the perfect symbol of this political continuity; built under the Shah and managed by his notorious secret police SAVAK, it was stormed during the 1979 Iranian Revolution. But this Bastille was not destroyed; it was merely taken over by the mullahs who succeeded the Shah). If a reminder of the true nature of the Iranian regime was necessary, there was the public execution of three protestors after a dubious trial on Nowruz, the Persian New Year. 19-year-old national wrestling star Saleh Mohammadi (and two other men) was arrested on 15 January 2026, charged with killing a police officer, convicted on 4 February, executed in Qom on 20 March.

The Iranian government constitutes a threat to Iranian citizens. But it does not pose a threat to the rest of the world.

Bibi Netanyahu and Donald Trump do. If they score an easy and fast victory in their unprovoked and illegal war against Iran, nothing will prevent them from riding roughshod over the world (including Europe), imposing not just their dominance but also their policies, ideas, values, and ways of being on the rest of us.

At the end of his media conference on the Iranian ship controversy, responding to a question about providing shelter to Iranian ship IRIS Bushehr, President Anura Kumara Dissanayake said, “We are not a party to the war. This ship is in our charge. I think all parties to the war will act in consideration of that. If this is a world which acts in contravention to that, then in that world, conventions, agreements, and protocols become useless.” It’s towards just such a world (where a country can be punished with impunity for honouring its national laws or international obligations) the Bibi-Donald duo are planning to take us.

From MAGA to MIGA: Make Israel Great Again

In June 2024, Uri Tzafon, a right wing Israeli organisation, sponsored a gathering called The First Lebanon Conference. According to a 16 June 2024 report in The Times of Israel, the purpose was to promote its solution to the Lebanese conflict: Annexation of territory and Jewish settlement; the Lebanese people to leave South Lebanon and for Israelis to occupy the land south of the Litani river and populate it.

In June 2024, that was a fringe position. Just one and a half years later, that fringe position is becoming the new reality. Under cover of its ground offensive against the Hezbollah, Israel is targeting civilian infrastructure in Southern Lebanon. Civilians living south of the Litani river and Beirut’s southern suburbs have been ordered to vacate. Depopulation is underway, a prelude to repopulation and the extension of Israeli borders deep into Lebanon. In the meantime, under the cover of Iran War, Israel has re-imposed starvation policy in Gaza and is expanding settlements in the West Bank.

According to the other participant in Bibi Netanyahu’s 1984 conversation with Rebbe Schneerson, Alan Barker, Israel Senor Legal Counsel at the UN, the head of the Chabad-Lubavitch criticised the planned withdrawal of Israeli army from Lebanon. “You went into Lebanon in self-defence. Also you are in a state of hostility with Syria. If need be, you should continue going forward even into Syrian territory. It’s Israel’s right to protect itself”. That idea too is about to be realised. On 20 March 2026, Israel attacked military bases in Southern Syria, ostensibly as retaliation for a Syrian attack on the Druze people in Suweida. According to a report by France 24, Israel drones are spraying herbicides on crops and even fruit trees in the buffer zone between Israel and Syria, destroying them.

A Strategy for Israel was a 1982 essay written by right-wing Israel journalist Oded Yinon. Known as the Yinon Plan, it presented a series of measures to make Israel strong and safe. The first was the dismemberment of Egypt: using the Muslim-Christian split to set up a Coptic Christian state in Upper Egypt; “Breaking Egypt down territorially into distinct geographical regions…without a centralised state.” The second was the “dissolution of Syria…into ethnically or religiously unique areas,” including a Druze state near the area of Golan Heights. As for Iraq, “Iraq’s dissolution is even more important for us than that of Syria… An Iraqi-Iranian war will tear Iraq apart and cause its downfall at home…” The other recommendations included the “dissolution” of Saudi Arabia, invasion and occupation of Saini, the division of Lebanon, and the liquidation of Jordan.

In the 4+decades since the essay’s publication, many of its proposals have become the reality, wholly or partially. These regional transformations constitute necessary milestones on the road to Greater Israel, turning Israel into a regional empire by absorbing all or part of many a neighbouring land, including Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia. Engorging larger neighbouring lands would be easier if those lands are broken into smaller – and more digestible – parts.   

In August 2025, Bibi Netanyahu caused a stir beyond Israel when he publicly claimed that he feels he is on a “historic and spiritual mission” and that he is “greatly attached” to the ideas of Promised Land and Greater Israel. The war on Iran is a necessary precondition of that dream. There is also Bibi Netanyahu far more immediate need to stay out of prison. He is obviously hoping to use the Iran war to put pressure on Israeli president Isaac Herzog to issue him a pre-pardon. In his first press conference after attacking Iran, Mr Netanyahu said that President Herzog “needs to do the right thing”; issue him that pardon President Trump too has criticised President Herzog for not agreeing to the pardon request. President Herzog, said Mr Trump, should issue that pardon so that Bibi Netanyahu can focus on the war and not “focus on the f&*ing trial,” according to Axios.

Mr. Trump is also busy with his own diversionary tactics to make American people forget both Epstein Files and the massive fuel price hikes resulting from the Iran war. He has ordered the government to release all UFO files to the public. Republican representative Thomas Massie called it the ‘ultimate weapon of mass distraction.’ Whether aliens can make American people forget the pain resulting from this unnecessary war remains to be seen, Donald Trump is planning to send a supplementary estimate of $200billion to the Congress soon – the price Americans will have to pay to Make Israel Great Again.

Extremism and Chaos

The Tanya is the foundational text of the Chabad-Hasidism. Written in the 18^th century by the first Rebbe Schneur Zalman, it makes a number of controversial claims. Foremost among these is the belief that Jews and non-Jews have fundamentally different souls.

“Every Jew, whether righteous or wicked, possesses two souls,” says Chapter I of the Tanya. “One soul originates in the kelipah…” (the explanation says that this is the peel or shell). All good and bad human qualities stem from this non-divine soul from, anger and pride to compassion and empathy. The second soul is “uniquely Jewish and truly a part of the God above…” Every Jew possesses this soul which is “derived from God’s thought and wisdom.”

Non-Jews, according to the Tanya, do not possess a divine soul. “The souls of the nations of the world, however, emanate from the other unclean kelipot which contains no good whatsoever… All the charity and the kindness done by the nations of the world is only for their self-glorification”.

The Nazis divided the human race into humans and sub-humans (Menschen and Untermenschen). That division formed the basis of both the Holocaust and the larger Genocide. The victims were Untermenschen, and therefore did not count. The teaching of Chabad-Lubavitch movement’s foundational text is no different. Humanity is divided into two again – those with souls originating from the divine (Jews and a few non-Jewish Chosen Ones) and those with unclean souls (about 99.8% of the humanity). Mass murder to the point of genocide becomes possible when people are so divided, clean/unclean, chosen/unchosen, worthy/unworthy. It was so yesterday, it is so today, it will be so tomorrow.

This Israeli extremism is matched by the extremist Christianity which motivates many of the decision makers under Donald Trump. For instance, Pete Hegseth is a follower of an extremist pastor, Douglas Wilson who thinks women should not have the vote and believes in turning the US into a Christian republic. “Public spaces belong to Christ… Catholic church bells would be ok. But a parade in honour of the Virgin Mary, carrying an image of the Virgin Mary down main street, no.” Another no would be “public display of idolatry… You wouldn’t have a Hindu procession with a Hindu god. You would have to restrict not just Muslim but also Hindu migration…”. Incidentally, Buddhists too would be considered idolatrous, and all Buddhist temples un-permitted in this new Christian republic.

To create this perfect world where the Chosen few will reign over the Unchosen many (including the pope, the Mahanayakes, the mullahs and the Hindu priests), no sacrifice would be deemed too much. Including total chaos.

Professor Xueqin Jian is a Chinese-American educator who made three political predictions in May 2024. The first was that Donald Trump will win the upcoming American presidential election. The second was that he will go to war with Iran. Both predictions have come true. His third prediction was that America will not win that war, “which will forever change the global order”.

Appearing on the Tucker Carlson show, Prof Jian made an even more worrisome prediction – that Israel will carry out a controlled demolition of the Al Aqsa mosque, blaming the destruction on an Iranian drone/missile attack. Their purpose would be to ignite a Sunni-Shia war and clear the ground for the rebuilding of the Third Temple. If that prediction becomes too, we are looking at a carnage that will spill into every part of the world.

Bibi Netanyahu and Donald Trump are unmaking the world, as we have known it for decades. There might be nothing left to rebuild by the time they are through.