COMMENT | Despite public indignation, Malaysia is preparing to welcome a figure whose legacy is written not in diplomacy, but in destruction.

As the fires in Gaza continue to burn, with tens of thousands killed and millions displaced, the reappearance of Donald Trump on the international stage poses both moral and strategic questions of the highest order: will Malaysia, long a voice of conscience for the oppressed, now offer a red carpet to one of the most unrepentant enablers of genocide?

To frame what is unfolding in Palestine merely as another “war” is to make truth complicit in its own erasure. As UN human rights expert Francesca Albanese has stated with unflinching clarity, “It’s not a war, it’s a genocide where there is a determination to destroy a people as such.”

A war, however tragic, can still end in negotiation or a treaty. Genocide, by contrast, defeats the very logic of resolution - it is not a conflict but an extermination. It leaves no side to reconcile, no humanity to salvage.

When leaders continue to speak of...