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Tag: Gaza

  • Why Trump and Israel differ on Turkey’s involvement in Gaza

    Why Trump and Israel differ on Turkey’s involvement in Gaza

    As the Gaza ceasefire struggles into its second month, a significant difference between the position of Israel and that of its chief ally, the United States, on the way forward is emerging. This difference reflects broader gaps in perception in Jerusalem and Washington regarding the nature and motivations of the current forces engaged in the Middle East. The subject of that difference is Turkey. 

    The Turks have expressed a desire to play a role in the “international stabilization force” (ISF), which, according to President Donald Trump’s 20-point plan, is supposed to take over ground security control of Gaza from the IDF (and Hamas) in the framework of the plan’s implementation. Ankara appears to have played a significant role in securing the 1October 10 ceasefire between Israel and the Gaza Islamists. Now, Turkey wants a major role in future arrangements on the ground in Gaza, in both the military and civilian sectors.  

    Israel is absolutely opposed to any Turkish role in future security arrangements in Gaza. Jerusalem appears to grudgingly accept Turkish civil involvement. Here also, however, given the background and orientation of the Muslim Brotherhood-associated Turkish IHH Humanitarian Relief Foundation, which is currently engaged in relief work in the Strip, there is extreme suspicion in Jerusalem. The IHH was the sponsor of the 2010 “flotilla” to Gaza, in which a number of Islamist activists and their allies sought unsuccessfully to break Israel’s naval blockade on the territory. But while a Turkish civil role is probably unavoidable, Israel draws the line at a Turkish troop presence. 

    This is because Israel identifies Turkey in its current form as something very close to an enemy state. The reasons aren’t mysterious. Jerusalem has alleged that Ankara allows Hamas to maintain a large office in Istanbul, from which they claim the organization has planned both military and terror activities and political and media campaigns.  

    Israel has also claimed that Turkey facilitates the unimpeded travel of Hamas officials across the Middle East by supplying them with Turkish passports. Turkish President Recep Tayipp Erdoğan has never condemned the massacres of October 7, 2023. Rather, the Turkish leader describes Hamas as “not a terrorist organization, it is a liberation group, ‘mujahideen’ waging a battle to protect its lands and people.”

    The Turkish leader is somewhat less complimentary in his view of Israel’s leaders. A few days ago, Ankara issued arrest warrants for alleged “genocide” against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and 36 other Israeli officials.  

    In May 2024, against the background of the Gaza war, Erdoğan announced that “relations with Israel have been severed.” Later, it became clear that he had been referring specifically to trade relations. Still, the statement reflected that the state of affairs between Jerusalem and Ankara had reached their lowest ebb.  

    The Israeli system considers that Turkey’s consistent pattern of anti-Israel activities forms part of a larger, assertive and expansive regional strategy. It fits comfortably with Turkey’s military incursions into Iraq and Syria over the last half decade, its deployment of drones and proxy fighters in Azerbaijan and Libya in support of allies’ wars, its efforts to build influence in Lebanon, the West Bank and Jerusalem, its burgeoning alliance with Qatar, and its “mavi vatan” (blue homeland) strategy in the Mediterranean, in which it seeks to lay claim to expanded exclusive economic zones (EEZs) in the eastern Mediterranean, Aegean and Black Seas.  

    In all this, Israel sees a combination of political Islam and Neo-Ottoman revanchism, exemplified by a statement by Erdogan earlier this year that Turkey’s “spiritual geography” extends to “from Syria to Gaza, From Aleppo to Tabriz, From Mosul to Jerusalem.”

    Israel suspects that Turkey wishes to make use of the ISF in Gaza as a platform by which it can reinsert Turkish troops into the Israeli-Palestinian context and use their presence in turn to leverage influence, probably through tacit cooperation with its Hamas ally.  

    The Trump administration shares little or none of Israel’s perception of Turkey. Rather, it sees Ankara as a strong, stable and welcome partner, able and willing to play an important role in securing the region. President Trump describes Erdoğan as a “great leader.” The White House has rushed to embrace the new Sunni Islamist president of Syria. As Trump has noted, the victory of Ahmed al-Sharaa and his rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham in the Syrian civil war was equally an achievement for Turkey, which created the conditions for the Sunni Islamist fighters to prepare before they marched on Damascus late last year.  

    The administration appears to have taken Turkey as a kind of guide on regional matters, accepting the notion that Turkish power can guarantee Syria and continue to prevent an ISIS resurgence. In a recent briefing to the Middle East Forum think tank, Turkish researcher Sinan Ciddi also noted that, during his September visit to the White House, Erdogan committed to giving the US access to Turkey’s deposits of lithium and other critical mineral deposits in the country.  

    The combination of strong, authoritarian rule, an apparent ability to achieve goals and a willingness to make available natural resources appear to have won Trump’s favor. Turkey’s close alliance with Qatar, which similarly backs Sunni political Islam across the region, forms part of the same general orientation.  

    US Middle East envoy Tom Barrack on Thursday paid tribute to the Turkish role in Syria, describing “Turkey’s tireless role… a testament to the quiet, steadfast diplomacy that builds bridges where walls once stood.” In all this, one can detect Trump’s famously transactional view of relations with foreign powers. These are forces with power and money that can get things done. They claim to want stability. They offer potential tempting material inducements. What’s not to like?

    In this, there is a key difference between the US and its allies in Jerusalem. The view of Middle Eastern affairs diplomacy as a real estate deal so prevalent in Trump’s White House is programmed to regard such elements as politicized religion or nationalist revanchism as surely verbiage only, perhaps to be used to fire up the base, but hardly likely to motivate or direct behavior at the state level. Here is the gap in understanding. Prior to October 7, many in Israel also dismissed these elements, convinced that the shared motivation of self-interest would solidly undergird relations and that, therefore, for example, the Hamas leaders in Gaza could be bought off with money and material inducement.

    For now at least, in Israel, no one believes that any more. But that is the principle that appears to be underlying much of the current US orientation in the pivotal Middle East region. The problem is that the Middle East is notably different from the real estate world in a number of key details. Recent experience suggests that those who try to ignore this may eventually learn it through bitter experience.

  • Do black lives still matter?

    Do black lives still matter?

    It was an ethnic massacre so bad that it could be seen from space. Satellites picked up bloodied patches of soil in North Darfur’s capital, El Fasher, after Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF) swept into the besieged city. Pools of blood and piles of bodies were identified. Thousands of people are feared to have died in the appalling violence. Many thousands more have fled for their lives. Others remain trapped in the city.

    The scenes of slaughter were so blatant that it should have brought marchers out onto the streets in passionate protest. But there wasn’t a peep from the usual suspects. Was this because the killings did not take place in Gaza or the West Bank, but in Sudan, one of Africa’s largest countries? The perpetrators, of course, weren’t the Israel Defense Force, but Sudanese militants fighting a vicious civil war in the vast country.

    The RSF, which had been besieging the town of El Fasher for 18 months, is primarily an ethnically Arab group. The victims in the most recent atrocities appear to be black Africans in the famine-stricken and war-torn Darfur province of eastern Sudan. When El Fasher finally fell, helpless civilians were gunned down in cold blood. There are reports that in one maternity hospital alone almost 500 people – including patients and their families – were killed. The Sudan Doctors’ Network said that RSF fighters had “cold-bloodedly killed everyone they found inside the Saudi Hospital, including patients, their companions, and anyone else present.”

    In London, this was seemingly of little interest to the marchers whose protests against “genocide” by “Zionists” in Gaza have regularly disfigured the streets of Britain’s capital since Hamas carried out their pogrom on October 7, 2023 – the biggest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. Do black lives matter?

    The slaughter in El Fasher echoed the massacres in Darfur in 2003, which were declared a genocide by the United Nations. In those terrible scenes, Sudanese government militias killed approximately 200,000 black African Darfuris and tortured, abused and displaced thousands more. Once again, protests in Britain were notable mostly by their absence.

    This one-eyed hypocrisy is remarkable, since Sudan, like Palestine, is a former de facto British colony. Events there were once of such pressing concern that the Victorian-era prime minister William Gladstone was forced by public opinion to send a military expedition up the Nile to save the legendary General Gordon, who was besieged by followers of a messianic Islamic leader called the Mahdi in the Sudanese capital Khartoum.

    The expedition arrived too late and Gordon was murdered by a Mahdist mob. For years after that, British troops attempted to gain control of Sudan by force. In 1898, the young Winston Churchill rode in one of the Army’s last cavalry charges at the battle of Omdurman when an Anglo-Egyptian army commanded by Sir Herbert Kitchener killed 20,000 Mahdists for the loss of fewer than 500 of their own men.

    The tomb of the Mahdi was desecrated and Kitchener was widely – but falsely – rumored to have used his skull as a drinking goblet. When Sudan finally won independence in 1956, the country continued to be the scene of conflict and inter-ethnic slaughter as the ethnically Arab north oppressed the mainly Christian and black African south.

    This finally led to South Sudan breaking away and being recognized by the UN in 2011 as Africa’s most recent independent state. But coups, civil wars and inter-ethnic violence continue to scar the Sudan. So when will the London rent-a-mobs pay attention and act? I’m not holding my breath.

  • Activist silence over Sudan speaks volumes

    Activist silence over Sudan speaks volumes

    The city of El Fasher, long a symbolic and strategic stronghold in Darfur, has in recent days become the site of atrocities so grave that the United Nations has openly warned of the risk of genocide. Videos reviewed by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights show scores of unarmed men executed in cold blood, some lying dead at the feet of Rapid Support Forces fighters, others dragged off and detained. Journalists and aid workers have disappeared. The last remaining functional hospital was shelled, killing patients and staff. The Saudi Maternity Hospital, once a rare lifeline, is now a mass grave.

    Volker Türk, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, has confirmed that his office is receiving “multiple, alarming reports” of summary executions and ethnically motivated killings. He has also warned of sexual violence, the targeting of civilians, and the use of starvation as a weapon.

    In January 2025, the United States government officially recognized the situation in Darfur as a genocide. That designation was based on documented patterns of targeted violence against the Masalit and other ethnic groups, carried out by the RSF with deliberate and systematic brutality. What is happening in El Fasher now appears to be a continuation of that same pattern, on a new and terrifying scale.

    Yet despite this, global attention has been almost non-existent. There are no viral campaigns, no slogans echoing across protest marches, no campus occupations. The cultural and political forces that mobilized with speed and intensity over Gaza have, in the case of Sudan, fallen almost entirely silent. The contrast is stark.

    The numbers speak with grim clarity. The Sudanese conflict has killed at least 150,000 people, displaced over ten million, and according to some reports starved thousands of children. Entire cities have been razed. Bodies lie buried in shallow graves along roadsides. And still, the attention from media, advocacy groups, and international institutions pales into insignificance when compared with the hysteria over Gaza.

    This dissonance raises uncomfortable questions. Why does a genocide carried out by paramilitaries with a documented record of mass atrocities provoke so little public response? Why has the legacy of the Janjaweed, now rebranded as the RSF, not inspired the same moral mobilization as other contemporary crises? It cannot be for lack of evidence. Nor can it be due to the complexity of the conflict, for the situation in Gaza is hardly less contested or politicized. The absence of Sudan from the activist conscience is hard to explain.

    Perhaps it’s a case of ideological selectivity. The Gaza conflict fits into a broader matrix of anti-colonial, racial and political narratives that have been adopted by global protest movements. Sudan, by contrast, does not map easily onto these frameworks. There are no obvious Western powers to blame, no clean dichotomy of occupier and occupied. And so, the killing of Sudanese civilians, even on genocidal terms, fails to galvanize.

    This is not an argument about proportionality. Every innocent civilian death is a tragedy, whether in Gaza, Sudan, or anywhere else. But the silence around Sudan is not merely an oversight. It is a revealing index of what captures the moral imagination of the world, and what does not. It suggests that certain atrocities only gain traction when they resonate with a pre-established political script, however transparently manipulated.

    Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, head of the World Health Organization, has called the El Fasher hospital attack “horrific” and reiterated that “health care is not a target.” The Sudanese Journalists’ Syndicate has demanded the release of Muammar Ibrahim and warned that communications blackouts are placing civilians and reporters at grave risk. Such pleas relating to hospitals and journalists may sound familiar from a war where one side openly and deliberately abused medical facilities and the guise of journalists to carry out brutal terrorism and killing: that in Gaza. And still, in this case, the world barely blinks.

    Sudan does not lack for suffering. What it lacks is a globalised network of advocacy targeting our media, schools, universities, pop concerts, fashion designs, and cultural institutions. The very experts and campaigners who demand accountability elsewhere must now be asked: why have they gone quiet here? If the war in Gaza is paused why has none of their energy to write open letters and organise marches been directed toward the dying in El Fasher?

    I know the answer. Do you?

  • Will the Gaza ceasefire hold?

    Will the Gaza ceasefire hold?

    In the latest blow to the beleaguered Gaza ceasefire, Israeli aircraft this week struck targets in Gaza City after Hamas carried out an attack using rocket-propelled grenades and sniper fire on IDF soldiers in the Rafah area. One Israeli reserve soldier was killed in the Hamas attack. The exchanges of fire took place amid continued Hamas stalling on the issue of the return of the bodies of slain Israeli hostages. 

    There was widespread Israeli outrage this week after filmed evidence emerged showing Hamas fighters re-burying body parts of a murdered hostage whose corpse they claimed to have already returned. After burying the body parts of Ofer Tzarfati, 27, of Kibbutz Nir Oz, who was kidnapped and murdered at the kibbutz on October 7, 2023, Hamas invited Red Cross officials to the scene and tried to present the body parts as those of another of the murdered hostages. 

    The Gaza Islamists’ intention, presumably, was to reveal this deception later on, and by so doing retain an additional murdered hostage as “collateral” in the grisly trade in which it seeks to deter Israeli action against it by holding on to the bodies of those it has murdered. 

    These two incidents reflect the current troubled state of the ceasefire concluded in early October between the sides. They probably do not presage its imminent collapse, because neither side has an interest at the present time in a full return to hostilities. Hamas entered the ceasefire under the guidance of its allies in Turkey and Qatar, in order to prevent an IDF push into the Gaza City area which threatened the organization’s continued existence as a governing structure. It needs the continued support of these powerful states, who in turn want to stay on the right side of the Trump administration. 

    Israel, meanwhile, wants a period of rest and recuperation for its exhausted soldiers and similarly has an interest in staying on the right side of the Trump administration. The President, apparently, continues to believe strongly in his 20-point plan for what he called a “grand concord and lasting harmony” in the Middle East. Jerusalem has no desire to, and cannot afford to, appear to be the party responsible for consigning the plan to the memory hole. 

    So for now at least, the framework brokered by the US looks set to remain formally in place, despite the incidents of the last days. But the path to its implementation remains strewn with obstacles. Indeed, it is possible to discern an emergent reality quite at odds with the provisions of the plan, which looks set to constitute the true “post war” state between Israel and the Gaza Islamists. This emergent reality appears set to uneasily co-exist with the 20-point plan’s continued existence as an increasingly theoretical road map. 

    The problem with the 20-point plan is that while both sides had a clear interest in implementing its first phase, from there it gets complicated. The part that has been implemented involved Israeli forces withdrawing to an agreed upon line and the release of the then 20 remaining living hostages. Following this initial withdrawal, Israel now remains in control of 53 percent of the Gaza area, with Hamas holding the remaining 47 percent, along with the majority of Gaza’s population. Hamas, as seen in recent days, appears in no hurry to release the bodies of the remaining hostages. But this is not the main obstacle to the plan’s continued implementation. Article 13 of the 20-point plan contains the provision that: “Hamas and other factions agree to not have any role in the governance of Gaza, directly, indirectly, or in any form. All military, terror, and offensive infrastructure, including tunnels and weapon production facilities, will be destroyed and not rebuilt. There will be a process of demilitarization of Gaza under the supervision of independent monitors, which will include placing weapons permanently beyond use.”

    This describes a situation in which Hamas agrees to its own dissolution as an armed factor in Gaza. Part of its wording suggests the influence of the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. But this is in defiance of reality. Hamas has been massively damaged as a military force over the last two years of fighting. It no longer exists as the hybrid army of 24 battalions that entered the war after the massacres of October 7, 2023. But as may be discerned from the rapidity and brutality with which it reimposed its authority on the 47 percent of Gaza which it retains, it is far from destroyed.

    Armed struggle as part of a long war intended to end in the dissolution of Israel is in the core DNA of this movement. Its officials, indeed, have made perfectly clear that they have no intention of carrying out those provisions of the plan which call on it to disarm. On October 11, a Hamas official told Agence France-Presse plainly that “the proposed weapons handover is out of the question and not negotiable.”

    With Hamas making its intention not to disarm clear, those countries which had considered signing up for the “international stabilization force” envisaged by the plan are now having second thoughts. No external third party wants to put its manpower in harm’s way challenging a jihadi armed force determined to prevent its own dissolution. And for as long as Hamas remains in control of part of Gaza, there is an additional reluctance on the part of outside actors to commit resources to the reconstruction of the Strip, given the possibility that any such investment might be destroyed once again when Hamas chooses to reignite the war that forms its raison d’etre.  

    From the Israeli point of view, the current situation in which an Islamist-ruled pile of rubble is surrounded by an area of Israeli control is by no means unmanageable. Israel succeeded in recent months in establishing a number of clan-based allied militias within Gaza. These appear set to remain in existence in the Israeli-controlled zone. Article 17 of the 20-point plan, meanwhile, allows for the possibility that “in the event Hamas delays or rejects this proposal… the scaled-up aid operation, will proceed in the terror-free areas handed over from the IDF to the ISF.”

    Such a situation is unlikely to hold in the longer term, of course. Israel remains determined to secure the complete dissolution of the Hamas entity in Gaza, if not by agreement, then by force. But given the current US commitment to the 20-point plan, for the period ahead it looks likely that two de facto entities of governance will exist in Gaza and that intermittent hostilities between them will continue. This is a far cry from “grand concord and lasting harmony,” of course. But then in the Middle East, reality’s victory over illusion, at least, tends to be swift and decisive. 

  • How Israel won the war – and lost the PR battle

    How Israel won the war – and lost the PR battle

    Regardless of the ultimate outcome of the Gaza peace deal brokered by Donald Trump, the past two years have seen Israel achieve an unprecedented litany of military accomplishments in the Middle East. The level of damage done to Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis is difficult to comprehend. The end of the Assad regime and, with American support, the demolition of the Iranian nuclear program – setting it back years at the least – were steps that many once thought impossible. Israel has emerged from the post-October 7 period unquestionably stronger in every way except one: its support around the globe, particularly among the youngest voices in the West.

    Polling is consistent, showing increased opposition to Israel and even support for Hamas among younger voters

    The polling on this question has been consistent and widespread, finding a clear trendline toward increased opposition to Israel and even support for Hamas among younger voters. In America, the widely respected Harvard-Harris poll found last month that nearly half of Generation Z respondents supported Hamas over Israel, and more than a third of millennials shared their views.

    Gallup’s July survey found support among those aged 18 to 34 for Israel’s military actions in Gaza and Iran to be just 9 and 15 percent respectively. A Quinnipiac survey which previously showed strong majorities believing it is in America’s interest to favor Israel found support had fallen from 69 percent in December 2023 to 47 percent today, driven by a significant increase in skepticism among younger voters.

    And a major study released in October by the conservative Family Research Council that surveyed American Christians found just six in ten regular churchgoers believe it’s important to pray for Israel, and a majority did not believe it was important for the United States or for their churches to support Israel. Consistent with other polling, churchgoing Gen Z respondents ranked the lowest in favoring any kind of support – prayer, verbal, or financial. In the wake of the October 7 attacks, it would have seemed ludicrous to predict this level of dropoff. But for those who consistently conduct polling on this topic, the trend is both undeniable and the reasons too convoluted to explain with simple questions.

    “For young people on the left, it’s a racial thing, a victimhood thing,” one pollster told me. “On the right, I think it’s more complicated. There’s a strong narrative that’s taken hold in a younger generation that claims American foreign policy is still overwhelmingly being dictated by the Jews, not ‘America First’ influences. So being an Israel skeptic has become a transgressive revolt against the establishment – and people need to understand that even for those who support him, Trump is the new establishment.”

    What has helped this trend take hold in the minds of some young conservatives is that sometimes the actions of Israel’s most vociferous supporters trigger callbacks to the speech codes of the American left. A survey over the summer conducted by Turning Point USA of roughly 7,000 attendees who participated in their major student activist conference in Tampa, Florida, found that 73 percent self-identify as pro-Israel. But that doesn’t mean they don’t recoil at what they view as a tendency by some Israel supporters to frame criticism of the nation or its political leaders like Benjamin Netanyahu as anti-Semitism.

    “One of the things that’s driving more people away from Israel is when you shut them down and don’t say they’re allowed to ask certain questions,” Andrew Kolvet, Charlie Kirk’s producer, said in a NewsNation interview outlining the results of the survey and a series of focus groups. “We have lived through an era where they were called racist if they felt like DEI was a problem. A lot of these kids have been steeped in a world where they were told they couldn’t say something, then the floodgates broke open and now they can say it, and now they feel like the anti-Semite word is being thrown out just like the racist word was a few years ago.”

    The effort Kirk and his team placed on navigating the complicated feelings on campuses about Israel, even gathering multiple Jewish and non-Jewish influencers to discuss the questions he was getting from fans in the weeks prior to his death, indicates how much this area has become a minefield for the young right.

    The Mike Huckabee generation of America’s baby boomer Christians who looked forward to their church’s annual trip to the Promised Land may still be in key positions within the Republican party, but they no longer dominate the conversation online or among younger voters. And for people raised on the idea that a core principle of “America First” foreign policy is avoiding entangling alliances which risk dragging the United States into needless wars, Israel is the number one example.

    Yet for some avowed supporters of Israel, the real story here isn’t entirely or even mostly an organic one, but is driven by a number of intentional actors with their own agendas, backed and promoted by foreign or anti-American interests. Mark Levin, the radio host and Fox News anchor, has taken to labeling these forces “the enemy within,” a combination of media figures and politicians he believes have seen their rhetoric boosted and shared across social media in an attempt to break the America-Israel alliance.

    The ongoing feud on this question between Levin and his former colleague Tucker Carlson (Levin calls him “Chatsworth Qatarlson”) has been just one of many to play out on social media and across a vast diaspora of podcasts, many of which have stronger consumption among politically engaged young people than the cable-news programs that once dictated the direction of foreign-policy debate.

    In the grand scheme of things, this is a battle that is not going away so it cannot be considered lost

    Just as the degradation of power held by the Democratic media establishment has furthered the fortunes of radical candidates like Zohran Mamdani, the fear among some pro-Israel activists is that diminishing strength of leadership on the right could lead to critics of the Israel alliance – like once-MAGA darling Marjorie Taylor Greene – taking on larger roles within the coalition. And behind it all is an abiding concern about the future of the Republican party after Donald Trump. As much as Trump has cemented his place in the minds of many as the most pro-Israel President in American history, his heir apparent is viewed with significantly more skepticism. The potential of a J.D. Vance contest against the likes of Marco Rubio for the GOP nomination in 2028 could become one where differences of opinion on Israel take center stage.

    There is near-universal acknowledgment on the part of American Jewish activists that there is a problem here for their cause, but the question of what to do about it prompts little in the way of answers. AIPAC, the much criticized pro-Israel lobbying group, recently rolled out an ad campaign to rebrand their organization as “America First” to online derision. The elevation of Bari Weiss as editor-in-chief of CBS News by David Ellison, who is very public about his pro-Israel views, has prompted hopes for more pro-Israel commentary from a network that has courted controversy with their coverage.

    But there is a noticeable lack of vibrant leadership making the case for Israel to young audiences – a fact that becomes all the more noticeable with the loss of Kirk. “We know the kind of voices we need, we just don’t have them right now,” one Jewish activist told me. And in their absence, anti-Israel voices such as Nick Fuentes’s can fill the void.

    When CBS News’s Tony Dokoupil put the question to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, citing a poll showing just 14 percent of Americans under 30 support Israel, his response was clear-eyed. “I think the first fix is to finish the war as speedily as possible, something that I have sought to do against all these contrarian propaganda… so, first, you want to end it, end the war speedily, because in the TikTok age and in the television age, letting wars go on too long is going to cost you precisely what it cost you. There’s a real battle on the social media. It’s a big battle. It’s a battle for truth, really.” Netanyahu’s answer implies that Israel is losing that battle.

    In the grand scheme of things, this is a battle that is not going away, so it cannot yet be considered lost. The lack of bipartisan support for Israel has been an acknowledged problem for years, and now the danger of real opposition within both parties is a growing concern that can’t be ignored. For now, Israel backers can hold on to the reality that they continue to get the votes they need and the backing of many of the most prominent American politicians.

    So long as Donald Trump is the leader of the GOP, he defines “America First” – as he reiterated when some of his MAGA supporters were invoking the prospect of World War Three during the debate over striking Iran. He has given no indication of handing over the reins to anyone else.

    It is important to remember that there is a time for war and a time for peace. The debate over the Israeli alliance takes on a different nature in both contexts in American politics. The emergence of an emboldened anti-Israel faction of the American right has been driven not just by prominent voices but by the images from Gaza blasted across TikTok. With a ceasefire in place, a renewed conversation can be had. Israel’s focus remains survival above all else, even if the destruction of its enemies has come with a critical loss of western support. In the hierarchy of needs, staying alive matters most. The arguments can wait for another day.

    This article was originally published in The Spectator’s October 27, 2025 World edition.

  • Who deserves credit for the Gaza ceasefire?

    Who deserves credit for the Gaza ceasefire?

    Since the Gaza ceasefire was announced last week, two distinct narratives have emerged. The first gives President Donald Trump the lion’s share of credit. The second, mostly pushed by former Biden officials, is trying to share the glory. Both are wrong and for the same reason: they give the United States unrealistic credit and ignore the obvious fact that it is the belligerents who decide the fate of a war. More than any world leader, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu deserves credit.

    After the return of the living hostages, Biden-administration Secretary of State Antony Blinken posted on X to explain the ceasefire’s emergence: “It’s good that President Trump adopted and built on the plan the Biden Administration developed after months of discussion with Arab partners, Israel and the Palestinian Authority.”

    Blinken is correct that Biden and Trump plans are similar, but there’s a big difference between devising and implementing a plan. The Biden administration had an uneasy relationship with Israel. This led to Israeli distrust of any American proposal on the one hand and Hamas’s hopes that, by exploiting the tensions, it could get more favorable terms or even a unilateral Israeli withdrawal.

    More important is the fact that the Biden plan contained clauses that doomed it to failure. The initial stages of that plan saw Hamas agree to release the living hostages drip by drip. Israel was wary of this as it would have potentially allowed the terrorist group to leverage hostages even after a ceasefire had been reached. The only plan Israel could expect – given Hamas’s habit of “playing games” with hostages – was one that saw a simultaneous liberation. By March, it became clear that the drip-feed Biden framework would not secure an ending to the war, and Israel resumed fighting. As the Persian proverb goes, if the mason lays the first stone crooked, the wall will be crooked all the way up to the stars.

    The Trump plan made sure to plant the first stone straight: it ensured the initial stages were acceptable to Israel. It made Hamas responsible for starting the ceasefire by releasing all the living hostages at once and then returning the dead bodies.

    Even so, Trump can’t really take credit for this. As the Israeli journalist Amit Segal wrote, “Every Trump plan [for] the Middle East is a plan written by Ron Dermer (senior adviser to Netanyahu) and just wrapped in this shining bright gift package to President Trump.” Avi Shavit further reports that Dermer, former U.K. prime minister Tony Blair, and Emirati president Mohamed bin Zayed had been working on this plan since December 2023. This proved mutually beneficial for Israel and Trump. Any plan that seemed to come obviously from Israel would have been rejected by Hamas and Arab states, so by allowing Trump to take credit for a framework, the Israelis increased the likelihood of its acceptance. And by putting his name on it, of course, Trump got to be the peacemaker. The genius of the so-called Trump plan is that it was conceived in Jerusalem then slapped with a “Made in America” label.

    Many of the talking heads who Trump deserves most of the credit for ending the war argue – without evidence – that he did so by exerting pressure on Netanyahu to wrap things up. There is no evidence that he did so. In fact, all evidence points to the opposite. The attitude of the Trump administration toward Israel behind closed doors has been to ask, “What do you need from us?” This was a reversal of Biden-administration policy, which berated Israel and frequently withheld arms deliveries.

    In other words, the Trump administration applied pressure not to Israel, but to Hamas. And they did so primarily by getting out of Israel’s way. After the President chose not to resist Israel’s invasion of Gaza City, Hamas’s last stronghold, the terrorist group realized it could not drive a wedge between the US and the IDF.

    What this means is that the majority of the credit must go not to Trump – and certainly not to Biden – but to Benjamin Netanyahu and the strength of Israeli soldiers. This is not a criticism of Trump, who did everything right, but a simple fact that the belligerents are the primary drivers of change.

    Non-belligerents can only do so much to end a conflict. This war only ended when the US decided to get out of Israel’s way. As our nation’s policymakers again turn their full attention to Russia and Ukraine, they would be wise to remember this fact.

  • Can Trump’s peace hold?

    He came, he saw, he conquered. That just about describes President Trump’s 12,000-mile round trip from Washington, D.C. to Israel and Egypt. He addressed Israel’s Knesset in Jerusalem, greeted the hostages and their families, hopped on Air Force One for a flight to Sharm el-Sheikh, signed the first phase of a Gaza peace deal, delivered a moving speech, met with the leaders of 27 countries to push the next phases of his 20-point peace plan forward and take a well-earned victory lap, and returned to Washington after what most people would consider a full day.

    The guns are silent, relief supplies are being poured into Gaza, IDF troops have withdrawn to agreed areas and the 20 surviving hostages have been released, along with four of the 28 bodies of the dead, the others to be returned when they are found by Hamas. That spikes the most powerful weapon Hamas had. In return, Israel released some 2,000 Palestinians, some from Hamas, some serving life sentences for murder. Perhaps more importantly, President Trump’s personal promise that Israel would retreat to agreed areas has allowed Gazans to return to their homes.

    A key ingredient in the deal was the culture of the New York real estate business. Jared Kushner, the President’s son-in-law and a man with deep relations in the Arab world; Steve Witkoff, who says his goal is to deliver what Trump wants; and the President himself all learned in delis, board rooms and bank C-suites: “get to yes.” Kushner described himself in a New York Times interview as a “deal guy,” and says deal-making is “a different sport” from diplomacy. You take what you can get from the key players, with whom you have formed close relationships, as Trump demonstrated when he acknowledged many personally, and worry about the details later. 

    Now come those details, the time to move on to a durable peace as laid out in the President’s plan. The prospect is not bright, and the televised image of 27 nations gathered to applaud Trump deceiving. Hamas did not attend. The attendance of Israel’s Prime Minister, Bibi Netanyahu, was vetoed by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey, who threatened to absent himself if Netanyahu were present. Crucially, Iran announced support for “ending the genocidal war” in Gaza but will continue to back Hamas “if Israel continues its expansionist and racist plans.” The mullahs promise to re-arm their proxies throughout the region so they are equipped to continue their battle to destroy Israel. Never mind that Trump has warned that he has ordered 28 “beautiful” new B-2 bombers and that “we will be back” if Iran interferes with progress towards peace in Gaza.

    The hope that a ceasefire will eventually reduce the bitter enmity between Gazans and Israel seems similarly unrealistic

    Then there is the problem of the positions taken by Hamas and Netanyahu. Hossam Badran, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, announced, “The proposed weapons turnover is out of the question and not negotiable.”

    Netanyahu has promised that if Hamas do not disarm there will be no further compromises. Rumors that Israel might offer amnesty to Hamas fighters if they do surrender their weapons – “decommission their weapons” in the language of Trump’s plan – seem to reflect unbridled optimism. The head of Mossad has made it clear: “Let every Arab mother know that if her son took part in the massacre he signed his own death warrant.” Israel obviously intends to treat these Hamas fighters as it did the terrorists who assassinated Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics in Munich, and hunt down and assassinate them no matter where they are and how long it takes.

    The hope that a ceasefire will eventually reduce the bitter enmity between Gazans and Israel seems similarly unrealistic. The thousands of Gazans trekking across Gaza to their former homes will find only debris, adding to their anger about the death of family members and friends. The Israeli euphoria will give way to anger as the tales of the horrors inflicted on the surviving hostages circulate, and some of the bodies of hostages remain unfound. Meanwhile, Hamas remains in charge of governing Gaza. The Israeli press estimates that 16,000-18,000 Hamas fighters have survived, and reports that they are now setting about killing internal opponents. The peace plan calls for an international peace-keeping force to replace Hamas, but as General Keane points out “most peace enforcement does not do well.”

    Nor is it realistic to believe that the gleaming towers envisioned on the Gaza coast by Trump will ever emerge from the sands and debris of the Strip. The birth in Gaza of “some of the thriving modern miracle cities in the Middle East” requires concrete and steel. And Israel is not likely to abandon its barrier to the importation of materials that permitted Hamas to build its tunnels and manufacture arms.

    Then there is the small matter of the $50 billion the UN estimates would be required to rebuild Gaza, which Trump sees as well within the ability of rich Arab nations to provide. Those nations have not yet unzipped their wallets. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates cannot agree on the governing structure that must be in place before the billions in cash flows. The Saudis would rely on the Palestinian Authority, the Emirates won’t until the PA is reformed, and Netanyahu says he will never agree to turning over the governance of Gaza to the PA. Whether the Kushner-Witkoff “get to yes” team can unleash the needed flow of funds cannot be counted a certainty.

    Even if the funds become available, the reconstruction of Gaza will tax the skills of the world’s builders and the patience of the Gazans. The UN estimates that the 50 million tons of debris created by the war will take 20 years to remove. Trump, reverting to his New York builder’s argot, told Egypt’s president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi – “I call him General’ – that Gaza needs ‘a lot of cleanup’, and says ‘rebuilding will be the easiest part.’” Easiest compared with negotiating a ceasefire, perhaps, but extremely difficult. The Strip is strewn with buried, live mines and ammunition; its infrastructure has been destroyed; thousands of its most talented professionals and entrepreneurs are reported by Palestinian sources to have fled, “draining the territory of the very minds needed for reconstruction and development …. [That] undermines its ability to build a resilient society capable of forging a path toward stability and prosperity,” writes Omar Shaban of the Brookings Institution.

    And yet, and yet. The value of the existing “yes” should not be ignored. Any party that breaks the current ceasefire or walks away from future negotiations will face the combined displeasure of the powerful group of world leaders who attended the signing ceremony in Sharm el-Sheikh including, crucially, the Presidents of America, Egypt, Turkey; the Emir of Qatar; the foreign minister of Saudi Arabia; the King of Jordan; the rulers of the Emirates, and the president of Indonesia, an important Muslim country that does not recognize Israel.

    The leaders of the wealthy Arab nations looked at the seas and created spectacular, prosperous cities. They just might find it in their interests to look at the debris of Gaza and imagine a skyline to match theirs and Tel Aviv’s. For now, we have a ceasefire. The one negotiated in Korea has held for over 70 years. As Jews chant during Passover services, at the mention of each blessing from God, “Dayenu”: that would be enough.

  • Donald Trump’s finest hour

    Donald Trump’s finest hour

    This is Donald Trump’s finest hour. Speaking in the Knesset on Monday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called him Israel’s “greatest friend” and nominated him for the Israel Prize,” the nation’s “highest award.” Trump himself was greeted rapturously by the parliamentarians for securing a breakthrough peace deal in Gaza. Trump basked in the applause for his months-long diplomatic effort, declaring that “this is the historic dawn of a new Middle East.” But can one truly emerge? Or is this simply a temporary truce between the warring parties?

    Trump’s immediate accomplishment was to arrange for the release of the remaining 20 living Israeli hostages held by Hamas since its attack on October 7, 2023, when more than 1,200 Israelis were murdered. The plight of the hostages upended Israeli society, leading to weekly demonstrations against Netanyahu whom his detractors accused of needlessly prolonging the conflict to maintain his own hold on power. When Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff appeared in Tel Aviv’s Hostages Square, they were cheered by the crowd but a mere mention of Netanyahu’s name drew loud boos.

    Netanyahu is also in bad odor among Trump’s America First followers. They are construing the peace deal as a defeat for Netanyahu. On his show Real America’s Voice, Steve Bannon remarked, “This is a catastrophic defeat for the Israel America First crowd… because they overreached, pushed this greater Israel project, and it came crashing down around them.” Still, Trump called upon Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, to “give him a pardon” for the criminal allegations that he faces.

    Trump’s ambitions clearly exceed simply overseeing a deal between Israel and Hamas. He has fortified American relations with the Gulf States who played a pivotal role in nudging Hamas to accede to the agreement. Pilots from Qatar will soon be training in Idaho, a move that has triggered hysteria among some of Trump’s MAGA followers who see it as an opening wedge to introduce Sharia law into America. In his Knesset address, Trump vowed that the ceasefire deal would result in “a very exciting time for Israel and for the entire Middle East, because all across the Middle East, the forces of chaos, terror and ruin that have plagued the region for decades now stand weakened, isolated and totally defeated.”

    Well. The forces of disruption and hatred and violence will not be uprooted as easily as Trump’s exuberant language might suggest. His exuberance is understandable. It may even be understood as a form of exhortation. But Iran and its terrorist allies are unlikely to surrender their ambitions overnight. The isolation and defeat that Trump alluded to has not yet occurred. Rather, these malignant forces are working overtime to regroup. Already Hamas is seeking to reestablish control in the Gaza strip, which could easily lurch back into warfare. Nor do Iran’s nuclear ambitions do appear to be in a state of inanition.

    For now, Trump can revel in his accomplishment. But the first test of his vision of a new Middle East will come on Monday afternoon at the “Summit for Peace” in Egypt, where 20 world leaders are gathering, including Trump. Netanyahu, however, will not be in attendance.

  • Donald Trump is the real anti-fascist hero

    Donald Trump is the real anti-fascist hero

    Tell me: who has done more for the cause of anti-fascism? Real anti-fascism? Those masked momma’s boys of the antifa movement for whom “fighting fascism” means little more than hurling abuse at blue-collar workers who voted for Donald Trump? Or Donald Trump himself, the man they love to loathe, who today accomplished the miraculous feat of liberating 20 Israelis from the anti-Semitic hell of Hamas captivity? It’s Trump, isn’t it?

    As of today, following the soul-stirring emancipation of the last living Israeli hostages, whenever I hear the phrase “anti-fascist” I will think of Trump. Forget those sun-starved digital radicals who bark “Fascist!” at every politician on the right, or the snotty lefties whose “anti-fascism” entails yelling at working-class mothers protesting against illegal immigration. Those people have sullied the noble cause of anti-fascism by appropriating it as a mask for their bourgeois sneering.

    No, it was Trump who took the fight to fascism. He has cornered – we hope – a brutal organization that was founded with the express intention of killing Jews and destroying the Jewish state. He has freed 20 men whose only “crime” is that they were Jews in the Holy Land. He has landed a spectacular blow against the forces of Islamo-fascism and helped to fortify the beleaguered Jewish nation. Give me that over the am-dram activism of antifa’s balaclava bores any day of the week.

    Today should be the day that Trump Derangement Syndrome is laid to rest. No one has to agree with everything the US President says or does – that would be weird. But we should acknowledge that he has achieved something extraordinary. He expertly deployed both threats and talks to drag Hamas to the table. And, in the process, he made good on the 20th-century cry of “Never Again” by securing the release of Jews from the limbo of Islamist cruelty.

    We have just lived through one of the most extraordinary moral inversions of modern times. Truth and reason have been entirely turned on their heads these past two years. Israel was unjustly assaulted by a genocidal terror group, and yet it was Israel that was branded “genocidal”. More than a thousand Jews were slaughtered by an army of anti-Semites, and yet it was the Jews who were called “racist”. Israel was ravaged by the war-making of a hostile neighbor, and yet it was Israel that was damned as warmonger.

    Nowhere was this moral inversion more starkly, and more grossly, expressed than in relation to the hostages. These 251 men, women and children were the innocent victims of a fascistic rampage. And yet they were reimagined as “colonisers” by activists in the West. Their posters were rabidly torn down. Their images were desecrated with slurs and insults. There was a time in late 2023 when parts of many cities were papered with the flapping remnants of these posters following the frenzied clawing of anti-Israel activists.

    The most shameful moment came in late October 2023, mere weeks after Hamas’s pogrom, when a poster in London featuring three-year-old twin girls, Emma and Yuli Cunio, was defiled in the most horrific way. Someone drew Hitler mustaches on these two children who’d been taken from their homes by Hamas. It was 2023 and Jewish kids were once more being treated as legitimate targets for bigoted invective. So much for “Never Again”.

    Emma and Yuli were held in captivity with their mother, Sharon, for 52 days before being released in November 2023. Their father, David, was also kidnapped. The girls have asked after him every day for two years. Today they will be reunited with him: David is one of the 20 who has staggered back into the sunlight courtesy of Trump’s deal-making. Who has contributed more to the cause of humanity – the “Be Kind” mob who desecrated posters of Emma and Yuli? Or the president who gave them their dad back?

    Today is a day of celebration, tinged with sadness of course, given Israel is also due to receive the remains of 28 hostages who did not survive the Hamas hell. But tomorrow must be a day of reflection. We need to ask why so many in our own societies took the side not of the oppressed Jewish hostages but of their oppressors. Why so many chose to make excuses for Hamas while demonizing the nation it invaded. Today we can share in Israel’s joy. Tomorrow we must interrogate the blackened western soul that this infernal war has exposed.

  • The return of the Israeli hostages goes beyond politics

    The return of the Israeli hostages goes beyond politics

    This morning in Israel began like no other: layered, dissonant, momentous. A collision of spectacle and salvation, of grief and hope, of noise and meaning. It was a morning composed of many parts: part show, part hope, part illusion, part bluster, part redemption, part commercial deal, part peace plan, part threat, part diplomacy, part war. For a few hours, all those contradictions briefly aligned to form a kind of harmony. They may yet fall apart again, but for now, they have converged in one extraordinary sequence of events.

    On one side of the news screen, Donald J. Trump descended the stairs of Air Force One at Ben Gurion Airport, fist raised in his characteristic gesture of triumph. On the other, Israeli hostages were being shepherded to safety under the watch of the IDF and Shin Bet, emerging after 738 days of brutal captivity. This was a day choreographed like theatre. The world was invited to watch. And the world watched.

    Trump, ever the master of spectacle, timed his arrival to perfection. The plane banked low along Tel Aviv’s coast, passing over the beaches spread with an enormous welcome sign. President Isaac Herzog announced he would award him the country’s Medal of Distinction. Netanyahu walked beside him. Trump grinned, basked, orchestrated. “Everybody wants to be a part of it,” he said of his peace plan as he spoke with journalists inside the plane. “It’s a unique period in time.”

    If Hamas once used hostage handovers for grotesque theater, with drones capturing staged presentations of hastily printed certificates, terrorists preening and Palestinian children cheering as the captives were forced to perform and even kiss their captors, today the tables were turned. Hamas had been warned: no stunts, no provocations, no theatrics. This time, the show belonged to Trump, and to Israel. And nobody engineers a show like Trump.

    But for all the cameras, this was not just a spectacle. It was a day of raw human emotion. As the hostages emerged – first Eitan Mor, Alon Ohel, Ziv and Gali Berman, Guy Gilboa-Dalal, Omri Miran, and Matan Angrest – Israel held its breath.

    Families received confirmation in real time. Some spoke with their loved ones by video call, others waited in silence, eyes fixed on the screens. The father of Omri Miran said only, “We are waiting, waiting and waiting” to embrace his son. A cousin of Alon Ohel described the morning as the best of his life, saying, “I just want to hug him.”

    On Tel Aviv’s Hostage Square, thousands gathered waving flags, watching the Red Cross convoys inch across the screen. Across the country, the atmosphere was charged – anxious, breathless, and exultant in turns.

    And now, the next chapter begins. The other thirteen hostages are in Red Cross custody, preparing to cross from Khan Younis into Israeli hands, their families waiting. The IDF has confirmed preparations are complete. The nation holds its breath again.

    This may have seemed like a pageant of diplomacy and spectacle. But beneath the politics and choreography lies something deeply embedded in Jewish thought – an ancient, relentless imperative to redeem the captive. The drive to bring the hostages home is not merely emotional or nationalistic; it is sacred.

    The source lies in Leviticus: “After he is sold, there shall be redemption for him”. On this verse, the medieval commentator Rashi writes, “It is a positive commandment to redeem him.” The obligation is not optional. It begins with family but extends to the entire community, and ultimately, to the whole nation. The Talmud adds that “there is no greater mitzvah than redeeming captives” (Bava Batra 8b). Because the captive is vulnerable, exposed and often in mortal danger, redeeming them becomes the highest form of piety – an act that binds law, love, and life itself. In halachic terms, this duty surpasses almost every other form of charity.

    For Jews – and especially for Israelis – the commitment to hostage redemption is more than a cultural reflex. It is a covenantal instinct, encoded in scripture, enforced by sages and lived with aching urgency in moments like these. Today’s deal may have the hallmarks of a political agreement, but for many, it is something older, deeper and profoundly moral.

    Trump, for his part, believes this is the beginning of something larger. He has declared that Arab nations are behind his plan, and that peace and prosperity may yet emerge from the ashes of Gaza. Once stabilized and normalized, he claims, Gaza can succeed.

    That is the promise. But reality is more unforgiving. Since the ceasefire, Hamas has turned inward with ruthless efficiency, executing suspected collaborators and rivals in brutal purges across Khan Younis and Gaza City. Palestinians not aligned with the regime’s grip are hunted, tortured, and silenced. The prospect of a peaceful Palestinian polity still stumbles against a foundational obstacle: a political culture steeped in violence, a history of rejection, and a leadership that elevates martyrdom over statecraft.

    As the Israeli scholar and Arabist Dr Mordechai Kedar put it in a recent interview: “Victory in war, by our definitions, is not victory by their definitions. For us, victory means dismantling an army, destroying its command, forcing surrender. But for them – even one survivor, amputated, seated on the rubble of his home, raising a V sign with his only two remaining fingers – that is victory. He has not lost. He will have children, and they will continue the struggle.”

    History casts a long shadow. But today, for a moment, there is light. Relief, reunion, joy, and yes – grief. For those not returning alive. For those lost. For those still waiting. In all this complexity, one thing endures: the determination of a nation which never stops fighting to bring its people home. Today, the traditional Jewish “shehecheyanu” blessing will be uttered by thousands around the world: Blessed art thou oh Lord our God, who has kept us alive, sustained us, and brought us to this moment. Amen.