The Social World

Tag: Middle East

Will Israel bring back the death penalty for terrorists?

For years, there was a broad consensus in Israel that there was no benefit to reintroducing the death penalty. But now, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government is reportedly considering supporting a bill which would bring back capital punishment for convicted terrorists.

The bill, which has passed its first reading in the Knesset, would introduce the death penalty for those who murder Jews – specifically, Palestinian terrorists. It would not apply to Jews who commit acts of terrorism and murder Palestinians. And it would not apply if Israeli Arabs, who are full citizens, are murdered.

The bill is being promoted by Itamar Ben-Gvir, the minister of national security, who in 2007 was convicted of incitement to racism for chanting “Death to Arabs.” Since becoming a minister more than three years ago, he has moderated his language and now urges his supporters to chant “Death to terrorists” instead.

The bill has also been backed by the Shin Bet, Israel’s security service, which for the first time has said it supports the death penalty in principle. Six weeks ago David Zini, its new chief, was appointed after being nominated by Netanyahu.

In the death penalty bill’s draft presented by Zvika Fogel (of Ben-Gvir’s Jewish Power party), it states that the death sentence would be carried out within 90 days, with no possibility of appeal, for “anyone who murders a Jew solely because they are Jewish – including those who planned or dispatched the attack.” It also specifies that “the execution will be carried out by the prison service through lethal injection.”

If passed, it would not be the first time Israel has had the death penalty. From the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 until 1954, it was in force under the British Mandate’s 1936 Criminal Ordinance. During those six years, courts issued death sentences to several murderers – both Arabs and Jews – and to a Jewish Kapo accused of crimes against humanity during the Holocaust. But state presidents Chaim Weizmann and Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, who opposed the death penalty on moral grounds, pardoned every one of those convicted and commuted their sentences to life imprisonment.

The only exception was IDF major Meir Tobianski, who, during the war of independence, was hastily and unjustly convicted for treason and spying for Britain and executed by firing squad in the Jerusalem hills. Months later, in 1949, military advocate general Aharon Hoter-Yishai ordered a review of the case and ultimately recommended that the conviction be annulled. Tobianski’s name was cleared, his rank was restored and an apology was made to his widow and son.

In 1954, the Knesset abolished the death penalty altogether for murder. The debates were not partisan, and the arguments for abolition were rooted in Jewish tradition – that human beings are created in the image of God, and only a divine decree can take away that right to life – as well as universal moral principles and the fact that capital punishment does not deter crime.

Although the death penalty was abolished for ordinary murder, Israeli law still permits it in rare cases: treason, treason during wartime, crimes against humanity, crimes against the Jewish people (such as Nazis), or extremely severe wartime offenses. In the occupied territories, where military law often applies, there are also provisions that permit death sentences for severe security offenses.

Over the years, military courts have occasionally handed down death sentences to terrorists, but these were always overturned and commuted to life imprisonment. The only civil death sentence ever carried out in Israel was for Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi official who was responsible for implementing the Final Solution.

For years, there were occasional calls – mostly from right-wing politicians – to impose the death penalty on terrorists in particularly heinous cases. But most parties in Israel, along with human rights organizations, strongly opposed it on security, moral and practical grounds – as well as concerns about Israel’s international image.

The Shin Bet also always opposed it. Over the years, various internal discussions took place within the agency, always concluding that the death penalty would not deter potential terrorists. The arguments against the death penalty were particularly well articulated by the late Yitzhak Ilan, former deputy director of the Shin Bet. In conversations I had with him, and in documents he wrote, he explained that the only possible justification for the death penalty would be deterrence. But based on his 31 years of fighting terrorism, “the disadvantages far outweigh any potential deterrent effect.”

He noted that between sentencing and execution, terrorist organizations would likely attempt to carry out kidnappings or bargaining attacks to prevent executions – just as the Jewish underground groups did under British rule. “In such a case,” Ilan emphasized, “we would suffer a double loss: instead of a terrorist sitting in prison for life, he might be released as part of a deal triggered by the death sentence.”

Ilan also warned that executions could lead to revenge attacks by terror groups or even by the condemned person’s relatives. In addition, wanted terrorists would refuse to surrender, choosing to fight to the death – putting security forces at greater risk. And perhaps most significantly, those sentenced to death would become martyrs and role models. “Islamic culture glorifies martyrs,” he said, “and those who face execution would quickly become revered cultural heroes.” In Israel today, public streets, parks and institutions are named after members of the underground organizations executed by the British.

The Shin Bet strongly denies that its change of position is tied to Zini’s appointment, claiming that its stance was formed independently by professional officials over a long period, influenced by the horrendous acts of murder, rape and burning by Hamas on October 7, 2023, and by the fact that Hamas no longer holds any live hostages. The Shin Bet has stated that although it supports the death penalty in principle, it opposes its automatic and blanket application. In other words, it believes each case must be evaluated individually. This approach sharply contrasts with the demands of Ben-Gvir and his allies, who want courts to apply the law automatically, without judicial discretion.

There is still a long way to go before the bill passes its second and third readings. But given Israel’s security situation and with the 2026 elections approaching, Netanyahu appears more willing to advance the bill than ever before. Some reports suggest he tried to halt the passage of the bill behind the scenes. But the legislation is gaining momentum – and if passed, could reshape Israeli society forever.

November 25, 2025
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.

November 17, 2025
The jihadist I knew: my life as al-Sharaa’s prisoner

As Washington rolls out the red carpet today for the former al-Qaeda chieftain and now Syrian president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, Syria’s minorities continue to live in terror. An army of destruction, half Mad Max, half Lollapalooza is rolling through the desert somewhere south of the country’s capital, Damascus. Who has ordered these militants into action? No one knows. What do they want? It isn’t clear. But, as a former prisoner of al-Sharaa’s band of jihadists, I can’t say I’m surprised by what is unfolding in Syria.

Whatever else might be said about the old regime of Bashar al-Assad, no one was ever in doubt as to who was in charge. There were statues of al-Assad on roundabouts, billboards plastered with his face on the highways and pop hits on the radio (“O Bashar, the lofty brow, but who is like you?”). These weren’t masterpieces by any means, but they had a certain catchiness to them, and so, over time, they settled into everyone’s mental jukebox. The old power wished to govern a particular place, namely Syria, and to preside over a particular people, namely Arabs, as the national anthem, Protectors of the Realm, was at such pains to point out.

The power looming over the nation’s minorities at the moment has no such properties. Many of the foreign fighters still in Syria drifted in at the beginning of the civil war, 14 years ago. Often enough, those fighters burned their passports on arrival. It is hard to know who they are.

Whoever the culprits, the violence is unmistakable. The powers that have been coming for the Druze over the past few months have also been targeting the Christian community in Syria, which is living through a period of danger unlike anything that has befallen eastern Christianity for over a century. The worst of the anti-Christian violence occurred last June at the Mar Elias Church in Damascus, when an attacker opened fire on the congregation. He killed 25 people before killing himself.

As I was frequently subjected to fake executions, I spent most of my first year in a state of shock and awe

The Alawites are also in jeopardy. A mixture of government and civilian forces, amounting to some 200,000 fighters, descended on the Alawite homeland, along the Syrian coast, in March and April. The massacres there appear to have left at least 1,500 people dead. In July, when a similar mixture of government and irregular forces attacked the Druze capital, Sweyda, they killed some 1,400 people, of whom 765, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, were civilians “summarily executed by defense and interior ministry personnel.”

Anyone who visited Syria before the war will be familiar with the spirit that animates this violence. In the time of al-Assad, whenever the propaganda division wanted to haunt the national imagination, it depicted sectarian strife as a big-bellied gourmand sitting down for a feast. The nation of Syria was laid out before this creature like a meat pie. The cartoons depicted him, bloody knife in hand, about to carve the country into bits. That dark prophecy is alive in al-Sharaa’s Syria.

I happen to know something about what it’s like to live under the power of Islamist extremist rule. In the autumn of 2012, during an ill-fated reporting trip in Syria, a band of jihadis, led by Syria’s then al-Qaeda chief, Mohammed Jolani, now better known as al-Sharaa, took me prisoner. In those days, he and his deputy, Mohammed Adnani, presided over a caliphate-in-miniature which operated out of the basement of the Aleppo eye hospital. Adnani subsequently became famous for his behead-the-journalists-in-the-desert videos, and for directing the November 2015 attacks in Paris.

Almost right away, during the first hours after my arrest, I was told that Islam holds creation to be divided between the realm of the seen and that of the unseen. As Adnani was my first interrogator, I happened to hear his rantings about this important topic most often. In his view, ever since the arrival of the very first Alawite in Syria in the ninth century, the members of this only-in-Syria sect had been inflicting their barbarism and ignorance on the nation. Through the centuries, according to him, the Alawites had lied so subtly, sabotaged Islam so relentlessly and when all else failed, simply terrorized the people, that, eventually, those who truly loved Islam had been forced into hiding. Adnani and al-Sharaa were going to escort all of Syria out of its thousand years of darkness, into the light.

As I was often held by myself in a windowless cell, I was never permitted out of it without a blindfold. And as I was frequently subjected to fake executions, I spent most of my first year in a state of shock and awe. After about 500 days, however, the effect wore off. By that point, I had been transferred to a prison somewhere on the banks of the Euphrates, in eastern Syria. By then, the little family of terrorists I had encountered at first in a warren of rooms beneath a ruined Aleppo hospital was no longer so little. Thanks to an ingenious social media footprint and a “cataract” of American weaponry, as this New York Times article (which I did not have occasion to read at the time) put it, the family now controlled an area the size of Texas.

What does life inside an international terrorist organization feel like during its rapid growth phase? It feels like young men who’ve been shunted to the side since childhood – who’ve been poor and rootless and frightened of the police – are coming into their own at last. They are up to their ears in guns, combat vests, grenades, and two-way radios. Each one of these young men dreams of a little Playboy mansion in the desert: the four wives, the children underfoot, the loving community all around. In Syria, especially for the fighters who have access to money from Europe, it’s not so hard to make this particular dream come true.

In a contemporary caliphate, among the fighters at least, much feasting goes on. There is singing. The happiness in the air, the resolve to do away with Syria’s three million Alawites once and for all, the high-tech western weapons, the half-suicidal, half-homicidal foreign fighters: when you live within these phenomena long enough, you will eventually feel that you have drifted away into a country which is just being born, which the outside world has never seen and cannot fathom. You will note how often the citizens here call up the old world on the phone, how they miss it and how much time everyone spends assembling improvised explosive devices.

An al-Qaeda official in Syria who I remember lecturing a roomful of prisoners he was about to execute on charges of apostasy is now a senior minister

Eventually, you will feel about this parallel world as you might feel about a novel in which a high school student – a clairvoyant, let’s say – is laughed at for some essential element of herself, and so withdraws into a netherworld of spirits and spells. The reader of a novel like this might not know how exactly the climactic scene will unfold but long before the spectacular bloodbath arrives, he will feel it coming. Life inside the growth phase of an international terrorist organization is like waking up to find that everyone you know is the lead character in such a novel.

One night in July of 2014, I was let out of my cell. A kerfuffle over who was entitled to the revenue from Syria’s oil fields had broken out. During the subsequent forced march out of eastern Syria, we drove through the desert, always at night, and always without lights. Just before dawn, we would stop at the mouth of a cave or at the base of a sand dune in order to drink tea and catch a few hours of kip.

At least a few of the pick-up drivers who escorted us have since become generals occupying plush offices in downtown Damascus. An al-Qaeda official in Syria who I remember lecturing a roomful of prisoners he was about to execute on charges of apostasy is now a senior minister. On the surface of things, it would appear that the revolution has turned everything in Syria on its head. But have things really changed all that much? I, for one, am skeptical.

Looking back, I suspect that in the summer of 2014, when I was traveling through the desert, the nation had already slipped from al-Assad’s grasp. During the day, his men controlled certain checkpoints. But at night, bands of clairvoyants in pickup trucks roamed the countryside. Somewhere, far away, in a palace on a bluff overlooking Damascus, a president who liked to play both sides off against the middle received foreign dignitaries. He smiled for the cameras. Did he know what was going on in his own backyard? Did he care? It wasn’t clear. Meanwhile, every day, a stream of young Europeans keen on guns, pick ups and being married to four women at once was trickling into the country.

The old stream has begun to flow again, according to a report in Le Figaro. In 2014, some of the men with whom I traveled through the desert were keen on the idea of the slave girl. The markets which used to traffic in Yazidi women are now trafficking in Alawite women. “The matter of the kidnapped women is worrisome to everyone,” an activist, Ihan Mohammed, told France 24. “Every day, two or three women disappear.”

One of the most vexing issues in Syria in 2014 was the Europeans’ tendency to summon their friends back home into the jihad. A few weeks ago, a British TikTokker, standing at the site of an Israeli bombing in downtown Damascus, issued a general appeal. Evidently, he had seen into a nefarious plot. Israel was planning to pave a highway through Syria, into Iran, his visions told him. “It’s some crazy shit,” he says in his video. “My brothers and sisters, it seems that this is just the beginning of the war with Israel. What are you guys doing? Are you just sitting there? All of you can get on a plane right now…”

In Syria, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Syria has a new president who is warmly welcomed in western capitals. But on his watch, the blood continued to spill.

November 10, 2025
The Israel-Lebanon ceasefire is in danger of shattering

It’s been almost a year since Israel and Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia that arguably held more power in Lebanon than the government itself, signed a ceasefire to end a ferocious two-month long war. The deal couldn’t have come at a better time; thousands of Israeli air and artillery strikes had pulverized southern Lebanon, Hezbollah’s traditional base of operations, leading to a displacement crisis and killing close to 4,000 Lebanese. Whole swaths of northern Israel had been vacated due to Hezbollah missile attacks, forcing the Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to spend money on tens of thousands of civilians bunking in hotel rooms. But the agreement is wearing thin. The ceasefire is really a ceasefire in name only. Will it hold?

Israel continues to strike targets in Lebanon, both in the south and above the Litani River, in what it claims is a self-defense measure to prevent Hezbollah from rearming. Last weekend, four people were killed in the southern Lebanese town of Kfarsir. Before that strike, the UN Human Rights office stated that more than 100 Lebanese civilians have died in Israeli attacks since the November 2024 deal was signed. The situation is getting intolerable for Lebanese politicians. President Joseph Aoun, a former army chief himself, went so far as to order the Lebanese army to confront Israel in the event of similar events in the future. The fact that Lebanon’s military capacity couldn’t possibly match up to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) is beside the point. The larger issue is that Israel’s military actions are alienating a Lebanese government that is, if not friendly, than at least not adversarial.

What Hezbollah and Lebanese officials call violations of the ceasefire, Israel calls self-defense. Despite Israeli troops pulling out of the small portions of southern Lebanon they briefly controlled during the war, the IDF still holds five separate points on the Lebanese side of the UN-demarcated Blue Line, which is technically a breach of the terms. The Israelis, however, are tying a full withdrawal from Lebanon to the Lebanese government’s demobilization of Hezbollah. And Israel has no intention of stopping the airstrikes as long as Hezbollah is holding weapons.

“The Lebanese government’s commitment to disarm Hezbollah and remove it from southern Lebanon must be implemented,” Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Sunday. “Maximum enforcement will continue and even intensify – we will not allow any threat to the residents of the north.”

The Trump administration, which inherited the Joe Biden-era ceasefire agreement, finds itself in a vice. Tom Barrack, the US Ambassador to Turkey who doubles as Donald Trump’s special envoy for Syria and Lebanon, warns that Hezbollah still has a stockpile of at least 15,000 rockets and is replacing some of the arms it lost during last year’s war. During a conference last week, Barrack advised the Lebanese government to sit down with Israel and work on a normalization pact, as if establishing normal diplomatic relations would magically fix all the problems between these two states. It also happens to be a recommendation that is borderline pointless, since Lebanese officials will find it hard to rationalize normalization talks as long as Israeli bombs are killing Lebanese citizens on Lebanese territory. To do anything less would be to jeopardize the credibility of the relatively new administration in the eyes of the people it’s supposed to represent.

It’s difficult to see what Washington can do fix things. Hezbollah has no incentive to part with their small arms, rockets, launchers and explosives if Israel continues to attack. Israel, in turn, has no incentive to stop treating Lebanon as its own personal piñata as long as Hezbollah refuses to disarm and transition strictly into a non-violent political party (and that’s even assuming Israel would support Hezbollah participating in Lebanese politics to begin with). The maelstrom is further complicated by the Gulf states, who would normally be called upon to fundraise Lebanon’s reconstruction but aren’t likely to write any checks if they don’t feel comfortable that the war is truly over.

This is not to say the situation isn’t entirely negative. The resumption of full-scale war between Israel and Hezbollah, which many observers assumed would occur shortly after the agreement came into force, hasn’t come to pass. Northern Israel has seen a total of one rocket attack from Lebanon. The Israeli population that left for the country’s major cities during hostilities is starting to come back to the farms and small villages that populate Israel’s northern communities. Hezbollah has cooperated far more than previously assessed, and the Lebanese army, constantly strapped for cash and dealing with resource constraints, has proven itself to be a committed enforcer of the deal’s provisions. The writ of the Lebanese state has expanded, and Lebanese troops who previously viewed the southern portion of the country as a no-go zone are now regularly deployed there. Last but not least, the Lebanese government is no longer acting in an interim capacity; its president is a leading promoter of demobilizing Hezbollah and bringing all arms under the state’s control.

But these glimmers of hope can’t hide the fact that the situation risks spinning out of control. It’s the geopolitical equivalent of the chicken-and-egg problem. Except this time, the answer will determine whether Lebanon stays in a gray zone between war and peace, descends into another cycle of violence or gets the opportunity to rebuild.

November 4, 2025
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.

October 29, 2025
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.

October 21, 2025
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.

October 14, 2025
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.

October 13, 2025
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.

October 13, 2025
Will Israel always have America’s backing?

Marc Lynch is angry. The word “rage” appears six times on the first page of America’s Middle East: The Ruination of a Region, and comes in response to Israel’s war in Gaza. This should be sufficient warning to anyone expecting a cool, calm, dispassionate analysis of the Middle East that they might have picked up the wrong book. That is not to say that Lynch, who runs the George Washington University’s Middle East program, is not worth reading. On the contrary, and despite the occasional lapse into the sort of political-science-speak favored by academics, he is a fierce and compelling voice.

Lynch dates the beginning of America’s Middle East to 1991, the conclusion of a swift military campaign against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and the end of the bipolar era in which the US and the Soviet Union had for decades shared the responsibilities of international mediation. Contrast the hopes for the region then – Israeli-Palestinian peace, the spread of democracy and liberalizing economic reforms – with the reality of what followed: multiple wars between Israel, Hamas and Hezbollah; another war and a decade-long insurgency in Iraq; civil wars in Syria, Yemen, Libya and Sudan; and continued internal repression by regimes that can be classified as autocracies, if you are being kind, or varying shades of dictatorship if you’re feeling less charitable.

Both Israel and the United States come in for a vigorous kicking, more so than the region’s Islamists, Hamas foremost among them. This is a pity, as well as a mistake, because it undermines a wider analysis of American policy towards the Middle East that is otherwise brave, bracing and original.

It is Washington’s complicity with Arab autocracy combined with the impunity it allows Israel, irrespective of whether Republicans or Democrats are in government, which infuriates Lynch. And much of the rest of the world, too. The author is unsparing in his critique. The US, he writes, consistently likes to present itself as “seeking to liberate the people they are immiserating”. Washington’s inability or refusal to take regional public opinion seriously has long been its “fatal flaw”. “The starting premise of American policy has always implicitly been that Palestinians are not fully human beings.”

As an avowed Obama fan who advised both presidential campaigns, he cuts the former president a lot of slack, though the title of this chapter, adapted from Obama’s memoir, gives the game away: “The Audacity, and Failure, of Hope”. Given Obama’s much vaunted hopes of changing both American policy in the region and the mindset behind it, the charge sheet against him makes depressing reading: a free pass to Gulf forces to help Bahrain’s monarchy crush its Arab Spring uprising in 2011; failure to uphold his “red line” in 2012 over Syrian president Bashar al Assad’s use of chemical weapons against his own people; the refusal to brand the 2013 Saudi- and UAE-backed rising against the democratically elected Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt a coup. In the words of a 2016 Brookings report, not quoted by Lynch, “when it comes to Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking, no US president has promised more and accomplished less than Obama”.

The years ahead, Lynch argues, should cause concern for Israelis. The younger generation of Americans, who do not have political memories extending to Israel’s foundation in 1948, are considerably more pro-Palestinian than their parents. When the US finds itself alone, again and again, wielding its Security Council veto in defense of Israel, that demographic shift should ring alarm bells in Jerusalem and Washington. Likewise, as Lynch observes, for decades the bipartisan consensus in the US on Israel barely needed to be openly defended. Today it is under active discussion at every level.

There is a reason that Benjamin Netanyahu refuses to discuss “the day after” the war in Gaza has ended. We know that it does not involve the beginning of talks with the Palestinians leading to a two-state solution, because he has ruled out a Palestinian state. In many minds, the obvious alternative, a single state, will be tantamount to apartheid. Lynch notes that the quartet composed of Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem and the International Court of Justice considers “the international legal criteria for the crime of apartheid” to have been met already.

On 16 September, a UN report accused Israel of committing genocide, adding to the country’s deepening international isolation days ahead of the planned recognition by a handful of countries, including the UK, France, Canada and Australia, of the state of Palestine at the UN’s General Assembly.

What comes after Gaza? Like many experts, Lynch has already written off the two-state solution and reckons “an unsustainable apartheid may be a surer route towards the attainment of Palestinian rights than the perpetual pretense of the fantasy of two states”. To quote the title of the Egyptian-American writer Omar El Akkad’s excoriating book on the West’s complicity in the horrors of Gaza, One Day Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This.

The article first appeared in The Spectator’s UK edition.

October 10, 2025