Yes, hell has frozen over. I find myself agreeing with a Washington Post editorial, “The Gaza ceasefire is cracking. Hamas is to blame. Terrorist brutality risks igniting a Palestinian civil war.”
I am sure Jeff Bezos doesn’t know or care about my feelings, which is the way it should be since I am not a subscriber.
The editorial could have been a we-told-you-so harangue but the editorial showed a clear understanding of the Trump deal.
The problem has been how to kill a suicidal death cult built on terrorism. The answer was to let them kill themselves, but how?
Israel spent two years bombing Hamas to smithereens. This is expensive in terms of money and public opinion. Hamas hides behind women and children. A world that pays scant attention to wars that kill hundreds of thousands of civilians in Africa clucks its tongue at the thought of death of human shields in Gaza.
President Trump found a way to get the suicide bombers to bomb one another while the rest of us do nothing. Israel chased Hamas and Hezbollah leaders in Qatar and elsewhere. Israel (with the help of the USA) destroyed Iran’s nuclear program.
Oh sure, press reports said that Trump was angry at Bibi. Who do you think leaked those stories? Liberals aren’t the only ones using psy ops. A few bombs got Qatar’s attention and suddenly Yahya Ibrahim Hassan Sinwar, the Hamas leader in Gaza, was persona non grata. He was also dead, which helps.
The Washington Post editorial board knows this, writing:
After just a week, the fragile Gaza peace is fraying. Israel halted the transfer of aid to Gaza on Sunday and launched airstrikes after Hamas fighters killed two Israeli soldiers. The United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia have threatened to withhold reconstruction funds so long as Hamas stays in power. Given the continued barbarity of Hamas, a happy future for the people of Gaza is probably out of reach in the near term. Yet full war is also unlikely to resume.
Consider this a win for President Donald Trump, who brought about the ceasefire. It’s also an acceptable outcome for Israel, which has seen the return of all living hostages. And, perhaps most important, this might the best anyone can really hope for in the Middle East.
Now it seems to defy logic that gunfire in a ceasefire is a sign of peace. This is a civil war between outsiders (Hamas) and their lackeys (Gazans) over who controls the rubble. Obviously, it is in the best interest of the Israelis and the Qataris to kill Hamas. Trump has brought the two nations together to do just that.
Hamas became pariahs in Qatar because their terrorism was hurting business. English isn’t the language of the world. Money is.
The Post is on board, concluding:
On Saturday, the State Department warned that it has “credible reports” that Hamas is planning an attack on Palestinian civilians and warned that “measures will be taken to protect the people of Gaza and preserve the integrity of the ceasefire.” What that might look like remains unclear. Both Turkey and Qatar, other guarantors of the peace deal, envision a role for Hamas in a future Palestinian state. They are unlikely to want to confront it directly, even though the group stokes the fires of a Palestinian civil war.
All revolutions eventually consume themselves. Unfortunately for the miserable Palestinians of Gaza, Hamas is not quite yet in its final death throes.
The deal is Qatar gets the coast to build into an Arabian Riviera (complete, I suppose, with a Trump Tower and golf course).
This is Trump diplomacy at work.
This is Trump diplomacy at play in the Oval Office:
Ambassador Kevin Rudd was at joint news meeting when an Australian reporter blasted him for saying nasty things about President Trump in the past.
Trump: Where is he? Does he still work for you?
Australian PM: Yeah he’s right there.
Rudd: Before I took this position, Mr. President.
Trump: I don’t like you either and probably never will.
You can take the golfer out of the locker room, but you cannot take the locker room out of the golfer. Cutting deals (Australia agreed to sell us rare earth elements) requires humor.
Many readers have expressed skepticism about the peace holding in Gaza. Their doubts are rational and deserve respect.
Consider this piece from the New Yorker on Sinwar who had been in an Israeli jail for years for his terrorism. The August 3, 2024, story said:
From the start, Sinwar regarded Israeli prison as an “academy,” a place to learn the language, psychology, and history of the enemy. Like many other Palestinians designated as “security prisoners,” he became fluent in Hebrew and consumed Israeli newspapers and radio broadcasts, along with books about Zionist theorists, politicians, and intelligence chiefs. Despite the length of his sentence, he was preparing for his release and the resumption of armed resistance.
Indeed, even in jail he continued his battle. In 1998, he and Sharatha agreed that there was little hope of winning the release of Palestinian prisoners by political means, so they devised a plan: they’d pay kidnappers on the outside to capture an Israeli soldier. In exchange for the soldier’s release, they would demand the freedom of no fewer than four hundred prisoners.
In 2011, Israel released him and a thousand others in exchange for Corporal Gilad Shalita, who was 19 when captured, 24 when released.
The story told of how Yuval Bitton arranged a meeting for Sinwar.
Bitton said that he helped broker an interview between Sinwar and Yoram Binur, a correspondent for Israeli television, in which Sinwar acknowledged Israeli’s military strength and held out the possibility of a hudna, a truce that could last a generation. After the interview, Sinwar told Bitton he was confident that Israel could not count on its strength forever; it was innately fragile. Fissures between the country’s religious and secular populations would deepen. “After twenty years, you will become weak,” Sinwar said, “and I will attack you.”
How weak did Israel become?
Consider the words of one of the victims of the 7/10 attack.
Yocheved Lifshitz, an eighty-five-year-old peace activist from Kibbutz Nir Oz, was taken hostage on October 7th. After her release, she told the Israeli newspaper Davar that she and other hostages had encountered Sinwar in the tunnels, a few days after they arrived. “I asked him how he wasn’t ashamed to do something like this to people who have supported peace all these years,” she said. “He didn’t answer us. He was silent.” Oded Lifshitz, Yocheved’s eighty-four-year-old husband, remains in captivity. It is not known whether he is still alive. Adina Moshe, another hostage who was released, also recalled her encounters with Sinwar in the tunnels. “He’s short, you know? All his guards were taller than him,” she told Channel 12. “It was ridiculous to see him like that. . . . He stood there. No one responded. ‘Shalom! How are you? Everything O.K.?’ We all looked down. He came twice, about three weeks apart. Each time, it was ‘Shalom! How are you?’ No one responds, and he leaves.”
They supported the snake. How could he do this to them?
America is not the only country infested with liberals.
Bret Stephens, who plays a conservative for the New York Times, wrote:
We’ll probably never know whether Sinwar, who was killed by Israeli troops a year ago this week, ever came to grips with the scale of his misjudgment. Israelis did not crumble in the face of his butchery, which he appears to have specifically ordered against soldiers and civilian communities alike “so as to evoke fear in Israelis and destabilize the country,” according to a recent report in The Times. They did not limit themselves to several weeks of fighting, as they had in previous wars, or buckle to unceasing international pressure, or surrender most of their war aims for the sake of releasing the hostages.
Instead, Israelis rallied and won—at least inasmuch as a lasting victory is ever possible in the Middle East.
I hold out hope. Two months after the New Yorker published its piece on Sinwar, Israel came. Israel saw Sinwar. He’s dead.
We soon shall see if the rest of Hamas joins him. Note to the devil, a cold front is moving in.
This article first appeared on Don Surber’s Substack. Reprinted here with permission.
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