The silence is unsettling. It’s 12 hours since President Trump announced that Israel and Hamas have assented to the first phase of his peace plan, paving the way for a ceasefire. And yet the ‘Ceasefire now’ lobby is eerily schtum. The people who’ve been noisily clamouring for an end to the war in Gaza are either mute or they’re moaning. Don’t trust that snake Benjamin Netanyahu, some say. If I thought a genocide was being executed in Gaza, a crime as cataclysmic as anything the Nazis did, I’d be on the streets celebrating this morning. Yet these people can barely be @r$ed to put a thumbs-up on Instagram.
We know why: it’s because Trump has called their bluff. In fact, this could prove to be one of the most consequential bluff-callings of modern times. Trump hasn’t only managed to get two mortal enemies to sign on the dotted line of a deal. He has also, as a side effect, torn off the veil of pacifism worn by Israel’s legion loathers in the West and compelled them to come clean. He has created a situation where the true aim of this army of Israel haters – the dismantling of the Jewish State – will have nowhere left to hide. It might be a peace plan but it delivers a possibly fatal blow to the cult of Israelophobia.
There are many reasons for normal people – those of us who have not fashioned an entire personality from a frothing contempt for the Jewish nation – to feel hopeful about the events of the past day. The first phase of the deal compels Hamas to release all the Israeli hostages. That could happen as soon as Monday. In return, Israel will set free hundreds of Palestinian prisoners – a risky move, for sure, given many of them are Islamist terrorists with much blood on their hands. Israeli troops will then withdraw to an agreed line and more aid will go into Gaza. The fighting would stop.
It’s a little early to sing ‘Kumbayah’. This is only the first phase. The latter phases – especially the essential demand that Hamas lay down its arms and surrender itself into non-existence – remain a sticking point for the Islamist tyrants of Gaza and their craven apologists in the West. But what sweet relief it would be, for the grief-stricken people of Israel and the war-weary civilians of Gaza, to see the fighting stop. To see the return of the Jews so violently seized on 7 October 2023. To see something approximating peace somewhere on the horizon.
And yet from the self-styled peaceniks, nothing. You’d think the people who are hoarse from yelling ‘Ceasefire!’ would be pleased at the prospect of a ceasefire. Seems not. At the time of writing, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign has said nowt. Which isn’t surprising, given it has already madly rejected Trump’s deal as a ‘continuation of Israel’s genocide against the Palestinian people rather than a plan to end it’. The ‘ceasefire’ folk who have spoken over the past 12 hours seem oddly downbeat. It’s a ‘nightmare deal’, says one. What a weird thing to say about a deal that might bring to an end what you insist is a ‘genocide’. Meanwhile, actual Gazans are cheering Trump’s announcement.
That’s because where the exhausted civilians of Gaza really want a ceasefire, the privileged despisers of Israel who clog up our institutions here in the West want something quite different. They desire not peace, but destruction – the destruction of the Jewish State. They long not for the return of normalcy to Gaza but for the denormalisation of Israel. The shunning of it, the criminalisation of it, and at some point in the future, the deconstruction of it. In moving Israel-Gaza closer to a ceasefire, Trump has stolen that word from the faux-peace lobby and left them with the toughest of choices: either to fess up about their sick dream of Israel’s violent erasure or to shut up once and for all.
To some of us, it’s long been clear that the contagion of Israelophobia plaguing our cultural establishment had little to do with securing peace in the Middle East. But that became super clear over the past 10 days. Israel accepted Trump’s peace deal on 29 September and yet still its shrill haters beat the streets to say ‘Ceasefire now’. Why were they still haranguing the Jewish State after it had agreed to a ceasefire, and Hamas had not? Because they desire more than Israel’s laying down of arms. They want it to lay down its entire existence. Nothing less than Israel’s capitulation to its racist enemies in Hamas and its self-righteous haters in the West will satiate their unhinged animus for the Jewish homeland.
The protest in London on Saturday gave the game away. A vast banner hung in Trafalgar Square. ‘Disarm Israel’, it said. There it was, the true meaning of ‘Ceasefire now’ – not peace, not a deal, but the confiscation of all weapons from the Jews of the Holy Land. The seizing of their guns and rockets so that they might be more nakedly exposed to the ‘just’ punishments of the Palestinian people. The disarming of Israel is a feverish obsession of the activist class, for they understand that in order for Israel to be replaced ‘from the river to the sea’, in order for this sinning settler-colonial nation to be scrubbed from humanity’s records, first its Jews must be denuded of all means of self-defence.
They’re iffy about Trump’s plan for some one simple reason: it leaves the Jewish State intact and it demands the surrender of Hamas. It thwarts their dystopic dream of dragging the Middle East back to 1948, before the modern state of Israel existed. Everyone can now see that what falsely presented itself as a peace movement was in truth a ruthless campaign of delegitimation, demonisation and even destruction waged against the world’s only Jewish nation by our post-reason elites.
The failure of Hamas and its Western simps to erase Israel ‘from the river to the sea’ is a wonderful moment for humanity. We should celebrate both the possibility of peace in Gaza and the miracle of Israel’s survival. In the face of hostile Arab armies, Iranian plotting, neo-fascist militias and the obsessive defamations of our own cultural establishment, Israel stubbornly survives and thrives. That is a testament less to Trump’s ‘art of the deal’ than to the valour and self-belief of Israel’s people, in particular its young soldiers who took the fight to Hamas after 7 October. We cannot know what will happen next, but we know that Israel lives, in glorious defiance of the unholy alliance of murderous Islamists and woke nihilists who long for its annihilation. I’ll raise a glass to that today.
Brendan O’Neill is spiked’s chief political writer and blogs regularly on Spiked where this article was sourced.
There are many reasons for normal people – those of us who have not fashioned an entire personality from a frothing contempt for the Jewish nation – to feel hopeful about the events of the past day. The first phase of the deal compels Hamas to release all the Israeli hostages. That could happen as soon as Monday. In return, Israel will set free hundreds of Palestinian prisoners – a risky move, for sure, given many of them are Islamist terrorists with much blood on their hands. Israeli troops will then withdraw to an agreed line and more aid will go into Gaza. The fighting would stop.
It’s a little early to sing ‘Kumbayah’. This is only the first phase. The latter phases – especially the essential demand that Hamas lay down its arms and surrender itself into non-existence – remain a sticking point for the Islamist tyrants of Gaza and their craven apologists in the West. But what sweet relief it would be, for the grief-stricken people of Israel and the war-weary civilians of Gaza, to see the fighting stop. To see the return of the Jews so violently seized on 7 October 2023. To see something approximating peace somewhere on the horizon.
And yet from the self-styled peaceniks, nothing. You’d think the people who are hoarse from yelling ‘Ceasefire!’ would be pleased at the prospect of a ceasefire. Seems not. At the time of writing, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign has said nowt. Which isn’t surprising, given it has already madly rejected Trump’s deal as a ‘continuation of Israel’s genocide against the Palestinian people rather than a plan to end it’. The ‘ceasefire’ folk who have spoken over the past 12 hours seem oddly downbeat. It’s a ‘nightmare deal’, says one. What a weird thing to say about a deal that might bring to an end what you insist is a ‘genocide’. Meanwhile, actual Gazans are cheering Trump’s announcement.
That’s because where the exhausted civilians of Gaza really want a ceasefire, the privileged despisers of Israel who clog up our institutions here in the West want something quite different. They desire not peace, but destruction – the destruction of the Jewish State. They long not for the return of normalcy to Gaza but for the denormalisation of Israel. The shunning of it, the criminalisation of it, and at some point in the future, the deconstruction of it. In moving Israel-Gaza closer to a ceasefire, Trump has stolen that word from the faux-peace lobby and left them with the toughest of choices: either to fess up about their sick dream of Israel’s violent erasure or to shut up once and for all.
To some of us, it’s long been clear that the contagion of Israelophobia plaguing our cultural establishment had little to do with securing peace in the Middle East. But that became super clear over the past 10 days. Israel accepted Trump’s peace deal on 29 September and yet still its shrill haters beat the streets to say ‘Ceasefire now’. Why were they still haranguing the Jewish State after it had agreed to a ceasefire, and Hamas had not? Because they desire more than Israel’s laying down of arms. They want it to lay down its entire existence. Nothing less than Israel’s capitulation to its racist enemies in Hamas and its self-righteous haters in the West will satiate their unhinged animus for the Jewish homeland.
The protest in London on Saturday gave the game away. A vast banner hung in Trafalgar Square. ‘Disarm Israel’, it said. There it was, the true meaning of ‘Ceasefire now’ – not peace, not a deal, but the confiscation of all weapons from the Jews of the Holy Land. The seizing of their guns and rockets so that they might be more nakedly exposed to the ‘just’ punishments of the Palestinian people. The disarming of Israel is a feverish obsession of the activist class, for they understand that in order for Israel to be replaced ‘from the river to the sea’, in order for this sinning settler-colonial nation to be scrubbed from humanity’s records, first its Jews must be denuded of all means of self-defence.
They’re iffy about Trump’s plan for some one simple reason: it leaves the Jewish State intact and it demands the surrender of Hamas. It thwarts their dystopic dream of dragging the Middle East back to 1948, before the modern state of Israel existed. Everyone can now see that what falsely presented itself as a peace movement was in truth a ruthless campaign of delegitimation, demonisation and even destruction waged against the world’s only Jewish nation by our post-reason elites.
The failure of Hamas and its Western simps to erase Israel ‘from the river to the sea’ is a wonderful moment for humanity. We should celebrate both the possibility of peace in Gaza and the miracle of Israel’s survival. In the face of hostile Arab armies, Iranian plotting, neo-fascist militias and the obsessive defamations of our own cultural establishment, Israel stubbornly survives and thrives. That is a testament less to Trump’s ‘art of the deal’ than to the valour and self-belief of Israel’s people, in particular its young soldiers who took the fight to Hamas after 7 October. We cannot know what will happen next, but we know that Israel lives, in glorious defiance of the unholy alliance of murderous Islamists and woke nihilists who long for its annihilation. I’ll raise a glass to that today.
Brendan O’Neill is spiked’s chief political writer and blogs regularly on Spiked where this article was sourced.
17 comments:
What happens next depends largely on the ultraorthodox bloc in the Knesset. Netanyahu must have done some incredible sweet-talking to get them this far. The ultraorthodox parties abide by the Zionist doctrine of the late 19thC ideologue Theodor Herzl. To them, the only acceptable borders for Israel are those of the Kingdoms of Israel and Judea in its imperial heyday. The trouble is that Netanyahu can't govern without the support of the ultraorthodox parties. He and Trump have their work cut out.
You are a gifted writer Brendan. Your total grasp of how these two faced pretend pacifists have been silenced by Trumps peace deal. There is no one more disappointed than these tea towel wearing, flag waving lunatics, that a deal has been secured. Our corrupt MSM will be choking on its own poisonous bile as it invents ways to misinterpret the truth.
Success in politics, especially on the world stage, is based on achieving the possible, while working with all types of diametrically opposed political opinions and idealogical extremists.
That is why this deal is a real tribute to Trump’s unique ability to bring the warring factions together at the negotiating table where they have been able to reach agreement to cease hostilies and embark on a plan that requires significant concessions on both sides.
Whether the deal will last is anybody’s guess but there appears to be a concensus for movement towards a lasting peace.and that is something almost entirely due to the US President’s independent approach to politics
Even the Trump haters are struggling to find a reason why they shouldn’t join the international chorus of commendation.
It will be interesting to see if our local sufferers of TDS will have the courage to join the throngs in support of the deal or whether they will just crawl back under their rocks hoping it will all fall apart.
Probably the latter.
Observing the unbelievable hate the Pallys have toward Israel, I will believe it when the deal is actually done and stays done for another 12 months plus.
I’m no admirer of Donald Trump. I think that the United States will be a diminished country by the end of his presidency, (and by way of contrast, China will be decidedly more powerful and influential). But if this Middle East cease fire can be made to stick it will be largely due to Trump, and he’ll get, and deserves, much credit for it. Who knows? Maybe even the Nobel Peace Prize?
There will be no peace in Gaza. Only the temporary absence of war. It is a sadistic game. A merry-go-round of death. This ceasefire, like those of the past, is a commercial break. A moment when the condemned man is allowed to smoke a cigarette before being gunned down in a fusillade of bullets.
Israel has carried out murderous assaults on Gaza for decades, cynically calling the bombardment “mowing the lawn.” No peace accord or ceasefire agreement has ever gotten in the way. This one will be no exception.
The US 47th President Trump is conspicuous because of his particular style of speaking publically , (ok some say rambling) that always has a particular target in mind as it traverses back and forth .
It cannot be discounted that his style has produced huge results , his leadership has evolved into a US that is flourishing and world leaders clamour for his audience .
President Trump has sidelined the media because he learned harshly that some media were more venemous than snakes , his open office media briefings are refreshing with first hand dialogue and the positive world moves forward because of it.
A Nobel Peace Award should be a minimum.
There is nothing new in this so-called peace plan. Its components are recycled elements from plan after plan already rejected by one side or the other. So, what’s different this time around?
That’s easy. Israel is winning the war. To coin a phrase, it holds all the cards, at least in a military sense. It is applying military pressure to HAMAS and HAMAS has buckled.
And that’s got nothing to do with Trump’s diplomatic skills. Trump has hardly “brought the warring factions together“ as Mr Bibby wants us to believe. Trump may have endorsed a package that others have cobbled together, but only time will tell whether that package will survive. So right now, we don’t actually have enduring peace; just a cessation of war. And that’s not the same thing.
And that’s because HAMAS, like any credible military organisation, knows when to take a break in hostilities to refresh and regroup. Add to that the importance Islam places on making tactical treaties in times of weakness, and I confidently predict we have not seen the last of HAMAS, whatever Trump takes credit for.
Trump has only been able to play the international stage since 2016, and is a rank amateur at diplomacy. Islam on the other hand has been at it since the seventh century, and is very good at it. Early in Islam’s history, Muhammad established an important precedent when he breached the Treaty of al-Hudaybiya (628 AD), namely that breaking a treaty was morally acceptable if it was advantageous to Islam. Jurists subsequently developed the principle that, in general, truces were to be concluded for no longer than ten years, and only then if they were for the purpose of allowing weakened Muslim forces to gain strength.
So, the core motivations of any agreement by HAMAS are clear. Return the hostages in return for getting rid of the Israeli army, and buy time to regroup until the next opportunity arises to strike Israel.
Trump will be gone in three years, with or without his Peace Prize, and Netanyahu may be gone even sooner after the next election. But Islam, like rust, never sleeps, and HAMAS has time on its side. Like ISIS, they will be back. Israel knows this. But Trump couldn't care less while those condo developments on the Gaza Coast beckon. But his interference simply prevents Israel from finishing the job of destroying HAMAS and starts the clock ticking for the next round. And that does not bode well for enduring peace in general, and those condos in particular.
To - The Jones Boy - interesting commentary, true, this is a "war" that has been going on since 1948.
Yes - "(he) endorsed a package that others that others (namely former US Presidents) have cobbled together" [for which those 'peace deals', in those times, also failed].
Islam " has never slept " - it bides its time, then rises again, the current "power" behind this activity resides in Tehran.
If people are "distracted" by Gaza, then they are missing what has been happening to the UK for some time, namely the constant arrival (of perceived) military aged males (very few females cross the English Channel in RHIBs) - and there are those who reside in the UK, wondering, when will those (immigrants) all of the Islamic Faith rise against the English?
Keep in mind also, with above statement, that there resides in the UK, militant Mullahs (known to UK Agencies & Police) who have been "recorded" not only speaking against the UK and what it represents, but also calling for "an Intifada" against ALL non Muslim's .
Not that TVNZ/news & 3 news would show that as a News item - the BBC are also 'strangely' mute on this subject.
"Whilst we sleep, there are those who remain awake, they see our inadequacies, plan to usurp those beliefs, their intent is to destroy what they perceive as evil".
And when we awake, we do nothing, least we cause "offence".
"Israelophobia"? Does Brendan mean like its equivalent term "Islamophobia" which is also used in exactly the same cynical way as a thought policing tool and to dissuade legitimate criticism of its subject?
Like most Trump haters, Jonesy can’t bring himself to accept any commentary that credit’s POTUS 47 with even the smallest amount of input towards the peace agreement as it stands. I don’t know of any credible witness to the recent negotiations who hasn’t acknowledged the critical importance of Trump’s involvement. Even Ewan McGregor parts company with his old tag team partner re this dodgy interpretation of the facts - good for him.
What about the recipient of the Nobel Peace prize who has graciously dedicated her award to the help she has received from the US President .
These are facts that can’t be denied but somehow Jonesy finds a way to create a scenario that fits his bigoted delusion.
For what it is worth, my guess this that all nations in the Middle East including Hamas and Israel will want to make it work.
There is too much at stake for all parties by allowing it to fail.
In the end, the main winners will hopefully be the innocent bystanders who have become collateral damage of the centuries old power struggles between lslam and the Jewish nation.
Perhaps Mr Jones might be humble enough to concede that greater minds than any of us mere mortals will determine what happens next.
It doesn’t have to end as this self styled prophet has predicted and for all our sakes, let’s hope it won’t.
Oh dear Mr Bibby. And who precisely are these "greater minds" you allude to. Sounds suspiciously like you are elevating your hero to demi-God status. And it doesn't require any humility on my part to call you out on that score. Because it is precisely mere mortals who will determine what happens next in the Middle East. To assert otherwise moves the whole discussion into the realm of faith. And we have enough problems dealing with the existing cast of flawed mortals on offer, without having to invent supernatural solutions. If we drift off down that intellectual cul-de-sac we have lost the debate, if only because Islam does faith much better than us. And incidentally, HAMAS is not a nation, but an agent of Islam, and has no interest in making the peace process work. Except of course, as I have pointed out above, where it can advance the cause of Islam. So as O'Neill suggests, it's too early to sing Kumbyah yet.
Are you suggesting that we should place our confidence in the predictions of a mere mortal who is too afraid of his or her own shadow to write under his or her own name. Even HAMAS has learnt that faith is a powerful motivator when you are left with nothing else .
You should try it some time. Could make a big difference to your cynical and negative view of the unexplained.
Since making my above comment on Trump maybe getting the Nobel Peace Prize, I have familiarized myself somewhat with the rules. Alfred Nobel stated in his will that he wished it to be awarded the year following the act of its winning. This means that of now Trump’s peace plan does not qualify, and he will have to wait until next year, and that the peace needs to endure for at least that long, which is, obviously, the idea, though of which there is no guarantee.
However, as one columnist has pointed out, it is unlikely that it would go to someone who has excited an attempt to overthrow the constitutionally elected government of the United States. She could have added, and who, immediately upon retaking office four years later, pardoned all those, a hundred plus, who had been convicted of insurrection.
It could also be said that one who boasts his insistence that he deserves a Nobel Prize – five times over actually - does nothing but diminishes the prestige of the award. But then, Trump is not known for his humbleness.
Not everyone including DrJames Allen, who contributes to BV, ,accepts that Trump caused the insurrection and further he did win the previous election.
No he isn’t, but he is known as the most consequential US President since FDR and many historians now rate him with Churchill in the same league.
After only 9 months into his second term he has achieved more successes on the world stage than all his predecessors put together since Reagan and that is an indisputable record.
All world leaders have grabbed the opportunity to boast even when it is unjustified but Trump doesn’t have to worry about that.
Most of the time it is said in jest or to mock the ineptitude of his political opponents. The facts speak for themselves.
Generally when you are in a hole you might be expected to stop digging Mr Bibby. To state that Trump has "achieved more successes on the world stage than all his predecessors put together since Reagan" is a pretty open invitation to challenge. But since you carefully stopped at Reagan, perhaps you are tacitly acknowledging the success of previous US administrations in building the international rules-based security and trade order after WW2. America grew fat and prospered under that order. New Zealand still relies on that order for its economic survival. So why would you glorify Trump's deliberate destruction of that order? Is that what you seriously count as success Mr Bibby? Far be it for me to indulge in the ad-hominem attacks that are your stock-in-trade, but I might be forgiven for asking what are your motives Mr Bibby? Why are you consistently defending a foreign regime that is demonstrably acting against the interests of your own country?
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