“The message we’ve tried to convey to the Israeli leadership is that now the war is over,” said Jared Kushner.
A choir of Kings and Presidents was yodeling the praises of Trump the peace maker when I cautioned, “Beware the suicidal compulsion of antisemitic tyrants.”
Different US Administrations have devised their own ruse to stop Israel winning wars. Or they let the UN Security Council do the dirty work. President Biden’s impudent prank set a new low.
Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken acted like a co-opted member of Netanyahu’s war cabinet, when telling it to make a ‘clear plan’ for protecting civilians before resuming the business of eliminating Hamas. As though talking to a roomful of warlords he shook an emphatic finger. He warned that “A repeat of the massive levels of civilian life and displacement scale we saw in the north” would raise a red flag.
This play book guaranteed that Hamas would live to fight another day. What made it egregious was that while the group was exempt from playing by any rules, the book was thrown at Israel. As to the hostages, Biden did nothing to punish Hamas for holding and treating them as safe bet bargaining chips.
How does the Trump Administration compare?
Its play book’s for pulling up Israel short of the finish line is nothing short of ingenious. A ‘Cease Fire’ HQ set up in Israel proper, takes the war out of the hands of Bibi’s cabinet. Through CENTCOM (Civil-Military Coordination Center) real estate moguls rely on ‘stakeholders’ coming on board. Hamas backers such as Turkey and Qatar are by no means ruled out for policing a cease fire.
Some 200 US military people are based at CENTCOM, though won’t be deployed in Gaza. Troops from Britain, Canada, Germany, Denmark and Jordan will be deployed, though under what chain of command and legal status no one, not even Donald Trump knows. To add to the witches’ brew, Hamas’ United Nations arm may be invited as a peace keeper. We know how that turned out keeping the peace in Lebanon.
‘Stabilization’ is CENTCOM’s word for a coup in all but name. It’s the vagueness stupid. Mind-numbing like the soporific shoved down inmates’ throats in, “One flew over the cuckoo’s nest”, the less known about the peace-keeping phase the better for a stable Israel.
President Trump pulls no punches what will be if Hamas does not play ball. “They’re violent people,” he said. “But they don’t have the backing of Iran anymore. They don’t have the backing of really anybody anymore.” Be good or be eradicated,” he tells Hamas.
To which the group reacted how? Hamas bragged that it had no plans to disarm or to cede power in Gaza. It backed up the words with murderous acts to quash rebellion. Meanwhile it cemented power in the areas from which the IDF had to withdraw to allow Hamas to return the hostages, buggering Trump’s utopian vision of, “Eternal Peace”.
How on earth did MICHAEL OREN once a holder of Israel’s top diplomatic post, think that Donald Trump, Steve Witkoff, and Jared Kushner-“adept at developing urban properties and golf resorts” -could succeed, “where generations of aspiring peacemakers failed”?
The answer is that they have not succeeded. Nor can the property moguls begin laying the golden path to ‘Eternal Peace’ without peeking into Hamas’ 1988 Charter – better still, make its removal the 21st point in the peace plan.
The incriminating bits aren’t exactly concealed in the document:
“Israel will rise and will remain erect until Islam eliminates it as it had eliminated its predecessors.”
“The Islamic Resistance Movement believes that the land of Palestine has been an Islamic Waqf throughout the generations and until the Day of Resurrection. No Arab country nor the aggregate of all Arab countries, and no Arab King or President nor all of them, have (the right to violate) this law of Islam, with regard to Palestine.”
“Peace initiatives and international conferences to resolve the Palestinian problem are all contrary to the beliefs of the Islamic Resistance Movement. For renouncing any part of Palestine means renouncing part of the religion”.
“From time to time an International Conference (searches) for a solution to the problem.
of our religion. Israel, by virtue of it being Jewish, defies Islam and the Muslims.”
“World Zionism and Imperialist forces have been attempting to push the Arab countries, one after another, out of the circle of conflict with Zionism, in order ultimately, to isolate the Palestinian People”.
“Their scheme has been laid out in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Leaving the circle of conflict with Israel is a major act of treason and it will bring curse on its perpetrators. Within the circle of the conflict with world Zionism, Hamas regards itself the spearhead and the avant-garde.”
To rehabilitate Gaza, therefore, President Trump must overcome what Michael Oren concedes is next to impossible: disarm a terrorist group with intact tunnels, weapons and carte blanche from the great peace maker in the White House to break the cease fire at will.
A peace plan cannot be stronger than reality. Equally true, it must allow for Israel’s biblical underpinning. The Old Testament is not peaceable at all – Israel is commanded to wage holy war on implacable foes . ‘You shall utterly destroy them’ (Deuteronomy 20:17). Note the present tense: the religious obligation is bound neither by time nor circumstance.
Maimonides was no zealot. Yet the greatest scholar of all time is clear that Jewish law mandates Israel to go to war. Given what its people have been through since Oct 7, a certain militarism to regain equilibrium is hardly out of place.
After all if Trump can adopt the maxim: ‘Peace through Strength,’ why not Israel’s government mandated through free and fair elections to adopt the same.
Steve Apfel is an economist, the founder and former director of the School of Management Accounting, a veteran authority on anti-Zionism and a prolific author.
His 2012 book, ‘Hadrian’s Echo: the why and wherefores of Israel’s Critics’ was acclaimed by top Middle East scholars. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B007PIVM6G