Did Everything Change for the Better with the Hostage Deal?

[Order Michael Finch’s new book, A Time to Stand: HERE. Prof. Jason Hill calls it “an aesthetic and political tour de force.”]

Trump calls the freeing of 20 hostages for nearly 2000 Palestinian prisoners, and the withdrawal of the IDF from Gaza City, back to a perimeter closer to Gaza’s border with Israel, an “end of an age of terror and death” and a “triumph for Israel.” No doubt the Israelis are ecstatic at the return of the twenty hostages, but does this constitute a “triumph for Israel”? The IDF was prevented by Trump from dealing a mortal blow to Hamas in Gaza City. Hamas has already broken its promise to return 28 bodies, sending back only four dead Israelis, while claiming that they have been unable to locate the others. The IDF believes Hamas is lying. Why wouldn’t they send those dead bodies back? Possibly because any forensic expert would be able to detect signs of torture, with eyes gouged out and genitalia cut off, or decapitated bodies. And there is no real “triumph for Israel” until Hamas has been completely demilitarized, something the Hamas leaders promise will never happen.

Trump said: “Generations from now, people will remember as the moment in time when everything changed for the better.”

No, that’s not going to happen. The war may stop in Gaza. But saving Hamas from complete destruction does not change things “for the better.” Handing Hamas 2,000 potential recruits from Israeli prisons does not change things “for the better.” Putting words about the creation of a “Palestinian state” in the 20-point Trump Peace Plan is not changing things “for the better.” There ought to have been no mention of a “Palestinian state,” but a focus only on Hamas in Gaza.

Trump also said in the Knesset that the October 7 attacks “struck at the core of humanity itself.” Really? Was all of humanity struck dumb by the Hamas atrocities? Not at all. The expressions of sympathy for Israel lasted only a few days. Within a week, it was Israel that was being bashed around the world for the “disproportionate response” it had launched against Hamas.

“It struck to the core of humanity itself” — no it didn’t. Many people cheered, And the accusations against Israel, from around the world, became ever more unhinged, with Israel now said to have committed a “genocide” that was “worse than what the Nazis did.”

Trump described “dancing in the streets” all over the Middle East at the news of the hostage-for-prisoner exchange, and of the IDF’s pullback to a perimeter closer to Israel. Again, he’s exaggerating. Israelis danced in Hostages’ Square in Tel Aviv. In Gaza, Palestinians shot into the air, women ululated, men gave their Allahu-akbaring war cry, shouting that they would continue to fight the Zionist enemy. Elsewhere in the Middle East, the reaction was mute; there was no “dancing in the streets” in Egypt, in Jordan, in Lebanon, in Saudi Arabia, in the UAE, in Iran. Trump is hallucinating.

Trump then told the Knesset that “Israel’s security will no longer be threatened In any way, shape, or form.” Will Israel no longer have to worry about nuclear weapons on ballistic missiles being launched at it from Iran? Will the Houthis stop their aerial attacks from Yemen? Will Hezbollah finally stop its intermittent missile and drone attacks on the Galilee from southern Lebanon? Will Qatar stop supplying weapons and money to Hamas fighters in Gaza, and no longer play host to Hamas leaders who are living in great luxury in Doha? Will Egypt stop moving more troops into the northern Sinai in a clear violation of the Camp David Accords, and bring them back to the southern Sinai? The Israelis know that the war against them has no end, the jihad imperative never ceases, and the best way to keep the peace is to rely on deterrence, that is, with the IDF so obviously stronger than its enemies that they will not dare to attack it.

Trump foretold “peace and prosperity for the entire Middle East.” Does that mean that somehow the 80% of the Iranian population that now lives below the poverty line will be lifted above it? Will the Iranian riyal, now pegged at 1,050,000 to the dollar, return to its pre-Khomeini value of 42,000 riyals to the dollar? Will prosperity come to Yemen, still in the throes of a civil war between Shi’a Houthis and the national government run by Sunnis, that shows no signs of stopping, and has made the country one of the poorest in the world? What “prosperity” will come to Syria, racked as it is by disaffected minorities — the Alawites, the Druze, the Kurds — and with so much of the country’s infrastructure destroyed by Assad during the civil war that lasted from 2011 to 2024, that it will take at least $400 billion to put Syria back into its pre-civil-war condition?

Trump then claimed that “the world is loving Israel again.” Nonsense. It should never have stopped, if not loving, then at least admiring, the plucky little state forced to continually fight for its very survival. I wish Trump were right, but everywhere the anti-Israel pro-Hamas marchers are still out in force, in cities — including Amsterdam, London, Paris and Rome — and on campuses throughout the Western world. It will take years before Israel is again treated fairly.