Trump’s ultimatum brings hope and fear
'Here in Israel there is a newfound hopefulness that the future may finally be better than the past'
Here in Israel, it feels like the country is at a tipping point. The images of the emaciated, tortured hostages Eli, Or and Ohad released last week shocked and outraged most Israelis.
Israelis cannot accept the notion that the remaining living hostages are being slowly tortured and starved to death while the IDF, with all its resources, remains impotent to take any military action. The vision of the three hostages triggered the nation’s transgenerational Holocaust trauma, leaving Israelis asking how history can be repeating itself, as we watch Jews once again being starved and tortured to death. Aren’t the days of being led like sheep to the slaughter behind us? We have a state and a powerful army. How can we passively watch this abomination?
Unlike the Biden administration, Donald Trump has spoken passionately and with clarity on this issue, describing the condition of the returned hostages as like that of Holocaust survivors and handing the Israeli government a green light to take military action should all the hostages not be returned this coming Saturday.
Of course, if there weren’t any hostages still in captivity, the situation would be a lot less complex. Like in Lebanon, Israel was able to cripple Hezbollah with overwhelming military force. But the hostages remain, leaving the government in a devastating conundrum: Do they stick with the ceasefire “deal” or do they do as Trump has suggested, allow all “hell to break loose”, possibly endangering the remaining living hostages?
It appears that many Israelis back the mission to finish Hamas off. It is abundantly clear that due to the popularity of the Hamas ideology, the fantasy of living side-by-side with the Palestinians is currently untenable. Inside Israel, the term “two-state solution” died on October 7. The fact that even today, millions of voices outside of Israel still demand this clearly unworkable solution, is incomprehensible.
Anyone who continues to regurgitate this dangerous fantasy is either disingenuous, uninformed or simply intellectually lazy. For seventy-five years the same old paradigm of the “two states living side-by-side in peace” has been repeated again and again, as though it was the only possible solution to this never-ending crisis. As Albert Einstein famously said: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”.
If not one pro-Palestinian nation wants to take in Gazans, no doubt fearing some would be aligned with Hamas’s radical, Jihadist ideology, why on earth would the Israelis – especially after suffering the horrors of October 7 – be willing or able to live side-by-side with them?
Why doesn’t Ireland, a vocal supporter of the Palestinian cause, want to help the Gazan refugees by inviting them to live in Ireland? Why doesn’t Egypt want to help their “brothers”? They were perfectly willing to flood the Gaza strip with endless weapons smuggled under the Philadelphi Corridor and make billions of dollars in the process, but when asked to take in the refugees, they slammed the door shut by building multiple security fences. The hypocrisy is astounding.
The majority of Jordan’s population is of Palestinian descent, making them a logical destination for Gazan refugees. Many Jordanian Palestinians have family in Gaza and could be reunited with them if they were relocated to Jordan. But Jordan doesn’t want them either. Maybe that’s because of what happened during Black September in 1970, when the father of the current king of Jordan, King Hussain, massacred tens of thousands of Palestinians ostensibly as part of a campaign to suppress terrorism and violence.
Now Israelis are on the brink of yet another military escalation. IDF soldiers have been put on notice and leave has been cancelled. Once again, mothers and fathers are anxiously awaiting the possibility that their sons and daughters could be in harms way within days, and with the Houthis announcement that if the ceasefire ends, they will resume attacks on Israel, the citizens of this beleaguered country are readying themselves for a return to sirens and bomb shelters.
Yet amongst all the pain and anxiety Israelis are currently experiencing, President Trump has ignited a spark of hope. There is little doubt that the weak leadership that preceded Donald Trump’s return to the White House, contributed to the catastrophe of October 7. The Biden administration’s appeasement of the Iranian regime by financially flooding their coffers with billions of dollars, allowed the Iranian Revolutionary Guard to arm and train the Axis of Evil that attempted to annihilate Israel 16 months ago. Rather than bankrupt the Iranian regime as Trump’s previous administration had almost accomplished, Biden empowered Iran, the most dangerous and antisemitic government in the world.
With only a few days in the White House, President Trump has audaciously managed to do what no one has dared do before him, and that is to create a totally new paradigm for the entire region. A vision of stability and growth in which democracy and peace would prevail. It may be too good to be true, but at least it has given Israelis a desperately needed morale boost.
As they prepare for the next potential phase of this war, here in Israel there is a newfound hopefulness that the future may finally be better than the past. There is no doubt that painful days are coming, but maybe, just maybe, we can allow ourselves to dream of a brave new world.
Anna Pasternak is the director of The AJN. These views are her own.
comments