Alan Zendell, October 13, 2025

Some people accuse me of despising Donald Trump so much that I can’t even see when he’s accomplished something positive. While there’s probably some truth in that statement, you won’t find it in anything related to the Gaza hostage/prisoner exchange. I watched our pompous President address the Israeli Knesset this morning, at least as long as I could stomach it. How nauseating! How inappropriate! How embarrassing to be an American and know most of the world is laughing at us, any respect they might had for the United States long used up by Donald the Clown.

Someone asked me how I felt about Trump’s expectation of the Nobel Peace Prize, this morning. My answer is the latest cartoon by the political satirist, Danziger:

Don’t be fooled by the raucous cheers of those Knesset members who attended. Israel’s legislative body is politically dominated by a right-wing coalition that hates all Arabs and would have been happy to see every last Palestinian driven into the Mediterranean Sea. Listening to them cheer for Trump was no different from MAGA echoing Trump cheering for Netanyahu or Vladimir Putin.

Trump’s outrageous demands over the last few months that he should receive the Nobel Peace Prize tell us all we need to know. Does anyone believe that saving lives, especially of Palestinian civilians, was uppermost in the mind of the ultimate narcissist? Does it matter that this cease fire agreement could have been achieved a year ago if Trump hadn’t pandered to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s need to destroy Gaza?

When the prize was finally awarded to Maria Corina Machado, who has worked for years to restore democracy to Venezuela, Trump erupted. Do you think he would have been as offended if Ms Machado had been a man, or white? What else would you expect from a man who has spent his administration attacking and firing every high-ranking nonwhite official he could, especially black women.

No one can dispute that Hamas’s attack on unarmed Israelis and visiting foreigners, including many Americans, two years ago, was a despicable act of barbarism. I have no sympathy for Hamas, whose leaders use their civilian population as human shields, and who would have stopped at nothing to remain in power. Similarly for the Iranian regime that continually funded and encouraged Hamas. Hamas needed to be destroyed or at least defanged, and most Middle-East nations will be only too happy to see them gone. But does that justify a death sentence on every Palestinian living in Gaza, even if they initially supported Hamas’s rise to power?

That would be like saying it’s okay for every blue/red state resident to hate every red/blue state resident, except that this isn’t just about hate or disaffection, it’s about genocidal disregard for more than two million people, most of whom are innocent. The Allies didn’t execute every German who supported the Nazi holocaust and no one tried to enslave the southern slave owners in retaliation for destroying millions of black lives and families after the Civil War. Far from deserving the Nobel Peace Prize, Trump is as guilty as Netanyahu of attempted genocide.

As Trump was explaining to Israel and the world that he is the greatest deal maker of all time, some of us were shaking our heads. Does anyone believe Trump had anything to do with the Cease Fire plan that was signed last week? Is it more likely that our more rational middle eastern allies like Egypt, Qatar, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE along with the European Union were the driving forces behind an agreement that could only have been written with one goal: to remove Hamas as a formidable presence in the region? They were already in their death throes, politically, as Iran stopped funding them and re-supplying them with weapons months ago.

I don’t know the exact numbers, but my sense is that most American Jews are disgusted by Netanyahu’s policies, as are a majority of Israelis. It’s worth noting that a year ago, both Trump and Netanyahu were desperate to remain in or return to power to avoid being sentenced to prison for multiple felony convictions. Isn’t it time we stopped being blinded by all the MAGA lies and bullshit? We all, whether we like some of his policies or not, know exactly what Donald Trump is.

The agreement in Gaza was signed, now, because the war simply couldn’t go on any longer. It was killing hundreds every day and consuming scarce resources while accomplishing nothing but creating discord among other interested nations. Our closest allies sent a message to Trump when they recognized a Palestinian state, a mostly symbolic gesture, but one that was a slap in the face to Netanyahu and indirectly, Trump.

There was also a surreal echo to Trump’s outrageous address to the Knesset of George W Bush declaring a premature victory on the deck of an aircraft carrier in 2003. As any historian or political scientist will tell you, destroying something is the easy part. The hard stuff is rebuilding something better than what it replaced, and there’s not even an inkling of what the future of Gaza will look like, except for Trump’s fantasy of eighty miles of waterfront hotels and golf courses, but isn’t that exactly what you’d expect from him?