Reckoning the odds stacked against it, Hamas declared the war in Gaza over. A comparable event would be Hitler declaring a pause in the Holocaust in order to stave off defeat.

“BLESSED ARE THE PEACEMAKERS!” wrote Donald Trump.

The conversion of Paul on the road to Damascus lags the passage of Hamas from barbarian to blessed peacemaker. Two years to the day it celebrated the end of war, Hamas had shot every Jew it could find, raped and tortured young women, decapitated and made parents witness the execution of their kids, incinerated babies in ovens and carried off human trophies to wild acclaim in Gaza.

Abandoned by its Arab brothers, Hamas had to give up the remnants of those bargaining chips. To Khalil al-Hayya who negotiated for it, the tactical cost was the least-worst of the 20 points in Trump’s blueprint for “durable peace.”

He wouldn’t have quibbled over Trump’ demand that Israel stop bombing immediately — Hamas will have a week of respite before it returns a single hostage. And most of the 48 will be returned in caskets while Israel has to free 250 living mass murderers. And there’s the bonus that for now the group keeps its guns and embedded power in Gaza.

Al-Hayya who survived Israel’s audacious raid on Doha, learned negotiating tricks from patron Iran. The nuclear accord it extracted from Obama’s gutless and submissive team let the genie out the bottle.

As it was with that nuclear deal so it is with Trump’s peace deal: a U.S. President going helter-skelter to douse a mega threat.

The difference is one of style. Obama bribed the tyrants of Tehran just to negotiate while Trump browbeat ragtag elements of Hamas to deal or die. Whether it considers the ultimatum to be authentic remains to be seen.

Truth to tell, a pet project is a common human failing. So is to bend over backwards to get the project signed off. Obama’s political investment in a deal was an open secret. Badly as the Mullahs and the tanking economy of the Islamic Republic had to have one, it was obvious that a U.S. President consumed by vanity and ambition would cut a deal no matter what concessions they tabled.

Trump was correct that Obama made, “the worst deal ever negotiated.” His deal however won’t be much better if he overlooks the volcanic beliefs beating in the chest of every Islamist. Given the ultimatum to surrender or die, the crazies of Gaza may bank on the reward in Paradise promised to martyrs who fight Jews to the death.

The corrupt nuclear deal ended in Trump having to eliminate Iran’s immediate threat by blitzing its nuclear plants. Ideally it taught him to concede no copout clause to the desperado tyrants of Gaza. Love or hate MAGA Trump, he’s not a betrayer Obama, still less a demented Biden.

Trump also won’t play with Israel’s fate. On top of his vanity and artifice, Obama was no friend of the Jewish state. He told The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg that Iran could be trusted to uphold the nuclear deal. “There are deep strains of antisemitism in the core regime, but they also are interested in maintaining power.”

Goldberg was gobsmacked.

“It’s my belief,” he retorted, “that it is difficult to negotiate with parties that are captive to a conspiratorial antisemitic worldview; not because they hold offensive views, but because they hold ridiculous views.… I don’t believe that the regime can be counted on to be entirely rational.”

Obama was unconvinced

“The fact that you are antisemitic or racist, doesn’t preclude you from being interested in survival. It doesn’t preclude you from being rational about the need to keep your economy afloat; it doesn’t preclude you from making strategic decisions about how you stay in power; and so the fact that (Iran’s) supreme leader is antisemitic doesn’t mean that this overrides all of his other considerations.”

The truth happens to be the direct opposite. It is also more profound than ordinary racism. Tehran’s compulsion to wipe Israel off the map emanates from a volcanic inner disturbance.

When antisemitic rulers spew vitriol they do more than recite false accusations. Nor are they reacting to provocation. When the regime warned that Iran only needed 24 hours and an excuse to nuke Israel, it wasn’t mad about some misdeed or other. It was passionately in love with hating Jews. Antisemites are not, in common parlance, in their right minds. They are out of their minds.

Paul Johnson, calls Jew-hatred an “intellectual disease” a hatred like no other. It consumes governments, confounds domestic and foreign policy, ruins the economy, impoverishes the nation.

Walter Russell Mead concurs.

“Nations and political establishments warped by this hatred tend to make one dumb decision after another — starting at shadows, warding off imaginary dangers, misunderstanding the nature of problems they face.”

It’s what concerned Goldberg. Debriefing Foreign Policy Journal afterwards, he bemoaned the President’s blindness.

“Obama doesn’t seem to fully understand that antisemites actually believe the dangerous and idiotic things they say.”

Understand or ignorant? It seemed that Obama never knew that the Holocaust wasn’t a means to an end but the end itself. Or that the Final Solution was not part of the Nazi war machine but fully equal to it. The pivotal Operation Barbarossa meant nothing to him. Resources needed for the Russian front were diverted to putting Jews to death, as if that was the priority. In no small measure Hitler self-destructed by diverting trains to the genocide project, condemning German troops to the pitiless Russian winter in order that trains to death camps could run and oven chimneys smoke.

Paramount for Trump to avoid Obama’s mindset, it is concerning that he posted:

“Based on the Statement just issued by Hamas, I believe they are ready for a lasting PEACE.”

In fact Middle East conflicts are a lesson in cutting off your nose to spite your face.

No Arab leader facilitated the “Palestinians” to get a home to call their own. Jewish leaders did  – several times up to Oct 7 2023. Every time Arafat said, ‘No!’ and with Intifadas bit the Jewish hand that proffered the prize. After him Abbas repeated, ‘No!’ to Israeli Prime Ministers who begged him to take legitimate Israeli land for Palestine.

And here are the “Palestinians” post Oct 7 playing the powerful victim card, even as they won’t tolerate a Jew-neighbor.

The self-destruct gene of the Pals in general and Hamas in particular is traceable to the Old Testament Philistines. In Genesis we read that Isaac,

Acquired flocks and herds and the Philistines envied him. All the wells that his father’s servants had dug in the days of Abraham his father, the Philistines stopped up and filled them with earth. (26: 14-15).

Isaac re-dug wells in other parts, but envy dogged him. “The herdsmen quarrelled with Isaac’s herdsmen saying, “The water is ours.” (26:20)

Because Philistine farmers relied on the new wells, it means they’d relied on the wells Abraham had dug. Hence by filling in Jewish wells they shot themselves in the proverbial foot.

There is nothing like a dispute over public access to water to bring out spiteful behavior. In the Eastern Cape of South Africa one encounters towns and trendy resorts buckling under the problem. The antisemitic government blames drought. Locals blame comrade councillors out of their depth.

Israel’s ambassador put Israeli know-how for desalination and other fresh water solutions at the disposal of dry towns. He could have saved his breath. Politicians snubbed him. They preferred to leave taps dry, towns and resorts dying if the alternative meant getting into bed with Isaac’s seed.

Trump may discard the yellow ribbon pin on his lapel. The war may indeed have ended and the hostages will return. What loom large are the unknowable parts of his Peace Plan.

Let Trump therefore sport a pin on his lapel conveying the alert:

“Beware the Suicidal Compulsion of Antisemitic Tyrants”

READ MORE from Steve Apfel:

The Day Arafat Invented the Palestinians

A Palestinian ‘State’ Is Historically Ignorant

The Fiction of ‘Occupied Palestinian Territory’ Made Israel a Pariah

Steve Apfel is an economist, a former Director of the School of Management Accounting, a veteran authority on anti-Zionism and a widely published author.