Should Trump Be Celebrated for the Gaza Ceasefire?

I keep seeing people praise Donald Trump because of his administration’s role in the ceasefire agreement reached between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.

That’s like giving an award to a knife-wielding thief for dialing 911 to send an ambulance after stabbing someone to steal their wallet and then fleeing the scene.

The day Trump came into office, there was already a ceasefire in place.

Trump literally encouraged Israel to violate it and resume its genocide.

And Israel took his advice, reimposing a total blockade of humanitarian aid on March 2 and then on March 18 resuming its genocidal military assault on the civilian population and infrastructure of Gaza.

More recently, Trump supported Israel’s assault on Gaza City, an effort to complete the ethnic cleansing of northern Gaza in accordance with Trump’s own vision for a “Riviera of the Middle East” emptied of the land’s native inhabitants.

Now, you would think that the “left”-leaning US mainstream media would respond to a Republican president supporting a genocide by excoriating him for it.

Instead, you get the New York Times et al. describing what happened in March as the ceasefire having “broke down”.

No explanation. It just happened. The ceasefire mysteriously “broke down”, with implied equal responsibility between both sides.

As a simple thought experiment, consider how it would have been characterized in the US mainstream media had Hamas been the party to violate the ceasefire.

So why don’t you see the New York Times seizing the opportunity to excoriate Trump for supporting a crime against humanity?

Simple.

Because the genocide was supported by the Biden-Harris administration, too.

It’s just an extension of the longstanding bipartisan US policy of supporting Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians, including the crimes against humanity of ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and now genocide.

There are many who defended Israel’s war crimes and genocide from the start, and there is a remnant who still vainly attempt to defend it.

But then there are those who’ve opposed the genocide but who voted for Trump and now are grasping at straws to try to justify that choice by celebrating him for the ceasefire proclaimed effective on October 10—as though he weren’t absolutely complicit in the crime he’s credited with ending (and as though it has really ended).

By this logic, you might as well propose the Nobel Peace Prize to Benjamin Netanyahu himself.

It is utterly perverse.

People who voted for Trump either because they couldn’t stand the thought of Kamala Harris in the White House or to get Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. into a position to do something about Americans’ frighteningly poor health need to come to terms with the fact that they empowered a man who is himself guilty of this genocide.

I know a lot of my own readers don’t want to hear that, whether because they’re a member of the libertarian community who voted against the Democratic Party or a member of the health freedom community who voted for a new HSS Secretary, but I’ve never really been into telling people what they want to hear—as opposed to saying what needs to be said, no matter how much people dislike it.

Everyone likes to feel good about their choices. So, people have a tendency to subconsciously view the consequences of their actions through a distorted lens. They succumb to confirmation bias, choosing to overlook the negative outcomes and exaggerating—or inventing—the positive.

That explains how even people who’ve opposed the US-backed genocide can come to praise Trump for supposedly ending it despite his own key role in perpetrating the crime.

It is cognitive dissonance.

To be clear, Biden and Trump and key players in their respective administrations could all be prosecuted for violating the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which not only prohibits the commission of genocide, and not only prohibits complicity in genocide, but also obligates states to act to prevent and stop acts of genocide.

That is the obligation that the government of South Africa was fulfilling in December 2023 when it brought its genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

Trump’s actions go beyond mere complicity. He’s been an active participant in the genocide, arming Israel and cheering on its destruction and slaughter in Gaza—with the openly declared intent of ridding Gaza of Palestinians.

And it is that intent that elevates the Trump administration’s actions from mere complicity to direct participation in the genocide.

And it wasn’t out of the goodness of his heart or because he’s a “man of peace” that he directed his envoys to push for the ceasefire that is supposed to have been in effect since October 10.

Rather, both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his partner in crime Donald Trump recognized the dramatic shift in American public opinion toward viewing Israel negatively, and even increasingly supporting sanctions against Israel, which if allowed to continue would eventually undermine the political feasibility of continuing the US-Israeli “special relationship”—the longstanding US government policy of supporting Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians.

Netanyahu, for his part, was also dealing with intense unpopularity among Israelis who’ve long been demanding that he stop trying to undermine efforts to achieve a ceasefire. (The advocacy of a ceasefire among Israelis isn’t because they don’t support the destruction of the Palestinians as a people—they do—but to secure the release of Israeli hostages held by Hamas in Gaza since its attacks in Israel on October 7, 2023.)

Beyond the rapidly waning support for Israel among Americans, the decisive factor in Trump’s decision was the fact that Netanyahu went so far in his efforts to undermine ceasefire negotiations that he tried to assassinate Hamas’s negotiating team in Doha, Qatar, on September 9.

That crossed the line, in Trump’s view, because Qatar is a strategic partner of the US government’s—such as being the third-largest buyer of US arms.

That made Israel’s airstrike an act of defiance and disobedience. You just don’t mess with the US-dominated world order that way, going around attacking other strategic partners without permission.

Qatar wasn’t convinced that Israel didn’t have a green light from the Trump administration—no doubt in large part because of the admission that Israel had alerted the US, and a warning from Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff to the Qataris came while the strike was already underway.

Besides destabilizing the US strategic partnership, Trump has personal business dealings in Qatar and other Arab states (as does his son-in-law and seemingly unofficial Middle East envoy, Jared Kushner).

Israel’s airstrike also threatened to undermine the Abraham Accords, the set of agreements Trump boasts having achieved during his first term to “normalize” relations between Israel and a number of Arab states, despite Israel’s ongoing apartheid regime and violation of Palestinians’ right to self-determination. With the line being crossed, Qatar’s neighbors the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain, both parties to the Accords, expected Trump to pressure Netanyahu into accepting a ceasefire.

With the US government’s relations with Arab partners under strain and his own credibility in question, Trump acted to reassure the Qatari government that Israel had acted alone and against US interests by making Netanyahu call Qatar’s prime minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani, to apologize.

The White House released a photo of Netanyahu making the call from the Oval Office, with the Israeli prime minister holding the landline handset to his ear and reading a written apology while a stern-looking Trump sits alongside him with the phone base in his lap.

Under pressure from a revolting American public and angry Arab partner states, Trump decided it was time to use the moment to apply pressure on Netanyahu to accept a ceasefire.

Oh, and Trump was also perversely aiming for the Nobel Peace Prize and feels snubbed he didn’t receive it.

So, we can view the ceasefire agreement as a positive development inasmuch as it has put a lull in Israel’s efforts to destroy the people of Gaza as a people.

But it’s far from over yet.

And Trump’s role in the horrific Gaza tragedy is not one of benevolence.

Trump has done nothing praiseworthy. Had his aim been a ceasefire in Gaza for the sake of a ceasefire, he could have achieved that at any time by picking up the phone, calling Netanyahu, and warning that if the genocide didn’t stop, all military aid to Israel would stop—and he certainly wouldn’t have encouraged Israel to violate the ceasefire that was in place already when he came into the Oval Office.

You don’t give an award to a schoolyard bully just because he finally stops kicking a little kid over and over again after beating the kid to the ground. You don’t shower the bully with praise. It would be perverse to vindicate the abuser that way and would only encourage his further bullying.

Trump’s role in a ceasefire agreement being reached does not negate his role in perpetuating the genocide. It does not make him worthy of our praise or an object of celebration. He is a war criminal—like Netanyahu—and should be regarded and treated as such.