A rchive Date
[ 12-10-2025 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Israel ]
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[https://nationalpost.com/opinion/trumps-mideast-peace-deal-will-only-lead-to-more-bloodshed?itm_source=index
Trump's Mideast 'peace' deal will only lead to more bloodshed
The prospect of the hostages returning is cause for celebration, but the end of the war is not
By Anthony Koch Oct 10, 2025
All Jews are cautiously rejoicing in light of the announced return of the hostages. This is a sacred moment, a flicker of light in a long and merciless night. There are few sights more beautiful than that of a captive returning home. In their faces, we see not only survival but something divine, the endurance of a people who, no matter how often the world tries to break them, refuse to disappear.
While celebrating this deliverance is right, it would be wrong to mistake it for peace.
I have seen this movie too many times before, and every time it ends the same way — with funerals, not festivals. While the hostages’ return will be a win, the deal that delivered them is not. It is another act in the long play of wishful thinking that has haunted Israel since Oslo, and it will, I
fear, lead us once again down the road to tragedy.
I will not defend U.S. President Donald Trump’s so-called peace plan. Whatever tactical skill was displayed in negotiating it, the underlying vision is fatally flawed. It is merely the latest attempt to pacify evil by pretending it is rational, to buy quiet at the cost of truth.
The West, and too often Israel herself, has convinced itself that terror is a grievance to be addressed rather than an ideology to be destroyed.
From the handshake on the White House lawn in 1993 to the “disengagement” from Gaza in 2005, Israelis have lived through the same delusion that if they show enough restraint, enough magnanimity, enough willingness to compromise, they will finally be left alone. But the Jewish people are never left alone for long.
Oslo brought suicide bombings.
Disengagement brought Hamas to power. Every act of “confidence building” has been answered not with peace but with rockets, kidnappings and massacres. We should remember that the road to October 7 was paved with these very gestures of goodwill, the belief that by giving up its land, or compromising its security, Israel could purchase a lasting calm. Each time it has reached out, its hand has been met not with peace, but with blood.
The danger in the current moment is that we are once again mistaking respite for resolution. The cameras will show smiling diplomats and solemn declarations of a “new chapter.” There will be talk of moderation, of Arab partners, of mutual respect and “historic progress.”
But those who celebrate too easily forget how the last century unfolded for the Jewish people. From the British White Paper of 1939, which sacrificed Jewish lives to appease Arab unrest, to the endless string of western-led “peace initiatives” that rewarded terror and punished vigilance, our history is one long cautionary tale about the cost of self-deception.
Israel’s enemies have never hidden their intentions. They tell us, again and again, that they want a world without Jews, a land cleansed of our
presence. We, in our eternal yearning for peace, keep trying to convince ourselves they do not mean what they say. And each time we do, we learn anew that they meant every word. The Talmud warns us that he who is kind to the cruel will end up being cruel to the kind. It is a lesson our age refuses to learn.
So yes, celebrate. Dance, sing and give thanks to heaven for the lives saved and the captives returned. These are holy victories, the kind that remind us why we fight and why we endure. But do not be deceived. Do not mistake the silence that follows for peace.
The same ideology that burned families alive in their homes has not been defeated; it has merely paused to reload. The war did not begin on October 7, and it will not end with this deal. It is the same enduring struggle against those who hate who we are and despise the idea of a Jewish nation bound by faith, memory and covenant. It is a war against the very existence of the Jewish people.
There is no peace to be found in negotiations that ask Israel to trust those who have never stopped trying to annihilate it. The peace we long for will not be written in the language of diplomats, but in the vigilance of a people who understand that safety and sovereignty are not gifts but responsibilities. We can rejoice at mercy without surrendering to illusion. We can bless the moment without forgetting the lesson.
The hostages will hopefully be coming home soon, thank God. But history shows us that peace built on denial is only an intermission between wars. Let us be grateful, yes, but let us also be ready. Because if there is one truth our history teaches beyond all others, it is that the Jewish people can never afford to be surprised twice.
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