Not totally mad. There are promising things occurring, beautiful things – if we open our eyes to them. But there is a good deal that sure feels like insanity.
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Let us start with Zohran Mamdani, who is considered likely to be elected as the next mayor of New York City this week. Absolutely unimaginable, but apparently close to happening – although his lead, thankfully, is shrinking.
Mamdani – a Shia Muslim of Indian heritage who became a naturalized US citizen some seven years ago – has declared himself prepared to arrest Netanyahu, per the ICC warrant, should he come to NYC, and has refused to condemn the call to “Globalize the Intifada” – which is a call to rise up against Israel.
“Zohran’s father, Mahmood Mamdani, a Columbia University professor, serves on the advisory council of the Gaza Tribunal alongside Ramy Abdu, whom Israel designated in 2013 as a key Hamas operative in Europe.
“The Gaza Tribunal held a conference in Istanbul from October 23-26, 2025, which featured speakers and participants with documented ties to terrorist organizations, including Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).”
Zohran Mamdani at the helm of the most Jewish city in the world outside of Israel? Surreal!
Just as surreal is the fact that there are NYC Jews who are voting for him. For what? Free bus rides and rent control?
Should it happen that Mamdani doesn’t make it – let it be! – there would still be very difficult questions to answer regarding how he came as far as he did. Questions regarding Jews who failed to discern a threatening reality.
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Then there is Hamas. Can I call this group “insane,” when a malicious insanity is the norm for them? Devoid of any moral or ethical standard, acting only in their own malevolent self-interest and furtherance of their ideological goals, they rely upon deception, threats and violence.
It may not be unreasonable to say that a madness of sorts lurks within the international community, which closes its eyes to so much of the behavior of Hamas.
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While two more are apparently about to be returned, Israel has been waiting to receive a number of deceased hostages, several of whom Israel believes Hamas should have been able to locate. But Hamas has been playing games of deception that are vile, attempting to hold off discussion regarding their disarmament.
At various points recently they have turned over (additional) body parts of a deceased soldier – Ofir Tzarfati – who had already been given an Israeli funeral and provided three bodies, none of whom turned out to be our hostages.
https://www.jns.org/hamas-again-hands-over-remains-that-dont-belong-to-hostages/
What happened with Tzarati’s remains was particularly egregious: An IDF drone that had been in the area caught a video of Hamas members placing Tzarfati’s remains in a freshly dug hole before covering them with dirt. They then proceeded to “dig up” the remains and called over members of the Red Cross to witness the discovery.
https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-871936
Where, I ask, has been the international outcry condemning all of this?
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As we have been waiting for the return of the remaining deceased hostages, there have been calls inside of Israel for rearresting some of the security prisoners we released as part of the Trump agreement. This leads me to ask a most disturbing question:
Why did Israel release all of the terrorists we promised to let go – 1,968 – before we had all of the hostages, alive and dead?? According to Trump’s 20-point plan they were supposed to be returned to us within 72 hours of the initiation of the agreement.
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The questions are numerous: they shine a light on the craziness of the current situation in Gaza. Though they have been asked in my posts and elsewhere over the last few months they merit consideration now:
Why is Qatar, which has blatantly supported Hamas, treated in many quarters as an unbiased mediator?
How is it that Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, both of whom have considerable financial ties to Qatar, are serving as US envoys?
And now a new one: Just days ago it was discovered that some 150 terrorists who had been released from our prisons as part of the deal had been staying for weeks in a five-star Cairo hotel. Who was paying for them, or how they came to be there was not revealed, although it would be pertinent to have this information. Once their presence was made public, the management evicted them. Other guests at the hotel were decidedly displeased when they learned they were sharing facilities with terrorists. They were then transferred to another, Egyptian-owned luxury hotel. And yes, indeed, totally crazy.
https://www.ynetnews.com/article/s1azq4ccxe
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The notion that the Palestinian Authority would truly moderate, in order to be involved in the administration of Gaza, is, to put it bluntly, simply nuts. Anyone who embraces this notion is either demonstrating a shocking naivete – a failure to understand the duplicity of PA leaders or the nature of their ideology – or has deeply questionable motives.
Repeatedly I have asked myself how it is that this notion, this absolutely crazy notion of a “two-state solution”, is never put to rest but emerges in public discourse again and again?
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Dr. Mordecai Kedar, an academic who specializes in Arab culture and served with IDF military intelligence for 25 years, was recently interviewed by Danny Seaman on his JNS podcast “Straight Up.”
https://www.jns.org/israeli-scholar-prof-mordechai-kedar-warns-the-trump-gaza-deal-could-ignite-the-region/ (Kedar starts at 9 minutes.)
Kedar says that the larger the number of parties involved in a project, the smaller the chance that the project will hold until completion.
In the case of Trump’s peace plan, we are looking at involvement by the US, Israel, Hamas, Turkey, Qatar, Egypt and more on the periphery. Each has its own agenda and these various agendas conflict in some measure. Kedar believes that the chances that this plan will come to fulfillment is just about nil.
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But wait! It’s more complicated than having six parties – even with conflicting agendas – that are believed to have signed on to Trump’s 20-point plan!
As Lazar Berman explained in a piece in the Times of Israel in late October (emphasis added):
That document laying out the 20-point plan was never signed by either Israel or Hamas. Netanyahu publicly accepted it on September 29, and Hamas endorsed it in a statement released on October 3, but with several qualifications. Hamas did not agree to disarm, but only to discuss it “within a comprehensive Palestinian national framework.”
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And this is with regard to only one document – the 20-point plan Trump had released. There were two others following (all emphasis added):
The day before the ceasefire began, Israel, Hamas, and the mediating countries signed a one-page document in Sharm el-Sheikh. Focused primarily on the first stage of Trump’s plan, it laid out “implementation steps,” while watering down some of the specifics in the first document. With regard to many specifics it is deliberately vague.
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And then there was a third document also signed at a Sharm El-Sheikh Summit on October 13. This was following Trump’s talk to the Knesset.
“The document does not delve into the specifics of the Gaza ceasefire. Instead, it expresses support for Trump’s plan and hope for ‘a new chapter for the region defined by hope, security, and a shared vision for peace and prosperity’…
“It is full of wonderful sentiments, but is entirely nebulous. Not only does the document not commit to Hamas being excluded from power and disarming, it does not even mention the terror group…
“Speaking at the newly established US-Israel Civil-Military Coordination Center in Kiryat Gat…US Secretary of State Marco Rubio referred to countries “who signed onto this plan.”
“’Everyone who signed onto this plan,’ he said, ‘all of these other countries, agreed, everyone agreed, that Hamas cannot govern and cannot be involved in governing the future of Gaza. Everyone’s agreed to that.’
“In fact, it is not clear that any of the countries that have signaled backing for Trump’s 20-point Gaza plan, including those that gathered at the Sharm summit…have ever signed on to the idea of Hamas being pushed aside.
“At best, Turkey, Qatar, and Egypt signed the Sharm declaration that welcomes the ‘implementation by all parties to the Trump Peace Agreement…’
“The many other countries at the Sharm summit signed nothing.” Israel was not present.
“The ambiguity around what Israel and Hamas committed to, and to what exactly the countries overseeing the ceasefire’s implementation are bound, leaves plenty of room for Hamas to wriggle its way out of terms it does not like and to drag the process out.
“It also leaves Israel clinging to Trump’s promises about Hamas disarmament, rather than a signed obligation by Hamas…
“But there is logic to the confusing reality around the Gaza process.
“If Trump had insisted that all the involved parties sign on to every element of his 20-point vision, it is far less likely that he would have found buy-in from so many international partners, let alone Hamas itself.
“With his deliberately ambiguous approach, the president let all the players believe that their concerns were being met…”
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Moti Kedar knows precisely whereof he speaks. The question is how long it will take for this “peace plan” to fall apart.
The Americans have made it clear that while they have a military contingent in Kiryat Gat overseeing matters in Gaza, there will be no American boots in Gaza. They are not about to disarm Hamas.
And not only has Jordan’s King Abdullah made it clear that his country will not be involved in disarming Hamas, he has stated that he hopes the mandate of security forces inside of Gaza will be peacekeeping, “because if it’s peace enforcing, nobody will want to touch that…
“Peacekeeping is that you’re sitting there supporting the local police force, the Palestinians, which Jordan and Egypt are willing to train in large numbers, but that takes time. If we’re running around Gaza on patrol with weapons, that’s not a situation that any country would like to get involved in.” (Emphasis added)
https://www.frontpagemag.com/king-of-jordan-none-of-us-are-disarming-hamas-or-policing-gaza/
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One shudders when contemplating “Palestinians” trained by Jordan and Egypt to enforce the peace. What Palestinians? So-called civilians in Gaza who are essentially Hamas supporters? Members of Hamas hiding within the civilian population? People from the Palestinian Authority, which fosters terrorism?
But Abdullah is wrong when he says no country would get involved. Israel, and only Israel, is fully prepared to get involved and do what must ultimately be done.
Will Trump ultimately recognize this? He talks tough about how Hamas must shape up or else. But words are cheap and what we need to watch is what he does.
Or will it fall to Israel, finally, to say that enough is enough, and move ahead as must be done?
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Please, pray for all of Am Yisrael, with special prayers for the rehabilitation of the returned hostages, return of all deceased hostages, and our final victory over Hamas.
©Arlene Kushner. This material is produced by independent journalist Arlene Kushner. Permission is granted for it to be reproduced only with proper attribution.
