Trump's Golden Deal

by Dr. Meir Seidler, Senior Lecturer in the Jewish Heritage Department of Ariel University in the Shomron, translated by Hillel Fendel.

This past Tuesday evening, I set myself down in front of the TV and internet screens, and prepared myself for a long night.

The last time I remember doing something like that was when I was a boy and my parents gave me special permission to stay up to watch the legendary late-night championship fight between Muhammed Ali and Joe Frazier. And here it was, over 50 years later, and it was happening again.

This time, too, I watched and listened up to the end, jumping from one channel to another internet site and back again. I started with my favorite station, Reshet Bet, the news and talk station of the Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation. It has a large selection of broadcasters who enjoy frustrating and angering me and my fellow nationalists. And since, like most Israelis, I like to get angry, I listen to Reshet Bet a lot. This particular time Reshet Bet was producing a special Trump-Netanyahu summit broadcast.

The atmosphere its broadcasters emitted was one of depression, something between extreme sourness and heavy mourning. The main topic discussed for many minutes at the beginning was Netanyahu's "betrayal" of Biden. That is, Trump had said that, in contrast with Biden, he himself supported Israel absolutely and without reservations – and Netanyahu did not come out in Biden's defense! Yes, I'm serious: The Reshet Bet journalists felt that the most important thing to talk about at this time was why Netanyahu didn't have a good word for Biden. In any event, the real news – the Trump-Netanyahu meeting and subsequent press conference – soon pushed even the critical topic of Netanyahu and Biden to the back burners, and the real show began.

And what do you know? Trump took the whole world by surprise. The plan that he came up with was something that we really hadn't thought of. He explained, perhaps three times, that the reason he wanted the U.S. to essentially border Israel is that the world can't go on making the same mistakes again and again, when all they lead to is more war and more suffering. When you think about it, what he said was totally logical. War, ceasefire, rebuilding, rearming, war, ceasefire, rebuilding, rearming, and so on, over and over. What business that wants to remain competitive would ever adopt a business model like that, one that has failed time after time?

Countries from all over the world have invested large fortunes of money in what has been called, in accordance with the best Orwellian tradition, the "peace process." These monies ended up supporting not housing and reparations, but only one thing: Arab aggression that has become increasingly more brutal and has brought upon us never-ending rounds of war. One round barely ends before the next one appears on the horizon. Just in the last 15 years we have seen Operations Cast Lead, Pillar of Cloud, and Protective Edge, then the fighting accompanying the 2021 Israeli-Arab revolt, Operation Summer Rains, and more.

And now comes along Donald Trump with a vision that no one thought of; he himself could not have imagined it up until possibly a year ago. His creative plan is to turn the Gaza Strip not into the 51^st state of the United States, but something close: a beautiful shoreline front of American-built and American-owned hotels, where "anyone who wants to" can live, presumably after having been vetted for terrorist backgrounds and the like.

And here must be said something that has not yet been said outright, but appears to me to be quite obvious: The Trump Gaza Plan will include the establishment of an American military base offshore of the Mediterranean Sea (or perhaps on the beach). This explains why Trump is pushing this plan so enthusiastically. It's not because he has become a Messianic evangelical who wishes to help Israel even more than Israel itself asked for. He's still the same businessman he always was – but now he is more creative and has the resources of a superpower in his pocket. This is a golden opportunity for the United States to improve its strategic status in our region. It's the kind of thing that happens once in a century – and it happened precisely when Trump was elected President with his Make American Great Again program atop the agenda. How wondrous are G-d's ways!

The U.S. military base will benefit from a friendly neighborhood, and of course will leave plenty of space for a tourism paradise on the beach. All this will supply the "thousands of jobs" that Trump promised – and there is no doubt that he will give priority to Israeli workers over Arabs, who are liable to turn hostile at any given moment.

This is also what stands behind the weakest link in Trump's plan: the transfer of all or most of the residents of Gaza to other countries. But even this part of the plan can become realistic. Given the tremendous interest that the U.S. has in implementing this tremendous strategic upgrade, and also the no-less tremendous aid that American provides Egypt, it is very likely that a solution will be found for the transfer. This is true especially when the countries of the region wake up to the tremendous economic potential for everyone when the dollars start pouring in. Egyptian and other workers will be glad to receive American salaries in order to build the grandiose American project that will take shape here. This is a dream that with G-d's help can and will come true!

We can only hope that in the framework of this unexpected plan – and of course given the most recent developments sparked by Hamas' threats and Trump's bellicose response – all the hostages will be freed before it's too late. Hopefully, the leaders of Hamas will be made to realize that they have no hope of remaining alive if they do not release the hostages. We can only pray that this works out, under the guiding hand of the Leader of History in Whose hands are placed the hearts of kings (see Proverbs 21,1). May it be soon!

Made in Gaza

by Dr. Meir Seidler, senior lecturer in Jewish Philosophy in Bar Ilan and Ariel Universities, translated by Hillel Fendel.

A British research center reveals how the Ministry of Health in Gaza manipulates and falsifies data on Hamas and Gaza casualties – the very data on which the international community and the International Criminal Court in The Hague rely when condemning Israel. 

Following the IDF's three-week long Operation Cast Lead military campaign that began in December 2008, the Hamas-run Ministry of Health (MoH) in Gaza reported that 1,300 Gazans had been killed, of which only 48 were Hamas members. At the same time, an IDF report noted 1,166 Gazan deaths, including 709 Hamas terrorists.

Ultimately, the Hamas administration was forced to change its version and admit that some 600 to 700 Hamas terrorists had been killed in the operation. The correction was published at the time by the Haaretz newspaper, but did not receive much attention in the press.

During the weekly violent Gazan protests between March 2018 and December 2019, known by Hamas as the Great March of Return, the Gazan MoH reported 55 protesters killed on one day in clashes with IDF forces at the border. This figure was adopted in a report by OCHA (the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs), leading to a sharp condemnation of Israel by UN Secretary-General Guterres and a demand from the head of OCHA to prosecute those responsible for killing "innocent civilians." However, two days later, Salah al-Bardawil, a senior member of Hamas's political bureau, was asked sharply by a PA journalist why Hamas sent civilians to die at the border. Al-Bardawil answered that 50 of the 55 killed were actually Hamas fighters. This admission that the official Gaza numbers were false changed nothing in the UN's accusations against Israel.

These are just two examples cited in a report published a few days ago by a Middle Eastern affairs think-tank operating under the auspices of the conservative British research institute HJS (Henry Jackson Society).

But it's not the past that is the main point of the HJS report, which is entitled: "Questionable Counting: Analyzing the Death Toll from the Hamas-Run Ministry of Health in Gaza." It is rather the current war in Gaza on which the report chiefly focuses. This comprehensive survey, the first of its kind since the war broke out close to 15 months ago, relies on a very large number of sources and research institutes, including the Washington-based ISW (Institute for the Study of War). It presents and analyzes many statistics and data, and provides conclusions. The report's data is verifiable by the sources cited in the notes, and in fact, I randomly checked some of the information and found that all of it was reliable.

I would like to note that behind the dry numbers of Gazans killed in the current war stand, as in every war, some people who are in fact innocent, as well as many children. Even after the atrocities that we so painfully experienced on that infamous Oct. 7^th, and even after the resulting cheers of glee that we saw in Gaza, I personally am sorry for the death of every Gazan who did not cheer, as well as for the children who died.

The primary feature of this report is the finding that the Hamas-run MoH has "systematically inflated the death toll [among Gazans] by failing to distinguish between civilian and combatant deaths, over-reporting fatalities among women and children, and even including individuals who died before the conflict began." This is no accident, but is rather the official policy of Hamas, as evidenced by a document revealed as early as a decade ago by the Hamas interior ministry. The instructions there were very clear: 'Whoever was killed and became a shahid [holy martyr] will be counted as a Gazan or Palestinian citizen… When describing those killed in Israeli attacks against Gaza, do not forget to always add that they were 'innocent citizens.' In conversations with friends from other countries, do not praise the [fallen] military commanders regarding their military successes."

The overall picture is that Hamas is reporting nearly 40,000 total deaths, while Israel states that of these, nearly half were Hamas terrorists. (American intelligence sources say that Hamas deaths numbered only 12-14,000).

The lack of differentiation between terrorist deaths and civilian deaths is particularly blatant given the fact that the official Hamas numbers do specify how many men, women, and children were killed – even if not quite accurately. For instance, among the women killed in one particular month, were more than 100 whose names were given as Muhammed… Many of those originally listed as aged 18 and above suddenly were counted as having been 17 years old – thus increasing the number of dead "children."

An interesting anomaly that arises from the statistics is listed on Dec. 5, 2023, when the MoH reported a total of 16,248 deaths in Gaza. Some 1,353 women and children were reported killed on one specific day – way more than the total number of deaths that day, which was only 1,041.

The report notes the following brazen attempt to deceptively increase the numbers of dead: More than 5,000 people who died natural deaths during the course of the year of the war were counted as having been killed by Israel! Concrete examples of Arabs felled by cancer are presented in the HJC report as having been killed by Israel. So are Arabs killed in criminal murder cases – and even those who were killed as a result of the commandeering of humanitarian aid deliveries by Hamas.

And get this: Hundreds of Gazans were killed by the more than 1,000 Hamas and Islamic Jihad rockets that didn't quite reach their targets and instead exploded inside Gaza – and they are counted as having been killed by Israel! The report cites the famous case of the Al-Ahli Hospital that was hit by a rocket. When the rocket was thought to have originated in Israel, Hamas reported that 471 were killed, but when the truth was learned that it was a mistakenly-fired Hamas rocket, the reported numbers went down considerably.

Fake Media Reporting

The report also examined some 1,400 English-language articles written about the war for eight leading websites between February and May 2024. It found that 98% of them relied on the Hamas MoH stats – and of these, 19% did not even mention their source. Only 5% relied (also) on IDF numbers.

Fewer than 2% of the articles that used data from the MoH indicated that the data was questionable and could not be verified. In contrast, half of the articles that mentioned IDF-provided data noted that its numbers were questionable. Only 16% of the articles noted that the MoH does not distinguish between civilians and fighters.

It is hard to say that we were surprised by the report's findings, but for the rest of the world, such a report by a prestigious think-tank such as the HJC is of supreme importance. It is incumbent upon the State of Israel to use it proactively in its hasbara (PR) efforts around the world.