Well of COURSE this isn't peace. That's a given. But it may get the hostages home, it may get a thousand longtime Palestinian prisoners home, and even if it will inevitably be the most radicalized Hamasniks who arrive, this progress is a miracle in itself.
Don't credit Trump. He obviously didn't do shit except yell at his underlings. Credit Jason Greenblatt, David Friedman, Avi Berkowitz, and of course, Jared Kushner. These are the true authors of this peace plan, and just those names tell you this is not serious, it also tells you just how authoritarian the Republican party now is that the most insanely pro-Israel hawk team of Middle East operators just arranged a deal that they would find loathesome until yesterday on general principle.
Of course, the chances of it sticking is less than 5%, but it will give everybody time to heal just a little bit, maybe only enough to gather sufficient resolve to resume fighting, but it's still an accomplishment.
On the other hand still, well, this is almost worse news. It is the first proof we truly have that American authoritarianism can truly function, hold onto power, and use it properly. There won't be much proof of it, but from now on, all MAGA has to do is point to this deal, and they will be sufficiently convinced to never relinquish Trump's hold on them.
That is... if it lasts past tomorrow...
.....................................................................
On this respite of peace, at least a brief one, I feel no relief. I feel anger. Overwhelming anger.
Believe it or not, I've gotten through the last two years by suppressing the vast majority of it, telling myself over and over again, 'this is history, this is just how it works.' People have a death wish, they steer themselves right toward the storm then grow stunned when the storm turns in their direction. We are the storm we've been waiting for.
Life is precious, life is delicate, life can be great, but it can all be over tomorrow and you'll never have time to say goodbye.
It's that uncertainly of life that's the ultimate condition, the uncanny valley between life and death, love and hate, belief and doubt, right and left or left and right or right and wrong. Believe too fervently in one or the other, life is ruined. Life is life, and over its course we're meant to feel all those things. Put too much belief in one or other pole, you court the death of the state you love.
Now apply that to politics, apply that to history, apply that to religion and even science. You now have ideology, the stablest force of belief on earth, and therefore the most unstable force of action. When you believe too fervently in your solution, you provoke those who disagree with it, and thus does the situation continue until both sides are destroyed and a critical mass of those left relinquish their beliefs.
In order to provide for a future, you have to plan for all contingencies. No ideology does. It can't. Embrace an ideology and you can't expand your mind to accommodate any possibilities but the one you are certain will happen.
I don't see a lot of friends I miss, but it's so difficult for any Jewish person but an anti-Zionist to hear people we once trusted excuse one of the most totalitarian organizations on earth as an understandable Palestinian response to mass murder while lumping every Zionist together as some monolithic force we don't recognize known as "Israel," knowing that it may come up at any moment, and even a glance of protest could start the fight of the century.
It's equally difficult to go around family in that state of terror, including your own mother, knowing that any moment could be the one that starts a heated, personal contest of one-upmanship that could end with weeks of tension, knowing that any single word against Israeli policy, any defense of Gaza's defenseless, can be the one to do it.
I know, I know, don't talk about politics, and compared to what goes on over there, this is nothing. Even if it's nothing, it's still something. Politics finds you even when you're not looking for it, we all know that at this point. Even the most apolitical animals have been politicized now, hell, the apolitical ones are the most liable to radicalize.
That susceptibility to radicalization is exactly the problem. 98% of people aren't evil, we're just dumb. We know what we think we know, and we can't be talked out of it.
For all the irritability of my natural temperament, I have changed my opinions so many times that I can reasonably acquit myself of closed-mindedness, and have worked so hard to be more agreeable, and still find it this hard...
People wonder how I stopped towing the progressive party line as early as college, made life difficult for those who generally agreed with me, did not properly gauge all my fire toward the Republicans where they think it all belongs, but the answer is so simple: I'm a Jew.
Most people aren't antisemites, including most accused of it, but you cannot possibly go into any comment section or progressive hotspot and not hear the oinking throats of people who claim to love all humanity yet carry hatred for Israel. Dig just a foot and you see that they equate Israel with all Zionists. Dig just another foot and you see that they equate all Zionists with 90% of Jews. They know nothing about the conflict: you point things out to them and every single fact you name they dismiss as 'propaganda.' Turn just a few degrees left, and millions turn into Alex Jones or Tucker Carlson, turn a few degrees right, and millions begin to sound like Chapo Trap House and The Young Turks.
When people simply hate what Israel does, it's easier to deal with. They might sometimes misinterpret Israel's actions, but the idea that they're antisemites is willful madness of the type that only ideology accommodates. And yet, among those disgusted by Israel these days, say, probably 15% of them, there would be no difference had Israel sued for peace consistently for a hundred years. They hate Israel because it exists. Israel is the only country in the world which people demand it ceases to be. Sometimes they merely demand Israel to cease as a Jewish state, but we all know what they mean. This is antisemitism, purely and simply, and those who believe it could take account of the hatred in their souls, but they choose not to. Why? Because ideology makes them not themselves. Once you subscribe to a movement, a part of you IS the movement, and prohibits you from questioning why you believe what you believe.
But even more troubling than that is their excuses for Hamas. 'What do you expect? Of course an organization like Hamas will happen when Israel acts like that!' Well, of course they're right! That's not the point. They expect Israel to deal with Hamas cooly when they can't even let Charlie Kirk die without dancing on his grave. Hamas just killed 1200 people, filmed it, and sent the videos to their families. What did YOU expect? Once upon a time the left excused Marxists, and eventually, as many as 148 million people were killed because of their excuses.
But we're not in imminent danger of a Hamas-like ideology killing 148 million any time soon. More on them in a moment, because we have to talk about the 'other' ideology, because willfully stupid as those who excuse Hamas are, they have a point.
Is Israel as evil as Hamas? Of course not. Is Israel as deadly as Hamas? Of course not. It's much deadlier. The power differential between Israel and Hamas is the difference between the British Empire and the Boers or Mau Mau rebels. Even if Israel's motives are purer than the British Empire (not anymore...), they exceed Hamas in power so vastly that they could decide on a dime to turn overnight from a power like the British Empire to a power like the Belgian Empire and not a person on earth could stop them from slaughtering and enslaving every Arab in the Middle East.
They're not going to slaughter every Arab in the Middle East, but keep going on this trajectory... they will slaughter millions of them, and no one will stop them. No one in the world could, no one in the world with power would.
The world is not in danger of an authoritarian left-wing takeover any time soon. However, right-wing authoritarianism is an imminent threat, just in time for the Ages of AI, drastic global warming, internet misinformation, and mass weapon proliferation. The entire world stands on the brink of authoritarian takeovers, and not from those supposedly omnipotent campus radicals, but from septuagenarians who long for absolute power, from tech utopians who want to transform humans into computer hybrids, from nativists who aren't just anti-immigration but view immigration as an existential threat.
Whether or not you see it, we are potentially on the cusp of death that makes the 20th century look like heaven itself. Will we get it? Probably not yet, but a horrific level of it announces itself that makes Gaza look like Vermont, probably in our lifetimes, and whether such murder continues from the left, it is instigated by the right.
This is what ideology has always wrought over the long contemptible unfurling of human history. The beliefs themselves change, but the fervor never does, and the mental repression to stop it never lifts until it's too late.
So no, I feel very little joy at all this. When I hear of peace, I can't find it in me to be happy yet. Maybe when the peace proves longer than a week. All I can think of right now is how much it took us to get here, who would benefit from it, and what they would do next.
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