Trump’s Hail Mary (Update)
According to bookies who handle the action on things like this, betting was fierce this year on the Nobel Prize for Peace. The odds on Donald Trump fluctuated back and forth as, on the one hand, his military bombed small boats off the coast of Venezuela, while on the other hand, he touted at every opportunity his self-proclaimed role in making peace between countries he couldn’t properly name and were not even at war like “Aberbaijan vs. Albania”.
Then, as the clock on the big October 10th Nobel announcement was running out, Trump threw a Holy Land Hail Mary into the competition. Notwithstanding trifling details like the disarmament of Hamas, that had not been actually agreed to by the terrorist group, he announced that he had settled the Gaza war.
Wow! The White House hailed the Trump announcement as an “Enduring Peace in the Middle East”. However, about a week later, the Nobel Committee (made up of Norwegians, a homogeneous people Trump has invited to the U.S. as his preferred immigrant group over those from “sh-thole countries”) awarded the prize to Venezuela’s Maria Corina Machado, someone the committee believed more worthy of “promoting democracy”.
The injustice! Trump’s Communications Director immediately attacked the Nobel Committee for placing “politics over peace”, and Trump himself alternated between bemoaning how he was robbed by Obama supporters and rationalizing that, as the deadline for nominations had been January 31, 2025, the prize he failed to win was actually for 2024, when he was running for president and unable to devote himself to his life’s work in settling conflicts.
So let’s see if Trump’s chances have improved for 2025.
In the category of “promoting democracy”, he sent troops into several American cities to stifle peaceful protests, while producing an AI video of himself in the cockpit of a fighter jet bombing the protesters with feces in amounts so disgustingly huge as to suggest they must contain his own DNA.
Legal experts have since reviewed his other bombing campaign, the one against unproven and in any event non-combatant “drug runners” in the Caribbean, and declared it to be murder on the high seas. After president of Colombia claimed that, in at least one case, the victim was a mere fisherman, the “peace President” cut off all foreign aid to Colombia.
Now, it turns out that Trump’s hastily slapped together peace plan in pursuit of a trophy for himself is causing Hamas to produce some terrible waste to Gaza. This is something Trump simply excuses with a public shrug, as is his pattern. See, e.g. his abandonment of Ukraine and (non) reaction to Russia’s recent multiple invasions of NATO airspace.
So, on Day Two of the “greatest peace plan ever”, Hamas publicly executed dozens of its enemies, including members of clans who assisted Israel during the war. The Chairman of the Gaza “Board of Peace” reacted to this slaughter with the following: “[W]e gave them approval for a period of time”, the NY Times quoted Trump as saying. They (Hamas) had “taken out a couple of gangs that were very bad. That didn’t bother me very much, to be honest”, he said.
A few days later, this past Sunday, a Hamas squad killed two Israeli soldiers and severely wounded a third with unprovoked RPG and sniper fire. Trump attributed the attack to “rogue elements” who had gotten “very rambunctious and they did things they shouldn’t be doing”.
“Rambunctious”? How cute. When it comes to Trump’s peace plan for Gaza, you have to wonder if there is any there there. And when the tote windows re-open on next years’ Nobel, Trump deserves to be off the board.
Update: This morning, the Times reported on a visit to Israel by Trump’s Vice President, JD Vance, to “monitor” the “fragile” state of the Gaza “peace agreement”. “Several of the thornier issues required to implement the next phase of the cease-fire have yet to be addresed, including how officials would persuade Hamas to lay down its weapons,” it said. “When asked on Wednesday about how they would persuade Hamas to disarm, Mr. Vance declined to provide any details. ‘We’re going to keep working on it,’ he said.”