Analysis

Are Zionists trying to scuttle the Israel-Gaza ceasefire deal to save Netanyahu?

Since the ceasefire was announced, a smear campaign has been launched against Trump's Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff and other realist members of the president's foreign policy squad. The only question is, why and to what end?
Featured Image
(L-R) Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Donald Trump participate in the signing ceremony of the Abraham Accords on the South Lawn of the White House September 15, 2020, in Washington, D.C.Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images

Stephen
Kokx
Stephen Kokx
Comments 
6

(LifeSiteNews) — While signing dozens of Executive Orders in the Oval Office Tuesday night, President Donald Trump said something alarming about the ongoing conflict in the Middle East. 

When asked if he was optimistic about the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, Trump expressed strong reservations. 

“I’m not confident. That’s not our war, it’s their war,” he said. 

Trump’s comments are odd for three reasons. 

First, the U.S. has been the primary benefactor — both diplomatically and militarily — for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s genocidal campaign since it started in October 2023. If the war isn’t the United States’, then whose war is it?  

Second, Trump promised millions of Democratic Palestinian voters in swing states this past year that he would  “end the war,” not simply shrug his shoulders and act like it’s something he can’t be bothered by. 

Third, Trump is reportedly on the verge of lifting Biden-era sanctions that prohibited the shipment of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel. How can he imply that he’s just an innocent bystander to the conflict when he’s actually intimately involved with it? 

Trump does not get along with Netanyahu 

Donald Trump has a frosty relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Their fallout can be read about here, here, and here.  

In brief, Trump still feels very much betrayed for being stabbed in the back by Netanyahu after the 2020 presidential campaign. At Mar-a-Lago last year, Trump reportedly gave him Inauguration Day (January 20) as the deadline for bringing the war to an end. For someone who is used to boasting about how he controls U.S. politicians, that surely would have been a rude wake up call.   

Also notable is that Netanyahu was not invited to Trump’s inauguration and was apparently spoken to rather bluntly by Trump’s emissary during negotiations.  

Trump’s envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, has worked tirelessly with a team of ambassadors from Qatar and other regional players like Saudi Arabia to ensure a ceasefire would be in place by the time Trump took office. 

Of course, a peace deal had been on the table for over a year but Israel’s far-right national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir purposefully scuttled it every step of the way.  

Ben-Gvir was so incensed that Trump’s team was able to get it approved that he resigned his post in Netanyahu’s hawkish government this past weekend.  

For his own part, former U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who boasted about his Jewish heritage during his meetings with Netanyahu, has also been accused of not doing enough to bring the war to an end. Journalists Max Blumenthal and Sam Husseini called him out for that during his last press conference and it went about as well as you would expect. 

Are Zionists running a smear campaign to undermine the ceasefire? 

The ceasefire deal puts Netanyahu in an almost impossible situation politically. An article from the Khaleej Times accurately notes that “even before it was signed, the Gaza ceasefire forced Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu into a tight spot — between a new U.S. president promising peace and far-right allies who want war to resume. That tension is only likely to increase.” 

An essay published on the Chatham House website this morning came to the same conclusion. Its headline reads: “Netanyahu’s phase two dilemma: Political survival vs defying President Trump.” 

Despite his grim prospects, Netanyahu put on a happy face during a recent media appearance. 

“President Trump … praised the agreement and rightly emphasized that the first step of the agreement is a temporary ceasefire,” he sad. “The war campaign is not over yet,” he also emphasized, assuring his base. 

Whether or not Trump actually told Netanyahu that is not readily known. What is known is that there is a grassroots media campaign, seemingly coordinated by Netanyahu himself given the players involved, that has been launched against Witkoff and other realist members of Trump’s foreign policy squad.  

Podcaster Mark Levin has taken on a leading role in the attacks, which are designed to blow up the deal by painting Witkoff as an agent of Qatar while also ratcheting up rhetoric about Iran. 

“Say what? Witkoff said it is good if the United States talks directly with Hamas? Where’s the foreign policy A-Team?” he complained, while praising the more hawkish Marco Rubio for his support for Netanyahu. 

Others have joined in the attacks, too. 

“Steve Witkoff is compromised by Qatar. He forced the atrocious ‘hostage deal’ on Israel,” X user Han Shawnity said. 

Anti-peace activist Nikki Haley likewise declared her opposition to diplomacy, as did other pro-Israel voices on X. 

  

Fortunately, there is enough awareness and political power behind Trump’s America First supporters to counter the bogus narrative pushed by Levin & Company. 

“I am hearing of a massive whisper campaign in D.C. against Steve Witkoff for negotiating the ceasefire and other Trump appointees who want to avoid war with Iran,” Saagar Enjeti has sad. 

“Neocons are now smearing Trump appointees … for ‘controversially’ opposing U.S. regime change on Iran,” he also remarked. 

The American Conservative (TAC) has jumped into the fray as well. Executive Director Curt Mills recently defended Trump pick Michael DiMino for Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense on X. Levin had previously called DiMino a “reprobate” but Mills praised him, as well as Witkoff, for having a sober outlook on the situation.  

TAC editor Jude Russo also took up his pen in defense of DiMino. In an essay, he explained that DiMino’s past comments about why the U.S. “should reduce its exposure in the region” are not at all radical. It is a searing rebuke of the Zionist lobby. 

The influence of Miriam Adelson? 

The elephant in the room with all this is none other than Zionist mega-donor Miriam Adelson. 

Seated just behind Bill Clinton, George Bush, and Barack Obama at Trump’s swearing-in ceremony Monday, Adelson gave $100 million to the president’s re-election bid. She has long desired Israel’s annexation of the West Bank. 

During his first term, Trump prevented Netanyahu from taking over the West Bank. “I got angry and I stopped it, because that was really going too far. That was going way too far,” Trump said in an interview with Jewish journalist Barak Ravid in 2021. 

Trump is singing a far different tune today. 

“U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday rescinded sanctions imposed by the former Biden administration on far-right Israeli settler groups and individuals accused of being involved in violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank,” Reuters reported the day after Trump took office. 

Whose war is it? 

So what is going on here? Has Trump capitulated to Adelson? Did he offer Netanyahu an olive branch by giving him the West Bank in exchange for a ceasefire in Gaza? Will the smear camping against Witkoff and DiMino by Zionists work? Will a false flag attack happen in the coming days or weeks and will it be blamed on Hamas to torpedo peace efforts and keep Netanyahu in power? 

While answers to those questions will vary depending on who you talk to, a LifeSite colleague of mine persuaded me earlier this week that Trump has a longer-term goal in mind when he says that the war is “not our war.” 

What my colleague convinced me of is that what Trump is really saying is it is not America’s war but Netanyahu’s war, and it is Netanyahu who is on the verge of losing his political life by continuing to pursue war instead of peace. Indeed, it is Trump who ran on an anti-war platform and despite Adelson and other Zionist backers wanting him to give carte blanche backing to whatever the Israeli government wants, he seems to be planning to keep the pressure up on Netanyahu until he acquiesces to his demands or is forced to step aside for a less hawkish successor. 

The Israeli-Hamas war is not only unpopular inside Israel but across the world, as evidenced by repeated condemnations from the United Nations and other countries like Ireland. Trump has not failed to notice the shift in opinion. Last March he told Israel Hayom, an Israeli daily newspaper founded by Adelson, that “Israel has to be very careful, because you’re losing a lot of the world, you’re losing a lot of support, you have to finish up, you have to get the job done. And you have to get on to peace, to get on to a normal life for Israel, and for everybody else.”  

It is important to add to our prayers that Trump is successful in his efforts for peace this year and that Netanyahu realizes that war, death, and slander are not the answer and that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is ultimately what he needs to accept, not only for the sake of Israel but most especially for his own soul.  

6 Comments

    Loading...