Roundup
The peace deal and the hostage return still dominate the news:
(1) As if all the love from Israel wasn’t enough, now Trump has received Egypt’s highest state honor:
During his speech, El-Sissi also awarded Trump the Order of the Nile, the country’s highest state honor.
“The Collar of the Nile, sometimes referred to as the Order of the Nile, is Egypt’s most prestigious decoration, symbolizing the unity of Upper and Lower Egypt through the life-giving Nile River. Made of gold and adorned with Pharaonic motifs and precious stones, it is traditionally awarded by presidential decree to heads of state and figures whose efforts have offered exceptional service to Egypt or humanity.
“Past recipients include Nobel laureates Ahmed Zewail, Mohamed ElBaradei, and writer Naguib Mahfouz, as well as heart surgeon Magdi Yacoub and late President Anwar El-Sadat.
“On the international front, honourees have included Queen Elizabeth II, King Hussein of Jordan, Emperor Haile Selassie, and India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who received the honour in June 2023.”
(2) The left hardly knows how to handle Trump’s Middle East deal and the return of the hostages, so some seem to have fastened on the idea that Trump is mostly copying those negotiating geniuses, Joe Biden and Anthony Blinken:
On Monday, Blinken said Trump’s 20-point peace plan for the Gaza Strip was based on one developed by the Biden administration. …
“It starts with a clear and comprehensive post-conflict plan for Gaza,” Blinken wrote. “It’s good that President Trump adopted and built on the plan the Biden administration developed after months of discussion with Arab partners, Israel and the Palestinian Authority.”
Biden’s statement was somewhat better.
Others leave Trump’s name out of it. For example, Elizabeth Warren doesn’t mention him (nor does Obama), but Warren implies that her own “calling for” the hostages to be released might have somehow been involved.
For two excruciating years, I have called for the return of the hostages brutally kidnapped on October 7th and held in Gaza.
Today is a good day. Surviving Israeli hostages are finally home and reuniting with loved ones. I’m thinking of them and their families on this joyful day and praying for their full recovery. I’m also grieving for all those who can’t come home today.
Oh, and of course she calls for none other than a two-state solution now:
Today must also be an important step toward lasting peace in the region — peace for both Israelis and Palestinians. We must end the war in Gaza, surge humanitarian aid, and negotiate a two-state solution now.
(3) And then there’s Pakistan’s prime minister:
And today, again, I would like to nominate this great president for Nobel Peace Prize because I genuinely feel that he is the most genuine and most wonderful candidate for Peace Prize because he has brought not only peace in South Asia, saved millions of people — their lives. And today, here in Sharm El Sheikh, achieving peace in Gaza is saving millions of lives in the Middle East.
Mr. President, I would like to salute you for your exemplary leadership…and I think that you [are] the man this world needed most at this point in time. [The] world will always remember you as a man who did everything, went out of the way, to stop seven — and today, eight — wars.
(4) No doubt you want to know what the Democratic Socialists of America had to say on the subject of the peace deal. It’s just about what you’d expect them to say [emphasis mine]:
The Democratic Socialists of America — the organization backing New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani — denounced the “conditional” cease-fire deal between Israel and Hamas and called for continued resistance against the Jewish state in a statement released Monday.
The DSA declaration titled “Until Palestinian Liberation” came days after Israel and Hamas agreed to halt fighting and begin exchanging hostages and prisoners under a US- and Arab-brokered deal.
The far-left group said the truce “will not end Israel’s assault on the Palestinian people or the theft and occupation of Palestinian lands,” describing it as a “conditional cease-fire” that “does not wash the hands of the ruling class that … continued to fuel and arm genocide while stoking regional war.”
(5) The newly-released hostages’ stories are now starting to come out:
The mother of freed Israeli soldier Matan Angrest said her son was beaten so savagely by his Hamas captors that he blacked out — in one of many chilling accounts emerging since the release of 20 surviving hostages under the Israel–Hamas peace deal this week. …
“They covered him with black sacks and dragged him away,” she told Haaretz. …
Several of the freed hostages — among them Ariel Cunio and Rom Braslavski — were kept in complete isolation, Haaretz reported.
Cunio told Israel’s public broadcaster Kan that he spent his entire captivity alone, unaware for months that his brother David and partner Arbel Yehoud were still alive.
Braslavski, 21, was also held alone and told relatives he was starved, shackled, and forced to sleep barefoot on cold ground.
Survivors said Hamas guards ate in front of them while they went hungry. …
Channel 13 News said the hostages were never given shoes and that some were kept chained continuously.
(6) Hamas doing what Hamas does best: killing. This time it’s other Gazans:
As Israeli troops withdraw from most of Gaza’s populated areas, the residents of the enclave are again getting a taste of what a ‘Palestinian state’ might look like under their current leadership.
With the U.S.-brokered ceasefire providing a breather, Hamas terrorists have crawled out of their tunnels and fanned out into the streets of Gaza — massacring political rivals and opposing Arab clans to reestablish their reign of terror. It is worth noting that the massive Hamas tunnel network was exclusively for terrorist warfare, and not to shield a single Gaza civilian during the two-year-long war.
Hours after the Israeli pullout, Hamas publicly executed dozens of Gazans. “A greatly weakened Hamas has sought to reassert itself in Gaza since a ceasefire took hold, killing at least 33 people,” Reuters reported Monday.
Both Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey and Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan know that Trump is easily flattered.
From a Xeet by someone named Colin Wright:
Bluesky has apparently become a voluntary echo chamber for Lefties that protects them from any unpleasent cognitive dissonance that might result from real world events that defy narratives and tamps down and drives out any wrongthink. It’s fascinating. I don’t think that they aren’t ignrorant of their choosing of ignorance.
BrooklynBoy:
And yet I don’t recall their praising him in the past.
Re: Dems/left inability to handle a Trump success in Gaza
neo:
I believe you called this a few days ago.
I think it’s a decisive crack in the “Trump as Hitler” frame Dems/left put on him.
The Pro-Palis have been caught completely flat-footed.
Good luck to the Hollywood old guard, Robert DeNiro, Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts, George Clooney et al., who have been doubling down on their self-serving rants against the evil Trump and his dumb supporters.
In news shows I have noticed a few ordinary people going public that they were wrong about Trump.
The ceasefire/hostage deal is obviously huge for Israel, but it’s a pretty big deal for America too.
DSA was founded in 1982 by a merger of the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee and the New American Movement. The chairman of the former was Michael Harrington, the most prominent figure in the latter Barbara Ehrenreich. Harrington’s outfit was formed in 1971 out of the detritus of the Socialist Party of America and by 1981 had the largest membership of the three successor organizations thereof. About 3/4 of the membership of the merged organization was formerly in Harrington’s outfit. Harrington himself when asked held predictable opinions on the foreign policy questions of the day, but wrote little on the subject. His interest was in political economy. You could do an audit of his statements over the years; I think you’d have to scrounge to find any indicators of hostility to Israel. Ehrenreich in fifty years as an opinion journalist wrote nothing much worth bothering about; I don’t think the Near East was an interest of hers at all.
Just as the leftists here can’t credit Pres Trump, so the leftists in Israel can’t credit PM Netanyahu. Gadi Taub explains in a brief video clip: https://x.com/GadiTaub1/status/1978175342180213109
Pakistan and Turkey are more gracious than our Democrat Party. And the DSA is actually hostile to Western Civilization.
And another—MAJOR—reason why Trump must be destroyed…
“A Hint Of Opium Wars: Trump’s Campaign Against The Fentanyl Epidemic”—
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/hint-opium-wars-trumps-campaign-against-fentanyl-epidemic
See, it’s like this: “President Fentanyl-Tranq” is mightily miffed…and seeks total unmitigated vengeance against DJT for the latter’s sheer, shameless, unrelenting “interference” with DPUSA’s enlightened, humanistic and virtuous plans for America’s destruction…
Pigs are now becoming airborne. I am reading reports that both of the Clintoons (not a typo) have issued statements explicitly praising Trump for his Middle East breakthrough.
Without giving them too much credit I have always felt that Bill and Hillary were at least slightly less hardcore leftist and anti-American than Obama whose abominable foreign policy (especially JCPOA) fomented so much terrorism and violence including 10/7.
@FOAF –
I don’t know about “slightly less hardcore leftist and anti-American than Obama”, but the Clintons and Obama/Biden are like the Jets and the Sharks.
Recall 2008 and PUMA. It was Hillary’s turn and Jug Ears supplanted her both as the Democratic nominee (in a year that the Democrats were very likely to win) and as a history-making electee.
Now it’s years of feuding later and Hillary is never going to be President and Obama’s legacy (to the extent there was/is one) was vandalized by Biden and is being destroyed by Trump, in front of the whole world’s eyes.
I’m not surprised that the Clintons have issued tepid statements of support of their blood feud.
I’ll be watching to see if the Dem leadership backs off their Trump/Hitler/fascist/dictator name-calling, since it is becoming more and more untenable.
Unfortunately that’s all this bunch has and the hopes that a lone nut might yet shoot Trump or that violent riots will cause Trump to overreach or back down.
In chess if a player is losing, one strategy is to complicate the game as much as possible in the hope that the other player may make a mistake. This is called “playing for the swindle.”
Democrats are playing for the swindle.
Generally speaking, we don’t hate our politicians enough.
The MSM assured us Israel was creating a famine in Gaza.
Where are the stories showing the emaciated bodies grateful for the cease fire?
All of the video I see is of healthy young men singing, dancing and flashing “V” for victory signs.
@FOAF:I have always felt that Bill and Hillary were at least slightly less hardcore leftist and anti-American
Their primary ideology is to their wallets, but they don’t mind “doing good” (as the Left defines it) provided that they do well.
#2
The left minions have latched on good and hard to the myth that it was Biden who actually did the peace plan. Cognitive dissonance must be very painful for so many to grab onto such a story to save their world view.
Huxley, the minions had backed off for a few days, but are starting up again with Trump as Hitler with ICE back as the Gestapo. Due to “No Kings” they are working themselves up for the weekend.
Off topic: Another changer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uB_et1rpBQU
Life long indoctrinated lefty quits the left.
Trump is one of those who likes to fight for the love of fighting. All can say to him is thankyou.
Due to “No Kings” they are working themselves up for the weekend.
physicsguy:
Indeed they are. Robert De Niro is all over that one:
https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2025/10/10/watch-robert-de-niro-pushes-nationwide-no-kings-anti-trump-protest-campaign/
HJM,
Very interesting young lady. Neo should check her out. I’m going to watch some more of her….the one from weeks ago where she declares she’s leaving the left looks like it will be interesting.
Sarah Hoyt gives her observations on the Peace Deal, how long Hamas / Palestinians will keep to the agreed terms (hint: not very long), and what will / should happen next.
What she says is pretty much what most of us know now and suspect will happen.
https://accordingtohoyt.com/2025/10/13/the-way-of-the-scorpion/
As usual, it’s a quasi-stream-of-consciousness-essay for “the club” so please excuse the typos and occasional glitches.
Bonus: link to Leonard Cohen “Waiting for the Miracle”
And a cartoon in the comments: The last jihadist
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GR3Fg2la0AA_5Mh.jpg
Newt Gingrich: THIS puts him in a league with Washington and Lincoln – Fox News Video
https://commoncts.blogspot.com/2025/10/newt-gingrich-this-puts-him-in-league.html
For causes I cannot see (beyond, at least, his urge to fruitlessly mock Pres Trump), John Hinderaker beclowns himself: https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2025/10/who-will-disarm-hamas.php
Since the obvious remains the obvious: https://www.jns.org/netanyahu-hamas-must-disarm-or-all-hell-breaks-loose/
Duh
The question seems to be, should the IDF go back into the nearly half of Gaza it doesn’t currently control to prevent Hamas monsters from shooting their neighbors? IDF troops have neutralized people who approached the yellow line and refused to go back. At the moment, they’re applying pressure to get what remaining hostage bodies which can be found back into Israel . Four more came out yesterday, I think.
Not at all “. . . to prevent Hamas monsters from shooting their neighbors?” Kate, but to see to disarmament and demilitarization, is the question. Or put otherwise, to rid Gaza of Hamas and other Israel threatening jihadis altogether.
By the by, only three of the bodies were Israelis, the fourth is presumed to be a Gazan.
The peace prize thing….should it be awarded toTrump he would, at least from my side, earn giga-points for either:
1) “Thanks anyway, but just knowing what was acomplished is more than enough.
2) Sending one of the White House Usher’s staff members to pick it up.
3) “Just send it addressed to the White House, the mail room staff will get it to me.”
I hope this turns out to be an accomplishment. I do think people are going overboard about it. So many other troublesome things the patriotic sector has to address right now.
Now that Hamas is publicly murdering Gazans – more than likely Gazans that belong to tribes at odds with Hamas as opposed to Gazans that helped Israel – we can all expect pro-Hamas demonstrators, the MSM and “prominent ” officials -to totally ignore these murders.
Aside from a very small minority, those with TDS will maintain their opinion of Trump as the second coming of Hitler. Nothing will move these sorts of people to re-examine their opinions.
Ah, I wondered if Gazan bodies might be passed off as Israeli. That happened before. I’m guessing the Israelis will wait for a few more bodies to be released, and when it appears that they’ve got what they can, they’ll begin killing Hamas members again. They’ve already partially closed the Rafah crossing for supplies for pressure.
@JohnTyler:we can all expect pro-Hamas demonstrators, the MSM and “prominent ” officials -to totally ignore these murders.
They’re not ignoring them, they are blaming Trump for them.
Cavendish:
Good comments on how Trump might handle award of the Nobel Peace Prize next year.
My preference would be for Trump to say “hey thanks. I had you on my calendar last year, and right now I’m pretty busy. But thanks for thinking of me.”
CENTCOM Commander has words of warning and advisement for Hamas: https://x.com/CENTCOM/status/1978456188976042321
Everyone should watch – and post – the Gadi Taub clip that sdferr posted at 3:15 pm.
That sums up so much of what I usually post here…
They’ll be back at war again before a peace prize could be issued to the president.
Biden/Obama couldn’t have implemented this peace plan. They enabled Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas, pushed the two-state solution and hobbled Israel.
Trump was needed for this because of his pull with the Arab states. Biden damaged his influence with Saudi Arabia even before he was elected.
I may have said this earlier:
Trump is moving one step ahead of the peace plan.
He knows the Muslim side, however it is expressed, will keep up the fighting. Start again. Can’t prevent that.
But the arrangements made in the peace plan are such that no blame can conceivably be placed on Israel. It will be, of course, but the logic will be far less than it has been since Oct 7, thin as that was.
That, imo, is Trump’s goal. Since peace is impossible. One would think peace was practically unavoidable. That’s the genius. When it turns out that there’s still war, only one side smashed through huge obstacles including actual peace and prosperity, the (ostensible) wishes of other Muslim powers, to get back to war.