Features
The Dark Side of Albert: Einstein and Marie Winteler, his First Love
By DAVID R. TOPPER As I recall, in the TV series, Genius – which began with a series on Albert Einstein, this one by Ron Howard – the opening sequence showed a middle-aged Albert and his secretary having sex in his office.
I was disappointed, but not surprised. I knew that Albert liked sex and had several partners (in addition to his two wives) over his lifetime. But, for me, it portended the wrong obsession in his life. The true passion throughout Einstein’s life was another “s–word”: namely, science.
But this was TV for a general audience and … well, you can fill in the rest. Plus, what am I being petulant about? After all, here am I, doing the same thing!
We’ll come back to Howard’s portrayal of Einstein’s life at the end; for now I need to put all this in context. For this essay is the second (and last) part of my story of Einstein’s “dark side.”

As shown in the first part, on this website at: The Dark Side of Albert: Einstein and Mileva Marić, his First Wife, which was first published in The Academy of the Heart and Mind, February 7, 2025– Einstein’s loathsome treatment of his first wife often bordered on abuse, or at least very malicious behavior, that diminishes his image as a saintly man; even though many photos of him – especially late in life and with the halo of hair – herald that impression. The other reality, the focus of my first part, was how his maltreatment impacted Mileva and fostered the depression that haunted her all her life. In a sense, and as will be seen here, all this was foreshadowed by Albert’s previous relationship with Marie Winteler, which also had lasting consequences. (As an aside – while I’m in a disagreeable mood about TV portrayals – and since, in part one, I never commented on the TV series: I found Ron Howard’s treatment of Mileva downright offensive. He was obsessed with her orthopedic foot, ever focusing with close-ups of her gait, as she limped into a room. His camera was repeating the shameful behavior of Mileva’s childhood schoolyard chums, who taunted her.)
Now, back to Albert and Marie: we begin with how they met.
In 1895 Albert spent a year enrolled in the cantonal school in the town of Aarau, near Zurich. He had previously taken the rigorous entrance exams for the Polytechnic in Zurich (which Mileva later passed) and had flunked the non-science and non-math parts. But since he did so well with science and math, it was recommended that he do a year of make-up in Aarau; plus, he was applying at age 16, a year early. In Aarau he boarded with the family of Jost Winteler, a teacher at the school (although Albert never took a course from him). Jost and Pauline had three daughters and four sons; the youngest and prettiest daughter was Marie. The family had very progressive social and political views, which Albert admired. They were freethinking, liberal pacifists, and he quickly was comfortable and at ease in this household. Soon he called the parents Papa and Mama.
Marie was two years older than Albert, and was finishing courses toward becoming an elementary school teacher. She was an accomplished pianist, and so she played duets with him on his violin. Albert quickly fell for her, and she for him. We know about this relationship because there are letters exchanged between them when one or the other was out of town, such as Albert visiting his family during a holiday. The relationship eventually was taken seriously by both sets of parents, as seen in a surviving correspondence between the mothers. They gladly anticipated that a marriage was forthcoming. (Incidentally, both mother’s names were Pauline, and so Albert sometimes called them Mama-1 and Mama-2.) While I’m on a tangent here, it will be fitting to mention other connections that later came about. After Albert left Aarau, his sister, Maja, took courses in the city and also boarded with the Winteler family. She fell in love with and married their son, Paul, in 1910. Also Albert’s best friend, Michele Besso, married daughter, Anna, in 1898. In short, these were other ways in which Albert remained linked with the family over his life.
For a glimpse into their relationship, let me quote from letters between Albert and Marie. Listen to the turns of phrase; later I want to contrast this with Albert’s love letters to Mileva. Here are some of his salutations: “My dear little Marie,” “Dearest Sweetheart,” “Sweet Darling,” “Beloved Marie.” Some short phrases: he calls her “my child,” “you delicate little soul,” “you little rascal,” “my comforting angel.” And some sentences. “I love you with all the powers of my beleaguered soul.” “Music has so wonderfully united our souls.” The latter, of course, shows how significant their musical duets were.
Here is a longer piece dated 21 April 1896, where he is replying to a letter from her: “It is so wonderful to be able to press to one’s heart such a bit of paper which [your] two so dear little eyes have lovingly beheld and on which the dainty little hands have charmingly glided back and forth. I was now made to realize to the fullest extent, my little angel, the meaning of homesickness and pining. But love brings much happiness – much more so than pining brings pain. Only now do I realize how indispensable my dear little sunshine has become to my happiness.”
Receiving love letters like this, Marie was smitten by Albert and hence believed that marriage was in the offing. In fact, Albert even corresponded with her mother, saying, for example, “I have thought about you a great deal” and then calling himself her “stepson.” This was in August of 1896, so I’m inclined to believe that he too was thinking of marriage. But inevitably, he was to leave Aarau after passing all his courses, and in October of that year he moved to Zurich to study at the Polytechnic. We know that at the Polytechnic Albert met Mileva, the only woman in his small Physics classes, who was ignored by the other students.
Nonetheless, his correspondence with Marie continued. She was teaching elementary school, writing of her struggles in the classroom, and clearly expecting some talk of marriage. But a hint that something was amiss in their relationship emerges in the opening lines of this letter from Marie, written sometime in November of 1896. To put this into context, you need to know that Albert was sending her his dirty laundry, which she would wash and send back. (Believe me: I’m not making this up.) It goes to show how domestic the relationship was, which reinforces for me Marie’s continued belief in a forthcoming wedding.
She writes: “Beloved sweetheart! Your little basket arrived today and in vain did I strain my eyes looking for a little note, even though the mere sight of your dear handwriting in the address was enough to make me happy.” Nothing but the dirty laundry! Was Albert just taking Marie for granted? We need to keep this in context. We don’t know the extent of his relationship with Mileva this early in the school term. Maybe he still was thinking of marrying Marie. So, at the least it was insensitive. What we do know is that Marie made it clear that this laundry business was no small task; for, later in the letter, she writes. “Last Sunday I was crossing the woods in pouring rain to take your little basket to the post office, did it arrive soon?”
In the same letter she also makes reference to a previous letter from Albert. “My love, I do not quite understand a passage in your letter. You write that you do not want to correspond with me any longer, but why not, sweetheart?” Yes, why not? Perhaps he was involved in some way with Mileva by now and was distancing himself from Marie. She ends the letter with: “I love you for all eternity, sweetheart, and may God preserve and protect you. With deepest love yours, Little Marie.”
Albert wrote to her again. We know this from a letter to him of November 30, 1896 where Marie mentions that she had sent him a gift of a teapot. Apparently he wrote back, calling it “stupid,” which would be downright nasty – but not surprising, since we know how erratic Albert can be. At least, that’s how I interpret this sentence: “My dear sweetheart, the ‘matter’ of my sending you the stupid little teapot does not have to please you as long as you are going to brew some good tea in it.” Quite clearly, Marie doesn’t have it in her to reprimand him for his sometimes nasty behavior.
Later in her letter, Marie talks of her teaching duties, and how much she enjoys the task. Interestingly, she tells him of a “little boy in the first grade who shares with you a facial feature and, imagine that, whose name is also Albert.” She goes on to say how she gives this boy extra help.
Then there is this letter from Albert in March 1897. “Beloved little Marie, I love you with all the powers of my beleaguered soul. … To see you saddened because of me is the greatest pain to me. … How inhuman I must have become for my darling to perceive it as coldness. … What am I to you, what can I offer you! I’m nothing but a schoolboy & have nothing. … And yet you ask whether I love you so much out of pity! … Alas, you so misunderstand the empathy of ideal love.” Remember that phrase “ideal love”; we’ll come back to it at the end.
This brings me to an important letter from Albert to Pauline Winteler, sometime later in 1897, perhaps May. “I am writing you … in order to cut short an inner struggle whose outcome is, in fact, already settled in my mind.” He goes on to speak of the pain he has caused “the dear child through my fault. It fills me with a peculiar kind of satisfaction that now I myself have to taste some of the pain that I brought upon the dear girl through my thoughtlessness and ignorance of her delicate nature. Strenuous intellectual work and looking at God’s Nature are the reconciling, fortifying, yet relentlessly strict angels that shall lead me through all of life’s troubles. If only I were able to give some of this to the good child! … I appear to myself as an ostrich who buries his head in the desert sand so as not to perceive the danger. … But why denigrate oneself, others take care of that when necessary, therefore let’s stop.”
Unmistakably, we know now that, in Albert’s mind, the relationship with Marie is over and he is making a Mea Culpa – of sorts – to her mother. He is repeating what he wrote to Marie, that he is in pain because he has caused her pain – a rather egocentric idea, to say the least. And his excuse? He was too busy with his physics – probing into the mechanism of God’s creation – to deal with the triviality of human interaction. Of course, all this indeed is true, since this is Einstein. But at this stage of his life, it’s really only a young student’s fantasy. More importantly, it exposes what I’ve said above: science was the overriding infatuation in his life. And, God forbid, if someone would try to get in his way.
Indeed, let me repeat this phrase: “if only I were able to give some of this to [Marie].” I read this in light of the fact that in Zurich, Mileva was a fellow student, who knows the physics. It’s now a year into their studies and we know that they were at some stage of a relationship. So, indeed, Mileva could do what Marie could not; namely, converse with Albert about his beloved physics.
This brings me to the first item that proves that Albert and Mileva were in a relationship. It is a letter from Mileva to Albert in 1897, sometime in late October. She is in Germany taking physics courses. The language is formal; like intellectual friends exchanging ideas and experiences. Interestingly, it begins by her thanking him for a four-page-letter to her – which, sadly, we don’t have. But, importantly, she refers to “the joy you provided me through our trip together.” So we know that by now they are a couple. In fact, she mentions that her father gave her some tobacco to give to Albert; so, clearly their relationship is also known to her parents.
It’s also obvious how Mileva has filled in the hole left by Marie’s departure from Albert’s world. Listen to this musing from Mileva. “Man is very capable of imagining infinite happiness, and he should be able to grasp the infinity of space. I think that should be much easier.” Right up Albert’s alley, one might say. And this: “Oh, it was really neat at the lecture … yesterday … on the kinetic theory of heat of gases … [where the professor calculated that the colliding molecules] travel a distance of only 1/100 of a hairbreadth.” Surely, Marie wouldn’t have found this to be “neat” – no, not at all.
Despite Albert and Mileva now being a couple, he was still communicating with the Winteler family, possibly since his sister, Maja, was living with them. Thus, during a visit to his sister, we have this letter from him dated Aarau, 6 September 1899. At the time Marie was no longer living at home. “Dear little Marie, Little Mama relayed to me the friendly greeting that you sent me & the permission to write you. … Until now, the fear of upsetting your delicate heart has always kept me from doing so. … I know, dear girl, what pain I have caused you, and have already experienced grave suffering myself as a result.” Notice how Albert always turns the argument around, excusing himself. It’s like saying: “Oh, I hit you so hard, now my hand hurts. Pity me too.” Pathetic, I say.
He continues: “But if you look forward innocently to communicating with me & are able to replace old unfounded pain with new joy, write to me again.” His phrase “unfounded pain” tells it all. For Marie, the shabby way he treated her, and just dumped her, was real and hurtful. Calling it “unfounded” is an insult. Nonetheless, like Mileva, Marie remained love-struck by the charm of Albert and was ever eager to forgive him.
The story of Albert’s subsequent abusive relationship with Mileva was told in the first Part of the “dark side” of Albert. For now, we need to recall a few milestones in this story, since there is more to tell of Marie – as we follow her through the rest of her life, despite the meagre information we have about this.
Early in 1902 Mileva gave birth to Lieserl, whom she had to give up, after raising her with her Serbian parents for several months. As seen, Albert never saw his only daughter, and Mileva never forgot her. As I argued in part one: giving up Lieserl was probably a major source of the episodically occurring depression throughout her life. In January 1903, Albert and Mileva were married in a small civil ceremony. Neither set of parents attended. Their married life initially went smoothly, settling in Bern, where Albert got a job in the patent office. In his spare time, he was writing landmark papers on physics, while Mileva was the dutiful housewife. Two sons, Hans Albert (1904) and Eduard (1910), were born.
At this point, I sadly need to interject that back in Aarau in 1906, in the Winteler household, their son, Julius – after returning from a trip to America as a cook on a merchant ship – shot and killed his mother along with his sister Rosa’s husband, then himself. I believe this is important for, among other things, the impact it surely had on Marie; although, as far as I know, we have no documented record of this. But we do have the letter that Albert wrote to Jost. Referring to him as “Highly esteemed Professor Winteler,” he offers his “deepest condolences” despite knowing how “feeble words are in the face of such pain.” He also talks of the “kindness” that Pauline bestowed upon him, “while I caused her only sorrow and pain”– clearly referring to his relationship with Marie.
Meanwhile, by around 1909, Einstein was being seen as an important physicist within the European Physics community. In a letter to a close friend, Mileva says that Albert “lives only for his work” and the family is “unimportant to him.” That there was a strain on the marriage is further seen in the fact that Albert sends a letter to “Dearest Marie,” seemingly, of all things, to rekindle their relationship. He tells her that his “life is as wretched as possible regarding the personal aspect. I escape the eternal longing for you only through strenuous work & rumination. My only happiness would be to see you again.”
We don’t have Marie’s immediate reaction to this from Albert, but we can surmise that it would have been quite a shock – or what my late therapist wife would call, using her vernacular, “for crazy making.” Apparently Marie did reply to this letter of September 1909, because we have another letter from Albert in March 1910 in which he speaks of her having “trusted” him last year, but that she regrets it now; and he refers to a meeting between them, naming specific places where they walked in and around Bern. (Marie, at this time, had a teaching job not far from Bern.) And he reiterates: “I think of you with heartfelt love every free minute and am as unhappy as one can be.” Apparently she never replied to this letter, for we have this postcard from him to her on 15 July 1910: “Warm regards to the eternally silent one from your A. E.”
But she did reply to this; we have a letter of 7 August 1910 to her from Albert that begins: “As I was reading your letter, …” However, the message was not what Albert was waiting for, since he continues thusly, “it seemed to me as if I were watching my grave being dug.” I am quite sure I know what is happening here: Marie became engaged around this time, which eventually led to a marriage. So she has obviously told Albert of this, and this letter is his response. He thus goes on: “The little leftover joy that I still had has been destroyed. … However, I thank you … for giving me … the few hours of pure joy … 15 years ago [1895] and last year. Now you are a different person. … Farewell … and think of me [as] the unhappy one, rather than … with hatred and bitterness. … Your, Albert.” Knowing how Marie, like Mileva, was ever-forgiving, she probably harboured no animosity.
On 16 November 1911, Marie married Albert [!] Müller, a watch factory manager, 10 years younger that her. (So, again, another “Albert” has come into her life.) At the time, the Einsteins were in Prague, where Albert accepted an appointment in the German University. Besso told him of the marriage. In his reply, 26 December 1911, Albert writes: “I am sincerely pleased about Marie’s getting married. Thus wanes a dark stain in my life. Now everything is as it should be. Whom is she marrying?” (Incidentally, while mentioning Besso, it’s worthwhile to point out that there is an extensive correspondence between them that continued until Besso died in 1955, just a month before Einstein. For me, one of the riveting highlights of their relationship is the clear resentment of Albert by Besso’s wife, who openly reprimands Einstein for the dreadful way he treated her sister, as well as Mileva – and Anna harps on this, over and over, until she dies in 1944.)
Sometime around the spring of 1912, Besso informs Albert that Marie is pregnant. We know this because in a long letter to Besso of 26 March, near the end, Albert says, “I am happy that you are doing so well, and also that Marie is expecting a little boy (?), to whom I will be a kind of uncle, as a matter of fact.” The reference here is due to the fact that his sister Maja was married to Marie’s brother, Paul. On 8 August 1912 Marie gave birth to a son, they named Paul Albert. She later had a second boy, but I don’t have any further information on this.
While on this topic around Albert and Marie, let me add this. Albert also continued in contact with Marie’s sister Rosa. In a letter to her in January of 1914 he ends it this way (note the sly reference to Marie’s husband, also Albert): “With kindest regards to you and the kids, to Marie and to my namesake and general representative Albert, whose acquaintance I still hope to make one of these days.” As far as I know, Einstein never met Marie’s husband, nor saw Marie ever again.
Her subsequent life, it seems, was not a happy one – although we only have an outline of it, unlike the detailed agonizing life of Mileva that we saw in Part one. Marie and her Albert were divorced in 1927. As seen, she was an elementary school teacher, although records show that she missed a lot of classes due to sickness. She gave piano and organ lessons, possibly to supplement her income; she may have been dismissed from jobs later in life.
We also know that she tried to reach the first Albert in 1940; there exist two letters in June and September to him in Princeton, N.J. (Albert and his second wife, Elsa Löwenthal, had moved to the USA in 1933.) Similar to Mileva pleading for help to get their son Eduard out of Nazi-surrounded Switzerland, Marie wants to immigrate with a son to the USA and is asking for money and help. However, there is no record of him having read these letters. Most probably, his secretary, Helen Dukas – who was known to censor his mail – never showed it to him. But she did save it, along with the rest of the many items she sorted in his daily mailbox.
Marie was often plagued with depression, and in the end she died in a mental institution on 24 September, 1957, over two years after Einstein died. She was 80 years old, having been born on 24 April, 1877.
I will end this story where I began – the TV series by Ron Howard. Not surpassingly, in the episode involving Albert and Marie, he portrays them having an intimate relationship, which I’m quite sure never happened.
My aim here is not about moral values or judgements, but historical accuracy. Somewhere into the third or fourth episodes of Howard’s “Einstein,” I gave up keeping a list of the historical errors – and just sat back and watched it. Nonetheless, it perturbs me how the popular media often play fast and loose with the facts of history. I could harp on and on about how much work and effort goes into the writing of serious history by serious historians – but I’ll leave it there.
Albert and Marie met in the late 19th century, not the late 20th. They were living in a house with two parents and usually six siblings. There was little to no space available for privacy. Recall the salutations of Albert to Marie, and compare them with the following to Mileva: “sweet little witch,” “wild little rascal,” “my little beast,” “my street urchin,” “you wild witch,” “my little brat.” Of course, we know that their relationship eventually was intimate.
To me, the evidence of history suggests that the relationship between Albert and Marie was Platonic. Recall the quote above by Albert about “ideal love” in 1897. Sometime later in her life, Marie succinctly summarized her friendship with Einstein this way:
“Wir haben uns innig geliebt, aber es war eine durchaus ideale Liebe.”
“We loved each other deeply, but it was a completely ideal love.”
* * *
Readings:
The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein, Vol. 1-16 (1879-1927), by multiple editors (Princeton University Press, 1987–2021), a work in progress.
The Life and Letters of Mileva Marić, Einstein’s First Wife, edited by Milan Popovic (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003).
A Solitary Smile: A Novel on Einstein, by David R. Topper(Bee Line Press, 2019).
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David R. Topper writes in Winnipeg, Canada. His work has appeared in Mono, Poetic Sun, Discretionary Love, Poetry Pacific,Academy of theHeart & Mind, Altered Reality Mag., and elsewhere. His poem Seascape with Gulls: My Father’s Last Painting won first prize in the annual poetry contest of CommuterLit Mag. May 12, 2025
Features
Rabbi Gary Zweig’s new book provides humorous and moving accounts of making minyans in unlikely circumstances
By MYRON LOVE The recitation of the kaddish is a central tenet of Jewish religious life. Even members of our community who are largely secular will likely recite the words of the kaddish for a parent, sibling or spouse at some point in their lives – even if only at the grave site.
The kaddish can only be recited publicly in the presence of a minyan – a gathering of ten (men in the Orthodox tradition. The number, as explained by Rabbi Gedalia (Gary Zweig), stems from the number of spies – as written in the Torah – whom Moshe rabbenu sent into the promised land and who came back with negative reports as compared to the two spies – one of whom was Joshua – who said that the land was flowing with milk and honey.
It is this challenge of putting together minyans for a mourner to recite the kaddish in different locales and circumstances – when a minyan in a shul is not possible – that is the subject of Zweig’a newly released book, “Kaddish Around the World” – a 90-plus page compilation of short stories – some humourous, some heartwarming – of successful efforts to recruit enough daveners for a kaddish minyan, ranging in time and space from a Super Bowl game in San Diego to the middle of a game reserve in South Africa to a Jewish museum in Cordoba in Spain – in a city largely devoid of Jews.
Zweig, who hails from Toronto, was in Winnipeg over Yom Tov to lead services – along with Toronto-based Chazan Manny Aptowitser – at the Chavurat Tefila Talmud Torah Synagogue. On the Tuesday just before Yom Kippur, the synagogue hosted an evening to provide the rabbi with a venue to discuss his new book – a sequel to his first book, “Living Kaddish,” which he released in 2007 (and has been translated into Russian and Spanish).
Zweig is one of the original Aish Hatorah-trained rabbis – having attained his smicha in 1982 from Rabbi Noah Weinberg, the founder of Aish Hatorah. He (Zweig) is much travelled, himself having led Yom Tov services in such exotic locales as Bermuda, Barbados and Curacao in the Caribbean, Mexico and Sweden.
Zweig noted that he was inspired to write “Living Kaddish” after his mother passed away in 2002 when, on one occasion, he was not able to find a minyan so that he could say kaddish.
In his presentation at the Chavurat Tefila, he observed that the first Jew to mention kaddish is purported to be Rueven – about 3,500 years ago – on the passing of his father, Yaacov (Israel). About 900 C.E., Zweig continued, kaddish became part of the liturgy and, 200 years later, was included in the siddur.
It is interesting, he noted, that kaddish is said not for the deceased, but, rather, the living. There is no mention of the Lord in the kaddish either. Kaddish is actually a prayer for hope and the future.
For a parent, one is required to say kaddish three times a day – morning, afternoon and evening – for 11 months. For a sibling, child (God forbid), relative or others, the requirement is just 30 days.
One of the stories in “Kaddish Around the World” tells of one of Zweig’s own experiences – after his father died in 20201 at the age of 101. The author happened to be at a family bar mitzvah in Orlando several months later. He fully expected that in a city with a Jewish population the size of Orlando, he wouldn’t have any trouble putting together a minyan for a Sunday morning. He felt even more confident when he noticed that an AMOR Rabbis convention was being held at the same hotel. On inquiring which sort of rabbis these were, he learned that AMOR stood for “Association of Messianic Rabbis”.
Come Sunday morning, most of the bar mitzvah guests had gone home. He could only muster eight for the minyan. He thought he could try the messianic group in the hope that some of them may have been born Jewish. Four of the group offered to help. A Chabad rabbi suggested that Zweig ascertain that each had two Jewish parents. Two qualified.
Zweig quoted one of the two messianic rabbis who said, after the service that ”this was the most moving service I have ever experienced.”
“Maybe Hashem brought me to that particular hotel at that particular time so that I could provide them with little spark of what Judaism is about,” Zweig said.
Another of the stories in the book concerns a shopkeeper in an American mall where many of the other store owners were also Jewish. The individual, Yossi, needed a minyan for mincha (the afternoon prayer) but couldn’t afford to close his business. He figured he could round up enough of the other store keepers to form a minyan. Everyone he approached was willing to come if he were to be the tenth. (In my own years organizing minyans, that was something I heard often enough – “call me if I will be the tenth”). Yossi’s solution was to assure each one he asked that, yes, he would be the tenth.
“Kaddish Around the World” is available on Amazon and also in digital ebook format and as an audio book.
In addition to being a rabbi and author, Zweig also is a singer/songwriter working in his own genre – Jewish rock and roll. He has a band called “The Kiddush Club,” and a CD called “TOYS.” In addition, he has recently launched a YouTube channel called “Living Kaddish”.
Features
The Gaza Peace Plan is not a Done Deal, but an Opening
By HENRY SREBRNIK (Oct. 23, 2025) The idea that Hamas will voluntarily disarm, that international forces will deploy in the Gaza Strip, and that the process of building a Palestinian government by people like former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, in which a disarmed Hamas does not participate, are false hopes, if not fantasies. But does this mean U.S. President Donald Trump’s peace plan was useless? Of course not.
Trump understood the necessity of bringing the war to an end. But he also believed that endless debate among experts or, worse, historian and lawyers, would never produce an agreement. He presented an offer – actually, an ultimatum – to Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas that neither could refuse: immediate, unconditional and complete release of all hostages and missing persons, something the Israeli public longed for, in exchange for a final end to the war, which a humbled Hamas needed.
Two years of war has left Hamas weaker than it had been in decades. Israeli bombardments had shattered the group’s military capabilities and depleted its arsenals. In many neighborhoods, control had drifted to local clan networks and tribal councils. This hinted at something that could one day replace Hamas’s iron grip. To prevent this, Hamas has been ruthlessly murdering all potential rivals in the areas of Gaza it controls since the ceasefire went into effect.
Despite the severe degradation of its military capabilities during the war, Hamas still has more soldiers and weapons than all its rival factions in Gaza combined. Hamas has managed to redeploy approximately 7,000 militants to reassert control over the territory. They have publicized photographs and videos of their forces murdering and torturing; the victims include women and children.
The ceasefire is a temporary reprieve for Hamas: a chance to regroup, rearm, and prepare for the next round of fighting. In Islamist political thought there’s a word for it, hudna — a temporary truce with non-Muslim adversaries that can be discarded as soon as the balance of power shifts. Then the time for jihad will arrive again. Hamas was established in 1987 and isn’t going to disappear.
In fact Hamas also says it expects an interim International Transitional Authority to hire 40,000 Hamas employees, and Hamas spokesman Basem Naim says he expects its fighters to be integrated into a post-transition Palestinian state.
Still, Trump has succeeded in ending the current war in Gaza, where Joe Biden failed. Biden’s national security team, drawn almost entirely from his supposed expert class, didn’t even see the crisis coming. Just five days before the attack, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan had published an article in Foreign Affairs in which he wrote that “the region is quieter than it has been for decades.”
Biden also had insulted the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, by publicly condemning the 2018 murder of Saudi dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi. And, of course, there was Biden’s poor relationship with Netanyahu, and his chronic inability to get the Israeli prime minister to do what he wanted.
By contrast, Trump returned to office with substantially more influence in both the Gulf and Israel, based on his first-term successes in the Middle East, especially the Abraham Accords (for which he’s never been praised by his political enemies).
Four Arab countries formally recognized Israel, beginning with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, followed by Sudan and Morocco. The next stage was intended to include Saudi Arabia. One motive put forward by some analysts for the October 7 attacks was that they were intended to provoke Israel into a response that would derail Saudi Arabia’s admission.
Instead of sitting Israelis and Arabs in a room and expecting them to negotiate an outcome, Trump’s approach has been to exert leverage through other players in the region, especially, Egypt, Turkey, and – most importantly – Qatar.
In Jerusalem, they call Qatar “the spoiler state.” Israelis describe the emirate as two trains running behind the same engine. One, led by the Qatari ruler’s mother and brother, supports the Muslim Brotherhood and is an unmistakable hater of Israel. The other, led by the prime minister, Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani and several other senior figures, seeks rapprochement with the West.
The Qataris were shocked when Israeli jets on Sept. 9 conducted an airstrike in Doha targeting the leadership of Hamas. They then signed onto Trump’s peace plan at a meeting in New York Sept. 23, hosted by Trump and Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim Ibn Hamad Al Thani, and attended by the leaders of eight Arab states, along with members of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.
Netanyahu was then browbeaten into accepting the plan (and also forced to apologize to the Emir for the airstrike). It was somewhat ironic that the airstrike made the peace plan possible. As well, Trump’s attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities in June gave this negotiation some very sharp teeth.
“If you would rather leave peacemaking to the historians and diplomats, then you may wait a long time for wars to end,” suggested Niall Ferguson of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, in an Oct. 15 Free Press article. His advice? Go to the “deal guys: They get the job done.”
In a sense, both Israel and Hamas had accomplished their goals. Israel had broken the Iranian axis of terror by eliminating Hezbollah and Hamas as a fighting force, along with the Iranian nuclear threat. Hamas had succeeded in luring Israel into a trap that led it to become hated and isolated around the world. This included the labelling of Israel as genocidal and the global call for a Palestinian state.
The rest of the 20-point peace plan will be addressed in a step-by-step fashion. Meanwhile, Israel must ensure that it retains freedom of action in Gaza, by decisive action against any attempt by Hamas to rebuild its army, its rockets, its battalions and its divisions.
Henry Srebrnik is a professor of political science at the University of Prince Edward Island.
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Why Fitness Routines Fall Apart — and How to Rebuild Yours
Every spring, gyms see a flood of hopeful faces. New shoes, fresh playlists, unwavering intentions, by mid-summer? Half of them vanish into the fog of abandoned routines. The story repeats year after year until it starts to feel almost scripted. Why does enthusiasm evaporate? The easy answer involves willpower but that explanation misses the point. Habits don’t fail because people are weak. Life stress, boredom, and monotony ruin routines. Timely lever pulls can change narratives. The hardest part is persevering when motivation wanes.
Mistaking Motivation for Momentum
Most chase that opening surge, the lightning strike of motivation, but then stop searching once enthusiasm fizzles. A scroll through sites like PUR Pharma (pur-pharma.is/) or a glimpse of an influencer’s progress triggers a burst of action: new workout gear ordered, plans scribbled in planners destined for dusty drawers. Yet momentum fades when small setbacks pop up (a late meeting here, rainy weather there). Real progress comes from building systems stronger than any fleeting pep talk. Those who frame fitness as something owed to motivation end up back at square one every time life interrupts, which it always does.
Overcomplicating Everything
It’s tempting to turn wellness into a science fair project with spreadsheets and specialized equipment lined up on day one. This is the allure of complexity disguised as seriousness, a new diet paired with seven types of supplements and four color-coded bottles. Simplicity gets lost in the noise almost instantly. Most successful routines rely on two principles: keep it simple and keep showing up even when everything else is chaos outside those gym walls. Anyone insisting that perfection is required before taking step one has already constructed an excuse not to begin at all.
Forgetting Fun Completely
Who decided exercise must hurt or look like punishment? Somewhere along the line, fun got swapped out for grind culture and “no pain, no gain.” That isn’t just unappealing, it’s unsustainable over months or years. If sessions feel like torture devices borrowed from medieval times, nobody should be surprised when commitment falters fast. Seek activities that actually spark some joy or curiosity, a dance class instead of yet another treadmill session, maybe, or play a pickup game rather than slogging through solo circuits again and again.
Ignoring Recovery (and Reality)
Sleep deprivation, disguised as discipline, fools anyone, except perhaps uncritical Instagram followers. Ignoring recovery turns ambition into tiredness faster than any missed session. Because bodies break without rest, routines must breathe with owners. Cycling, real leisure, and honest self-checks regarding weekly goals build endurance, not continual pushing.
Conclusion
Change rarely arrives by force alone but usually grows quietly from patterns repeated imperfectly over time, even if last month looked nothing like this week so far. Drop the hunt for nonstop inspiration. Instead of breaking behaviors at the first hint of stress or boredom, build habits that last. People who rebuild methodically after every stumble or detour make progress, not those who peak and then fall.
