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What Trump’s Peace Plan Gets Wrong About Hamas
Hamas fighters on Feb. 22, 2025. Photo: Majdi Fathi via Reuters Connect
Despite his successful effort to release the hostages, Donald Trump’s plan for peace in the Middle East is destined to fail. Among other things, the American peace plan fails to understand basic Hamas ideas of death and time. Without a correct understanding, Israel will be left hanging in the wind, directionless, desperately fighting an interminable and unwinnable war.
Truth is exculpatory. Contrary to Trump’s hopes, there is no credible outlook for genuine peace in the region. Though Palestinian violence has once again been turned on itself, including the extra-judicial Hamas executions of “collaborators,” longer-term consequences will imperil Israel. Soon, the newly-released Hamas criminals will prepare not just for “ordinary” terror attacks, but also for calibrated escalations to chemical, biological or nuclear (radiological) weapons.
There is more. Any future war between Israel and its jihadi adversaries would have little or nothing to do with Palestinian sovereignty or self-determination. To wit, the October 7 massacre of Israeli civilians was detached from any rational plan for a Palestinian state. This mega-crime’s only plausible motive was debasement and lascivious satisfaction.
While veiled from ordinary assessments of politicians, pundits and strategists, the most authentically animating motives for jihadi terror stem from primal needs to overcome personal mortality. It follows, ipso facto, that visible struggles between the Jewish State and Hamas et. al. are generally reflections of much deeper issues.
Rejecting the syntax and generalities of Trump’s “Board of Peace,” Israeli planners need to inquire: What are actual jihadi goals? If Hamas and kindred terror groups seek “power over death,” how should Israel respond? This query is urgent because the jihadist path to immortality is expressly linked to “terror-sacrifice” and “martyrdom.”
For Israel, the potentially existential threat stems from an adversary that regards violence against Jews and the Jewish State as “sacred.” Today, in the bewildering cacophony of a demonstrably false peace, Jerusalem should distinguish Middle Eastern reality from shadows of reality. To do this capably, three basic concepts will need to be examined in tandem: death, time, and immortality.
What can these three interrelated concepts teach Israeli planners about the force-multiplying perils of Trump’s agreement? To answer thoughtfully, refined thinkers should undertake disciplined inquiries at the individual level, i.e., the level of microcosm. Though an illogical assurance, the promise of “power over death” offers jihadists the greatest imaginable reward for faith-based destructiveness. Significantly, this reward pertains to Islamist adversaries both as direct beneficiaries and reciprocal benefactors.
But first there must be a prior order of business. A two-part question will need to be raised and answered:
How can any one individual, terror group, or state gain “power over death,” and what can such presumed gain have to do with Israel’s fate?
On occasion, as Israelis ought already to have learned, the search for “power over death” demands an explosive end to the jihadist’s life on earth. Although revered by Hamas as “martyrs,” virtually all jihadi leaders strive more-or-less desperately to avoid personal death. As recent facts will affirm, these openly-unheroic commanders are usually “willing” to endure Israeli military retaliations while residing in Qatari five-star hotels. For such senior commanders, it would be difficult to contest, life amid secular affluence remains preferable to a martyr’s existence in asphyxiating tunnels.
All jihadists welcome the “sacrifice” of “unbelievers.” On October 7, 2023, Hamas and kindred perpetrators raped children as well as adults, males as well as females. They burned alive more than a dozen “enemies of the faith.” To support these “battles,” and later engagements with IDF forces, absent Hamas leaders sent large sums of money to “heroic martyr’” families. Often, as a correlative benefit duly sanctified by Islamic clerics, these families were gifted “collective immortality.”
On such matters, history deserves pride of place. In his Lecture on Politics (1896), German historian Heinrich von Treitschke observed: “Individual man sees in his own country the realization of his earthly immortality.” Earlier, German philosopher Georg Friedrich Hegel opined in Philosophy of Right (1820) that the state represents “the march of God in the world.” Such widely-believed views link loyalty to the state with the promise of “power over death.” In world politics, this is always a monumental promise, but one recognizable only in the eternal shadows of death and time. In the issue at hand, Hegelian and von Treitschke linkages apply equally to an aspiring state (i.e., “Palestine”).
Though it is an incomparable promise, personal immortality still represents an unseemly and disfiguring goal. This judgment owes both to the promise’s calming expression of scientific nonsense (“An immortal person is a contradiction in terms,” reminds philosopher Emmanuel Levinas) and to the fact that any search for life everlasting can foster war, terrorism, and genocide. Looking beyond Trump “remedies,” Israel’s task should be not to remove adversarial hopes for personal and collective immortality, but to “de-link” this search from variously barbarous behaviors.
In Reason and Anti-Reason in our Time (1952), Karl Jaspers comments: “There is something inside all of us that yearns not for reason but for mystery – not for penetrating clear thought but for the whisperings of the irrational….” The most seductive of these irrational whisperings are ones that offer to confer some otherwise unattainable “power over death.” It is somewhere within the twisted criteria of such a “selection” (an appropriate term made infamous at Auschwitz) that rapidly expanding acts of terror-violence can be spawned. This is because any jihadi- promised power over death requires the “sacrifice” of specific “others.”
To deal satisfactorily with both immediate and long-term security threats, Israeli policy-makers will have to understand the most elemental sources of war, terror, and genocide. These sources, which generally evade analytic scrutiny, are rooted in complex intersections of death, time, and immortality. In the end, ipso facto, it is at the conceptual or theoretical level that Israeli scholars and policy-makers must fashion pragmatic operational responses to jihadist violence.
Donald Trump will not save Israel. The Hamas/jihadi terror threat has not been eliminated or reduced. In significant measure, this continuing vulnerability is explicable by enemy ideas of time. Ultimately, it is to “sacred time” rather than “profane time” that jihadi criminals will turn for confirming chronologies of life-everlasting.
Prof. Louis René Beres was educated at Princeton (Ph.D., 1971) and is the author of many books and scholarly articles dealing with international law, nuclear strategy, nuclear war, and terrorism. In Israel, Prof. Beres was Chair of Project Daniel (PM Sharon). His 12th and latest book is Surviving Amid Chaos: Israel’s Nuclear Strategy (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016; 2nd ed., 2018).
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Amsterdam’s New Warning to Europe on Antisemitism
Anti-Israel protesters clash with police outside Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, breaking through barricades and setting off smoke bombs during a demonstration against a performance by the IDF’s chief cantor. Photo: Screenshot
Amsterdam likes to present itself as a city of tolerance. It celebrates diversity, prides itself on openness, and often reminds the world of its history as a refuge for those seeking freedom. Yet something deeply troubling happened in Amsterdam last week that should concern not only the Netherlands, but all of Europe:
A municipal debate about antisemitism had to be held at a secret location because of security concerns.
Pause for a moment and consider what that means. In a democratic European capital, a discussion about protecting a Jewish minority could not take place openly for fear of threats and intimidation. If that does not signal a serious problem, what does?
That’s in addition to the bombing of a Jewish school, and another attack that just occurred.
During the meeting, a 15-year old Jewish boy addressed the room. His testimony cut through political rhetoric and statistics with the clarity only a young voice can bring. Since the October 7, 2023, massacre in Israel, he said, life for Jewish students in Amsterdam has changed dramatically. Many of his friends have already left the city. They no longer see a future there.
Imagine hearing those words in 2026 in one of Europe’s most celebrated liberal cities. A teenager speaking calmly about the disappearance of his community.
Amsterdam alderman Melanie van der Horst was visibly moved and struggled to hold back tears. The emotional moment showed that some political leaders understand the gravity of what is happening. Yet empathy alone will not solve the problem.
Another participant in the debate raised a painful but necessary question: How must it feel for Jewish residents to walk daily through public spaces where demonstrations take place in which their country and their people are shouted down? Pro-Palestinian protests have become a constant presence in parts of the city. Political protest is a democratic right, but when rhetoric turns into open hostility toward Jews, society has crossed a dangerous line.
One proposal during the debate illustrated the level of frustration. A politician suggested sending undercover police officers into the streets wearing a kippah in order to identify those who harass Jews. Critics called the idea controversial. But the fact that such a measure is even being discussed reveals how serious the situation has become.
The problem extends beyond the streets. Jewish organizations in the Netherlands increasingly report difficulties renting venues for events. Cultural gatherings and lectures sometimes struggle to find halls willing to host them. It rarely makes headlines, but this quiet exclusion sends a clear message: you are welcome in theory, but not visibly.
History has taught Europe where that kind of atmosphere can lead. Antisemitism rarely begins with violence. It begins with discomfort, social pressure, and the slow normalization of hostility toward Jewish identity.
Meanwhile, another factor fuels the problem. Much of the European media landscape presents Israel through a lens that reduces a complex reality to a simple narrative of aggressor and victim. When context disappears and facts are replaced by slogans, public perception shifts. The hostility directed at Israel easily spills over into hostility toward Jews living thousands of kilometers away.
That is why factual education and responsible journalism matter so much. Civil society organizations that work to counter misinformation often struggle to be heard. Yet without a commitment to truth, public debate becomes an echo chamber for activism rather than a search for understanding.
There is also a question for Jewish communities themselves. When fear grows, the instinct to become less visible is understandable. But invisibility comes at a cost. If intimidation forces people to hide their identity, those spreading hatred learn that their tactics work.
The lesson of Jewish history is painfully clear. Silence has never protected Jewish communities.
Strength does not mean confrontation. It means refusing to surrender identity and dignity to intimidation. It means raising a generation that is proud rather than afraid. It means understanding that resilience is sometimes the only answer to those who seek to erase a people’s presence.
The young boy in Amsterdam asked a simple question without even intending to pose a challenge to Europe: will the Jewish community still exist here in the future?
That question should echo far beyond the walls of the municipal chamber where he spoke. Because if a Jewish teenager in Amsterdam already doubts his future in the city, then Europe is facing not just a Jewish problem.
It is facing a moral test of its own values.
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Billy Crystal Leads Tribute at Oscars for His Late Best Friend, Jewish Filmmaker Rob Reiner
Billy Crystal speaks about Rob Reiner during the Oscars show at the 98th Academy Awards in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, US, March 15, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Mike Blake
Billy Crystal delivered an emotional tribute to his late best friend and legendary actor-turned-director Rob Reiner at the 98th Academy Awards on Sunday night, and was joined on stage by several of Reiner’s other Hollywood friends and stars of his iconic films.
While eulogizing Reiner at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles, Crystal, 78, spoke about his longtime friend as a “master storyteller” and mentioned his long list of memorable projects. The longtime collaborators first met in 1975, when Crystal was cast as Reiner’s best friend in an episode of “All In The Family.”
“My friends, Rob’s movies will last for lifetimes, because they were about what makes us laugh and cry, and what we aspire to be far better in his eyes: far kinder, far funnier, and far more human,” Crystal said. He then talked about Reiner’s marriage to the late Michele Singer Reiner, who was killed alongside her husband on Dec. 14. Crystal called the two “unstoppable” together and said the couple’s loss is “immeasurable.”
“A gifted photographer, she not only produced films with Rob, but it was her energy that had them working tirelessly to fight social injustice in the country that they both loved,” he added. “Rob and Michele Reiner became the driving force in the landmark decision for marriage equality across the United States.”
“To the millions who have enjoyed his films all these years, I want you to know, here and around the world, how many times Rob told me that it meant everything to him, that his work meant something to you — and for us who had the privilege of working with and knowing him and loving him,” Crystal continued.
After the “When Harry Met Sally” star concluded his speech — by saying “Buddy, what fun we had storming the castle” — over a dozen actors who worked alongside the director on films joined Crystal on stage and stood silently together. They included Meg Ryan, Michael McKean, Jerry O’Connell, Mandy Patinkin, Kathy Bates, Annette Bening, John Cusack, Demi Moore, Kiefer Sutherland, Daphne Zuniga, Christopher Guest, Wil Wheaton, Fred Savage, Cary Elwes, Carol Kane, and Kevin Pollak. They had worked with the late filmmaker on movies that included “When Harry Met Sally,” “The Princess Bride,” “This Is Spinal Tap,” “Misery,” “A Few Good Men,” and “Stand by Me.”
Sunday night’s tribute came three months after the director died at the age of 78 on Dec. 14.
Crystal was introduced to the stage by Conan O’Brien, who was hosting the Oscars on Sunday night but was also one of the last people to see the Reiners alive. The couple was found stabbed to death in their Brentwood home hours after they attended a holiday party at O’Brien’s house on Dec. 13. Two sources who attended the party said they witnessed a loud verbal exchange between the Reiners and their middle son, 32-year-old Nick Reiner. He was arrested the following night and charged with murdering his parents.
The younger Reiner is charged with two counts of first-degree murder with special circumstances, including the use of a knife. He pleaded not guilty and has remained in custody without bail since his arrest. Reiner is next due in court on April 29 and could face life in prison without parole, or the death penalty, if convicted.
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Israel Says It Has Plans for At Least 3 Weeks of War as Airstrikes Pound Iran
Emergency personnel work at the site of a strike on a residential building, amid the US-Israeli conflict with Iran, in Tehran, Iran, March 16, 2026. Photo: Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
Israel said on Monday it had detailed plans for at least three more weeks of war as it pounded sites across Iran overnight, while Iranian drone attacks temporarily shut Dubai airport and hit a key oil facility in the United Arab Emirates.
The US-Israeli war on Iran is now entering its third week with no clear end in sight, largely shutting the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20% of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas flow, pushing up energy prices and raising fears of a spike in global inflation.
US President Donald Trump on Sunday called for a coalition of nations to help reopen the strait and said the US-led NATO defense alliance faced a “very bad” future if its members failed to help.
But while allies voiced support for diplomatic efforts to reopen the route, they were cautious about joining any military action.
ISRAEL STILL HAS ‘THOUSANDS’ OF TARGETS IN IRAN
Israeli military spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani told reporters there were detailed operational plans for the war with Iran for the next three weeks, and other plans extending further ahead.
Israel has said it wants to weaken Iran‘s capacity to threaten it, striking ballistic missile infrastructure, nuclear facilities, and the security apparatus, and that it still has thousands of targets to hit.
“We want to make sure that they are as weak as possible, this regime, and that we degrade all their capabilities, all parts and all wings of their security establishment,” Shoshani said.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi for his part said Tehran had not asked for a ceasefire or exchanged messages with the US, according to Iran‘s semi-official Student News Network.
In a post on X, Araqchi also said that some “neighboring states” that host US forces and permit attacks on Iran were also actively encouraging the killing of Iranians.
“Stances should be promptly clarified,” he said.
He said 200 children were among the hundreds of Iranian civilians killed in US or Israeli bombings.
Fars News Agency reported that several civilians had been killed in a strike near Tehran’s Martyrs’ Square, without giving figures.
ISRAEL CLAIMS STRIKES ON IRAN‘S SPACE PROGRAM
The Israeli military said on Monday it was carrying out air strikes on Tehran, Shiraz, and Tabriz.
It said its Air Force had also struck sites linked to Iran’s space program, including destroying a research facility in Tehran involved in developing a satellite launched in 2024.
One Tehran resident told Reuters that there had been no internet overnight and Iranians felt isolated from the world.
“People are being killed,” Shahnaz, 62, said via WhatsApp. “Just days before Nowruz (Iranian New Year, on March 20), but people are not in the mood to celebrate. When will this end?”
Asked if she supported the Islamic Republic, Shahnaz said: “No, I don’t. How can I? They killed my granddaughter in [January’s] protests. We want this regime to go. We want this misery to end.”
In Israel, air raid sirens warned of Iranian missiles. Iran‘s Revolutionary Guards said Tehran had launched attacks on areas In Tel Aviv, the US al-Dhafra air base in Abu Dhabi, the US naval base in Bahrain, and Bahrain’s Sheikh Issa air base.
Furthermore, oil loading operations at the UAE port of Fujairah on the Gulf of Oman were suspended following an Iranian drone strike.
Fujairah is a key exit point for the UAE’s Murban crude – a volume equivalent to roughly 1% of global demand.
Flights at Dubai International Airport, one of the world’s busiest, were suspended for several hours after a drone strike on a nearby fuel storage facility sent plumes of black smoke into the sky. Saudi Arabia intercepted 34 drones in its eastern region in one hour, state media said. No injuries were reported in either incident.
Later on, Reuters reporters also heard booms in the Qatari capital, Doha.
OIL SLIPS ON BESSENT SHIPPING COMMENTS
Despite the turbulence, oil prices, which had been above $100 a barrel, fell sharply and stocks rallied after US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told CNBC the US was “fine” to let some Iranian fuel vessels sail through the strait, and believed Indian and Chinese tankers had also passed through.
Ship-tracking data showed a Pakistan-bound oil tanker had passed through the Strait of Hormuz over the weekend, indicating that some countries are able to negotiate safe passage for their vessels.
On Sunday, Trump had demanded that countries relying heavily on oil from the Gulf should help protect the strait, and said he hoped China, France, Japan, South Korea, Britain, and others would participate.
However, many – including Germany, Italy, Greece, Japan, and Australia – said they would not send warships.
Israel continued to strike Lebanon and Gaza, attacking Iran-backed Hezbollah and Palestinian Hamas terrorists. The Israeli military said its troops had begun limited ground operations against Hezbollah positions in southern Lebanon.