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Why Trump was able to succeed with a Gaza peace plan where Biden failed
If Donald Trump’s Gaza ceasefire deal delivers, American Jews and supporters of Israel will get what they have yearned for since the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks — the return of the hostages, an end to Palestinian suffering, and a credible plan to remove Hamas as a military and governing force in Gaza.
What complicates the possible resolution is that the plan’s authors, Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, are deeply unpopular figures among liberal Jews.
As news of the deal spread, Orthodox and politically conservative Jews, already among Trump’s strongest supporters, said they were vindicated. The Republican Jewish Coalition said that Trump not only merited the Nobel Peace Prize he has long sought, the award should be renamed for him. Netanyahu also called for Trump to win the Nobel.
Rabbi Ari Berman of Yeshiva University, who delivered the benediction at Trump’s inauguration in January, thanked God for “raising up” Trump to bring the hostages home.
Jewish groups affiliated with the Democratic Party avoided effusive praise for Trump, describing the deal as a “momentous” first step in a broader goal of creating the conditions for an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and lasting peace.
When liberals mentioned Trump, it was begrudgingly. “Trump gets what he wants because he is a bully. Period,” Elana Sztokman, an Israeli American on the left, wrote. “And apparently, bullying was what was necessary to get this ceasefire done.”
The response reflected a Jewish community supportive of Israel’s security, exhausted by the ongoing war and deeply skeptical of its current leadership. A recent Washington Post survey of 815 Jewish Americans found that only 46% approved of Israel’s conduct in Gaza and 68% rated Netanyahu’s leadership of Israel as poor or fair. It mirrored polling after the joint Israeli and U.S. strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites earlier this year: cautious approval of the outcome and concern about escalation.
Recent polls show Democratic voters generally are increasingly sympathetic to Palestinians. Zohran Mamdani’s primary win in the race for New York City mayor is prompting mainstream Democrats with national ambitions to mimic his sharp criticism of Israel.
The 20-point plan — relief first, reconstruction and governance later, backed by Arab regional partners — gives both leaders a much-needed win. Trump can claim he succeeded where former President Joe Biden could not, securing his legacy and fulfilling a key campaign promise to both Arab American voters and his MAGA base to end the conflict. Netanyahu, meanwhile, deeply unpopular among Israelis who blame him for failing to prevent the Oct. 7 massacres, enters an election year with a diplomatic win, his right-wing coalition intact for now, and tangible results to show for what he called a seven-front war of redemption.
In Israel, there was unfettered jubilation. Across the political map, from Netanyahu loyalists to his harshest critics, Trump was hailed as the leader Israelis had longed for. A farmer who has used his land to send political messages in the past plowed the words “Nobel 4 Trump” into his fields. A town in Israel’s north said it was renaming its soccer stadium for Trump.
In his first interview after the deal was announced on Wednesday, Trump said that he told Netanyahu his post-war plan would enhance Israel’s standing in America and globally.
Why Trump succeeded where Biden failed
The Trump plan closely resembles the three-phase plan Biden outlined in April 2024, which called for postwar rebuilding, the removal of Hamas and a long-term regional strategy. The ceasefire-hostage deal signed in January, with the backing of both Biden and Trump, collapsed after just 42 days.
Gershon Baskin, a veteran Israeli hostage negotiator and an early conduit between U.S. envoys and Hamas, argued that Biden’s insistence on partial ceasefires rather than a full end to the war weakened America’s hand. Biden, Baskin said, was weakened by his concessions to Netanyahu, who feared that a long-term ceasefire would collapse his far-right coalition.
“To me, it was clear that President Biden projected American weakness while President Trump projects American power,” Baskin wrote in a Substack post. “From that moment, on December 26, 2024 it was clear to me that the only way that the war would come to an end is when President Trump makes the decision that it has to end.”
Trump also entered negotiations with advantages Biden never had.
First, there were no “daylight” theatrics. Biden’s public clashes with Netanyahu — over the judicial overhaul and Israel’s operation in Rafah — created visible friction. When Biden called for protections for Palestinian civilians and increased humanitarian aid, Netanyahu openly defied him. Trump, by contrast, backed Israel’s war goals, praised Netanyahu’s leadership and kept most disagreements behind closed doors.
Second, Trump focused on outcomes, not empathy. In her memoir 107 Days, former Vice President Kamala Harris wrote that Biden often appeared “inadequate and forced” when addressing Palestinian suffering, constrained by his strong emotional attachment to Israel.
Trump didn’t dwell on empathy. He was blunt. He called the war a “public relations disaster” and said his goal was simple: stop wars and bring peace. For an anxious Israeli public, that direct language resonated.
Finally, Trump’s transactional style and focus on results made his approach more effective. Netanyahu, who has over the last decade all but abandoned any pretense at cultivating Democrats, placed all his eggs in the Republican basket: He could not defy Trump.
Trump’s envoys — Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff — enjoy deep ties with governmental and business elites in Qatar and Turkey, two governments that are close to Hamas. Democrats had strained those relationships over human-rights disputes. The countries returned to the negotiations now as regional powerbrokers.
Another spur for Qatar: Trump enhanced the already expansive U.S. security relationship with the Gulf monarchy and pressured Netanyahu to apologize for an Israeli strike on the country’s capital targeting Hamas leadership.
That left Netanyahu no choice but to oblige. Trump, who plans to visit Israel and address the Knesset, will likely reward the embattled Israeli leader with the political backing needed to push the deal through and to jump-start a reelection bid.
JTA contributed to this report.
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VIDEO: A Hasid gives us a tour of Morocco in Yiddish
דער ירושלימער יוטוב־שטערן וועלוול קירשנבוים האָט לעצטנס אַרויסגעשטעלט אַ ווידעאָ אויף ייִדיש פֿון אַ פּרעכטיקן וויזיט, וואָס ער האָט געמאַכט אין מאַראָקאָ. עס באַגלייט אים זײַן חבֿר אַבֿרהם פּרץ.
אינעם ווידעאָ זעט מען ווי קירשנבוים דאַוונט שחרית מיט די אָרטיקע ייִדן און באַזוכט אַ גוט אָפּגעהיטענעם בית־עולם, וווּ עס ליגן באַערדיקט גרויסע צדיקים ווי למשל הרבֿ חיים בן עתר (1696–1743), באַקאַנט ווי דער „אור החיים“. „מענטשן מיינען, אַז נאָר אין אייראָפּע זענען דאָ קבֿרים פֿון צדיקים!“ זאָגט קירשנבוים.
מיר זעען אַ גרויסע, שיינע שיל מיט אַ פֿײַנער אַרכיטעקטור אין קאַזאַבלאַנקאַ; דעם גרויסן אַראַבישן שוק, וווּ קירשנבוים קויפֿט זיך אײַן מלבושים פּונקט ווי די מאַראָקאַנער גייען אָנגעטאָן. ער באַוווּנדערט אויך די שיינע טיי־גלעזער און טשײַניקן, וואָס מע פֿאַרקויפֿט דאָרט, און באַקענט זיך מיט אַ ייִדישן סוחר וואָס האַנדלט מיט זילבער און גאָלד, פּונקט אַזוי ווי זײַן טאַטע און זיידע האָבן געטאָן פֿאַר דור־דורות.
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Conservative and Christian movies are coming for Hollywood
A star-studded new movie set in a Soviet prison is coming out in November. James Franco and Rob Lowe anchor the cast of Confession, playing a brutal prison guard and an imprisoned dissident professor, and a disheveled Nick Nolte appears as a fellow prisoner.
These actors were once huge gets, and their names could convey legitimacy to a project. Nolte and Franco both have received Academy Award nominations. Lowe was a member of the Brat Pack, and was a regular on The West Wing.
Confession, written by Ben Shapiro and produced by the rightwing tabloid-esque news site The Daily Wire, is not the expected fare for actors with that kind of name recognition; Shapiro’s screenwriting aspirations have been the target of ridicule for years.
Nevertheless, this isn’t the only Daily Wire production getting big names; Danny Trejo signed onto a pro-ICE movie about Minneapolis in the aftermath of the Renee Good shooting, and Jonathan Majors led Run, Fight, Hide: Infidels earlier this year.
Each one of these actors has been, in some way, canceled or in career doldrums so may have been more open to working with The Daily Wire. And some have claimed that they did not know who Shapiro was, or what his politics were; Trejo’s son, Gilbert, said his 82-year-old father did not endorse ICE and was misled about the movie before he signed his contract.
Movie studios have struggled through the pandemic and the streaming era, both of which have tanked box office receipts, leaving the field open for movies from offbeat production studios. In addition to The Daily Wire, there has been a whole ream of Christian movies attempting to shift the stereotype of bible movies — that they’re preachy, low-budget straight-to-TV affairs with cardboard acting — to something more prestigious, or at least profitable.
The Christian company Angel Studios has been placing screenings of the half philo-semitic, half-antisemitic Jesus TV series The Chosen in movie theaters across the country, produced the right-wing hit The Sound of Freedom and is pumping out faith-based movies like the animated King of Kings Christmas story and David, a kiddie movie about the biblical king. Recently, Pinnacle Peak Pictures, another faith-based production company, premiered Daniel and the Fiery Furnace, another bible movie that was notable enough to merit a review in The New York Times. (Though admittedly it wasn’t a particularly positive one.)
For decades, Hollywood, and the media industry at large, has been associated with liberalism, progressive politics and diversity. (This is part of why conservative conspiracy theorists often insist that Jews control the media.) Even when conservatives are in power, satirical movies have poked fun at the ruling class — Team America: World Police spoofed George W. Bush’s foreign policy, while M*A*S*H critiqued Richard Nixon. During the current Trump administration, we’ve seen One Battle After Another lambasting immigration policies and rising white nationalism, Eddington on misinformation and populism, and The Apprentice depicting Trump directly.
But a rising number of higher-budget, bigger releases from the right wing, whether The Daily Wire’s conservative political parables or the Christian fables, are bringing a new kind of messaging — about the importance of God and country, about gender roles, about about the centrality of Jesus to the U.S. — to the American movie-going public.
This is no accident. A group of powerful conservative Christians, many of whom worked on Project 2025, are proponents of the Seven Mountains Mandate, a blueprint for Christian nationalism that instructs Christians to gain influence and control over the “seven mountains” of society — which include media, entertainment and the arts. The Mandate is part of the New Apostolic Reformation, a decentralized evangelical movement embraced by millions of Americans.
Jeremy Boreing, the director of many Daily Wire movies — though he has since left the company — said on a podcast hosted by businessman Patrick Bet-David that “It had always been part of our strategy to move into making culture, not just criticizing culture” as a way of proving that “there is a future where conservatives aren’t losing. There’s a future where we have political power and cultural power.”
Cultural power, of course, requires more than just a lot of movies; they have to be well-done, or at least appear to be. Previous Daily Wire productions, as well as other right-wing, MAGA movie ventures, have been hacky. Lady Ballers, about an unsuccessful men’s basketball team pretending to be women so they can dominate the league, was an unsubtle, unfunny and ultimately unwatchable spoof of transgender athletes. And even plenty of higher-budget attempts, like Daniel and the Fiery Furnace, can still fall victim to wooden acting and writing.
But now, with the financial success of movies like The Sound of Freedom and biblical parables like The Chosen, bigger stars are being drawn to projects like the Daily Wire’s lineup of pro-ICE, anti-immigration and anti-LGBTQ movies. With those bigger stars may come new audiences who might not have watched a Christian movie or Daily Wire project otherwise. And where there is money and viewers, mainstream Hollywood will go, too, no matter how progressive people expect the industry to be. We’ve already gotten a biblical epic from Amazon Prime, with The House of David, and there are likely to be many more to come.
After all, it wasn’t so long ago, after all, that Cecil DeMille’s The Ten Commandments was the biggest movie in town.
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‘Heil’ Mary? New Atlanta Falcons logo inspires Nazi comparisons
If there was something off about the logo the Atlanta Falcons unveiled on social media Wednesday, whoever runs their accounts did, uh, not see it.
Behind the black falcon graphic that began appearing on the football team’s helmets in the 1960s was a new background — a flag of red, tan, black and white vertical stripes. To thousands of people who responded to the logo, it looked distinctly German — in a 1930s kind of way.
“The Atlanta Falcons are preparing to invade Poland,” one fan wrote.
A day after its posting, the new profile picture had unleashed a deluge of Nazi memes in the 4,000-plus replies on X. One picture swapped in the logo for Nazi flags in the background of a historical photo of a Hitler rally. Another edited the Falcon claw to look like a Nazi salute.
Others depicted Hitler in a Falcons cap, references to Inglourious Basterds and the Battle of the Bulge and a World War II joke invoking a blown lead in Super Bowl LI.
“Falcons were up 28-3 at Dunkirk,” that tweet read.
The Falcons’ snafu enters a small but growing catalogue of Reich-coded brand mixups. Who can forget the German national soccer team’s ‘44’ soccer jerseys? There was also the swastika-emblazoned Hallmark gift wrap; the accidental Hitler mugs; and (for my money) the worst of the bunch, Zara’s concentration camp uniform shirt.
All of those have been addressed; so far, the Falcons’ has not. We’ve reached out to them for comment.
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