Monday was a day of rejoicing, of gratitude. For the families and friends of the 20 last living hostages freed after two years of hell, it was a day of fully breathing once again. The hostage release came as a very good sign that Hamas, the genocidal monsters responsible for the devastating two-year war with Israel, could at least come through on a principle term in a long sought ceasefire.
“This is the day the Lord has made known to us, and we will rejoice in it,” Zvika Mor, father of Eitan Mor, said after reuniting with his hostage son, according to reporting by the Times of Israel.
Peace is suddenly a real promise for this war-ravaged portion of the Middle East.
‘Trump Made History’
The man behind the deal, President Donald Trump, was heralded Monday as a hero by an effusively grateful Israel. At Tel Aviv’s oceanfront, Israelis marked the beach with a blocks-long banner — a massive blue silhouette of the 45th and 47th president and a heartfelt message: “Thank You” and “Home” in English and Hebrew. The warm welcome greeted Trump from the air as he arrived on Air Force One on a day for the ages. “Trump Made History”, declared a stretch of desert bathed in white paint. And signs on city buildings declared, “Trump Make Israel Again!”
CNN, no fan of Donald Trump, was forced to acknowledge that tens of thousands of celebrants packing Hostages Square rapturously applauded the peace broker throughout his speech to the Knesset.
“There was a rapturous applause for President Trump. His entire more than one hour long speech was broadcast on that jumbotron behind me and when he finished speaking, I don’t know if you were able to hear it at all, they started playing ‘Simply the Best’ by Tina Turner,” CNN chief international correspondent Clarissa Ward reported from Tel Aviv’s public plaza.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised Trump before the nation’s 120-member legislature, calling the U.S. president the “greatest friend” Israel has ever had for leading a peace deal aimed at disarming Hamas and demilitarizing Gaza. Trump then flew to Egypt to meet with world leaders, sign the ceasefire agreement and layout the roadmap for a lasting peace.
“No American president has ever done more for Israel,” Netanyahu said, according to Fox News. “It ain’t even close.” The prime minister announced he has nominated Trump for the Israel Prize, which would make him the first non-Israeli to receive Israel’s highest honor. Take that, Nobel committee.
‘I am the Opposite of a Nazi’
It is curious then that the same man the American left has vilified as a “Nazi” and a “fascist” is being lauded as peacemaker and protector of millions of Jews.
Days before the decisive 2024 election that brought the Republican back to the White House, NBC News ran a remarkably biased — and absurd — story headlined, “Trump and his allies insist he’s not a ‘Nazi.’” Then-GOP candidate Trump was skewered by corporate media’s intentionally overblown coverage of his campaign rally at Madison Square Guardian, with NBC noting that “several prominent Democrats” were comparing the event to a German-American Bund Nazi rally at New York’s City’s famed venue.
Trump called out the Democrats’ stand-in presidential candidate, then-Vice President Kamala Harris, and her supporters for the politically expedient narrative they were pushing.
“The newest line from Kamala and her campaign is that everyone who isn’t voting for her is a Nazi,” Trump said at a campaign rally in Atlanta. “I’m not a Nazi. I’m the opposite of a Nazi.”
Leftist leaders haven’t stopped the insane rhetoric of false equivalency, even as political threats and violence have spiked in Trump’s second nonconsecutive term.
The people of Israel — celebrating not only an end of the war with Hamas but the Trump administration’s neutralization of top terrorism sponsor Iran — know what Nazis are and what Nazis have done to the Jewish people. They know Trump is no Nazi. Israelis over the last two years have watched U.S. liberals, who have vilified the president, defending Hamas and its genocidal hatred for Jews as “freedom fighters.”
Former hostages and their families are celebrating the man of the hour who brought the region peace through strength.
“As a niece of one of the hostages, I have a lot of love for President Trump because he’s the one that really sealed that deal,” Yael Savariego, whose uncle Lior Rudaeff was murdered by Hamas, told CBS News.
Lishay Miran-Lavi embraced her husband, Omri Miran, for the first time since Hamas ripped him away from his wife and two young daughters on Oct. 7, 2023. Miran-Lavi has long had faith that Trump would come through on his promise to bring the hostages home. In March, after Trump met with eight freed hostages, the hopeful wife and mother posted a moving message to the president.
“@realDonaldTrump, my daughters talk about you all the time—they know you’re the one who brings daddies home to their kids.”
Donald J. Trump did just that. And now many of the same Democrat politicians who have branded him “fascist” and a “Nazi” are — at least for now — singing Trump’s praises as a man of peace.
Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.
