Welcome to The Untold Story, everyone. I'm Martha McCallum, and I'm very glad to be joined today by Douglas Murray, who, of course, is a very well-known writer, best-selling author, and has written

in The New York Post, The Wall Street Journal, the Free Press, the National Review, all over

the place.

And he has spent a lot of time on the ground since October 7th and has done really extraordinary

coverage of the experience in Israel and in Gaza during

this really tumultuous time. His most recent book is called On Democracies and Death Cults,

Israel and the Future of Civilization. So it feels that it's always a timely moment to speak about this, but particularly so this week.

Douglas, welcome.

Great to have you with us.

Very good to be with you and your listeners.

So President Trump met with Prime Minister Netanyahu at the White House, and they rolled out a 20-point plan, which is to end the war between Israel and Gaza, and they

had negotiated this with a number of Arab and Muslim countries.

Now we're waiting to see if Hamas will accept this deal.

What was your reaction to this plan?

And do you think it will actually lead to an end to the war?

Well, my reaction to the plan is one of I suppose mixed feelings. On the one hand, it includes

in the earliest stages the demand that Hamas release the remaining hostages, who they've been

holding onto for almost two years now,

who they kidnapped and have been keeping in tunnels and elsewhere in Gaza.

So the first thing is that if Hamas do agree to the deal and the remaining hostages are able to

return home, that's of course a good thing. The mixed

feelings come among other things because even that part of it comes with a familiar price,

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