It's Monday, October 13, 2025. I'm Albert Mueller, and this is the briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.

President Donald Trump departed Washington yesterday, headed for Israel, where today he is expected, along with others, to meet with released hostages.

Now, understand immediately that the presence of the president of the United States, expecting

these hostages to be released, it significantly ups the ante, so to speak. It puts the pressure

on Hamas to all new unprecedented levels. And as you know, near the end of

last week, Israel having already signed on to this new peace agreement, or at least an interim

peace agreement, a ceasefire agreement, Hamas signed onto it at the end of the week, but we now

know a great deal more about why Israel signed the agreement, came to turns with

the Trump administration, and why Hamas did the very same. And they are both interesting stories.

First of all, Israel, why did Israel agree to this? Well, on the one hand, you had Prime Minister

Benjamin Netanyahu, who political observer said would weaken his own political position if indeed

there was a ceasefire and there was a return of the hostages.

Some of that just makes sense, by the way, given the fact that he is already the longest

serving prime minister in Israel's history.

And there are huge questions being asked about why Israel was not as prepared as it should have been

on October the 7th of 2003 when Hamas attack took place. On the other hand, Benjamin Netanyahu's

military strategy, particularly in basically wiping out the leadership of Hezbollah, also significantly

weakening the leadership of Hamas in both cases.

The groups have basically had their leadership corps largely eliminated.

You also have very significant Israeli activity having an impact on the ground in Syria,

and of course Israel's attack upon Iran, including wiping out many of Iran's senior

leadership and intelligence officials. And so Israel has been since the October 7 attacks,

...