So welcome to the podcast. This is episode 399. My name is Douglas Wilson. I'm grateful that you decided to join us. As we're recording this, the peace deal in the Middle East has just been announced. Well, it was teased over the weekend. And now Monday, the hostages were released and the Hamas prisoners were released

in exchange and so on. The first observation to make about Trump's involvement in the Middle East

is that he is being the worst Hitler ever, some Nazi. This is really terrible. I mean, way to let the, way to

sally the brand, you know. Let's talk about the chances of this peace deal. There are several

ways to come at this. After Hamas launched their October 7th assault on Israel, if you zoom in on that conflict, Israel against Hamas in Gaza, it was my desire that Hamas be eradicated. And I didn't think, I don't believe, that there is any way to have lasting peace in the region unless Hamas is out of the

picture. And in the fighting, it looked like the only way that they could be out of the picture,

as a force to be reckoned with, would be if they were all dead, if they were just simply

annihilated. But if you zoom out, and this is all still to be determined, we don't know,

we don't know if this is going to work, we don't know the future, all of that. But the reason why

I don't think it is like other peace deals is because the perpetual conflict in Israel between Israel and the Palestinians,

whether it's Israel and the PLO or Israel and neighboring states,

or Israel and Hezbollah or Israel and Hamas,

the reason that conflict has been so long-lived, the reason it's just gone and gone and gone,

is because the radicals, the terrorists, have had supply lines from the West, and of course,

also from Iran. But there have been all sorts of, there's been all kinds of support from the West and from

surrounding countries and so forth. The thing that appears to me to be different about this one

is that Trump has lined up the surrounding countries, with the exception probably of Iran,

to basically secure the peace, which

means sitting on Hamas. Hamas can't be in control of anything, because if they are, then what

you have is if there's not war between Israel and Gaza, that's not the same thing as saying there is no war between Gaza and

Israel. So free Palestine is a, is perfectly acceptable sentiment, unless it means free Palestine as a

platform for continuing to launch rockets into Israel. That's simply asking for more of the same. Basically, nothing is going to change

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