The standard story in the Western media right now is that Israel has proposed a ceasefire deal that American Secretary of State Anthony Blinken calls “extraordinarily generous.â€Â  And that is true.
The Israeli deal proposes to give up over a thousand Palestinian prisoners—in many cases men who have murdered Israelis—in exchange for only 40 hostages.
For each hostage Hamas hands over, Israel will give a day of ceasefire.  That ceasefire will last for up to 42 days.
But the real story is much bigger.
A temporary ceasefire is not what Hamas wants.  It wants a permanent ceasefire and the withdrawal of all Israel’s troops from Gaza.
This sort of settlement would be regarded in the 57 nations of the Islamic world as a massive Hamas victory.  Why?  In the Islamic world’s view, mere survival after an assault on Israel is a triumph.
For example, the leader of Hezbollah in Lebanon has gone to war with Israel over and over again.  By some estimates, he was defeated almost every time. But he declared nearly every defeat a victory, and his claims of victory were spread all over the 1.9-billion-person Islamic world.
Meanwhile, the top three leaders of Hamas have grown rich off the backs of the Palestinian people. They are worth a combined $11 billion. So they have flown from their ceasefire negotiations in Cairo back to their luxury homes in Qatar to consider the Israeli offer.
And here’s where the big picture comes in.  Hamas and its allies are not just fighting their war in Gaza. They are fighting the Gaza war in the Western press and in demonstrations on Western streets. And they are fighting this war on the campuses of  Columbia University,George Washington University, the University of Texas, the University of Southern California and over 30 others.
Hamas’ biggest ally is its sponsor, Iran. Last Friday, one Iranian, Foad Izadi, a professor at Tehran University, said: “We like what we are seeing on U.S. college campuses. These are our people. They will support Iran in case of confrontation with the U.S.  Iran can repeat in America what it did in Lebanon.â€Â
What did Iran do in Lebanon? It took over the country, then used that newly acquired nation as a platform for war.
Keep in mind that a primary goal of modern Iran’s founding father, the Ayatollah Khomeini, was to topple the West and to bring it under Sharia law.  Sounds absurd, right?
But it sounded even more absurd in 633 AD when primitive tribal Muslim fighters attacked one of the biggest empires in history, the Persian Empire.  And it sounded even more absurd 21 years later when the Muslims toppled that empire and colonized it.
The Muslims then wiped out all of Persia’s religions and made Persians “slaves†of the Islamic god, Allah.  They made the Persians Muslims.
Today we call that ancient Persian empire Iran.
What does this have to do with Hamas and a ceasefire?  Everything.  Iran finances Hamas.  Iran regards Syria, Lebanon’s Hezbollah, Yemen’s Houthis, Iraq’s militias, and Palestinian groups like Islamic Jihad and Hamas as parts of a military alliance it runs, the military alliance that the Iranians call the Axis of Resistance.  And in Iran’s eyes, the war in Gaza is a war with the United States.
Iran doesn’t care that Hamas started the Gaza war with its attack on Israel on October 7thand the torture, rape, and killing of 1,200 Israelis.  That, in Iran’s eyes, was a magnificent victory, a manifestation of the generosity of Allah, and a turning point in history, a first step toward the defeat of Israel and, more important, the defeat of America. October 7th was, says the head of Iran’s army,  “unforgettable, stunning and unprecedented.â€Â
Now Iran’s leaders regard the pro-Palestinian demonstrations in the streets of Paris, London, and Los Angeles and the protests on American college campuses as what the founding document of the Muslim Brotherhood in North America called a “grand Jihad…eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their [own] hands.â€Â
This “destroying the Western civilization from within†means that Hamas does not have to accept an offer that Anthony Blinken regards as generous. Hamas is winning more every day it waits. It is winning on the college campuses of America.
Hamas can afford to take its time.
References:
https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2023/10/26/713452/Iran-IRGC-Salami-US-UK-Israel-crumbled
https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2024/05/01/724739/Blinken-Hamas
The Muslim Brotherhood, An Explanatory Memorandum On the General Strategic Goal for the Group In North America, 5/22/1991, https://www.investigativeproject.org/documents/20-an-explanatory-memorandum-on-the-general.pdf
The Islamic Resistance Movement “Hamas,” A Document of General Principles and Policies, https://palwatch.org/storage/documents/hamas%20new%20policy%20document%20010517.pdf
Howard Bloom, The Muhammad Code, Feral House, 2016
https://palwatch.org/page/35086
https://www.memri.org/tv/tehran-univeristy-prof-foad-izadi-american-campuses-support-iran-hizbullah
https://extremism.gwu.edu/sites/g/files/zaxdzs5746/files/2023-10/the-hamas-network-in-america.pdf
https://www.ynetnews.com/article/sk6mfkkma
https://www.csis.org/analysis/coming-conflict-hezbollah
https://www.ntd.com/china-hosts-hamas-fatah-as-hostage-deal-drags-on_989858.html
https://www.fdd.org/analysis/op_eds/2023/11/19/ten-things-iran-thinks-it-achieved-on-oct-7-analysis/
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Howard Bloom of the Howard Bloom Institute has been called the Einstein, Newton, and Freud of the 21st century by Britain’s Channel 4 TV.  One of his eight books–Global Brain—was the subject of a symposium thrown by the Office of the Secretary of Defense including representatives from the State Department, the Energy Department, DARPA, IBM, and MIT.  His work has been published in The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Wired, Psychology Today, and the Scientific American. Bloom is the author of The Muhammad Code: How a Desert Prophet Brought You ISIS, Al Qaeda, and Boko Haram. He does news commentary at 1:06 am Eastern Time every Wednesday night on 545 radio stations on Coast to Coast AM.  For more, see http://howardbloom.institute.