Unknowable Future

The good news from Secretary of State Marco Rubio's news conference today is a response which bore no resemblance to those typically seen from President Trump nor Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt. There was no blame placed on Joe Biden, imaginary, domestic Communists or Socialists, "fake news," nor the "Democrat," or even Democratic, Party. The bad news is that his vocabulary knowledge is deficient, a minor deficiency. (Comma day!) And so we had

Q: By any metric, the Israelis are flouting the ceasefire Trump negotiated by killing an average of 2 children a day, not allowing aid into Gaza. How long can the Israelis be allowed to show such disrespect to President Trump?

RUBIO: That's your characterization about… pic.twitter.com/0sMtxORJ1Y

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) December 19, 2025

Rubio is seen remarking

.... all the hostages were released and we have relative piece now for the most part despite the things you're pointing to. That was very difficult. But this is not easy. Peace is a verb, it's an action, it's not a sentiment.

Actually, peace is not a verb and not an action, but a state or period.  But given that he serves an authoritarian with grandiose delusion, that's trivial.  H

He continued

Every single day will bring challenges. Every single day. We've also had incidents where for example, the last couple of weeks, where Hamas elements emerged from a tunnel, attached an explosive device inside a vehicle, and injured and almost killed Israeli soldiers. 

We still have and see every single day, Hamas taking steps to strengthen themselves within those places in Gaza they still control. We saw early on the atrocities they were committing in the streets against people. They ere trying to show people how strong they were. 

This highlights how, with both sides periodically breaking the ceasefire, the Trump-inspired deal is not a peace deal but merely a ceasefire, and an imperfect, fragile one at that.  In an article, written soon after the 10/7/23 Hamas attack, the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point noted

both before and after the so-called “Shalit deal” in which Israel released over 1,000 Palestinian security prisoners in exchange for one Israeli soldier captured in Gaza in 2006—Gilad Shalit—Hamas has ceaselessly engaged in kidnappings and attempted kidnappings in hopes of gaining a valuable bargaining chip to use in future negotiations with Israel.

One of those 1,000+ prisoners released included Yahya Sinwar, the mastermind 26 months ago of the most successful terrorist attack upon Israel in its nation's history. 

The September agreement which, at least temporarily, ended the Hamas-Israel war included release of all prisoners held by the butchers of Gaza, which slashed the ability of Hamas to blackmail Israel. Well: good, or great. Hamas has been, as it was before the deal, largely, though not totally emasculated. As part of Trump's 21-point peace plan, the group is to disarm. Good luck with that. 

Moreover, a peaceful and just accommodation of "Palestinians"- presumably a Palestinian state- is no closer than it has been for several years.  The famine was precipitated by Israeli warfare but encouraged by the Trump Administration, which replaced the United Nations and its partner organizations with the largely ineffectual private Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.  Though not genocide, it was an active effort to curry favor with private interests at the expense of human life.

The contempt for human life echoed a major theme of this regime, such as the Secretary of State's stubborn refusal to back down from his enthusiasm for the elimination of USAID, which has killed hundreds of thousands of individuals abroad, with the clock running. Hopefully, at some point Rubio will realize that reinforcing and deepening human suffering is a major objective of President Trump. 

More importantly, we can wish that none of the nearly 2,000 prisoners held by Tel Aviv since before 10/7/2023 becomes the instigator of a  major terrorist attack, such as the one led by the late Yahya Sinwar. I don't like Israel's odds.

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