In the Broadway musical Fiddler on the Roof, Motel the Taylor sings a song reminiscent of the Passover Seder’s Dayenu, recounting the miracles God had performed for the Jewish people throughout history, culminating in the joy he and Tzeitel felt when Tevye, the main character of the play and Tzeitel’s father, gave them his blessing to marry.
Motel sings in near-disbelief, “Wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles. God took a Daniel once again, stood by his and side and miracle of miracles, walked him through the lion's den. Wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles. I was afraid that God would frown, but like He did so long ago in Jericho, God just made a wall fall down.”
Wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles, last night, a wall far greater and more dangerous than Tevye’s disapproval came down. Hamas finally agreed to release all of the hostages after more than two years of holding them in the most barbaric conditions.
There have been many miracles over the last two years, and especially over the last year. In late 2024, Hezbollah, the most powerful and dangerous of Iran’s terrorist proxies, was decimated and weakened to such an extent that a future for Lebanon as an independent state whose well-being is no longer subjugated to Iran is possible for the first time in decades. The blows against Hezbollah led to the fall of the Assad regime in Syria, removing an Iranian puppet regime responsible for the murders of hundreds of thousands of his own people.
And in July of this year, Israel and the US finally took action to eliminate the threat of Iran’s nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs, removing the specter of the greatest existential threat to Israel.
In many ways, getting Hamas to agree to release every hostage is an even greater miracle. Hamas is a homicidal and genocidal death cult, dedicated to the eradication of the Jewish people and Western civilization. It places no value on human life, except perhaps the lives of its leaders, and seeks to maximize casualties on its own side as well as on Israel’s side in a sick attempt to appeal to the antisemites in the West who need to blame the Jews for everything, an attempt that has been unfortunately successful given the prevalence of antisemitism globally.
Hamas held onto its hostages as long as it did because the hostages have been its leverage, its guarantee that it will live to kill and rape another day. To get Hamas to agree to give up that leverage is nothing short of miraculous. Israel was hampered in its war efforts due to the hostages and did not blow Gaza City to smithereens knowing they were there.
With this deal US President Donald Trump has achieved the miraculous, something the previous Biden Administration could not even dream of - a deal to free all of the hostages in phase 1, not limited releases designed to preserve Hamas’s leverage and ability to rebuild for the next massacre.
There is no excuse for not awarding Donald Trump the Nobel Peace Prize now. This diplomatic breakthrough will bring the end of the war closer and reshape the Middle East even if only the first phase of Trump’s 20-point plan is implemented. Without the hostages, Hamas will have no leverage in future talks on truly ending the war, nothing with which to bargain with Israel, the US, and all the nations who have agreed to the plan that Hamas disarm and be removed from power in Gaza.
Should Hamas refuse those terms of surrender, Israel will finally be free to deliver the final blow to the terrorist organization once it no longer has to hold back to avoid harming the hostages.
Trump’s diplomatic success is the result of Israel’s military pressure on Hamas, which has backed the death cult into a corner. It is also the result of Trump’s ability to resist the propaganda from the left-wing media, the UN, and even some on the so-called ‘woke right.’ This American Administration has seen the conflict between Israel and Hamas with a moral clarity that is absent in the governments of the UK, France, Canada, Australia, and all nations that rushed to recognize ‘Palestine’ while Hamas continued to remain in power and to hold hostages. Those nations rewarded terrorism and genocide and sought to give Hamas more opportunities to commit more October 7s. The Trump Administration put the public pressure where it belongs: On the butchers of Hamas.
The deal is not perfect. No deal that requires Israel to release terrorists is. Nor will it truly end the Arab-Israeli conflict or the Islamist war to annihilate Israel. That will require the end of Iran’s attempts to dominate the region and decades of work to undo the Palestinian Authority’s indoctrination of its people to see killing Jews as the highest value to which they can aspire. But it brings peace closer than any other “peace deal” that has been forced on Israel in the last 35 years.
So thank you, President Trump, for having the moral clarity necessary to secure a deal that brings the hostages home instead of just stopping the fighting as the previous administration did.
Thank you to Prime Minister Netanyahu for leading us to this point, where Israel’s enemies are shattered and all of the hostages are about to come home. To say that resisting the global campaign to save Hamas at any cost by smearing Israel with lies was difficult would be an understatement.
And last but certainly not least, thank you to the brave soldiers of the IDF, whose courage and determination never faltered, who proved every day that they are truly the most moral army in the world despite the constant blood libels made against them, and who have defeated Israel’s enemies in Lebanon, in Syria, in Iran, and now, God willing, in Gaza.