Ceasefire Now: Trump and the Gaza Generation

There’s no overstating it: President Donald Trump and his voters are about to decide world history. Just ahead of Election Day, I believe it’s more than worth it to regroup and call to mind just how historic the Trump movement is in the grand scheme of global events.

It’s not often that a brief chapter of history is so momentous that it shapes an entire generation of American voters. The terrorist attacks on 9/11/2001 and the Bush administration’s response were one such inflection point. Nothing after that has come close…until Hamas’ attack on Israel on October 7 of last year and the relentless bloodshed that has been taking place in Gaza since.

And here’s where the historic importance of Trumpism comes in. 

It’s largely thanks to Trump’s influence that politicians today can’t so much as present themselves as Republican candidates for office without first denouncing the political establishment’s disastrous actions in response to 9/11. The months following the attack were marked by confusion, rashness, and deception. The opportunism, corruption, and political blunders of 2001 and 2002 led to a monster surveillance state, unmanned U.S. drones gunning down civilians in places like Yemen, numerous wars, genocides, and the rise of ISIS.  It’s largely thanks to Trump’s influence that politicians today can’t so much as present themselves as Republican candidates for office without first denouncing the political establishment’s disastrous actions in response to 9/11.Tweet This

After Trump’s entry into the national political scene, that whole tragic series of events is now almost universally seen as unconscionable—and that new humane view, with its preference for peace and distrust of political elites, is the Trump effect.

Of course, to the political establishment that profits by what Trump calls the “forever wars,” the violent deaths of tens of thousands of Palestinian children just in the last year mean nothing. But the suffering of Gaza—the bombings of churches, the women and girls killed by Israel Defense Forces snipers, the Israeli government’s obstruction of aid trucks to tend to the wounded and the starving—it means everything to the good-hearted people of America, and especially to our young and minority voters.

In fact, what is rising up now among American voters is what might be called the Gaza Generation. And just like distancing ourselves from the post-9/11 actions of the military-industrial complex has become a litmus test for office in the Republican Party today, denouncing Israel’s violence against Palestinians will soon become a litmus test too. And, again, thanks to Trumpism, I believe the Gaza Generation will hold every major figure in public life to that litmus test, including candidates of both major parties.

Trump was one of the first and remained one of the only consistent voices for peace immediately following 9/11. While others bickered over the Middle East like it was so much profitable material to be divided like spoils, invested in or sold out, used or discarded, Trump always seemed to see the human costs in the midst of Western elites’ frivolous games of war and plunder.

And he clearly feels the same way about the current situation in Gaza. At a campaign stop just days ago, a young man shouted “Trump, what do you have to say about Gaza?” Without hesitation, Trump responded: “It’s gotta stop. …What we want is peace.”

For Trump, the world isn’t a war of all against all where America competes thoughtlessly against adversaries over resources. He has no interest in a chaotic, unpredictable, multipolar world of tense competitions and skirmishes between greedy nations and their proxies throughout the Middle East. His program is to “Make America Great Again”—in a unipolar, stable world stage where vulnerable people—and their governments—have reason to trust our leadership and look to it as an upholder of shared interests.

Even in his comments on the conflicts between Middle Eastern nations, Trump doesn’t see the interests of the region’s peoples as mutually exclusive. He denounces Iranian leaders as leading exporters of terrorism and warns them against reckless aggression in one breath and speaks with compassion and admiration of the Iranian people in the next.

Similarly, not even in the heat of the current conflict between Israel and Hamas does Trump fail to speak with genuine humanity to both Israelis and the people of Palestine. 

This election isn’t over till it’s over, and the last thing we need in the uncertainty of these last few days and hours is complacency. But despite what many Washington, D.C., advisers would have him think, President Donald Trump could stand to lose more by selling himself short than by overconfidence.

To secure the edge in the final stretch, and to inject our political movement with the crucial last boost of adrenal energy it needs to get over the finish line, President Trump is now in a position to make one last move that would drive home just how historic this political moment—and his movement—really is: Trump can call for a ceasefire in Gaza.

I’m sure there are plenty of weak-kneed political strategists telling Trump it would be a terrible risk. First of all, that’s not even true: the polling is clear that if anything he’d gain more votes than he could possibly lose by taking this stand for peace. But more importantly, they fail to see the other, much graver risk. I mean the risk of forgetting—or allowing the public to forget—that the whole character and credibility of Trump’s prophetic role in global events has always hinged on his courageous opposition to senseless violence and war.

And besides, by calling for a ceasefire, Trump will forever secure his place as the first political figure to understand and lead the Gaza Generation. In the coming one or two election cycles, many politicians will struggle to catch up. No doubt many will fail the test and disappear into history.

But if Trump calls for this ceasefire now, he won’t just win the day in American politics for the next four years. He will shape the fate of the world for the next four decades at least.