How is Peace President Trump’s plan for Gaza going this week?

Zeteo presents a skeptical, critical take on the “Trump plan” for Gaza and for supposedly ending the genocide, featuring the Palestinian attorney Diana Buttu: (1)

Former Israeli diplomat and negotiator Daniel Levy recently described how badly lacking the “Trump plan” is to achieve positive results – other than those desired by the most hardline Israelis. (2)

The Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politik is a leading German journal on politics and international affairs. It’s editorial perspective tends to be left-leaning. But they also feature article by authors that can scarcely be considered left.

Their current (October) issue includes three essays on the Israel-Gaza conflict and the genocide. (3)

Anti-Zionism and antisemitism

Eva Illouz mainly polemicizes against left critics of Israel, repeating various Israeli hasbara (public information/propaganda) tropes along the way. She is particularly scornful of anyone who doesn’t equate anti-Zionism with antisemitism. And, as usual in this particular vein of polemics, she treats criticism of Israel as criticism of Zionism which then is tagged as antisemitism. But, of course, this is a very problematic position conceptually, since many secular and religious Jews have been and are critical of Zionism, especially in its more toxic, narrow-nationalistic forms of which Netanyahu’s government represents by far the worst and most toxic manifestation to date.

It also has distorted the figures cited for antisemitic incidents reported in the US and Europe, because it’s now more of a challenge to distinguish between incidents of the I-hate-Jews variety and those of the Israel-should-stop-starving-Palestinians type. She recently wrote in Haaretz:

When [a Jewish intellectual] turns her head left, she cannot fail to register the spectacular comeback of antisemitism from within the liberal belly of Western democratic societies. This is palpable through the stunning increase of hate crimes against Jews everywhere in Western Europe and in the United States, through widespread public obsession with Israel and its actions, through the demonization of Zionism as a uniquely criminal ideology and through a boycott of Israelis reminiscent of the stigmatization and ghettoization of Jews of yore.

All of this wrapped in the claim that antisemitism doesn't exist, that it is a manipulative argument used by Jews or even better, that it is an understandable reaction to Israel's own actions. After October 7, the Jewish intellectual has been forced to sober up and recognize that antisemitism as an irrational force driving human affairs comes from within the ranks of its seemingly most democratic activists. (4)

But Illouz also comments caustically that the Netanyahu government has been undermining “its judicial – and thus democratic – safeguards.” And warns that “Friends of Israel must not avert their eyes from the nature of the government in Jerusalem, its misbegotten priorities, its incompetence and its no longer justifiable Gaza war.”

Of course, we don’t have to look much further than American Christian Zionists like US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee or the enthusiastically “pro-Israel” Christian United for Israel (CUFI) group to see that they can be very antisemitic in their attitudes. The AfD party in Germany and the FPÖ in Austria, both parties that push the envelope on how close they can come to Nazi positions without violating anti-Nazi laws, claim to be enthusiastically pro-Israel. The formula there is along the lines of: We hate Muslims and Muslims hate Jews and Israel kills a lot of them, so we love Israel and so we can’t possibly be antisemitic! (A related schtick is: We hate Muslims, and Muslims hate women, so we can’t possibly be woman-haters!)

Also, I’m having a hard time recalling any “left” argument literally claiming “that antisemitism doesn't exist.” Although I’m sure there must be some instance of it somewhere.

Indictment of Netanyahu’s conduct of the war and German complicity

Wolfgang Kraushaar, author of a 2024 book, Israel: Hamas-Gaza-Palästina, that includes the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack, is an authority on the recent history of the left in Germany, including editing a three-volume study on the Frankfurt School and the student movement. His Blätter contribution offers 16 theses about the “Gaza war.” He criticizes the German government belated response to Israel’s war that quickly took on genocidal dimensions.

He argues that Netanyahu’s government from the start of the current war declared two inherently contradictory goals: getting the Israeli hostages back and eliminating Hamas. He describes Hamas as an “Islamic murder gang” that nevertheless was no threat to the existence of the State of Israel as such. He writes, “The aggressiveness, even the hatred, with which Israel sought to discredit UNWRA, [the UN agency in charge of provides provisions to the Palestinian refugees for decades] and with which it increasingly fought it is unparalleled.”

And he goes on to criticize the contempt for human rights demonstrated by the Netanyahu government, the extreme nationalistic goals it has pursued in line with the hardline Israeli fundamentalists, and its assassination policy, including the infamous “Where’s Daddy?” AI-driven program. He argues that “AI-based warfare as such inherently has a tendency toward war crimes.” He also calls out Netanyahu’s notorious support for Hamas as a force to undermine the Palestinian Authority in Gaza as well as his dangerous underestimation of Hamas’ capabilities leading up to October 7. In his 16th thesis, he argues: ”Whoever wants to change the situation will have to consider how the Israeli war machine can be stopped, which has recently once again put the [ethnic] cleansing of Gaza into full swing.”

The Trump 2.0 world order

Seyla Benhabib emphasizes three major contributing factors to the current situation. One is Trump’s rouge foreign policy including his notorious military threats and his policy of threatening “the unabashed annexation of territories” like those of Canada and Denmark. Another is that the decline of the pre-2025 so-called rules-based international order and Trump famous deal-making is a retreat to a greater reliance on bilateral agreements and less on multilateral ones, accompanied by a declining emphasis on international law. And she also cites the rise of “autocratic and sovereigntist” governments which have a goal of freeing themselves from the constraints of international law.

Benhabib does use the term “genocide” to describe Israel’s war on Gaza’s Palestinians. Eva Illouz, not surprisingly, does not. Nor does Kraushaar, arguing cautiously that proof of intent on the part of the Israeli leaders is not clearly established. Genocide scholars like Omer Bartov have noted, however, establishing intent based even on the public statements of Netanyahu and other political and military leaders seems unusually clear compared to other adjudicated cases of genocide. The UN Genocide Convention includes intent as being a necessary element of the crime of genocide. And that is typically the most difficult element to establish legally.

In his 2024 book, he goes into more detail on the consideration of evaluating whether the Gaza crimes rise to the genocide level, though he notes that the Israeli historian Raz Segel called the ISF (formerly IDF) actions “a textbook example of a genocide.” It clear that Kraushaar treats the issue carefully and regard it as a serious matter. Including describing how seriously the International Court of Justice (ICJ) took the charges brought by South African against Israel in this case.

Kraushaar in Blätter also makes a relevant criticism of the concept enunc:ated by Angela Merkel that the security of Israel is part of Germany’s “reason of state,” which the current Chancellor Friedrich Merz has reaffirmed.

It was not a good idea to elevate the protection of the state of Israel to a Reason of State [Staatsräson] of the Federal Republic. If only because this promise was hollow from the beginning. And no one could assume that it would also include some kind of obligation for military assistance [of Germany to Israel] in an emergency.

Reason of State is a term from the arsenal of an authoritarian state. [That is, it’s a justification for the government to take actions it has no legal authority to take.] It is anything but a coincidence that it does not appear in the Basic Law [the German Constitution]. It simply does not fit in with a democratic state based on the rule of law. Now, however, it has taken on the function that Germany's Israel policy has literally buried itself in it. [Former Chancellor Olaf] Scholz, whose foreign policy has always been characterized by ducking away, had literally crumbled after October 7. By immediately invoking the reason of state, he went into hiding – no matter what might happen. That was convenient, but in the long run it became more and more untenable.

In his 2024 book, he explains that Merkel’s original Staatsräson declaration in 2008 was clearly in the context of Germany’s commitment to a two-state solution for Israel-Palestine. Even so, it was an extravagant and ill-advised declaration. The conservative German President (head of state) Joachim Gauck in 2012 at an official dinner on a state visit to Israel that the Staatsräson declaration could bring “enormous difficulties” to a German Chancellor. In the book, Kraushaar expounds at some length on what a problematic statement it was on Angela Merkel’s part.

Notes:

(1) Invaders Behind the Iraq War Are Now After Gaza. Zeteo YouTube channel 10/05/2025. <https://youtu.be/2NsgTnqYG_o?si=Vq9N2_a3opSMivwQ> (Accessed: 2025-05-10).

(2) Levy, Daniel (2025): Interpreting the Trump (Netanyahu) Gaza plan; reactions to it and what next. Daniel Levy Substack 10/03/2025. <https://open.substack.com/pub/daniellevy2/p/interpreting-the-trump-netanyahu?r=n5yv&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web> (Accessed: 2025-06-10).

(3) Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politik 10:2025. Benhabib, Seyla: Gaza und die Ära der Straflosigkeit; Illouz, Eva: Israel in der dekolonialen Matrix; and, Kraushaar, Wolfgang: Eine mörderische Sackgasse. Translations to English are mine.

(4) Illouz, Eva (2025): We Cannot Choose Between the Fight Against Antisemitism and Condemning Israel for Gaza. Haaretz 08/08/2025. Full link: <https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2025-08-08/ty-article-opinion/.premium/we-cannot-choose-between-the-fight-against-antisemitism-and-condemning-israel-for-gaza/00000198-7407-de53-a3f9-765f7a380000?gift=83f26410010c42368d5e8efe88c7f6a7> (Accessed: 2025-05-10).