Just one month ago, when I published my last blog post, we, the people of Israel, were being held hostage by our war-mongering leaders. We sat in our poorly protected apartments awaiting the sirens which sent us running underground. We saw our neighbors killed, with thousands of homes destroyed throughout the country. Today, tens of thousands of Israelis are still displaced by Iran’s ballistic missiles that leveled their homes. And this destruction was all just a side-show in the horrific 21 months since Oct. 7th, 2023. Trump calls it ‘the 12-day war’. We Israelis call it ‘the war within a war’.

Here in Hostage Square, the mood becomes ever more desperate. We mark Day 652 of the Gaza war by marching through the streets. We shout and beg for the lives of our hostages. We scream, Stop the War! Is anybody listening? Political leaders in Washington and Jerusalem taunt us with promises of an imminent deal. Read more here. We have heard these promises for so long. We want to believe that something will happen soon. But what will that be?

The deal on the table right now is a bad deal by all accounts. This deal would return only half of the living hostages, and that only within a period of 60 days.  A bad deal, but we’ll take it. Well, we would if we could. But we cannot.

Although there may have been some surprise in the Oval Office, none of us at home were shocked when Netanyahu managed to return from his trip to Washington with nothing achieved. No cease-fire deal, no announcement to give even a ray of hope to the families of the 50 hostages still in Gaza. Well, that in itself is the achievement for Bibi, the Master Manipulator. His goal is to drag things on and on, to postpone his........

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