We see their grim "routine" in captivity. We notice, even through the cruel staging by the Hamas terrorists, their gestures of kindness toward one another, the generosity and concern that flowed among Eden, Alex, Hersh, Ori, Carmel and Almog in that great darkness.

Heartbreaking new footage, recovered from items seized in Hamas terror tunnels, confirms that six Israeli hostages, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Eden Yerushalmi, Ori Danino, Alex Lobanov, Carmel Gat, and Almog Sarusi, were filmed lighting Hanukkah candles while held captive in Gaza. pic.twitter.com/DUu1mg62To

— Israel Hayom English (@IsraelHayomEng) December 11, 2025

That emotion has a name: shared destiny. It is a national feeling, not a private one. And it erupts with full force during national trauma. These videos are not private matters. Watching them, one cannot shake the sense that not only were those six held captive in the tunnel, but so were every Israeli. When Ori Danino gazes with tearful eyes at the Hanukkah candles, our eyes fill with tears, too. And when they rise from their worn-out mattresses to huddle together in a group embrace, even if under the orders of their captors, we, too, crave a collective embrace of our own.

Alongside the bottomless grief over their murder, the true loss is not just in the mistakes of the government and military at the time. It lies, above all, in our inability to see ourselves in that situation. Every Jew and Israeli must imagine themselves, even if but for a moment, inside that Rafah tunnel. Because in that tiny room deep beneath Gaza, all of Israel was represented, embodied in those six young people. What took place there was a deeply Jewish sense of shared fate: mutual responsibility, compassion, an instinctive acceptance of the other in their greatest hour of need.

That simple human truth, that sense of a common destiny, can and must be part of our lives above ground as well, in sovereign Israel. We must not allow cynical leaders, politicians or a jaded media to twist this story into anything else. This is the story, and it is both simple and powerful.

Like the 35 soldiers killed in the 1948 Convoy of the 35, like the 73 troops lost in the 1997 helicopter disaster, these six hostages murdered in the Rafah tunnel at the end of August 2024 form a heroic Jewish collective. Their story must teach us something about our life here. Their deaths were not in vain. Look at them. Remember them.

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That was in May 2017, just four months after he entered the White House for the first time. At the time, Donald Trump was under attack from almost every Western leader, derided as an unrestrained president avenging himself on political correctness. Most saw him as "a mistake of history," something democracy would "fix" after four years.

During that visit, following meetings at the President's Residence, a summit with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and a prayer at the Western Wall, Trump met in Bethlehem with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. In hindsight, that meeting is now seen as a last greeting from the old diplomatic conception, one Trump has since dismantled, brick by brick.

After returning to Washington, he quickly recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital, moved the US Embassy there, and recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights — three steps every previous US president had avoided and feared to take.

If in 2017 Trump was "a mistake of history," in 2025 he is history in the making. He is its driving force. Today, he leads every global summit as the head of the world's greatest power — a title that, only 11 months ago, was questioned in relation to the US. Now, every Western leader stands behind him, without doubt or debate.

Trump understands the spirit of the times, that compells us to establish a new social order, to adopt new concepts of politics, diplomacy, and pragmatism. He recognizes that the Western world, rigid and trapped for years in a cognitive maze, numbed by the fear of free thought, needs mirrors placed before it — so that perhaps it may finally realize that its own reflection is paralyzed and distorted.

Just direct truth

That is how one must understand President Trump's humor, his willingness to break every protocol, his disdain for ceremonial rules, his businesslike view of international politics, and his ease in speaking about everything — from his daughter and son-in-law's marriage to a potential pardon for Netanyahu. That is how one should assess the extraordinary personality of President Donald Trump: a man who understands that yesterday's answers are irrelevant in today's world. He knows there's no point in fighting over the past — the future must be shaped instead.

Only three weeks ago, Trump stood at the forefront of the struggle for Israel at the UN General Assembly — a disgraceful display in which the world spoke of a Palestinian state but offered nothing toward a new order in the Middle East.

At that moment, Trump did not hesitate to clarify that he was "on Israel's side," a direct response to the leader of the old conception, French President Emmanuel Macron. In Trump's diplomatic playbook there are no lies, no warped status quo, no euphemisms — only direct truth, for better or worse, and in practice, mostly for the better.

On the night of Simchat Torah, it seemed as though a masterful director had timed reality itself into a climactic moment: as Air Force One touched down at Ben-Gurion Airport, a split screen showed Israeli hostages emerging from the hell of Gaza. Exactly two years later, on Simchat Torah — the holiday we feared would become the saddest day on the Jewish calendar — it instead became one of redemption.

"Against all odds, we did the impossible," Trump said in his address to the Knesset. It is now clear that only those who believe everything is possible, can accomplish the impossible.

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That was our main headline the morning after. Images of pogroms from living rooms, from Shabbat tables, from children's rooms, from clinics, from bases, from fields and roads and squares – threatened to penetrate every home in the country. Even Israelis living hundreds of kilometers from the south felt the walls of home collapsing, and that tremor of uprootedness, which we mistakenly thought no longer nested in Israeli DNA after two thousand years of exile.

But like in exile, the hostages were taken on bayonets from their homes. From their beds. From safe rooms by their stubborn handles. From parties with friends from the community. They were torn from within the daily Israeli promise – which evaporated at 6:29 in the morning.

Their pure anonymity was violated and trampled. Overnight, 251 men and women, boys and girls, became a living monument to the great failure. Their disappearance cried out to us from the depths for two years. As some of them returned to us, as some were murdered, as some starved – that cry only grew stronger.

And when the home is shaken, when doubt is cast upon it, its residents rush to save it. "Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken," wrote Ecclesiastes. Abandonment became mobilization, became a powerful tailwind, of the generation of heroism, which turned its back on the stigmas attached to it and ran to fight for the home.

The thread did not break. 914 IDF soldiers have fallen since that Black Saturday until yesterday. Tens of thousands were wounded. Hundreds of thousands of reservists sacrificed their family routines, the stability of their livelihoods, so that the threefold cord would not break. And against all odds – against the conception that the State of Israel is not built for long wars, against isolation and international back-turning, against the lack of equality in burden – the cord did not break. But it stretched immeasurably.

The heavy price we paid, now we must fix. The great price that the State of Israel has paid since October 7 – must pay off. The home is not in doubt, but precisely its stability requires us to seek repair for it. Symbolic that the hoped-for return of the hostages and ceasefire come during the Sukkot holiday – when we leave our permanent dwelling for temporary housing, to contemplate the essence of home. We must not be mistaken: the war over it is not yet over. It is multi-arena: in hearts, in streets, in the conversation between us.

If we succeed in building a sukkah that is both shelter and invitation – for soul-searching, for reconciliation, for repair – perhaps we can say, for the first time since that terrible morning, that the home stands. Not just on its foundations, but also on its principles.

Omer Lachmanovitch is the editor-in-chief of Israel Hayom.

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In that deal, which freed women and children, the ratio of released terrorists per hostage was several times more modest than the wholesale release of murderers now taking place in each phase. If in November 2023 we would have released three terrorists of Oded Lifshitz's age (80 plus) in exchange for him alive – last week Israel released 30 terrorists from prison in exchange for his body, many with Israeli blood on their hands. It was a junction at the beginning of the campaign, where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stood with a war cabinet that at the time included Benjamin Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot. Only in hindsight was it clarified how decisive and fateful this junction was and how tragic the turn was – both in terms of the lives of hostages who are no longer with us today, and in terms of the enormous price of the second, current deal.

Did the Israeli consensus in November 2023 to continue forcefully destroying Hamas justify impatience for another phase that could have saved elderly Israelis? This is a question Israeli society must receive answers to, certainly in light of the strengthening of that same consensus in February 2025. Erasing Hamas from the face of the earth – governmentally and militarily – is a timeless mission that depends on nothing else, as we have all now sworn. Meanwhile, the hostages – especially the elderly ones – were definitely temporary.

The public needs to receive clear answers to identify those who failed among the responsible parties, but primarily to redefine the value of Jewish lives in the State of Israel. We need to understand and know, to be convinced that the cheapening and indifference will not destroy every good part of our national body. Moreover, Israeli society as a whole, as well as the media, must engage in soul-searching regarding the moral conduct towards elderly hostages. There is no dispute that the many young lives that ended in the Simchat Torah massacre, led by the horror at the Nova music festival, are a catastrophe of an incomprehensible magnitude. But there's no escaping the feeling – especially in light of the November 2023 decision – that the elderly were not at the top of the national priority list.

Between summer 2020 and summer 2021, thousands of elderly Israelis passed away from the COVID pandemic, but under the cover of national repression, the immediate excuse was "underlying conditions." These allowed us to digest the disappearance of healthy, good people from among us, as if it were part of routine. During the past year, this denial found different expression regarding our elderly hostages in Gaza – whose limited time ran out and they returned here in coffins.

Last August, an IDF force retrieved from Khan Yunis the bodies of Avraham Munder, Haim Perry, Yoram Metzger and Alex Dancyg, pioneers of Nir Oz and among its builders – people of settlement, education and culture. Last week, the body of Oded Lifshitz was returned – buried today in the soil of the kibbutz. Amiram Cooper was murdered in captivity and his body is still held by Hamas. Shlomo Mantzur, 86, from Kibbutz Kisufim, was also murdered on Oct. 7 and his body has not yet been returned. Of the generation of giants who were kidnapped, only Gadi Moses, 80, survived captivity. "I will do everything in my power to rehabilitate Nir Oz," he said upon his release. Did we do everything in our power?

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The first phase of the hostage release deal is life-saving for those who have endured mental and physical torment in captivity for one year and four months. It offers solace and some healing for the hostages' families. It serves as oxygen for the people of Israel, who see mutual responsibility as a cornerstone of their national ethos. But it is also crucial for the universal, bleeding war between radicalism and moderation. It matters for Western humanism and for passive media consumers worldwide who follow the Israeli-Palestinian "conflict."

The deal's importance lies in its ability to organize the relentless stream of events from the past year into clear, irrefutable categories of "good" versus "evil." It clarifies that as a movement, Hamas, like Nazism, must be eliminated. It proves that the "uninvolved" civilians in Gaza support the terror regime that brought destruction upon them, and that it must be replaced through international effort. It sharpens the unbearable gap in the rules of contemporary warfare – while democracies are bound by international law and humanitarian aid, terror organizations and states enjoy horrifying freedom of action.

It's hard not to notice the visual dissonance between the reunion of innocent Israeli civilians with their families, versus the return of mass murderers and terrorists to the embrace of a society that nurtures and glorifies them. It's impossible not to feel outrage when watching Israeli hostage Arbel Yehoud, gaunt and pale, emerging from Gaza's darkness after 482 days in isolation, only to be attacked by an incited mob threatening to harm her. Conversely, our hearts go out to Gadi Mozes and Keith Siegel, two elderly Israelis, as they walk back to their homeland with straight backs, full of human kindness they never lost despite the tortures of captivity.

Thus, the hostage deal provides not only extraordinary human drama but also a readable X-ray of the world's cultural status – a moment when the West, conflicted with itself, understands it must unite to fight the danger of radical Islam, which threatens to destroy every modern way of life – whether from antisemitic motivation or from Islamist fundamentalism that challenges the "infidels."

In this clear moment, Donald Trump begins to work. The "common sense" policy of the returning president, already evident in many actions taken in the two weeks since his inauguration, should be most effective in the Middle East as well. Simple order corresponds with common sense. The self-evident distinction between those who desire life and those who believe in death leaves no room for clever interpretations. Benjamin Netanyahu's arrival this week for a White House meeting will take place in an emergency climate – it sas a shot across the bow for diplomatic and military moves that will further sharpen the line between the Islamist death coalition and the axis of life and prosperity.

The hostage release deal is not just a local humanitarian event, but a historic turning point that compels the Western world to decide – whether it will stand paralyzed in the face of those seeking its destruction, or unite around the values of freedom and democracy. Make no mistake – the meeting between the leaders could be the pinnacle of the battle for the future of Western civilization itself.

Donald Trump's plan for the Gaza Strip is historic. For the first time, a US president is not demanding concessions from Israel, which was attacked by its enemies on October 7, 2023, but from Gaza, which started the war. This should be the norm. However, in Israel's case, the standards of common sense have unfortunately often been turned upside down.

Trump's plan is historic for another reason: it makes clear that things cannot continue as they have. That a return to the status quo— which led to the attack on Israel and the war—is not an option.

The images from Gaza in recent weeks have reinforced this message for the entire world. They have made it clear that Hamas as a movement, just like Nazism, must be eliminated. That—of course, not all, but the majority of—the so-called "uninvolved civilians" in Gaza support the terrorist regime that has brought destruction upon them. And that this regime must be replaced through international efforts.

Omer Lachmanovitch is the editor-in-chief of Israel Hayom

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Leaving Reagan Airport in the freezing, festive early morning hours of Sunday, fingers automatically scroll to TikTok – only to be informed on screen that United States law has blocked the application. But the brief notification to subscribers was phrased with the directness of the era's spirit, "We are fortunate that President Trump has indicated that he will work with us on a solution to reinstate TikTok once he takes office," it stated.

Indeed, within two hours, the giant video platform was back to normal operation in the US. Hundreds of thousands of small American businesses – who promote their merchandise through it – breathed a sigh of relief. And Trump? He arranged for his administration a "joint venture" with a thriving business like TikTok, and reaped enormous political capital from countless young social media users who called the move "the best presidential decision."

This is how it's going to be in the Trump administration 2025 – decisions and changes will be made at TikTok speed, not from today to tomorrow but from now to now, and in the long-term case – from morning to evening. Every foolish radical bureaucrat from the Biden administration will be replaced within hours of my inauguration, Trump promised his supporters at the victory parade he held at Capitol 1 one day before the inauguration. Carried by the greatest political comeback ever, he isn't coming to examine, check, or delve deeper. He has an unprecedented public mandate to immediately lower the curtain on a "failed administration" and sweep the stage to "make America greater."

The fear and dehumanization sown by Democrats when Trump entered the White House in 2017 are nowhere to be seen on Washington's streets, and not because of the harsh weather. Even blue senators sit huddled in studios demanding the new president address the immigration problem that grew to troubling proportions during their term. Suddenly alternative Trump, representative of the rejected and silenced, is the figure emerging from global consensus - and it doesn't bother him at all. He doesn't need to pour scorn and venom in his speeches, he can be courteous, lavish with thanks, take the stage as Lee Greenwood sings "God Bless America" – and sting with humor when needed. The dosage of winners.

The "Trump effect" brought about the start of the hostage deal with us, even before the president placed his hand on the Bible and took the oath. Now, the effect will intensify as Trump is expected to sign 200 presidential orders on his first day in the Oval Office: swift orders to close borders to infiltrators; launching the "Iron Dome" project set to protect US skies from missile threats; removing all progressive "woke" elements from military and government ranks; rapid rehabilitation of hurricane-stricken South Carolina; and the cherry on top: declassifying secret documents about the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Senator Robert Kennedy, and Martin Luther King – an interesting act that will scratch at unhealed scars in American culture.

Trump in this round is no longer for "closeted Trumpists" but for all of America – and it's no coincidence he emphasized in his Sunday speeches his tremendous electoral achievements among African-American and Latino populations. The final stamp was in the joint appearance and dance on stage with the disco group "Village People." Though "YMCA" has starred in every Trump campaign rally in recent years, the physical arrival of the LGBTQ group to the stage in Washington at the Republican president's peak event conveyed a clear message about who represents the liberal, rights-supporting side in America, and who represents the side of consciousness control.

Will reality align with the dizzying pace Donald Trump promises American citizens? Even if it's reasonable to doubt this, as of today, that's not a thought to dwell on. The most television-oriented president in history already promises his first week in the White House will be "the greatest there ever was." Biggest ever. We're in an era of records, and records mean ratings too. "You're going to have so much fun watching TV tomorrow," he said in his speech the evening before inauguration. For Trump, the build-up and production are a leadership necessity. Earlier, his son Don Junior took the stage and gave the signal for celebrations, Today is like Christmas, Easter, Hanukkah and my birthday combined, he said and fired up the crowd.

Jan. 20, 2025, is the moment when America wants to be swept away by hope. Masses from all population segments expect change to come right now, right with Trump's hand placement on the Bible. Democrats are no longer wearing sackcloth and ashes but speaking of a "historic opportunity for correction," while Republicans look up to a "moment of redemption." There is for the first time a common denominator and it is a sense of urgency. For the first time in years, it seems the entire American nation – Trump lovers and opponents – is ready to give a real chance to the change he promises.

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The following is an Israel Hayom interview with Donald Trump originally published March 25, 2024.

Israel, Iran, Biden, Harris, and the Jewish vote. In a no-holds-barred interview, former US President Donald Trump told Israel Hayom that he supports Israel's defensive war against Hamas and said he would have responded to the October 7 attack in a very similar way. He added that "what I saw October 7 was one of the saddest things I've ever seen," but says Israel should draw the fighting to a close. "You have to finish up your war. To finish it up. You gotta get it done. And, I am sure you will do that. And we gotta get to peace, we can't have this going on. And I will say, Israel has to be very careful, because you're losing a lot of the world, you're losing a lot of support, you have to finish up, you have to get the job done. And you have to get on to peace, to get on to a normal life for Israel, and for everybody else."

He noted that the dragging on of the war could hurt Israel because of the footage coming out of Gaza.

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The exclusive and special interview with Israel Hayom took place over the past weekend at Mar-a-Lago, in Palm Beach, Florida. It focused primarily on the war, President Joe Biden's handling of it, and the next steps that Trump believes should be taken.

Q: I want to present you with a question I think every world leader has to answer. How would you react if your children or grandchildren were kidnapped by Hamas and underwent the same atrocities many Israelis have experienced since Oct. 7? 

"I would say I would act very much the same way as you did. You would have to be crazy not to. Only a fool would not do that. That was a horrible attack."

Q: We have seen a major rise in antisemitic attacks since Oct. 7. What are you going to do about it?

"Well, that's because you fought back. And I think Israel made a very big mistake. I wanted to call [Israel] and say don't do it. These photos and shots. I mean, moving shots of bombs being dropped into buildings in Gaza. And I said, Oh, that's a terrible portrait. It's a very bad picture for the world. The world is seeing this…every night, I would watch buildings pour down on people. It would say it was given by  the Defense Ministry, and said whoever's providing that that's a bad image."

Q: But terrorists are hiding in those buildings.

"Go and do what you have to do. But you don't do that. And I think that's one of the reasons that there has been a lot of kickback. If people didn't see that, every single night I'd watch and every single one of those... And I think Israel wanted to show that it's tough, but sometimes you shouldn't be doing that. "

Q: Senator Chuck Schumer, just two weeks ago, called Israelis to go to the polls and change the government. And on top of that, we see, I would say daily interference by the administration. What do you think about what Schumer said about Biden's support, or lack thereof, for Israel?

"I think it's a terrible thing to do, because it takes all of your momentum away, because they watch, and they watch the government, they watch the people what's going on. And it shows great division in the United States, you have to have support. And you don't have the support you used to have. Some 15 years ago, Israel had the strongest lobby. If you were a politician, you couldn't say anything bad about Israel, that would be like the end of your political career. Today, it's almost the opposite. I've never seen, you have AOC (Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez) plus three, these lunatics, frankly. But you have AOC plus three plus plenty of others. And all they do is talk badly about Israel, and they hate Israel, and they hate the Jewish people. And they are open about it. Take a look at some of these, Rashida Tlaib, what she says the way she talks, and they truly hate the Jewish people. And 15 years ago, that would have been unthinkable to be doing that. So Israel has to get, Israel has to get better with the promotional and with the public relations, because right now they're really, they're being hurt very badly. I think in a public relations sense."

Trump, who recently secured the Republican nomination for president, is leading in the polls but has given only a few interviews since. However, he agreed to grant an interview to Israel Hayom in the library of his estate, where he spoke at length on the race against his successor. Trump harshly attacked Biden over his treatment of Israel.

"It [Oct. 7] was an attack that I blame on Biden because they [Hamas] have no respect for him. He can't put two sentences together. He can't talk. He's a very dumb person. He's a dumb person. His foreign policy throughout 50 years has been horrible. If you look at people that were in other administrations with him, they saw him as a weak, ineffective president, they [Hamas] would have never done that attack if I were there."

Trump explained that during his presidency, Iran's economy collapsed due to the sanctions he imposed on it.

"I said to many nations, 47 nations, I spoke to many of them personally, 'If you buy oil from Iran, you will not do any business in the United States, and we're going to tariff your products. Every single one of them agreed, I didn't lose one, not one. Iran did almost no oil business, you know that nobody would buy oil because of me, they were broke, they had no money for Hamas they had no money for Hezbollah, they had no money for anybody. And now they're sitting with $221 billion in cash. And they control Iraq which has $300 billion in cash. It's like a subsidiary, whether you like it or not, it's like a subsidiary because stupidly, the United States went in and blew everything up…and number two if I was the president, they [Hamas] would have never done that, because they knew there would have been very big consequences. That being said, you have to finish up your war. To finish it up. Iran is 35 days away from having a nuclear weapon because of the incompetence of Biden; he is an incompetent president. He's the worst president our country's ever had. And it's so sad when I see what's happening in Israel and Ukraine and other places."

Q: What should be done now with Iran, now that they are so close to the bomb? 

"Well, I don't want to tell you that. Because I don't think it's appropriate for me to tell you, but I don't think you can allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon. I don't think it's my position right now to be telling you that but I would tell you this – I was very strong on Iran not having a nuclear weapon to a point where they … literally had no money. "

A significant portion of the conversation was dedicated by the former President to harsh attacks on his rival, Joe Biden. "He can't put two sentences together," Trump said. "Remember this, Biden is not a friend of Israel. Because if Biden was a friend of Israel, October 7 would have never happened. Forget about what happened after October 7. October 7 would have never happened if you had a friend named Biden, because if you had the proper president, that would have never happened."

Q: Do you have any plans to visit Israel? 

"I would love to. I was treated very well there. In Israel, they say if I ran for office in Israel I'd get 98% of the vote. Not here we have a lot of people in the United States who are Jewish but they actually fight Israel, look at the New York Times. It's a Jewish family. I think they hate Israel. I watch what they write in the New York Times, it's hysterical. Now the conservative Jews love Trump, I would get the highest marks I would get  I would beat anybody [with them] they love Trump I think they are great, and they love Israel."

Q: You have been critical over the years of Jewish Democrats who don't support you. Perhaps now with the rise of antisemitism and the war, which has made them care more about Israel, you have something new to say that could convince them. 

"I think if you have to convince them, you got a problem because that should be automatic. I'm not Jewish. And yet Israel for me is very important."

Q: Vice President Kamala Harris' stepdaughter has tried to raise funds for UNRWA. What do you think about this? 

"How could a Jewish person vote for Kamala Harris? And essentially, you know, that's what probably is going to happen because you look at this guy [Biden], he can't walk down a flight of stairs, he can't walk across a room. He can't find the exit to a stage without five different sets of stairs. You might have Kamala Harris if this doesn't work out. Something happens to him and you have her. She supports the enemy, but he supports the enemy too."

Trump also made sure to mention his record on Israel while president during the interview. "I was the best president in the history of Israel. But there's never been a president and mostly anybody whether it's a president, nobody did for Israel what I did for Israel, including defense, including billions and billions of dollars a year $4 billion a year for years, when other people wanted to cut it off. But I will say that Israel's in trouble right now it's in trouble. It's a very troubled place. An attack happened that should have never been allowed to happen, both from the Israeli standpoint and from the United States standpoint. If they respected our president, which they don't, they have no respect for him whatsoever. That's why it wouldn't have happened with me. But I say just be strong. Be smart. And let's get this over with and when it's over with, you're going to be back to having a great life."

He added that he wished Israel could move beyond the tragedy of Oct. 7.

"Look, I know Israel, very well. Spent a lot of time there. And I have a lot of friends there. tremendous number of friends here. They're incredible people. It's an incredible place. You have to finish up what you want this through. We gotta get back to having that country again. The way it was so sad that this could have happened. The date of October 7 is gonna go down as such a terrible thing to happen, and it bothers me so much when I see people, they don't talk about the October 7 thing, they talk about how aggressive Israel is. It's amazing that they're not talking about October 7. And what we're going to talk about, they don't want to talk about it, when I talk about it, people don't want to hear about it."

Q: Why don't they want to hear about it? 

"You have a lot of a lot of people on the outside that are not friendly to Israel, and they're never going to be friendly to Israel. And you have to be very careful. You're in a very treacherous neighborhood that's a little on the dangerous side, but they're in a very dangerous neighborhood. And with Iran getting a nuclear weapon, once they have a nuclear weapon, you'll be speaking to them a lot differently than you speaking right now. They would have never had a nuclear weapon with me."

Q: They will not have a nuclear bomb if you are president? 

"They will never have a nuclear weapon no. They can have a nuclear weapon in 35 days. I have seven months to go, and nine months to take office. A lot of bad things can happen in that period. That's a lot. That's like an eternity. Seven months in this world, and especially in the Middle East, where it's so and so combative, and so combustible, that's a long period of time, so many bad things can happen. And also, so many good things can happen. If we had a real president, if we had a president that knew what he was doing, who could put two sentences together, that could get solved very quickly."

The full interview will be published in the coming days.

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In the whirlwind of pain, the numbers from that Saturday are etched in stone: 1,194 people were murdered and killed in the Oct. 7 massacre. At least 3,300 were wounded. Some 38 children were murdered in the massacre, 20 children were orphaned from both parents. Some 251 men, women and children were kidnapped into Hamas captivity in the Gaza Strip. Some 334 IDF soldiers fell on that day, 60 police officers, 10 Shin Bet personnel.

This was the entry point of the State of Israel into the Swords of Iron War. Since then, another 426 soldiers have fallen defending the homeland. Over 20,000 have been wounded. Some 117 hostages were released alive from captivity, the vast majority in the hostage deal at the end of November 2023, and a few in military operations. Another 37 of the murdered hostages were returned to Israel for burial. Still, 101 hostages are in Hamas tunnels in Gaza.

There is no measure and no logic

Why return and recite the numbers? Because they constitute an anchor and order within what cannot be ordered and described. They try to outline a framework for grief that has no measure and no logic.

Is there anyone among us who will banish from consciousness the body count of the first days? On Saturday night it was "at least 250 dead", then 500, and within a day we passed a thousand murdered. And since then it has grown and increased. What do 1,677 people look like? Sometimes they can be described sitting in a concert hall, or filling several passenger planes, or spending time a park. The mind tries to paint the complete, living picture, but the many details thwart the attempt.

The Israeli bereaved family is no longer just a family. It is no longer a separate, fenced and sanctified sector. It is almost a nation now. It is present in countless homes, in too many towns to count.

Faces and names

They have faces and names, and their stories flood the public space in Israel every day in the past year. Not just in the media and social networks, but also on street light poles, on house fences, in train stations, in large crowds arriving with flags and signs to performances, and even on staircases at tourist sites around the world. So great is the void, and so persistent is the willingness of Israelis to fill it and tell about it.

Trauma has no introduction and no preparation. The State of Israel that preceded Oct. 7, 2023, had never corresponded with murder and loss on similar scales. The largest massacre in the history of the state's days until that dark Saturday was the 1978 coastal road massacre, and it claimed the lives of 35 Israelis. That was 46 years ago. In the Passover massacre, the largest attack in the current millennium, 30 Israelis were murdered.

The immense loss gave birth to communities of blood ties, for life and death. Nova survivors and families of the female observervation soldiers are two examples that have been etched into consciousness this year. Small or large groups of people whose paths crossed on the most terrible day in the state's history. The "comradeship" of their loved ones was not in tanks or trenches, but in captivity apartments and tunnels in Gaza, in shelters and in safe rooms, in the wormwood bushes near the party complex in Re'im. Rare and mighty moments of humanity, of grace, of compassion, of courage.

And perhaps therein lies the power of the memory of Oct. 7: in the heroism that emerged from the battlefield and spread among friends, among family members, between adults and youth, between Israelis.

Like on the way to Jerusalem

From a distance of a year, what is the fear that Oct. 7 gave birth to? It was not fear of our enemies (we could handle them, and always will). It was the fear of the change that occurred within us. The massacre and its dimensions forced a change upon every Jew and Israeli, and not in this way – with the stroke of the sword – did we want to change.

Almost immediately we understood that we would become a different people, society and state. Israel of Oct. 6 is not Israel of Oct. 8 – for worse, and for better. Reality forced a change upon us, and alongside the awakening, the shattering of conceptions and the sobering – there was also planted the fear that we would be strangers to ourselves, that we would continue to long for who we were, and for who we could have been.

This change is also expressed in the Israeli subconscious. Paths between lush lawns and modest family homes in the kibbutz will never again be free from the shadows of the murderers who roamed between them on that morning; the stunning sunrises at nature parties will always hint at the masses of young people who fled for their lives; the shelters that knew terror and heroism will forever tell the Israeli bereavement, like the armored vehicles that were scattered from 1948 on the ascent to Jerusalem.

The Israeli present

In Jewish law, from the first anniversary of a person's death, their sons and daughters are exempt from the mourning customs that applied to them. Now they are allowed to participate in joyous events, to renew themselves with clothes and to remove additional mourning customs from themselves. They extricate themselves from the past toward rehabilitation and building forward, out of the sanctity of life.

For anyone who has experienced death up close, the memorial allows a retrospective look at the loss, an opportunity to come to terms with it or to repress it. It is a day that offers mental coping with an event that happened and ended – and whose implications are present in life.

Are we already there? It seems not. Our brothers and sisters are still held captive in Gaza, our sons and daughters are still in the midst of war. But we will rise from the crisis. The Jewish people, the Israeli nation, usually do not have time to process what was, or to dwell on what is happening, because the battle for tomorrow is already in full swing.

Oct. 7 is not an event from the past. It is still the Israeli present. We will not completely extricate ourselves from it. But we will continue on from it – different, other, stronger. Better. 

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An umbrella for half a minute? Only 50 yards separate the gate of Donald J. Trump's magnificent estate from the guest reception area. From those 50 yards to a gate behind an enormous American flag was visible.

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The strict security instructions we received two weeks before the interview made it clear that we would have to walk this short distance. But now, it was pouring rain. And so, hours before meeting the 45th president, we suddenly realized that we might reach him with our clothes drenched in water. And with all due respect to Israeli sloppy attire, this would have been too disrespectful.

This is how it happened in the final tense hours last Friday before we left the hotel in West Palm Beach for Mar-a-Lago, our heads were preoccupied with the question of where to get umbrellas here and now. In the end, a local Walmart solved the problem. After all, this is America.

These tiny details of the interview were essential since this was not just another "question-answer" with an American politician, but rather a complex journalistic and logistical operation, because Mar-a-Lago is not a typical office or standard home of an American senior official, but rather a strange combination of both, along with an operational golf club and restaurant. The faucets, chairs, and other items are painted in Trump's favorite gold color. The shiny parquet floor, high ceiling, plush sofas, and waiters rushing back and forth exuded the aura of a royal palace. 

At one point the signal was given and all the furniture was cleared to the side, in order to prepare the compound for a party held after our departure. On the walls, even in the bathrooms, hung pictures and paintings of Trump from various stages of his life, including with his late father. As is well known, our interviewee does not suffer from a lack of self-esteem.

All this took place while from the early morning hours, a five-person film and recording crew in the adjacent library room began meticulously aligning the camera angles, lighting intensity, chair positioning, and other minutiae that only they saw. They and Trump. When the former president sat across from us at five in the afternoon, he devoted the first minute to examining how the conversation would look on screen. The man is, after all, a media creature with decades of experience. "Looks good," he said after long seconds of watching the monitor setup behind our backs displaying the interview. Only when he was satisfied with what he saw was the signal given to start the conversation.

J'Accuse 

We asked questions. Trump answered, in his way. Because in the whole world, there is no other politician who speaks in his language and manner. He uses words like "incompetent," "stupid," "dumb," "Biden is the worst president ever," and so on. People his age (78) have long stopped speaking like that. But to the American public, or at least half of it, this style resonates. And yet, it's one thing to see such statements on a television screen, and quite another to hear them face-to-face from a former president sitting across from you. Trump also did not hesitate to jump between subjects in contexts that were not always clear mid-conversation. And what else was clear: Trump chose to speak about Israel's war only in general terms. He refrained from saying anything that would box him in about it. 

When we asked, "Do you agree with Israel's goal of completely destroying Hamas?"He responded that "only a fool or a crazy person would have not responded the way you did," Adding that if he had been in the Oval Office, the war would not have broken out on Oct. 7.  "They would have never, ever done that [if I were president], for two reasons: number one, they were broke. and number two, when I was the president, they would have never done that, because they knew there would have been very big consequences. 

Although it is very difficult to determine "what would have happened if "in history, in this case there is reason to assume he is right. After all, it is clear that Biden and his people projected American weakness around the globe, particularly toward Iran. Instead of putting it in its place, they allowed it to inch closer to acquiring nuclear weapons, took the threat of military action off the table, pumped billions of dollars into Tehran, and begged the ayatollahs for a new nuclear deal that never materialized. The flaccid message was well received in the Middle East.

"It [Oct. 7] was an attack that I blame on Biden because they [Hamas] have no respect for him. He can't put two sentences together. He can't talk. He's a very dumb person. He's a dumb person. His foreign policy throughout 50 years has been horrible. If you look at people that were in other administrations with him, they saw him as a weak, ineffective president, they [Hamas] would have never done that attack if I were there," he said of his rival.

But when we tried in other ways to elicit a clear statement from him about an Israeli victory or the destruction of Hamas, he used his own way. "You have to finish up your war. To finish it up. You gotta get it done. And, I am sure you will do that. And we gotta get to peace, we can't have this going on."

It is true that, unlike President Biden, Trump, at least in his conversation with us, refrained from explicitly stating that "Hamas must be defeated", but to Israeli ears, it is clear that the words "finish the job" mean agreeing with the overarching goal of the war.

Q: If you get reelected, and the war might still be ongoing, how will you act?

There has been no president better to Israel than me. because of the Golan Heights [recognition by the US], the Abraham Accords. If Obama did the Abraham Accords, you would have gotten 15 Nobel Peace prizes. I got nothing. I've been loyal to Israel, I've been the best president in history by a factor of 10 to Israel, because of all the things I do. The embassy in Jerusalem being the capital, is the best location for the embassy and getting the embassy built. The biggest thing I did was the Iran nuclear deal. I ended it. The problem is that Biden didn't do anything with it."

Q: What should be done now with Iran, now that they are so close to the bomb? 

"Well, I don't want to tell you that. Because I don't think it's appropriate for me to tell you, but I don't think you can allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon. I don't think it's my position right now to be telling you that but I would tell you this – I was very strong on Iran not having a nuclear weapon to a point where they … literally had no money. "

He then went on to say that Iran was only 35 days away from a bomb, once a decision was made. 

Q: They will not have a nuclear bomb if you are president? 

"They will never have a nuclear weapon no. They can have a nuclear weapon in 35 days. I have seven months to go, and nine months to take office. A lot of bad things can happen in that period. That's a lot. That's like an eternity. Seven months in this world, and especially in the Middle East, where it's so and so combative, and so combustible, that's a long period of time, so many bad things can happen. And also, so many good things can happen. If we had a real president, if we had a president that knew what he was doing, who could put two sentences together, that could get solved very quickly."

Good guys and bad guys

One must remember, of course, that the real battle for Trump is not in Gaza, it's in the battleground states across America.

On that very morning, the headlines in the US dealt with an ultimatum from a New York court to Trump, to pay a paltry sum of half a billion dollars within 24 hours, or face the seizure of his luxury assets. The threat did not seem to bother him particularly as he nonchalantly entered the library where the interview was filmed. He chatted casually with those present, examined the camera angles as mentioned, and then answered the questions as he did.

It is quite clear that political considerations led him to speak only in general terms about the war, without committing to anything future and with some distance from Israel. Although he is completely on Israel's side as will be explained later, his interest at the moment is not to lose the lead he has opened over Biden in the Electoral College count. According to CNN polls, for example, he has already crossed the threshold of 270 electors, while Biden is struggling in the 225 range only.

 In other words, from his perspective, any sharp statement one way or the other can only detract. And if so, why say something he might later regret? Most importantly, why alienate Michigan's anti-Israel voters, who currently are not willing to go out and vote for Biden but intend to stay home? For now, Trump is slightly ahead in the swing state. Any pro-Israel statement from him could push them back into the rival's arms, and perhaps jeopardize the presidency that seems within reach. So Trump, yes Trump, is weighing his words carefully, and holding back.

Does this mean that his actual attitude towards Israel will also be restrained if he wins? The answer is complex and consists of two parts. One, Trump has a positive feeling towards Israel. Unlike Biden and his circle, he has no progressive sympathy or compassion for the Palestinians. He understands who the good guys and bad guys are, and that's a very good starting point. In this spirit, he pledged in the interview, for example, that the vice president he runs with will be a supporter of Israel.

Q: Who will you appoint as your running mate?

"Who would you like?"

Q: We want him or her to be a supporter of Israel.

"You'll have an Israel supporter, that I promise you. Anybody that's vice president for me, will be an Israel supporter. You don't have an Israel supporter right now, you do know that. Kamala Harris is not a supporter of Israel. She's the opposite. And Biden is not a supporter of Israel...She supports the enemy, but he supports the enemy too."

Stock in decline

Trump believes he was the best president Israel has ever had but feels he deserves more credit. 

"It's not really reciprocal, because you know, I only got 26% of the [Jewish] vote. The first time in 2016 I got 25%. And the next time I got 26%. And the second time was more concerning because of [all the gestures toward Israel]....how a Jewish person in the United States can vote Democrat or can vote Biden is hard to believe it's almost as though they've never read a story. They've never picked up a newspaper or looked at a newsdesk… He has abandoned Israel. And he sees those marches in Illinois, and he sees those marches in Michigan and all these different marches that they see with the Palestinians. And he is absolutely not for Israel. And Schumer is not for Israel. Schumer's a Jewish guy who is not for Israel. What he did the other day with talking, you lose your spirit. And it's not a question of Bibi Netanyahu. What he did is he said, 'We want to break this thing up.' It's such a bad thing. You lose your guts, you lose your spirit, and it's hysterical I mean, we have a lot of people like Schumer, a lot of people. We have a lot of Jewish people like Schumer..look at the New York Times. It's a Jewish family. I think they hate Israel. I watch what they write in the New York Times, it's hysterical. Now the conservative Jews love Trump, I would get the highest marks I would get, I would beat anybody [with them]. They love Trump, I think they are great, and they love Israel."

Trump clearly defines who is an enemy and who is a friend. And yet, people may have forgotten that Trump did not give Israel everything it wanted. One had to negotiate with him over construction in Judea and Samaria and convince him of the necessity of every move on the agenda. He was never a pushover, and since then he has accumulated personal resentment towards Netanyahu and has questioned Israel's conduct since the outbreak of the war. Throughout the interview, it was impossible to miss what he sees as Israel's declining share price.

"You don't have the support you used to have. Some 15 years ago, Israel had the strongest lobby. If you were a politician, you couldn't say anything bad about Israel, that would be like the end of your political career. Today, it's almost the opposite. So Israel has to get better with the promotional and with the public relations because right now they're really being hurt very badly. I think in a public relations sense."

"I think Israel made a very big mistake. I wanted to call [Israel] and say don't do it. These photos and shots. I mean, moving shots of bombs being dropped into buildings in Gaza. And I said, Oh, that's a terrible portrait. It's a very bad picture for the world. The world is seeing this…every night, I would watch buildings pour down on people. It would say it was given by the Defense Ministry, and said whoever's providing that that's a bad image."

Q: But terrorists are hiding in those buildings.

"Go and do what you have to do. But you don't do that. And I think that's one of the reasons that there has been a lot of kickback. If people didn't see that, every single night I'd watch and every single one of those... And I think Israel wanted to show that it's tough, but sometimes you shouldn't be doing that…Israel has to be very careful because you're losing a lot of the world, you're losing a lot of support, you have to finish up, you have to get the job done. And you have to get on to peace, to get on to a normal life for Israel, and for everybody else."

If there is one thing Trump understands, it's business, public relations, and the connection between them. This is how he became one of the most famous people in America, and consequently, president. Whether he returns to office or not, his assessments should be read as a warning sign. 

The conversation ended, and the Shabbat was approaching. The Stars and Stripes flag flew in the background. Passersby stopped at the estate's gate to take pictures, pose for photos, or shout supportive calls to the former president, who of course could not hear them. The man who had just devoted 45 minutes of his time to us will return to the presidency on January 20, or perhaps not. With his captivating personality, the deeds done and attributed to him, his unique style, and no less importantly, the issues he placed on the international agenda, he has already left his mark on history. A significant part of this legacy directly deals with Israel, despite not feeling reciprocity, as he told us. 

For his part, Trump also taught us how a conversation with an American president is conducted, and also equipped us as Israelis with plenty of food for thought about the war and its next moves.

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The post When Trump asked us: Who should be my running mate? appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

While Paul Auster was commonly regarded as a New York novelist, more discerning critics would aptly characterize him as a "Brooklynite" writer. "I was looking for a quiet place to die. Someone recommended Brooklyn to me," testifies his character, Tom Wood, in the opening of his 2002 novel, "The Brooklyn Follies." Auster became the face and voice of the huge Brownstone borough long before gentrification, galleries, and co-working spaces. There, in 1982, he wrote "The Invention of Solitude" – the novel that made him an international star almost overnight.

For decades, Auster saw the privilege of urban and existential loneliness as holy and followed it devoutly. He walked from his Park Slope home to the Sweet Melissa Cafe with a short cigar in hand, a black wool coat, and sunglasses. This was a light, refreshing stroll in his grueling work routine. He wrote with a fountain pen and on an Olympia typewriter – which became the name of a heroine in one of his books – and abstained from technology and networks. "Keyboards have always intimidated me," he told the Paris Review in 2003. It wasn't a moral stance, he explained; rather, it was for his comfort.

The self, the introspection, the melancholic and ironic gaze at the body and soul – Auster's writing walked the fine line between loneliness and solitude, and from there it gained strength as a universal literary revelation. "Loneliness proves we are human, because it's the point where we are cut off from our basic needs. It represents a longing to be with other people. oneliness is the opposite of solitude, which can be by choice. A person can never be in a state of loneliness by choice," he said in an interview with Israel Hayom in 2012.

Auggie's photo

Auster was the modernist version of postmodernism. In his book of conversations, "A Life in Words," he testified that "I've always wanted to write what to me is beautiful, true, and good, but I'm also interested in inventing new ways to tell stories. I wanted to turn everything inside out," and expressed an affinity with Jacques Derrida's deconstructionism. However, his language was clear and story-driven, on the seam between urban tales and the mystery genre, and therefore accessible to many readers worldwide.

He was a unique novelist for the parent and child generations for at least two decades – appearing on bookshelves in the East Village and Petah Tikva, and was a superstar in Paris. He was never a top contender for the Nobel Prize, and didn't even win the Booker Prize, and to sum it up in clichés of the trade – he was an author of the people; not of the writers.

Auster excelled at capturing the present and saw life itself as part of literature, in the sense that the self of a person develops just as a character develops in a book, as observed by Will Blythe, the literary editor of Esquire. Hence, perhaps, the temptation to see him as a New Age harbinger, despite being a remnant of a bygone classical era.

His writing could easily be seen as conservatively subversive. Another expression of "Austerianism" can be identified in the ritual of his character Auggie from the screenplay "Smoke," which received a wonderful cinematic adaptation by Wayne Wang in 1995, starring Harvey Keitel. Every morning, precisely at 8:00 a.m., Auggie photographs the opposite corner visible from his Brooklyn tobacco shop; every day, at the same time, from the same angle. Auggie keeps the photos in albums: the changes are minor, almost imperceptible. Yet, over the years, reality is no longer identical to what it once was. A shift has occurred that we didn't notice. Paul Auster was a novelist of a world that was here just a moment ago – and is now gone.

Planting trees for Israel 

Growing up in the post-World War II era by Jewish parents in South Orange, New Jersey, then in the rural area of New York State, and finally in urban Newark. As in every Jewish household on the East Coast in the years back then, the fate of European Jews after the war preoccupied the family. "I grew up with Israel," he recounted in 2012 in the interview with Israel Hayom, "every morning I would go to the Hebrew school in New Jersey, knowing that part of my lessons would be devoted to raising money for the young state. We were busy all the time with planting trees and writing little greeting cards to people in Israel. We felt as though we were part of the state, even though physically we lived far away from it. We, the children and the adults, felt as though we were helping to build a place with new ideals. We were very excited about it."

He visited Israel in the mid-1990s and then in 2010. Since then, he observed that "one of the authors who participated in the festival told me, justifiably, that the feeling is that the Israelis live between despair, which characterizes the Left, and denial, which characterizes the Right, with very little in the middle. The denial is insufferable, it can't survive, and the despair; it also doesn't arouse hope. So everything is stuck."

Befitting a bon ton, he regularly criticized Benjamin Netanyahu, and despite being the flesh and blood of "New York Times Judaism," he looked squarely at the progressive hot air that took over the elite on America's coasts.

In the last decade, he lowered the volume a bit, but still published two prose books, several essay collections, and even a new book of poetry. In December 2022, his novelist wife, Siri Hustvedt, announced his battle with cancer. On April 30, 2024, he passed away. Perhaps he fulfilled what he sought in his first book: "Under any circumstances, he had managed to keep himself at a distance from life, to avoid immersion in the quick of things."

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