Ben Shapiro unironically called it ‘a religious event’.
I don’t know what to call it exactly: on paper it was the formalisation or celebration of a peace deal. It often seemed like something else though.
Israeli hasbara superstar Shapiro was there though, in the Knesset – so I’ll take his word for it. When he calls it a ‘religious event’, bear in mind he is doing so approvingly.
I’ll come to all the apparent Biblical enactment at the end of this piece: because Monday’s event was full of it.
I initially wasn’t going to cover any of this, not beyond the article I published here at the weekend about the peace plan.
But one of the objectives of this website was always to explore the strange and manufactured theater that’s frequently played out for our consumption.
And there was a palpable sense of such manufactured theater in Monday’s events.
So let’s talk about this whole thing: which really was divided into three main elements – the return of the Israeli hostages to Israel (and parallel return of a number of Palestinian prisoners to Gaza and the West Bank), President Trump being hosted in the Knesset, and the event with all the international leaders in Egypt.
I was half asleep, to be honest, but I kept the TV on to keep an eye on the news channel coverage of these events.
What I hadn’t realised was that the live coverage would go on uninterrupted for many hours. BBC and Sky News both had continuous live coverage, even when there was nothing really happening. It was like watching the Queen’s funeral or a royal wedding: it had become some kind of major world event, with accompanying mass media fascination and hyperbolic hype.
They kept calling it a ‘historic day’ or presenting it as an important moment in world history. Even Sky’s YouTube upload is eleven hours long.
Hours were spent showing crowds gathered in Tel Aviv, waiting for arriving hostages. Sometimes they broke into song or dance. Mostly, all that happened was a helicopter would fly overhead, indicating freed hostages being transported.
Meanwhile, Air Force One was being live tracked on its journey, as they basically counted down to President Trump’s arrival in Israel.
By the way, none of this is to downplay the importance – especially to Israelis – of the hostages coming home. It obviously makes sense that this would be highly charged and meaningful after two years.
So Israelis gathering to welcome back the hostages isn’t what I’m questioning.
But it’s the way the media was covering all of it that seemed strange: and particularly the way the two main political events were staged in general.
There was a real sense of scripted, choreographed performance for mass consumption: a carefully managed movie production.
The two major political components to the day’s events – Trump in the Knesset and then the gathering of leaders in Sharm al-Sheikh – were really weird events.
You would think the US President speaking in the Israeli parliament would be a fairly straightforward affair: have someone do a preamble, then invite him to the podium.
Instead, the build up went on for an hour: as completely unnecessary shout-outs, name-checks and roll-calls were conducted, individually naming and celebrating virtually every person in attendance.
The extreme level of praise heaped on Trump by Israeli speakers quickly became farcical – to the extent that it seemed like satire.
This wasn’t mere praise: it was practically worship.
The Prince of Peace was here. And all were there to adore him.
It got so bad, I had to mute it and put some music on for a while.
You know what it all felt like? You remember that MTV show about spoilt teenagers (usually girls) getting to have their perfect, privileged birthday party? In reality, the teenager is the one planning and choreographing everything, telling everyone exactly how everything needs to be.
Everyone has to attend. And then the insufferable teen princess arrives and is the center of attention, showered with gifts and praise. It was called ‘My Sweet Sixteen’ or something like that.
Chants of “Trump!” repeatedly broke out in the chamber. Trump’s people were even seen handing out MAGA style hats for people to wear: but these ones said ‘President of Peace’.
Aside from the extraordinary levels of contrived self-aggrandisement, what was really going on here was a reframing of narrative and the codification of a false reality: the new narrative is that Trump brought about this great peace process almost like a divine intervention to rescue the hostages – and that this was the Israeli government’s aim all along.
Never mind that Netanyahu and co showed virtually no interest in bringing back the hostages before now. Never mind that they’ve spent two years razing Gaza to the ground and largely with US financing and support.
And never mind that October 7th – the inciting incident of the war – still hasn’t been investigated to establish the degree of the state’s complicity: because Netanyahu’s government is blocking any investigation.
No mention or allusion was made at all regarding the death toll in Gaza or the obliteration of the strip. In fact, a refutation of the genocide accusation was made, with Netanyahu also condemning the ‘anti Semitic mobs’ in Europe, the UK and on college campuses in the US.
This was all careful reframing and theater. Trump the great peacemaker, and Israel being interested in peace and not being the wager of war.
But really, the weirdest part was all the over-the-top praise.
Even Netanyahu was celebrated as a ‘war hero’. A stark contrast to the booing that greeted his name the day before when Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner were addressing the crowds.
Which also shows how carefully managed this event in the Knesset was: the Speaker even declared early on that no dissent or disruptive behaviour would be tolerated in the chamber.
Almost 70,000 Palestinians have been killed in these two years. And multiple Israeli hostages who’re now dead could’ve been brought home alive if the Israeli government had committed to earlier negotiations and offers.
But the Israeli parliament and the “greatest friend Israel has ever had” were here acting like noble peacemakers who’ve accomplished some miraculous task.
Also, while Israelis are complaining about deceased hostages not yet having been returned to Israel, it was claimed that some 45 dead Palestinian bodies returned to Gaza still had their hands and legs bound and showed signs of physical abuse.
Later, the gathering in Egypt was even more awkward.
All these world leaders had hurried over to Egypt – some of them on very short notice, according to Trump himself.
Signs declaring ‘Peace 2025’ were made prominently visible and ‘Peace in the Middle East’.
There they all were, stood on the stage behind Trump: Starmer, Carney, Erdogan, Macron, Meloni. Prime Ministers, Presidents, Emirs and Princes, even a self styled Ottoman Sultan, standing around like awkward attendees at a birthday party for someone they don’t really like.
What were they there for? Some of them looked like they didn’t want to be there at all.
Was it just to look like they’re involved in the Great Project? Just to feel like they’ve played a part? Or were they pulled into it to provide additional legitimacy?
None of them even spoke at the event. It was all Trump.
The only exception was the Pakistani ‘Prime Minister’, the corrupt imposter and thief Shehbaz Sharif – and he only spoke because Trump told him to. In a truly awkward, ridiculous moment, Trump tells the Pakistani PM to step up to the mic and tell everyone ‘what you said to me earlier’.
Sharif then proceeds to shower more praise on the US President, all but calling him the greatest leader who has ever lived – and reiterating that Trump should receive the Nobel Peace Prize. Look, if Donald Trump did prevent open war breaking out between Pakistan and India, then I don’t deny he should be considered for that meaningless peace prize – especially with this Gaza ceasefire now added to the list.
But this stuff was genuinely embarrassing. And Trump using the Pakistani imposter-PM as a docile pet in front of all the other world leaders was a remarkable spectacle.
And Pakistan’s status as a US client state was never so clearly on display. Let’s also remember that Pakistan’s actual democratically elected leader, Imran Khan, is still sitting in prison after what was most likely a Washington sponsored coup.
Neither Trump nor anyone in the administration has said a word about Khan’s imprisonment or alleged mistreatment, by the way.
And Viktor Orban was there too. Why? What the fuck does he have to do with anything?
Why was the President of FIFA there? What does this have to do with football?
Was this whole event just designed to pay homage to the US President? To fully crown him as the ‘Prince of Peace’ (as per the Biblical Book of Isaiah)?
They already publicly anointed him as a High Priest last July, with that bloodied ear ritual in Butler, Pennsylvania: so this full enactment of ‘Prince of Peace’ theater seems logical.
That Prince of Peace motif has Messianic fulfillment connotations too, of course. So maybe that’s why this was all so overblown and weird.
Maybe Ben Shapiro is right to call it a religious event. Some of the language was conspicuous in that respect too, including from Trump himself, who referred to the peace deal as the ‘beginning of the age of faith and hope and of God…’
He also referred to the ‘the promise of Zion‘, and to the ‘heart of David‘ as being ‘that love that’s defeated the enemies of civilization‘.
It seems to all be consciously paving the way towards the prophetic endgame of Jerusalem as the center of world peace and future capital of the nations.
He referred to the ‘eternal Jerusalem’ and also to Israel being the spiritual center of the Middle East.
Israeli outlet YNET reflects this tone approvingly, saying that ‘Throughout his speech, Trump invoked biblical imagery and messianic overtones… In a vision echoing prophetic scripture, President Trump described a scene of worldwide joy and redemption. His words seemed to draw on Zechariah 8:5…’
Marco Rubio even said something curious a day or two earlier about the ‘captives’ being brought out of the darkness and into the light. Which seemed like a Biblical reference too.
So did Trump, telling the Israeli Knesset ‘After two harrowing years in darkness and captivity, they are returning… the sun rises on a holy land that is finally at peace…’
The imagery of the ‘captives’ (or in this case, hostages) returning has strong Biblical connotations in general, relating for example to things like the Babylonian Captivity. Curiously enough, the captivity in Babylon also related to the destruction of the first temple: and it was Cyrus the Great who allowed Jews to return to Palestine and reestablish Israel.
And who are Israelis comparing Trump to lately? Cyrus the Great, naturally. Have we all seen the Trump/Cyrus half Shekel ‘temple coins’?
The attempts to portray Trump in Biblical terms have become more and more obvious. The Evangelicals in the US had been doing that for a while, but the attempts to tie in Trump to Jewish religious or prophetic imagery has been more and more in evidence.
It’s a stage production: and Monday was a major scene in that production.
Everyone else seems to be a mere cameo or onlooker in this choreographed stage play: maybe that’s why Macron, Starmer, the King of Jordan and the other leaders were standing around awkwardly, not sure what to do.
But there you have it. Peace. Signed and sealed. And lionised. An ‘everlasting peace’, as Trump calls it. Let’s see what actually happens.
