What a good poem does
is make you feel
alive -
reminds you
but not in your head
in your body
how it feels
to be alive -
because we die
a bit
every day
and barely notice
we work
and barely notice
we eat
and barely notice
we talk
and barely notice
make love
and barely notice;
a good poem
like a laser pointer
helps you
notice.
Does anyone actually believe trump is mediating an end to the war in Ukraine?
Honestly. Has trump ever mediated anything in his life? Does he have anyone in his staff who knows anything about mediation?
And yet, if you go by the volume of serious press coverage this idea has been getting lately, the answer seems to be yes. I don’t know what they're seeing that I’m not.
Trump is a bully. Bullies don’t mediate—they dominate. They don't understand negotiation, compromise, or diplomacy. They understand force, intimidation, and loyalty. So what exactly is going on here?
What I see isn't mediation. It’s a game of tetherball, with Ukraine and the Europeans on one side, and Putin on the other, batting the ball—trump—back and forth. Analysts keep trying to count the rings on the pole to determine who's winning the "negotiation." But this isn't about negotiation. It's about manipulation. One day, it’s Putin whispering in trump’s ear; the next day, it's Zelensky. And like trump’s former national security advisor John Bolton has said—trump’s decisions usually come down to whoever spoke to him last.
Personally, I don’t think trump has the slightest clue what’s really going on. He thinks he’s mediating a peace deal—but he’s not. The players involved aren’t treating him as a neutral broker. They’re treating him like a mark. Each side is trying to win him over, to pull him into their orbit. That’s the exact opposite of mediation. And because Trump’s so easily influenced, he doesn’t even notice.
Let’s be clear: Trump does not care about dying Ukrainians or Russians. He wants to “end the war” for one reason—because he thinks it will earn him a Nobel Peace Prize. Period. Full stop.
And that’s not even why he called Putin recently. That call was pure political distraction—an attempt to shift headlines away from the politically disastrous Epstein files. Putin obliged because he saw the opportunity: a way to slide back into trump’s good graces after a few cold months. Trump rolled out the red carpet. Putin talked his ear off, made no commitments, and walked away with what he wanted—trump’s renewed attention. At the joint press conference, trump looked dazed and glassy-eyed, clearly reeling from a few hours of psychological rope-a-dope. You could see the satisfaction in Putin’s expression. He’d spun trump like a tetherball on a rope.
Then came team Ukraine-Europe for damage control.
And here’s where Zelensky did something smart. He understood that trump isn’t a mediator—he’s a predator. So he offered something Putin can’t or hasn’t yet: a bribe in the form of a $150 billion security package, combining $100 billion in European-financed purchases of American weapons, and a $50 billion drone production partnership. Zelensky isn’t appealing to trump’s sense of justice or humanity—he’s appealing to his ego and transactional instincts.
The cold truth is that the war ends when Putin decides it ends. As long as he believes he’s still playing trump like a fiddle, he’ll think he’s winning. The only way to shift the calculus is for the U.S. and its allies to fully commit to Ukraine's ability to fight indefinitely. That’s what real leverage looks like.
So why does trump still seem favorable to Putin, despite having almost nothing left to gain from him? That question drives analysts mad. Some speculate about kompromat. But I think it’s simpler than that: Trump sees Putin as a “winner.” And trump sees himself as part of the winners club. Putin’s attention provides him with the narcissistic validation he craves. That’s why trump can’t let go. And Putin, ever the master manipulator, understands this perfectly.
The irony is that trump could help tip the balance—if he put his fist on the scale for Ukraine. But that would require him to knock Putin off the psychological pedestal he’s built for him, and I’m not sure trump is capable of that. In his deeply warped worldview, doing so might feel like a betrayal of a fellow member of the “winners club.”
The only actual mediation we are witnessing is going on inside trump’s demented mind - how to win the Nobel Prize while keeping Putin atop his pedestal.
We aren’t witnessing a diplomatic process. We’re witnessing a dangerous, performative farce. And the main impediment to progress isn’t a lack of talks—it’s trump himself. The longer the world pretends otherwise, the longer Putin gets to keep smacking that tetherball.
P.S.
About winning games like tetherball, and apparently the Nobel Peace Prize. Here’s the thing. You don’t actually win the Nobel Prize like it’s a cheap trophy at a fake golf tournament. But that’s exactly what trump thinks. To normal people, a Nobel Prize is awarded - not won - in recognition of a great achievement for the benefit of humanity. Trump thinks it’s something to put on his mantelpiece. It’s simply demented.
I grew up in the town of Hampstead. Not the one in London. My Hampstead is a tony, upper-class suburb of Montreal—a newer facsimile of London’s Heath, right down to the street names: Minden, Downshire, Harrow, and so on. Montreal’s Hampstead was the town upwardly mobile Jewish immigrant dreams were made of.
Ironically, Hampstead was originally established by a well-heeled Protestant banking class in the early 20th century and was once restricted to Jews. That only made it more desirable to Jewish families looking to escape the cold-water flats of the downtown Yiddish-speaking ghettos. There was a golf course and a curling club. Today, those have been replaced by sprawling McMansions with pools on double lots. It didn’t even take two generations for Jews to become the dominant group in Hampstead—it was already true when I was playing municipal tennis, baseball, football, and hockey in the mid-1970s.
Back then, the Jewish community still seemed politically cautious. The city was run by goyim. There was still a sense among many Jewish residents, that we were guests, and needed to remain respectful of our hosts.
No longer.
There’s a political storm brewing in my once-sleepy, well-heeled hometown. Alongside the Quebec fleur-de-lys and the Canadian maple leaf, the blue and white Star of David now flies proudly atop a flagpole outside Hampstead city hall. The Israeli flag actually replaced the town’s own flag. It was first hoisted in October 2023, in solidarity following the terrorist attack in Israel—and remains flying to this day.
At first, the gesture wasn’t particularly controversial. Today, with global suffering mounting and public opinion deeply polarized, it’s another story.
The mayor, Jeremy Levi, is an outspoken supporter of Israel. So, it seems, are most members of the town council and, presumably, a large part of the 60% Jewish majority. Levi has even advocated publicly for Israel to occupy and annex Gaza. When challenged about the Israeli flag at city hall, he’s defiant: “If they don’t like it, the citizens can vote me out at the next election.”
Not all residents agree. One of them, Adam Ben David—clearly also Jewish—feels the Israeli flag doesn’t reflect the full spectrum of political or religious views in Hampstead. In a letter co-signed by dozens of residents, he wrote: “Raising the flag at town hall effectively removes each Hampstead citizen’s ability to express their personal stance on Israel.”
Montreal-area city halls have long been sites of cultural and political tension. In the past, debate focused on whether religious symbols like Christmas trees and Hanukkah menorahs had any place on civic property. That controversy stems from Quebec’s “Quiet Revolution” in the 1960s—a cultural shift that moved the province away from the dominance of the Catholic Church and toward a proudly secular identity. That secularism has hardened over the decades, most recently in Bill 21, An Act Respecting the Laicity of the State, which banned public employees from wearing religious symbols such as hijabs and kippahs. The law remains under court challenge as a violation of individual rights.
Which makes Hampstead’s current controversy even more striking. In contrast to Quebec’s secularism, here we see public resources used to champion the identity of a particular religious or cultural group. It echoes something more American than Quebecois: the way Donald Trump has used government institutions to enforce symbolic loyalty, especially toward Israel, often under the banner of combating antisemitism.
To me, the Hampstead flag fight is a symptom of something larger: the localization of global conflict in the age of social media. We are being pulled into battles far from home in ways that feel increasingly personal. The stakes of daily life in our communities have shifted. What used to be local politics is now global ideology in miniature. And people seem to have lost their sense of proportion.
Some basic questions might help restore that sense:
Is it appropriate for the flag of a foreign country to fly in front of city hall?
If we do that, should we expect to see other flags—like the Palestinian flag —raised in front of other city halls? How would Jewish people living in those communities feel then?
Shouldn’t mayors, and all elected officials, represent all of their constituents, not just those who voted for them?
If members of any group—Jews included—choose to take strong public political stances (which is absolutely their right), should they be surprised when others push back forcefully? Do they still get to label all opposition as antisemitic?
I don’t fully agree with Ben David’s argument that raising the Israeli flag “removes” residents’ ability to express themselves. Individuals can and do fly whatever flags they like on their private property. I, for instance, have had a bright yellow “Bring The Hostages Home” sign in my front window since late October 2023. I feared that it might provoke vandalism, but vowed not to take it down until every hostage was freed. I never imagined that, nearly two years later, it would still be there. It’s never been vandalized.
But while individuals can express themselves freely, public institutions are different. They are meant to unify, not divide. City halls are supposed to belong to all of us. And do we really want our communities to become a patchwork of flags and symbols on every corner, each staking out some tribal claim?
There was a time when political leaders understood that it was their job to foster unity, to build a sense of shared belonging and sense of community. That now seems increasingly rare.
In the end, this isn’t just about one flag in one suburb. It’s about how we live together when the lines between local and global, identity and ideology, neighbor and enemy, are no longer clear.
I am made of love and wisdom.
Love says: You are everything.
Wisdom says: You are nothing.
- based on words from Sri Maharaj Nisargadatta
Israel is a normal country. It is following a global trend: the steady drift of liberal democracies toward authoritarianism, especially after major security shocks.
Defenders of Israel often argue that it is unfairly singled out for criticism. That claim is not without basis—Israel has received disproportionate attention for religious, historical, and geopolitical reasons. Many Jewish people interpret this as proof of enduring anti-Semitism.
But there is another way to look at it. We can accept that Israel is a special country and we should expect more of it, especially the Jewish people. Founded in the shadow of genocide, built as a democratic refuge for an historically persecuted people, Israel represents a higher moral standard, and therefore expecting more from our ancestral homeland should be a point of pride for Jewish people. Instead, many Israelis and Jews seem to want Israel judged by the standards of a “normal” country.
And in that sense, they have succeeded. Israel is behaving as other democracies have under similar circumstances.
The U.S. after 9/11 is the most obvious comparison. October 7th has been called Israel’s 9/11, but on a far greater per-capita scale—equivalent to 40,000 American deaths in one day. The American response to its terrorist attack was swift and transformative: the Patriot Act, the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, and two decades of war in Afghanistan and Iraq. In retrospect, many analysts see this as the moment the U.S. began its slow erosion of civil liberties and expansion of executive power.
The same pattern has emerged elsewhere:
Turkey (2016): After the failed coup, President Erdoğan used emergency powers to purge over 100,000 civil servants, shut down media outlets, and rewrite the constitution to expand presidential authority.
Hungary (2010–present): Viktor Orbán’s government used the migrant crisis and later COVID-19 to justify sweeping powers, weaken judicial independence, and rewrite election laws.
India (post-2019): Security fears following the Pulwama attack and border clashes with China have coincided with curbs on dissent, tightened control over media, and controversial laws targeting minorities.
The dynamic is consistent: war and national emergencies accelerate authoritarian measures. The process is self-reinforcing—security crises demand extraordinary powers, which in turn lower the threshold for further conflict. Wars of defense can morph into wars of choice; necessary reactions slide into dangerous overreactions. Once the cycle begins, it is very hard to reverse.
Seen through this lens, Israel is not uniquely flawed nor uniquely virtuous. It is moving along a well-trodden path, one shared by other democracies in moments of perceived existential threat. The tragedy is that Israel, with its moral history and democratic ideals, could have been an exception. Instead, it risks becoming just another “normal” country in the worst sense of the word.
History rarely forgives nations that squander their highest ideals. For Israel, the true danger is not defeat by its enemies, but becoming indistinguishable from them. The measure of a “normal” country should not be how quickly it abandons its principles in the face of fear, but how stubbornly it defends them when they are most inconvenient to keep.
I recently listened to an insightful interview with Douglas Murray, the conservative British writer and journalist, who has become one of the most forceful public voices of Israel's right to self-defence following the October 7th attacks.
Murray’s stance remains unchanged, even as the humanitarian crisis in Gaza has worsened and the Netanyahu cabinet has decided that fully occupying Gaza might be necessary to achieve Israel’s strategic goals: eliminating Hamas, demilitarizing Gaza, and rescuing the remaining hostages—seemingly in that order. While Murray acknowledges that these goals may be impossible to fully realize, he insists that Israel is engaged in a broader civilizational battle against barbarism, fighting for Western values, and believes that the ends justify the means.
In the interview, Murray also referenced an argument from his most recent book, which I’ve heard others make as well. He asks: what army has ever been responsible for the welfare of its enemy’s population? He claims that Israel is expected to do more—unfairly, in his view—than any other country at war. Is Russia expected to feed Ukraine’s people, he asks?
Wait, did I just hear Murray equate Israel and Russia? Yes, I did. And that made me realize something crucial about the moral dilemma Israel faces. In fact, both Israel and Russia are invading forces, which is important to recognize. But their positions are morally very different. Russia launched a war of aggression to defeat an elected democracy, while Israel took military action from a defensive posture against a terrorist organization.
However, Murray’s comment highlights something significant: both Russia and Israel are, in effect, engaged in regime change.
Maybe it’s time to take a step back and ask: how did we get here? Israel failed to defend its borders on October 7th. In a defensive war, the only legitimate military objectives should be securing borders, restoring deterrence, and retrieving the hostages. Israel has already achieved two of these objectives, and the focus now should be entirely on the third. But this doesn’t seem to be the direction Israel is taking.
Israel’s current predicament stems from a shift in its strategic goals. What started as a defensive war has morphed into a war of aggression, one that will not end until Hamas is fully eliminated. Many analysts doubt whether that’s even achievable. At the very least, we can agree that Hamas has been defeated as a significant short- and medium-term military threat to Israel. Yet, the Netanyahu cabinet doesn’t appear satisfied with this outcome.
Above all, we should not lose sight of the key goal: getting the hostages back. If that requires a full withdrawal of the IDF, then I support it. Would I be concerned that Hamas would declare ‘victory’ and raise their flag over Gaza’s rubble? No. Let them have it. My bigger concern is that Israel is setting itself up to bite off more than it can chew—taking on a costly, unwinnable task that could drag on for many years to come.
Some are calling it the full occupation of Gaza. Apparently, this is what’s being contemplated by the Netanyahu cabinet. It may be a bluff, as some commentators have suggested — although to what end remains unclear. Perhaps it’s Netanyahu’s attempt to keep his faltering right-wing coalition intact, by reassuring the hardliners that Israel has no intention of making a deal with the terrorists, nor of halting operations and unilaterally withdrawing from Gaza.
Notably, Israel’s military leadership appears to oppose the idea, and that matters. The IDF understands the implications better than anyone.
In my view, the 'conquest' of Gaza would be disastrous on multiple levels.
First, it would deepen an already horrific situation. A full occupation would likely drag the IDF into a protracted urban guerrilla war, one that would exact a steep toll on young Israeli soldiers.
Second, it would make Israel fully responsible for the wellbeing of Gaza’s entire civilian population. The obligations of an occupying power under international law are immense. Given the current humanitarian catastrophe, this responsibility would be impossible to fulfill and would further damage Israel’s already very damaged international standing.
Third, it would validate the claims of those who label Israel a settler-colonial state. Occupation would provide fresh evidence to those who argue that Israel's intentions go beyond defense and into permanent territorial domination.
Fourth, it would drain Israel’s resources, manpower, and strategic focus. The IDF is already stretched. A long-term occupation would sap Israel’s military and economic strength, possibly for years to come.
Fifth, it would likely doom the remaining hostages. A campaign of total conquest could destroy what little leverage remains in any potential negotiations for their safe return.
Sixth, it would all but guarantee the collapse of any further normalization efforts, especially with Saudi Arabia. The Abraham Accords would stall indefinitely.
This would all come on top of an already devastating policy failure: the decision to halt food aid shipments from January through May. Dozens of desperate civilians are now being killed every week at food distribution centers. It is a humanitarian debacle of the highest order.
For the sake of Israel’s moral integrity and strategic future, I dearly hope Netanyahu is bluffing.
