Peace in our time? Gotcha.

TRUMP ANNOUNCES GAZA BREAKTHROUGH - that was CNN.

TRUMP CLAIMS HAMAS HAS AGREED TO DISARMAMENT DEAL IN GAZA - that one, the New York Times.

TRUMP SAYS HAMAS AGREED TO NEXT PHASE OF GAZA PEACE DEAL - CBS News.

TRUMP ANNOUNCES HAMAS DISARMAMENT DEAL - NBC News.

So went Friday’s front pages, or the tops of major news websites. The best reaction, however, came on formerly pro-Trump news platforms in Israel: nothing. TV7 Israel News, I24 News, Israel Hayom: no triumphant proclamation of Trump’s “breakthrough” at all. Zero.

There is a reason for that. No one who knows anything at all about Hamas, or Trump, believes any of it.  Even Israeli right-wing media - the most pro-MAGA media on Earth, until recently - didn’t buy it. As the respected Israeli journalist David Horovitz pithily wrote in the Times of Israel: Trump’s many previous claims about peace have simply been “false,” full stop.

Because they have been.  During his on-off war on Iran, for instance, Trump falsely claimed that peace was at hand at least 38 times. As of this week, Iran is still bombarding U.S. military bases, hammering Gulf region Arab states with air strikes, and aiming drones at ships in the Strait of Hormuz. Does that sound like peace?

Trump’s claims, as with most everything that emanates from the U.S. President, are made-up. They are farcical. Whenever Trump resorts to all-caps - as he did in his Truth Social post on Thursday evening, calling the peace deal “HISTORIC,” “COMPLETE DISARMAMENT,” and a guarantee of “PEACE and SECURITY” - he is engaged in what psychologists call the Illusory Truth Effect.

That is, by amplifying and repeating specific words, Trump tips us off to what is false. (Whether the President knows they are false is a question for the psychologists.)

Israel, for its part, said it would not withdraw from parts of Hamas territory in Gaza until the terror group disarms. Hamas, meanwhile, said it would not disarm until Israel withdraws. Checkmate.

Which side should go first? Continuing his administration’s anti-Israel tilt, Trump darkly warned he would be “very, very disappointed” if the Jewish state - not Hamas - did not adhere to the terms of the agreement. JD Vance is smiling, somewhere.

So who is to be believed? Certainly not Hamas.

The Palestinian arm of the Muslim Brotherhood has always been very candid about their ultimate objective. It is total and unrelenting war against Israel and the West.

In their 1988 Hamas Charter, which officially bears the weighty title of the Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement, the terror group states that they will “obliterate” the Jewish state, quote unquote. “Israel, Judaism and Jews,” write Hamas in Article 28, are “a vicious invasion.” Zionists, Jews, are “Nazis,” says Hamas, and salvation will not come until “Muslims fight the Jews, kill the Jews.”

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