For all the drama of the past week in Washington, Wednesday’s press conference by President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu will surely go down as one of the more surreal episodes in the history of Israeli-US relations, or even the Middle East itself.

President Trump appears to have the intellectual depth of a young child.

In all seriousness, he suggested that we should be optimistic about a deal between Israel and the Palestinians because he is going to study the issue carefully.

As for the shape of a deal — two states, one state, the territorial compromises, whatever — he was insouciant to the point of idiocy: it didn’t matter, he said, because the point of a deal is that both sides would be happy.

And there would be love. Love — and an end to hate.

One has to remind oneself that this man is leader of the free world.

It is deeply misguided to observe that, after eight years of the Obama administration, Israel now has a friend in the White House.

Some friends one can do without.

Moderate Wing?

Martin Himel’s documentary, Eyeless in Gaza, is important not simply because it shows the extent to which Hamas intimidated journalists during the 2014 Gaza War and skewed the global narrative surrounding the conflict, but because of the clarity with which it depicts Hamas.

It also puts in context much of the reporting this week of the election of Yahya Sinwar as the Hamas leader in Gaza. This has been portrayed as some sort of extremist triumph over Hamas’s more moderate wing.

But there is no ‘moderate wing’ of Hamas, simply variations in tactics with which to wipe out Israel and the Jews.