Democratic lawmakers, left-wing commentators, and pro-Hamas activists spent the last two years demanding Israel ink a ceasefire with the terror group and pause the war it has waged in response to the Oct. 7, 2023, massacres. Now that President Donald Trump has brokered a historic peace deal to do just that, those same voices are breathlessly criticizing the agreement, and in some cases baselessly claiming Israel is already poised to breach it.
“I love that we live in a world where we’re all supposed to now praise Trump for his peace-making and ignore the fact that at least 20,000 Palestinians have been killed on his watch, with bombs & bullets – & rhetorical support! – that he supplied to Israel,” disgraced former MSNBC personality Mehdi Hasan wrote on X in one of several posts about the deal. “That’s all erased now.”
Hasan—like numerous other far-left figures—went on to predict Israel will violate the terms of the deal once all 48 of its hostages are released early next week as part of the ceasefire’s first phase. Trump is expected to travel to Egypt in the coming days to oversee the deal’s formal unveiling while the hostages are slated to be released on either Monday or Tuesday.
“There’s literally nothing and no one to stop Netanyahu and Israel from resuming the war/genocide once they get all the hostages back and Trump has his Nobel Peace Prize and has moved on from this,” he wrote.
Other prominent left-wingers—like former Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) adviser Matt Duss, anti-Zionist writer Peter Beinart, Islamic Republic of Iran advocate Trita Parsi, and anti-Semitic U.N. official Francesca Albanese—cast doubt on the ceasefire’s durability after spending two years advocating for one.
“Before any next step, member states must ensure that Israel honours the ceasefire,” Albanese wrote on X Thursday morning, shortly after Israel and Hamas agreed on the terms laid out by Trump. “‘Ceasefire’, in Israel’s dictionary: you cease, I fire.”
Albanese also objected to provisions in the deal that require Hamas to disarm and end its support for jihadist terrorism, saying Israel should instead be forced to “deradicalize.”
“The request to demilitarize and deradicalize … Gaza … in the name of Israel’s security,” the U.N. official said on Sky News. “Where is the security of the Palestinians, who have been attacked without respite for decades? … Where is the demilitarization and deradicalization of Israel’s society?”
Parsi, vice president of the George Soros-funded Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, told CNN on Thursday “that it would be a disaster if Trump lets Israel reduce his deal to just a ceasefire and not the end of the war that he has touted it as.”
Duss, meanwhile, predicted Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu will detonate the deal shortly after his hostages are released.
“Pressure will need to be sustained to ensure [Netanyahu] doesn’t blow it up after phase 1, as he did the January deal,” Duss wrote, claiming the ceasefire “was only achievable after Trump pressured Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to accept.” He failed to mention Hamas rejected every previous ceasefire deal after Israel agreed to the terms.
“It wasn’t pressure on Hamas that got the ceasefire, they’ve obviously been under intense pressure all along,” Duss added. “The key variable here was pressure on Netanyahu.”
Beinart, currently an editor at large at Jewish Currents, said on X an enduring peace remains impossible unless the “Palestinians are free.”
“There will never be real peace–Palestinians and Israelis will never enjoy real safety–until Palestinians are free,” Beinart wrote.
In a videotaped message posted on his Substack, Beinart claimed that “before the genocide, there was apartheid. And there will be an even worse form of apartheid now” that a ceasefire is in place.
Ryan Grim—the anti-Israel Drop Site News reporter who in June falsely claimed Israel massacred Palestinians at an aid site—said the peace deal is no different than other past negotiations.
“A version of this deal has been available every day since November 2023, when many more people were alive,” Grim wrote on X.
Grim also claimed Israel’s decision not to release convicted terrorist Marwan Barghouti as part of the deal proves it does not actually want to see Hamas out of power.
“Refusing to release Marwan Barghouti, who embraces non-violence and a two-state solution, is blindingly clear evidence that the Israeli government, despite their protestations, genuinely prefers Hamas in power if there must be Palestinians at all,” he wrote. “If you are not pushing for Barghouti’s release, you do not want an end to the conflict, you want permanent war and occupation.”
Aaron Maté, a writer with the pro-Hamas Grayzone, also expressed anger that the Israeli government will not release Barghouti, who is serving a prison sentence for planning a 2002 terror attack that killed five.
“Israel won’t free Marwan Barghouti because he is a popular leader who could unite Palestinian factions,” Maté wrote. “For a colonial aggressor like Israel, democratic legitimacy is a threat. If this becomes a key sticking point, only Trump could get Israel to relent.”
The Guardian newspaper, which has a long history of advocating against Israel, claimed this week that Trump’s peace proposal “betrays Palestinians.”
While the outlet acknowledged that “any opportunity to end this war of annihilation must be seized,” it criticized the deal for only paying what it termed “lip service to eventual self-determination and statehood” for the Palestinians.
On the congressional front, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) hesitantly approved of the deal but called on the international community to prosecute Israel for alleged war crimes.
“While this is a hopeful step, we must demand accountability for every war crime committed during this genocide and continue to call for an end to the occupation,” Omar wrote on X.
Other notable anti-Israel voices, like Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) and Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.), have avoided commenting on the deal at all.
Sanders last discussed the situation on Oct. 7, the two-year anniversary of Hamas’s terror spree, when he wrote the United States “must stop providing military support to the Netanyahu government.”
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