Trump Signals Weakness on Disarming Hamas

Plus, Harvard Mideast fellow exits abruptly; Heritage leader raises new doubts; WSJ misleads on UChicago

In today’s newsletter: A Trump-related scoop-of-perception, a Harvard-related scoop, an update on the Heritage Foundation’s non-Zionist CEO, and a media-accountability item about the Wall Street Journal’s UChicago coverage.

President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu at the White House announcing a ceasefire plan on September 29, 2025.

President Trump is signaling weakness when it comes to disarming Hamas, one of Israel’s key war aims and an element of the 20-point ceasefire plan the White House published September 29, 2025.

Point 13 of Trump’s plan was “Hamas and other factions agree to not have any role in the governance of Gaza, directly, indirectly, or in any form. All military, terror, and offensive infrastructure, including tunnels and weapon production facilities, will be destroyed and not rebuilt. There will be a process of demilitarization of Gaza under the supervision of independent monitors, which will include placing weapons permanently beyond use through an agreed process of decommissioning, and supported by an internationally funded buy back and reintegration program all verified by the independent monitors.”

Last night on CBS News’s “60 Minutes” program, Trump was asked by Norah O’Donnell, “How do you get Hamas to disarm?” Trump replied, “If I want ‘em to disarm, I’ll get ‘em to disarm very quickly. They’ll be-- they’ll be eliminated. They know that.” It’s a subtle point, but the addition of the word “if” is a step backward from Trump’s October 15, 2025, response to a similar question, “Well, they’re going to disarm, because they said they were going to disarm. And if they don’t disarm, we will disarm them…if they don’t disarm, we will disarm them. They know I’m not playing games.” The “if” in the “60 Minutes” answer indicates some level of uncertainty about whether Trump wants Hamas to disarm.

The natural follow-up from the CBS News reporter would have been, “what do you mean ‘if’ you want them to disarm? Do you want them to disarm now or not? And if not, why not?” Maybe once Bari Weiss has been in charge there for a few years rather than just a few weeks, CBS will up its game to that level.

Perhaps Trump just misspoke. He just got back from a long trip; maybe he was tired. Or perhaps he wants Hamas to return the remaining bodies of slain hostages before focusing, sequentially, on disarming.

But Trump’s other comments in the interview—that he “had to push” Prime Minister Netanyahu, and that “I didn’t like certain things that he did, and you saw what I did about that. I also stopped-- you know, I-- we knocked the hell out of Iran, and then it was time to stop, and we stopped”—don’t exactly inspire confidence. They recall Bernard Lewis’s quip that America is harmless as an enemy but treacherous as a friend.

In the end, whatever public doubts Trump is conveying Prime Minister Netanyahu has been clear that Hamas will be disarmed. For now, Israel is using the time to maintain its armored vehicles and rest its troops while also operating in Lebanon. Brigadier General (Reserve) Amir Avivi, the founder and chairman of Israel’s Defense and Security Forum, who has been a reliable guide to events in the war, said in this morning’s IDSF Zoom briefing, when asked about finishing off Hamas in Gaza, “It’s imminent. At one point, the IDF will go in and destroy Hamas.”

Harvard Mideast fellow exits abruptly: On October 27 we wrote about Abdulhaleq Abdulla:

Additional context comes from Harvard Kennedy School, where a Senior Fellow with the Middle East Initiative at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, on October 25 posted a public statement that, as auto-translated, says, “Some tweets I posted about the events of October 7, 2023, which were understood as praising attacks against Israel, were a misjudgment. Had I realized at the time that they targeted civilians, I would have condemned them immediately. I express my regret for any misunderstanding they caused, as violence against civilians is unacceptable and contradicts my convictions as a Muslim and an Arab. Freedom is achieved through peace, not violence.”

That statement’s careful wording suggests that Abdulla still believes (or has to for some reason maintain a public posture of believing) that Israeli soldiers, even those deployed defensively during a ceasefire at a time when Israel had entirely and unilaterally withdrawn from Gaza, are legitimate targets for attack.

“Fellows” at Harvard can mean a lot of different things, from a medical specialist in training to a member of Harvard’s governing corporation (“The President and Fellows of Harvard College”) but in these two cases, it means someone who isn’t a senior or junior professor but has some more attenuated and shorter-term affiliation with the university.

Lo and behold, after that item was published, Abdulla’s status on the Harvard Kennedy School website changed.