(Dobbs) Credit where credit is due: what happened yesterday is a great thing.

But that still doesn't make Donald Trump a great man.

Credit where credit is due.

Without President Trump’s tough talk and unbridled threats— to both Hamas and Israel— the last of the Israeli hostages probably would still be imprisoned somewhere underground in Gaza. Instead, the twenty still alive after two years of cruel captivity are home.

And the same goes for almost 2,000 Palestinians long held in Israeli jails, many or most of whom are not innocent victims like the Israeli hostages, but who now have been released and in some cases deported to third countries. Under the 20-point peace plan hammered out only one week ago, one could not have happened without the other.

Trump gets credit because he’s the one who pushed the first phase of the peace plan over the finish line. And understandably, this president with his insatiable ego is basking in the glory of this historic step. After he landed yesterday in Israel, which has been bitterly divided about the war and politics but is, at least for now, united in its joy for the hostage release, chants rang out of “Trump Trump Trump.”

When he walked into the Knesset, the president was given what is best described as a rapturous reception. And he has heard almost unctuous homage from other world leaders. Pakistan’s prime minister said, after this year’s Nobel Peace Prize went to a brave pro-democracy advocate in Venezuela instead of to Trump, “I would like to nominate this great president for Nobel Peace Prize (again)…. The world will always remember you as a man who did everything, went out of the way to stop seven and, today, eight wars.” He might believe every word and he might be right, but to use a colloquial phrase, he and others might just be sucking up to Donald Trump because they’ve seen what happens when anyone gets on the wrong end of his sharp stick.

So yes, what happened yesterday, freedom for innocent victims of this war, is a great thing. And if what is now a ceasefire leads to a real peace, it is an even greater thing. But that doesn’t make Trump a great man. Because he is still an evil man. As the plan was drawn up to bring the hostages home, how many people in our own nation were being arrested on his general orders, sometimes without due process, sometimes thrown to the ground, sometimes deported to backward nations with which they are not even remotely connected, for the cardinal sin of being in the U.S. illegally, if even that? How many American civil servants were losing their jobs— their livelihoods, their security blanket for their families— because of Trump’s vile vengeance against Democrats? How many children in impoverished countries were losing their supplies of food and medicine because of his blind cuts to foreign aid? How many Venezuelans— or Colombians, or whomever— were being blown out of the water in extrajudicial executions in the Caribbean because they were identified— without a shred of evidence publicly presented so far— as drug smugglers?

This is not sour grapes. I am elated for the hostages and their families. But despite today’s glorious success, Donald Trump still has a lot to answer for. What’s more, it is still too early as the peace plan kicks in to declare victory. There are major questions not yet resolved: will Israel withdraw from Gaza, will Hamas disarm, will the terrorist group actually melt away, who will govern Gaza, do the Palestinians have any real chance of an independent state?

One immediate short-term issue is that Israel has declared that its withdrawal depends on full disarmament by Hamas, but Hamas has declared that it is not ready to disarm. What gives me pause is the illogical explanation I always heard when I covered that part of the world and things went haywire, when everything defied reason. It was the punchline to an old fable: “But remember, my friend, this is the Middle East.”

Trump also praised Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu. “He’s not the easiest guy to deal with,” Trump told the Knesset, “but that’s what makes him great.”

No, Benjamin Netanyahu is not great. Trump addressed him during his Knesset speech: “I just want to congratulate you for having the courage to say, ‘That’s it. We’ve won, and now let’s enjoy our lives.’” But the fact is, Netanyahu was more cornered than courageous. He deserves credit for seeing the writing on the wall, but not for being a great man. He’s not great because he was the overlord to military operations that morphed into indiscriminate and sometimes disproportionate attacks on Palestinian civilians. Gaza lies in ruins.

But Donald Trump did rise yesterday to the occasion. He told Israel’s lawmakers, with Netanyahu just feet away, “Israel, with our help, has won all that they can by force of arms. You’ve won. I mean, you’ve won. Now it’s time to translate these victories against terrorists on the battlefield into the ultimate prize of peace and prosperity for the entire Middle East.”

Whether the rest of the peace plan will materialize, whether this enhances the chance that some day Palestinians and Jews will drop their guns and live peacefully side by side, whether this truly is what Trump called “a historic dawn of a new Middle East,” depends on too much that we don’t yet know.

But what we do know is, the long-suffering hostages are home and, for the time being at least, the bombs have stopped ripping apart what’s left of Gaza. For that, credit where credit is due for Donald Trump. It is a great thing. But that still doesn’t make him a great man.

Over more than five decades Greg Dobbs has been a correspondent for two television networks including ABC News, a political columnist for The Denver Post and syndicated columnist for Scripps newspapers, a moderator on Rocky Mountain PBS, and author of two books, including one about the life of a foreign correspondent called “Life in the Wrong Lane.” He also co-authored a book about the seminal year for baby boomers, called “1969: Are You Still Listening?” He has covered presidencies, politics, and the U.S. space program at home, and wars, natural disasters, and other crises around the globe, from Afghanistan to South Africa, from Iran to Egypt, from the Soviet Union to Saudi Arabia, from Nicaragua to Namibia, from Vietnam to Venezuela, from Libya to Liberia, from Panama to Poland. Dobbs has won three Emmys, the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists, and as a 39-year resident of Colorado, a place in the Denver Press Club Hall of Fame.

You can learn more at GregDobbs.net