I had it all finished. This week’s newsletter. But something wasn’t right. And God spoke….through listening and reading….and finally harkening to my conscience. What I had written wasn’t wrong. It just wasn’t the whole story. I know the biblical position, God’s position on the Land of Israel. I know His promised love for His Chosen People. Some may not like it, but that is the truth of Scripture. But to stand on that alone ignores the elephant in the room. So, how to put the two together?
The murderous onslaught – replete with rape and torture and hostage taking – was beyond the pale. It was also within the traditional tactics historically employed by radical-Islam. But some aspects of the Israeli response are no more justified. The killing of innocent civilians, of children is in no ways justified in God’s Law. The Israeli general who called all Palestinians animals to justify their total destruction had fallen into the same moral pit as Hamas, as Hitler, as those who chant for the total annihilation of Israel and the Jewish people.
So, here’s the elephant. The Israeli attacks are in fact killing children and other ‘innocent’ civilians. To the extent that this is wanton, or careless or purposeful it is totally unacceptable. All human beings were created in the image of God. Consider this. “An Israeli air attack has hit apartment blocks in a residential area of Jabalya refugee camp, targeting 30 houses. Each house accommodates at least 20 civilians (women and children).”[i] (Is this accidental and collateral?) So, there’s the story – and civilian casualties come with war. But how much of it is real. Hamas has put together an effective propaganda team, about 60 strong that has been used as sources by such outlets as British TV, cable news networks and the Washington Post. Here’s one story that was spread widely around the world. The story was that Israel bombed the Al-Ahli Hospital. “Yesterday, a complete massacre happened. Around 1,000 civilians were killed and martyred.” Looked into by independent international investigators, the missile was quickly proven to be a misfired Islamic Jihad rocket and not connected to Israel at all. And about 50 people died in the incident.[ii] Truth, truly is, the first casualty in war. The world’s accusation is that Israel’s response is disproportionate. But according to international law, an aggrieved party has the right to eliminate a terror threat. Israel is in the process of eliminating Hamas. Still, they have the responsibility to mitigate civilian casualties. You, can’t just chock this up to collateral damage. On the other hand, we cannot fall into the trap of moral equivalency. The purposeful slaughtering of children and beheading of babies is not comparable to taking out terrorists who committed such acts in the first place.
And there is this fact. Terror groups have made it policy to target Israeli civilians – (including school busses) – and hide behind their own civilians, using them as human shields – hoping and using their own civilian casualties as opportunities to skew the narrative.
So, as best I see it, here is the proper Christian position on Israel. The current nation that came into being in 1948 is the nation God promised to restore in so many scriptures. That DOES NOT MEAN we have to support every action or policy of their governments. Human governments fail. Every one of them! When Israeli policies are wrong we must denounce them and pray for correction. We must also realize that many in Israel have opposed government policies in the past. The government is NOT the people. Biblically, we can know that currently, Israel is in rebellion against God because by-and-large they have rejected their Messiah, Yeshua ha Mashiach. Still, they are the Chosen People. Deuteronomy 7:6 tells us, “For you are a holy people, who belong to the Lord your God. Of all the people on earth, the Lord your God has chosen you to be his own special treasure.” (NLT) The ESV translates it as “his treasured possession.” And there is coming a time when God promises “all Israel will be saved.” (Romans 11:26) (NIV) It is God Himself who will write His law on their minds and hearts. “Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah—not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, though I was a husband to them, says the Lord. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.” (Jeremiah 31:31-33) (NKJV)
And here’s God’s definitive word on the matter. God promised Abraham that He would make him “a great nation…. I will bless those who bless you, And I will curse him who curses you; And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” (Genesis 12:2-3) It is our duty to bless Israel. It is further our duty to stand for God’s principles of moral conduct.
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It may be a little hard to wrap your head around the depth of evil spewed by the Palestinian side. It is especially so, because the narrative of the Palestinians as an aggrieved people, displaced from their land, occupied and virtually imprisoned is the narrative being pushed by the media including in most of the West. Step back for a moment from that fairy tale and consider the facts on the ground. What happened October 7 was not outside of the playbook that has served the Palestinian cause. Consider the nature of the attacks. Whole families were woken up and shot, children in front of parents. Babies murdered, some beheaded. Other children tied together and burned. And this was not the work of outlaws of the radical-Islamic society. Crowds gathered in Muslim countries to celebrate the slaughter. Candy treats were passed out to children in Lebanon. In Europe and America Palestinian supporters and their leftist allies rejoiced in the bloodshed. Chapters of BLM joined in, “I stand with Palestine.” The same group called for the destruction of Israel and the family. [The destruction of the family is an admitted goal of Marxism. And Black Lives Matter has declared themselves to be Marxist…in the New York Times.] I am not exaggerating when I say that these were the actions of a culture that had been captured by a demonic spirit.
If you want to understand the demonic nature of that spirit we need look no farther than to Ahed Tamimi, the female terror supporter and activist who is calling for the murder of Israeli settlers in the West Bank. She used Instagram to taunt the Israelis with this post. “We are waiting for you in all the West Bank cities from Hebron to Jenin – we will slaughter you and you will say that what Hitler did to you was a joke. We will drink your blood and eat your skull. Come on, we are waiting for you.”[iii]
Amir Tsarfati noted that about half the murder spree could be credited not to Hamas fighters, but civilians coming out of Gaza. He explained some of the reason for the early success of the attack. Yes, much of the border support around Gaza had been moved to other sectors. But there was another factor. At first, Israeli tanks didn’t fire. There are standing orders that the IDF is not to fire on unarmed civilians. And the tanks were seeing unarmed civilians coming through the fence. It was a fatal mistake.[iv]
The violence of the attack has to be taken in to account when we consider the furious nature of the Israeli response. That does not excuse the wanton slaughter of civilians, the targeting of women and children. But is that what is happening here. Israel routinely announces its’ targets and warns civilians to leave. Hamas and Hezbollah and the like have their own routine. They put military facilities and weapons caches and mortar & rocket sites near schools and mosques and hospitals. When the Israelis say ‘leave the area’, Hamas prevents its’ civilian shields from leaving. To the terror groups every civilian casualty is a public relations weapon.
The spirit behind this war is one that would see the extermination of the Jewish nation. It is in the charter of every Muslim terror group. This is the same spirit that drove the Nazis. That spirit can be seen in the pronouncements of senior Hamas official Ghazi Hamad. “Israel is a country that has no place on our land. We must remove it….[from] all Palestinian lands….We must teach Israel a lesson, and we will do it again and again. The Al-Aqsa Deluge [the name Hamas gave its 7 October onslaught – ed.] is just the first time, and there will be a second, a third, a fourth.”[v]
It is interesting that in Hebrew the word hamas means violence, evil or destruction. In Arabic it is translated zeal, or fanaticism. Ezekiel 7:11, “Violence (Hamas) has grown up into a rod of wickedness.” (KJV) Psalm 74:20, NLT: “Remember your covenant promises, for the land is full of darkness and violence! (Hamas). In Ezekiel 45( we read, “Put away violence (Hamas) and oppression, and execute justice and righteousness.” (ESV) And Isaiah 60:18 gives us this End Times promise, “Violence (Hamas) shall no longer be heard in your land, Neither wasting nor destruction within your borders; But you shall call your walls Salvation, And your gates Praise.”
When considering these events we do well to remember the truth of the matter.
- Israel was an established nation in the Holy Land around 3,300 years ago.
- Islam captured and occupied Jerusalem in 638 AD, over 1,900 years later.
- There never existed a Palestinian people or nation. The term Palestine was a Roman term for the land.
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After World War I, Britain was given a mandate to rule that territory. The original thought was that all of it was to serve as a homeland for the Jewish nation. Instead, the Brits designated what was then called Trans-Jordan or today’s Jordan as the homeland for the Arabs of Palestine. But the Arabs wanted the whole territory and hence the cause of the many wars against Israel.
- The notion of a Palestinian people wasn’t invented until around 1964. Even one of the founders of the movement, Zahir Muhsein, admitted in an interview that it was all a fiction. “The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality, today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese.” Their intention was to unite with Jordan when victory was achieved over Israel.[vi]
Messianic Rabbi Jonathan Cahn pointed out the connection of this attack to the Jubilee, the 50 year feast of the Hebrews which signals restoration to the earlier state. This attack came 50 years after another surprise attack that took Israel by surprise. That earlier event was the 1973 Yom Kippur War, launched on the first sabbath of October, as was this attack emanating from Gaza. In ’73, Israel was nearly defeated before turning the tide on its’ Arab foes. Despite so many enemies coming against them, Cahn is rightfully confident in Israel’s survival. “The nation of Israel lives because the God of Israel lives!”[vii] After all, it was Yahweh that promised that in the Last Days, Israel would come back into the Land and become a nation once again. That prophecy was already fulfilled in 1948 with the rebirth of that nation.
[i] Israeli Massacre in Jabaliya Refugee Camp, Gaza, The Expose, October 31, 2023
[ii] Exposed: Hamas’s propaganda team, Jerusalem Post, November 2, 2023
[iii] Tamimi: ‘We will drink your blood; what Hitler did to you was a joke’, The Jerusalem Post, October 31, 2023
[iv] Amir Tsarfati, October 2023
[v] Hamas member says they will repeat attacks until Israel is destroyed, Ukrainska Pravda, November 2, 2023
[vi] Interview with Zahir Mushein, as recorded by Trouw (Netherlands), March 31, 1977, as quoted in Farah, Palestinian people do not exist,
World Net Daily, July 11, 2002
[vii] Jonathan Cahn on The Strang Report, October 2023
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