As I watched the barbaric, evil GoPro videos Hamas released on October 7, 2023, I told my husband that Israel’s response needed to be swift and deadly. Watching people dance and throw rocks at terrified Israeli hostages being paraded through Gaza’s streets is something I will never forget.

Thankfully, Israel didn’t do what I desired. I knew it had the capability to bomb Gaza beyond recognition. But that’s not how Israel conducts war. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) follow a code of ethics stating soldiers cannot use force to harm innocent civilians or unarmed prisoners. Contrarily, Hamas terrorists mingle among Gazan civilians, using them as human shields.

Israel’s Difficult Dilemma

Israel has a highly complex situation on its hands. Hamas has built more than 220 miles of tunnels under Gaza. On October 7, these terrorists took Israel’s children, wives, husbands, mothers, fathers, grandmothers, and grandfathers hostage into those tunnels. Hamas’s provocation to war that day certainly would justify a dramatic response from Israel.

Yet, Israel’s war protocol would seem almost too humane to believe except that the United Nations (UN) has confirmed the nation’s virtuous tactics. And if you’re familiar with the UN, you know it is not Israel’s friend, and it never shows the Jewish nation much sympathy nor any favoritism. Despite Israel’s upright, democratic actions, the UN has charged the Jewish state with more violations than any other country in the world. 

Also confirmed by the UN, Hamas intentionally builds its tunnel entrances under its own schools, hospitals, and apartment buildings.

But the UN acknowledges that before Israel attacks an area or building, the IDF texts, calls, drops notes, and sends drones that repeat in Arabic a message to evacuate the area. Israel desires to kill terrorists and to allow civilians to flee. The nation strategically destroys buildings to gain access to terrorist tunnel systems to search for hostages, then destroy Hamas’s heartline by which terrorists move about Gaza undetected. Also confirmed by the UN, Hamas intentionally builds its tunnel entrances under its own schools, hospitals, and apartment buildings. No other group so blatantly uses its own people to protect its military and not the opposite. 

War is tragic. Civilians die when war breaks out in their land. The true number of casualties coming out of Gaza has changed throughout the war. Hamas continues to change its death tolls with no differentiation between combatant and civilian deaths. The IDF estimates it has killed around 13,000 Hamas terrorists, making the death ratio of Hamas terrorists to civilians roughly 1:1.5. The UN estimates that a typical death ratio of combatants to civilians in modern, urban warfare worldwide is 1:9. Israel’s actions are a far cry from the accusations of genocide spewed against it.

Iran’s Reach

It is hard to ignore Iran’s fingerprints throughout the war in Gaza and now the war in Lebanon. Soon after the Iranian Revolution in 1979, Iran established Hezbollah in Lebanon. Much like Hamas did in Gaza, Hezbollah infiltrated Lebanon’s society, offering help to communities with affordable housing, healthcare, and education in exchange for loyalty. Now, more than 40 years later, parts of Lebanon are unrecognizable apart from Hezbollah, Iran’s proxy.

Hamas, unlike Hezbollah, is not Iran’s proxy but instead more of a partner, bound together with the shared mission of destroying Israel and the Jewish people. It has accepted millions of dollars from Iran to aid in their common genocidal goal. Iran lurks behind both Hamas and Hezbollah’s fronts against Israel.

Focusing on Hope

Why is everyone set on destroying Israel today? As one friend recently told me, “When I put Israel in its rightful place in God’s Word, everything else falls into place.” Israel and the Jewish people have a purpose today and in the future, according to God’s Word. And while those who hate God hate His Chosen People and the Jewish nation, God’s plan—from Genesis to Revelation—will not be thwarted. 

Israel and the Jewish people have a purpose today and in the future, according to God’s Word.

Our Jewish and Israeli friends feel alone. Christians need to stand for truth now. This war is not as complicated as some people pretend. Israel has a right to its homeland, where the Jewish people have lived for millennia. It also has the right to defend its land. To date, Hezbollah has fired more than 15,000 rockets, missiles, and bombs into Israel since October 8, 2023. Hamas promised that October 7 was only the beginning. These terrorists trained for the invasion for years.

So what should a country do? It must take precautions to never allow such a massacre to happen again. Israel could have carried out the entire operation by air and finished it by now. Instead, it sent its sons and daughters in by land to minimize civilian casualties and bring back its hostages. 

The words of Golda Meir, the late prime minister of Israel (1969–1974), still ring true: “We can forgive the Arabs for killing our children. We cannot forgive them for forcing us to kill their children. We will only have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us.” Please pray for the peace of Jerusalem (Psalm 122:6).

Resources to learn more about Israel from The Friends of Israel Gospel Ministry:
It Is No Dream by Elwood McQuaid
Five Facts You Should Know About Israel by Renald Showers
Israel Always by Chris Katulka
Israel: Who’s Land Is It Anyway? by Jennifer Miles
Israel My Glory May/June 2024

Photo Credit: Adobe Stock

About the Author

The tragic events in Israel on October 7, 2023, and the response in the following months have caused many—some for the first time—to take notice of the conflict Israel has long faced. It’s easy to sit in our safe homes and workplaces and discuss the war in Gaza and Lebanon. “It’s complicated,” many of my friends and family have told me in our conversations over the last year. But is it really?

Watching the world turn on Israel after the nation was invaded on that quiet October Saturday holiday morning, its people kidnapped, raped, burned, and murdered, lit a fire of justice under me that has yet to be extinguished. It has been hard to convince Israel’s detractors that the nation’s response to the war is justified. The truth almost completely contradicts what the legacy media feeds the West by covering the nightly news with innocent, lifeless Gazan babies. 

The small nation of Israel operates uniquely compared not only to the rest of the Middle East but to the world. (By the way, it cannot be said enough: Israel is small! It could fit inside my home state of Tennessee five times!) But what separates this nation from other Middle Eastern countries? 

Israel’s Desire for Peace

The State of Israel always has sought to live peacefully with its neighbors. At its inception in 1948, the last thing Jewish settlers and immigrants wanted was war. After all, many had just left war-torn countries in Europe, where they were enslaved in concentration camps, watching their loved ones tortured and murdered. (To learn more about how the modern State of Israel began, see the list of resources located in the links at the end of this article).

Israel gave this land, bought by Jewish settlers in 1946, to the people of Gaza, hoping to stop increased violence in the area.

In 2005, Israel withdrew entirely from Gaza, an approximately 140 square-mile strip of land along the Mediterranean Sea, bordering both Israel and Egypt. Israel gave this land, purchased by Jewish settlers in 1946, to the people of Gaza, hoping to stop increased violence in the area.

This was a heart-wrenching moment in Israel’s modern history. The Jewish people had cultivated this formerly barren land, which many Arabs believed cursed, and transformed it into a place of agricultural beauty. The Israeli military forcefully removed its own citizens living in these communities. Israel built walls between itself and Gaza, stopping almost all suicide bombings and attacks on Israeli civilians in the area.

Once the wall was built, only a few Gazans were granted daily working papers, allowing them to enter Israel to work in the surrounding communities known as the Gaza Envelope. Many Israelis wanted Gazans to work in their communities. They paid these workers a better living wage than they would be paid in Gaza. Many of Israel’s communities along the Gaza border were home to peace activists who believed in achieving harmony with their neighbors in Gaza. Sadly, many of these activists were murdered or kidnapped on October 7, 2023.

Life Above All

Just like the Israeli settlers of Gaza in 1946, the entire State of Israel is full of those who bought and restored barren land. The prophet Ezekiel wrote “They will say, ‘This land that was desolate has become like the garden of Eden; and the wasted, desolate, and ruined cities are now fortified and inhabited’” (Ezekiel 36:35). Land was purchased and cultivated, swamps were drained, streams rerouted, and cities renewed. Life was brought back to this forgotten land.

I once stood with a group at a kibbutz in northern Israel on the border of Lebanon and Syria. Our guide showed us the boundaries of Israel, Syria, and Lebanon by pointing out the brown, arid landscape on the Lebanese and Syrian side and the green, lush vegetation on the Israeli side. Israelis call the line separating the two sides the “Green Line,” crafted in 1949 as a line of demarcation that briefly served as Israel’s de facto international border. While it earned its name for the green ink diplomats used to mark the map, it’s also appropriately named because it delineates where Israel’s green land begins. Although God “sends rain on the just and on the unjust” (Matthew 5:45), His blessing on the land of Israel is apparent. The difference between Gaza and southern Israel appears eerily similar.

Israel desires to bring life back to the once-fertile land. Yet their neighbors seem to focus only on the Jewish people’s destruction. 

Hamas hoped it could use Israelis’ hope for peace and love for life against them.

The day after October 7, 2023, Ali Baraka, a senior Hamas official, said on national television, “The Israelis are known to love life. We, on the other hand, sacrifice ourselves. We consider our dead to be martyrs.” Hamas hoped it could use Israelis’ hope for peace and love for life against them. The hate Hamas cultivated inside of Gaza manifested on October 7, 2023, when Hamas invaded southern Israel, killing more than 1,200 innocent Israelis and migrant workers from other countries. Why? Because it hates the Jewish people and believes the land they bought and cultivated for decades belongs to Palestinians. Stripping away deceptive media and emotion, we see Israel grow in love and Hamas in hate. 

In our next article, we’ll look at Israel’s unique approach to war, in particular, the war in Gaza.

Resources to learn more about Israel from The Friends of Israel Gospel Ministry:
It Is No Dream by Elwood McQuaid
Five Facts You Should Know About Israel by Renald Showers
Israel Always by Chris Katulka
Israel: Who’s Land Is It Anyway? by Jennifer Miles
Israel My Glory May/June 2024

Photo Credit: Adobe Stock

About the Author

Some today like to claim that the modern State of Israel has nothing to do with biblical prophecy but is merely a secular, political creation. However, nothing can be further from the truth.

Consider these five points:

1. It’s true—the modern State of Israel is currently a secular society that does not adhere to its biblical heritage and calling from God. However, this does not revoke God’s unconditional and eternal promises of blessing, land, descendants, nation, kingdom, and spiritual regeneration. All these covenantal promises are not dependent on Israel’s worthiness but on God’s faithfulness and the glory of His holy name (Ezekiel 36:22; Romans 11:28–33).

2. The prophetic scattering among the nations (Deuteronomy 4:27; 28:64) was not fulfilled in the context of either the Babylonian or Assyrian captivity. It was only literally fulfilled after AD 70 with the destruction of the Jewish Temple and overthrow of Jerusalem (Luke 21:24). The Jewish people were scattered among the nations of the world for nearly 2,000 years. Subsequently, Israel’s prophetic regathering from among the nations more likely finds fulfillment in 1948 with the rebirth of the modern State of Israel. 

Israel is now regathered as a nation. Only God could have done it!

3. God scattered Israel among the nations in judgment for its disobedience (Deuteronomy 30). Therefore, only God can regather Israel in His grace (Ezekiel 36:19, 24). Man cannot override God’s decisions and program. Once God regathers and replants Israel in the land, it will not be uprooted again (Amos 9:15). Israel is now regathered as a nation. Only God could have done it! He alone scattered Israel. He alone regathers Israel. He alone will preserve Israel and fulfill His promises and plan.

4. The prophetic process is clearly outlined: Israel first will be regathered physically and then renewed spiritually (Deuteronomy 30:1–10; Ezekiel 36:22–28; 37:11–14). Therefore, although Israel is yet to recognize Jesus as the Messiah and be nationally renewed in heart (Jeremiah 31:33), its physical restoration is the first step necessary in the prophetic process.

5. God’s promises to Israel are national in nature. Every individual is still required to have faith in Christ for salvation. Therefore, not every citizen or generation of Israel automatically inherits these national promises. However, God promises a remnant of faith will always remain (Romans 11:5). And it will be a future remnant of Israel that will, by faith in Christ, inherit the national Kingdom promises as God’s holy nation (Romans 11:25–29). Therefore, despite modern Israel being in unbelief, a remnant of faith remains, and a remnant is destined to be redeemed. 

So, is Israel today a fulfillment of biblical prophecy?

Yes! Israel is a prophetic miracle, proving again God’s faithfulness despite Israel’s (and humanity’s) unfaithfulness. And what God has begun He will carry to completion!

About the Author

Photo: Adobe Stock