Where is the Heart of God in Gaza?
Where is the Heart of God in Gaza?
So many people being killed. So much suffering. If the Bible is true, God’s heart breaks for those civilians who are suffering. And it needs to be stopped.
But there is so much more.
God’s heart is also for Israel, his chosen people through whom the Messiah came, and around whom the end times is prophesied to play out. And who are constantly under threat or attack from those who surround them.
Yet the group conveniently escaping most of the blame is the the group responsible for everything: Hamas.
Israel’s main desire is to exist in peace as a nation–and for 3000 years, minus the brief period when the Arabs pushed them out, Israel is the only nation ever established on that land. Palestine was never a state. Israel maintains peace with all its neighbors, as long as they don’t start bombing Israel.
But Hamas’s main, and publicly stated, desire is the annihilation of Israel.
Israel put up the wall not to harm the Palestinians but to keep suicide bombers out of Jerusalem. Israel maintains a blockade on the coast not to harm the Palestinians but to keep shipments of bombs from reaching Hamas. For this reason even Egypt blocks their border with the Gaza strip.
No nation on earth would tolerate a neighbor bombing them and digging tunnels under the border to send attack troops. Imagine how Americans would react if Mexico started doing to us what Hamas does to Israel.
Hamas purposely shoots rockets from densely populated areas, knowing Israel will target those locations and that civilians will be hurt and killed. And how many countries like Israel will warn people around targeted areas to evacuate before firing?
Why are people–Palestinians and outsiders alike–so superficial as to blame Israel, when Hamas repeatedly starts and continues conflict, violating every ceasefire and treaty, and sets its own people up for slaughter? It’s despicable.
Clearly Hamas knows they cannot win a military conflict. They’re not trying to. They’re trying to win a media war and get international opinion on their side. And they do it by sacrificing their own people in the incessant conflicts.
Certainly God grieves over the carnage in Gaza. How can he not? But don’t blame Israel too much. If Hamas had its way, along with Iran, and certainly a lot of Muslim nations that have been quiet on the matter, they would slaughter every single Jewish person in Israel.
Before the U.N. and the Western powers reestablished Israel in 1947–because they had been persecuted and their homeland occupied–the so-called land and people of Palestine were an ignored backwater place that no other Muslim nation cared about. Israel turned the desolate, third-world place into a thriving agricultural, technological, industrial power.
The whole dishonest scenario against Israel will never end–no matter how much they negotiate for peace. As long as they exist, they will be hated and wanted dead by their neighbors, who clearly don’t want them to even exist. We’re delusional fools to ignore this.
I won’t legitimize Israel’s building settlements in the West Bank, but they do have every reason to eradicate the weapons and fighters who seek to destroy them. God’s heart is certainly with them even amidst all the carnage.
How will all this ultimately end? The Bible gives us previews.
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