Discussing Israel and Gaza: Boundary markers and warning signs

In the days and weeks following the outburst of conflict between Israel and Hamas, many have undertaken to give a full history and explanation of the conflict, and make sense of who is doing what and why.

This post will not attempt to give that history, nor to trace all the motivations and historical contexts. We do not pretend to be an important voice on the subject, but this author is burdened with a few injunctions and reminders that hopefully will keep the wise and temperate reader away from sin and folly.

We also do not pretend to be an unbiased voice. Believing that the reader is better situated when they know explicitly the biases of the author, rather than having to discern them from what is written, we will lay out what you should know before reading on.

This author is politically Pro-Palestinian, meaning that in our understanding, there is no biblical, geo-political, historical or legal justification for the (a) establishment of the state of Israel, (b) the invasion and occupation of Historic Palestine by the Zionist entity, (c) the ongoing displacement of Palestinian people and (d) the ongoing erasure of Palestinian culture and history in Palestine.

Since this entire platform is one dedicated to Christian reflections and engagement, it should be blindingly obvious that this author staunchly affirms and defends the sanctity and equal value of all human lives, whether Palestinian, Jewish, Ecuadorian, Icelandic or Belarussian (there are more nations in the world, but you get the point). It is intellectually lazy beyond belief to read these last two paragraphs and smear them with that worn out label of ‘antisemitism’. Don’t do it. Use your brain.

What follows here will be a laundry list of warnings, followed by some points for consideration. Consider it like going for a walk on a beautiful but dangerous forest hike with a friend who has walked here before. We don’t care to strongarm you into a particular climbing route, just to say “oh hey, slippery rocks there!” if you get too close to a dangerous precipice.

Some warnings

1. The first warning we must give, which is sadly ignored by Christians as much as non-Christians, is the critical importance of not carrying out a judgement against someone before evidence has proven it. In other words, innocent until proven guilty. If you think you believe in ‘innocent until proven guilty’, but that when the people you hate are accused of some evil you default to believing the accusation rather than testing it, you are a hypocrite and a poor judge. Do not believe an allegation until it is proved by independent lines of testimony. This is what the Bible teaches. Yes, this means that some crimes will not be punished in this life, because there won’t and can’t be sufficient evidence. This other article goes into this idea in more detail.
   
2. As hard as it may be to not waver from this, all human being are made in the image of God, we are human persons and not mere animals, and it disrespects the Imago Dei and therefore the Creator to call another human an ‘animal’, ‘savage’, ‘brute’, ‘monster’, etc. You can call behaviour animalistic, use savage as an adjective or adverb, but do not define another person with those words. It is a slippery slope when you start using non-human language to refer to those whom you hate.
   
3. You don’t necessarily need to have an opinion on a complicated issue you haven’t studied. This author knew nothing about the Ukraine/Russia conflict when it broke, so he said nothing, and felt no need to take to social media with ‘the correct take’. Think about it. Is there a complicated subject, issue or fandom you are invested in? How would you react if in 24 hours, millions of people who had watched 20 mins of mainstream media talking points started pontificating as if they were the experts? There’s nothing wrong with acknowledging that you don’t know enough to have a relevant opinion.
   
4. This author would warn you against framing this simply or primarily along religious lines (as a Jewish vs Islamic conflict). It is always tempting to simplify conflicts down to one axis of categorisation, and then to choose the side of that axis you side with. For example, imagine portraying the systematic sterilisation of the Uyghur people as an Atheist vs Muslim conflict, since the CCP is officially atheistic, and the Uyghur people are a predominantly Islamic people group. You would think about it very differently than if you framed it as Tyrannical Government vs Ethnic Minority. We’re not saying that either of those is more important or better, just that they both relate to some of the facts, but not all of them. So, this conflict is partially involving a religious element, but do not take the intellectually lazy path of simplifying it down to a religious conflict and then saying ‘oh, the Muslims have been starting wars ever since Islam started. God’s Jewish people have been on the defensive for all of history. Isn’t it obvious who is wrong here?’
   
5. This one we cannot stress firmly enough. You are engaged in a dire, sinful, disastrous and irresponsible wrangling of the Scriptures if you would dare to say that Joshua’s conquest of Canaan is a Biblical precedent for a modern day predominantly European nation to conquest the lands of Historic Palestine, without some direct prophetic word from the Bible or a prophet (though we would argue covenantally that this kind of thing would no longer happen) to justify it. To put it simply, Joshua had his instructions straight from the Most High God, and he was a man of God. Netanyahu’s wickedness is not a result of direct revelation from God, and Netanyahu himself is about as far from a man of God as you can get. Likewise, this cannot be a continuation of Joshua’s mandate. The Palestinian inhabitants of Historic Palestine are not the Canaanites, and they would still not be the Canaanites even if 2% of them were somehow found to have Canaanite heritage. Likewise, Netanyahu and the vastly Atheistic modern nation of Israel shares only one thing in common with Joshua’s nation, and that is the name Israel. They are not the same.
   
6. Further, this author would warn you against any wholehearted or unequivocal support or rejection of the parties involved. We believe that no Orthodox (meaning correct beliefs, not the Eastern Christian tradition) Christian can give her wholehearted and unequivocal support to the ‘nation’ Israel, nor to leadership of Fatah in the West Bank, and obviously not Hamas in Gaza. Any support or advocacy we give must come with some qualification. If you support Israel for whatever reason, you must be prepared to criticise their sins with unerring and impartial justice. If you support Palestine, or the rightfulness of the Palestinian people to self-determination, you still must be prepared to disavow the corruption in the administration of Fatah, as well as the sinful Islamic beliefs of Hamas. There is no room for unequivocal support. If you read this, and your first response is something like ‘but you’re not saying that we should abandon God’s people Israel right?’ or ‘but we have to still support Israel even though they make some mistakes!’, then this author has no problem accusing you of Idolatry, which is a sin of the first order.
   
7. Next, this author would admonish you strongly to analyse your heart, and see what manner of hatred is there. You ought to hate evil. Let us repeat that. You ought to feel hatred in your heart when evil is committed. However, it must be hatred for what God hates. If you hate Jews because they look funny with their curls and big shawls, shame on you. Repent this instant. If you hate Israel because you have some ideas about Hollywood executives being some kind of nefarious actors, get your act together and repent, that’s not right. If you hate Palestinians because their name sounds a bit like ‘Philistines’, if you really squint, then not only repent of your lazy sin, but do your damn homework. If you hate Arabs because their skin is darker, because their women are often covered in intimidating Burqas and Niqabs, shame on you. Repent, and know that Christ suffered on Calvary for that sin. If you hate Palestinians because you believe the Dispensational rot that the unbelieving Israelis of today need to build a third temple in Jerusalem to usher in the return of our Lord, then shame upon shame on you, for your ignorance and the way you have let a ridiculous and unbiblical system dishonour the once-for-all sacrifice of Christ. Repent, and for goodness sake buy a book on covenant theology, and throw away those Left Behind books, and anything by Hagee.
   
8. This is the last of our major warnings. It serves nobody and is a sin before God if we repay injustice with injustice, or if we condone it when we see others doing it. Decimating and razing Gaza is not a just retaliation against the actions of Hamas. Instead, it means that the army perpetrating that has created a new injustice, for which they stand guilty before God. No, rather if Hamas has committed the sin, then only Hamas can justly be punished for it. Before you open your mouth to say ‘but Hamas hides in hospitals and schools!’, just take one look at what has been done to Gaza. If you want to lie to yourself and pretend that every one of those residential buildings, schools and hospitals they destroyed was actually a Hamas target, then we pity you, but don’t lie to the rest of us.

So, those eight warnings are the things that this author wants you to hear loudest. They are calls for wisdom, temperance, justice, fairness, goodness and self-control. Going on from there, we have some more specific and detailed positions and criticisms to offer, for your consideration.

Even when referring to the conflict between Hamas and Israel, you have to make choices, and whether you know it or not, those choices communicate political stances and ideas. Consider the options below, how they communicate on that basis of the same essential list of facts, but position the information very differently.

1. On the 7th of October, Hamas terrorists started a war with Israel, attacking them on one of their religious holidays.
2. The pressure created by the illegal Israeli occupation of Gaza boiled over on the 7th of October, with armed Hamas units pushing back into Israel in an act of desperate resistance.
3. The war between Hamas and Israel has losses on both sides.
4. One of the most high-tech militaries in the world is tyrannising, murdering, shepherding and arbitrarily detaining a scattered, marginalised, oppressed and malnourished people, all in the name of national security.

The content of these four statements is irrelevant, our point in writing them is to show you that there is no neutral way of speaking about this conflict. Don’t we all know the phrase that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter? Whether you say that this is a ‘conflict’, a ‘war’, a ‘resistance’, or something else, gives a political attribute to what kind of conflict you are speaking about. Are the parties both mighty nations that have chosen in their war rooms to go to war? Or is there only one nation involved, and on the other side of the table a scattered and disunified set of resistance groups? Are they roughly equal in size, or is this conflict between a boot and an ant?

These questions, whether you intend to think about them or not, are answered when you choose your words. That is why we try not to refer to this as a war between nations. It isn’t. In fact, the student of politics would know that there is currently no Palestinian state, there are merely two Occupied Territories which are Palestinian, namely the West Bank and Gaza. Neither of these is a self-governing, independent state. So first things first, this conflict is between one nation (‘Israel’) and one of the Palestinian Occupied Territories (Gaza).

Let’s stop there. Is it between Israel and Gaza, or Israel and Hamas? The obvious asymmetry with that nomenclature is that we pit a nation against a paramilitary government, which makes the conflict confusing. Is Israel fighting only against Hamas? Would they want the peace, unity and prosperity of Gaza under a different leader?

The next thing to consider will raise the hackles of anyone who has a Zionist affiliation, but the truth of it is unavoidable, no matter how much they would put the history books through the Speakwrite. The Israeli army invaded a land during a war, which is something that happens all the time, and is fair game. However—and this is the critical bit—they didn’t leave. International law (and common sense) both tell you that after you defeat the foreign nation that you’re invading, you and your troops exit their borders and go back home. So, you have an internationally funded and propped up army (the IDF), occupying a foreign territory, and they are in conflict with the people who live there. The people who live there (mostly Arab Palestinians) are bitter from their occupation, dehumanised from being treated like cattle and sub-human by their Israeli military police, and some of whom have channelled that anger into their participation in military resistance, whether a solo act as simple as throwing a rock at a passing armoured vehicle, or taking up arms within an organisation like Hamas.

This is not a war between rival nations with rival armies. This conflict is between an enormous and well funded state of the art army living in someone else’s house, and a rag-tag bunch of paramilitary organisations who have taken up arms in their anger and their desire to push the invaders out of their lands.

Yes, that is a biased way of looking at it, but bias is unavoidable, so the best thing you can do is not to pretend neutrality, but to acknowledge your bias and let the reader judge as they will, which is what we invite you to do.

The next thing this author feels burdened to address is the involvement of Dispensational theology on the American attitude towards Israel. As an Australian Christian, this author was blessed to grow up far from the influence of Dispensationalism, however it is so pervasive in America, that if you try to describe it to an American, they typically won’t hear you describing some unusual modern theological system, but the core mechanics of the faith that everyone they know not only believes but assumes. It is like describing water to fish.

Given that less than half of the readers of this blog are from America, here are a few points to give a description of some features of Dispensational (Dispy from here on) Theology.

• ‘Literal’ interpretation.
  Dispy hermeneutics insists upon ‘literal’ interpretation wherever possible, as opposed to the majority of biblical hermeneutics which insists that the genre of the book or text should determine in what sense it should be understood. For example, when Jesus calls himself a shepherd, a gate, a vine, a door and a bridegroom, he was none of those things literally, but the student of Scripture can understand that an analogy is being made. On the other hand, when Jesus is raised bodily from the tomb or walks on water, the text does not give us permission to spiritualise or analogise those texts, in their contexts they are clearly a straightforward and ‘literal’ description of what happened. Dispy literalism takes this too far, and so when it encounters the Cosmic Deconstruction language in the Olivet Discourse (i.e. Jesus talking as if the cosmos itself will fall apart, just as Isaiah before him did, to signify national judgement) they insist that it must be a literal description, and that the sun itself will literally go dark, the stars will literally fall out of the sky, etc.
• Focus on Israel, sharp distinction between Israel and the Church.
  Dispensational frameworks see the ethnic nation Israel as the overall focus of the Bible, and see the Church as this entirely new and separate body that is created during Paul’s day, and which will be teleported off to heaven in an event called the rapture, after which history will once again be centred on national ethnic Israel, and the system of temple worship which Israel used to practise. These two groups are on different ‘tracks’, where their peace before God is concerned. God deals with them in entirely different ways, and doesn’t deal with them both concurrently.
• Dispy Premillennialism
  Whereas Historic Premillennialism is a Christian Eschatological position that has existed in the church for ages, Dispy Premillennialism is the ‘end-times’ views that go hand in hand with this system. There are some very nuanced differences between the advocates of the sub-positions (pre-wrath, mid-trib, post-wrath, etc) and no love lost between those camps, but as an overview we can summarise this position as the idea that the Christian Church will only continue to be oppressed and hunted down by the evil world system in our history, and eventually (if not these very days!) the sea beast from Revelation will make a deal with the modern nation Israel and then that deal will be violated, one third to two thirds of the world Jewry will be killed, the church will be ‘raptured’ (teleported off to heaven in the blink of an eye), where we will reign with Jesus in heaven, then seven years of hell on earth (the ‘wrath’) will afflict the Jews and pagans (or if you don’t believe in the rapture, you’re hiding underground in your bunker with your packet meals and powdered milk), and after that period Jesus comes down and establishes his throne in Jerusalem, from which place he will have his distinctively Jewish Kingdom, meanwhile Christians will keep reigning from in heaven.

These three main ideas (Literal hermeneutics, Israel/church bifurcation, Premillennialism) are a pretty good place to start with understanding Dispensationalism. You may have begun to understand while reading that summary why this modern American theological system would cause such a ruckus for Middle East politics. Millions of these Christians expect that there will not be peace in the Middle East, but only more war. If they do see peace coming, they are identifying it as a phoney deal that the bad guys are planning to break halfway through, and then destroy Israel. What’s more, they are expecting, preparing for, and in some cases funding the construction of a third temple in Jerusalem. Their support for the modern nation Israel is their support for the Old Testament people properly called Israel. It is as if Netanyahu’s Israel is the natural branch in Paul’s analogy, and Trump or Biden’s America is the engrafted branch. As such, it is as if America is a special nation, called to be the last line of defence for God’s people in the Middle East, as they are beset on all sides by the evil dirty Arabs. Now, this author and probably most of you dear readers know immediately that this is ridiculous and inappropriate, but you have to understand how widespread it is. There are more people who truly believe this than there are Australians!

So, Dispensationalism is bad news but it is also so, so cringe! These Christians wearing Israeli flags and devoting themselves to a predominantly atheistic, Christ-rejecting European-heritage nation is so cringe. The only amusing part of this is that it creates this one topic on which this author finds himself agreeing more with raving lefties than with the erstwhile sensible and ostensibly Christian conservatives.

Interested reader, if you are wondering what this author thinks the biblical and future significance of Israel will be, considering the critical things we have said about Dispensationalism here, please look forward to a post we are researching and writing regarding Romans 11. This author is certainly excited about it.

One final point before we wrap up. The Temple is an important symbol in the Bible. It is the place where God dwells, and where his worshippers come to meet with him, and to bring their sacrifices, and to be justified in his sight. The wonderful news is that as Christians, we do not need to go to any building for this, because the Spirit of God has come to dwell within each one of us, so we are Temples. We are the fulfilment of the Temple, and though we are not grand pieces of architecture, we are far more glorious temples, because God’s Spirit will never depart us, and no invading army can set up the idol of their God in our temples. The fact that we are temples is also glorious because it reminds us that no more animal sacrifice is necessary or acceptable. If you don’t understand this, read the book of Hebrews about 15 times. Christ’s once-for-all sacrifice on behalf of his people (which is his bride, which is all believers in God from Adam until the last day) was more potent and enduring than any animal sacrifice could ever be. Trusting Jesus for our salvation means trusting that his sacrifice was sufficient.

Anyone who would dare to make an animal sacrifice now is trampling underfoot the blood of Christ, proclaiming his sacrifice to be insufficient, and posturing as if they could make a better or more necessary sacrifice. Can you think of anything that would be a higher insult and blasphemy before God than that? Can you think of any action or statement that would be a fuller rejection of the gospel of free grace than that?

Every person who is funding the erection of a Third Temple is setting money aside that will work towards the express and explicit denunciation of Christ. How would you react if your friends and Elders at church were setting aside money for a shrine to River gods or Vishnu or Thor or Baphomet in Jerusalem? Even that (we maintain) is less of a pungent sin.

Lastly, let us draw your attention back to the only true and living solution to this intractable conflict. It is not policy, war, ethnic cleansing, a bad compromise, more funding, legislation, divestment, sanctions, boycotts or education. It is news. The news that will solve this conflict is the news that one Jewish man born in Occupied Palestine entered death, conquered it, and returned to our world to tell us how we can pass through death, if we only come with him.

The only way to unwind over a hundred years of strife is for the innermost parts of the Israelis and their neighbours to be changed by a Sovereign Spirit who is at work, bringing spiritually dead rebels into wonderful life in Jesus’ Kingdom. It may not happen in our lifetime, indeed in this lifetime we may only see more ethnic cleansing in Palestine at the hands of the Israeli army, but if the Lord should tarry some more, his gospel is unstoppable, and it will go through Palestine and her neighbours, and God will redeem every one of his elect, irrespective of their bloodline. We ardently believe that on the last day, many will be gathered before the throne who were Hamas militants, who were Gazan children, who were IDF soldiers, who were unbelieving Israeli politicians, and they will all embrace one another arm in arm, without partiality or the holding of grudges, because the ground is level at the foot of the cross, and it will be the mighty cross to which they bend the knee. So pray earnestly for the salvation of every Jew and Arab, and for the true Shalom that Messiah is bringing. Love your neighbours, and do not show partiality.

Be still, and know that he is God. He will be exalted among the nations. He will be exalted in the world.