Fox News reports that President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris will meet in the White House Situation Room today (9/2/2024) with the U.S. team negotiating for release of the remaining hostages taken by Hamas on October 7, 2023. This follows Saturday’s discovery of six recently-murdered hostages, including Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who was a U.S. citizen.
In response to Hamas’ murders of the six hostages, mobs of protesters took to the streets in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and other cities on Sunday (9/1/2024), with crowds of up to 500,000 protesters expressing frustration and anger, and demanding that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu do more to secure the release of the remaining 101 hostages.
The Fox News article may be read in full HERE.
My brothers and sisters, I would never in any manner attempt to minimize the justified heartbreak and frustration over having a family member abducted, held, tortured and potentially murdered by Hamas. Lord have mercy! I’ve learned over the decades, however, that it can be very beneficial to look at certain situations in a more dispassionate manner – from the outside looking in – to minimize oversight and bias, which can cloud reasoning due to passion and heartache.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and his leadership team, are in an untenable situation, but one that must be hit head on – and bravely so. If the protesters really mean that they want ‘a deal’ no matter what, so long as the war crime of taking hostages is appeased, then in reality, what is being asked of Netanyahu is to stop short at the cusp of fully destroying the terrorist organization Hamas. Hamas, even in the face of the near total destruction of Gaza and the death of thousands upon thousands of Palestinians, continues to fight Israel in complete unrepentance and to murder the hostages it kidnapped on October 7, 2023.
Nowadays, it’s unwise or even a ‘fools errand’ to simply trust everything the national government of any nation has to say (sadly), but the weight of the evidence in the Israel-Hamas War is clear that Israel did not instigate the Hamas attack, the resulting hostage taking, nor the subsequent missile and drone attack by Iran.
In fact, Hamas’ hostage-taking is in-and-of-itself a war crime, strategically undertaken in the knowledge that in recent decades Western nations have become much more risk averse and accepting of hostage deals instead what used to be the norm – refusing to promote more terrorism or hostage taking by negotiating with terrorists and offering the hostage takers ‘a reward’ for their bad behavior.
If Israel were to suddenly cease the war effort and remove itself from the Gaza Strip and other security oversight operations along the West Bank and elsewhere, history proves that Hamas would again step in, pretend to care about the Palestinian people, blame Israel for its own actions, dig more tunnels, indoctrinate more school children, foster continued hate for the Jewish people, and soon, there would be yet another attack. And moreover, this doesn’t even consider the potential actions of Hezbollah and Iran in such a scenario.
As this writer has stated before, Hamas, breaks every known and internationally-accepted rule of warfare. It is a terrorist organization supported by Iran and its ‘big brother’ terrorist organization Hezbollah, with the expressed goal of killing all Jews and removing the nation of Israel from the face of the earth.
Let’s remember what the bible has to say about the Jewish people and Israel:
Deuteronomy 7:6 (NKJV)
“For you [the Jews] are a holy people to the Lord your God; the Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for Himself [emphasis mine], a special treasure above all the peoples on the face of the earth.”
Zechariah 2:8 (Amplified Bible)
“For thus says the Lord of hosts, ‘[a]fter glory He has sent Me against the nations which plunder you—for he who touches you, touches the apple of His eye.’”
And, as hard as it may be to accept, the bible says that there is a time when war becomes necessary:
Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 (Amplified Bible)
A Time for Everything
“There is a season (a time appointed) for everything and a time for every delight and event or purpose under heaven—[a] time to be born and a time to die; [a] time to plant and a time to uproot what is planted. A time to kill and a time to heal; [a] time to tear down and a time to build up. A time to weep and a time to laugh; [a] time to mourn and a time to dance. A time to throw away stones and a time to gather stones; [a] time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing. A time to search and a time to give up as lost; [a] time to keep and a time to throw away. A time to tear apart and a time to sew together; [a] time to keep silent and a time to speak. A time to love and a time to hate; [a] time for war and a time for peace [emphasis mine].”