| One of my dearest friends was born in a kibbutz two miles from Gaza. His village was able to evacuate when Hamas launched its murderous assault last Saturday. However, a neighboring kibbutz called Kfar Aza was targeted by the terrorists.
Yesterday, my friend forwarded to me a survivor’s description of what happened:
A thriving community of one thousand people, men and women, was brutally crushed within forty-eight hours. Whole families, parents, brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers, grandfathers, and grandmothers were murdered in cold blood. Their houses were turned into piles of earth and ashes, and their lives as they knew them—destroyed. They lost their homes, their livelihoods, and all their property. They lost neighbors, both relatives and beloved friends, in one of the greatest terrorist attacks in history. Those saved from the slaughter were trapped for two days under fire until they were rescued with only the clothes on their backs.
An Associated Press reporter quotes an Israeli army general who stood amid the wreckage of the village: “You see the babies, the mothers, the fathers in their bedrooms and how the terrorists killed. It’s not a battlefield. It’s a massacre.”
Harvard students blame Israel
The Israeli death toll has passed 1,100 at this writing. President Biden confirmed yesterday in his address to the nation that fourteen US citizens were killed in the conflict and that Americans are known to be among the hostages held by Hamas.
And yet . . . |
All my life I remember being told that “if one forgets (negative) history, one is doomed to repeat it,” or some variation of this. How true this has proven to be. It seems to only take two to three generations for all that may have been experienced and learned to be forgotten, or worse, denied through intellectual dishonesty, utter self-absorption and trusting in the wisdom of the world instead of the truth of the bible. When I was in 7th grade, I had to get permission from my parents to watch a film about the Holocaust so that as young students, we’d understand the evil perpetrated by Germany’s Nazi war efforts, resulting in the genocide of roughly six million Jews (and the murders of millions of others). I remember sitting in the chemistry lab watching the dead bodies thrown into pits and the emaciated persons with sunken eyes being liberated by the Allied Forces from the concentration camps in the US military films intentionally taken to document the war crimes and for the sake of our posterity. And now, many young persons and so many of our academic institutions sit idly by as Hamas terrorists are glorified and subhuman acts of violence and murder are deemed “justified” by those who adhere to a false religious belief and a false god. Chants of “gas the Jews” are being reported by the press with nominal indignation, as if this was sad, but not that big of a deal. That is a HUGE DEAL for those of us who learned history. God help us! The Jewish people are God’s chosen. Jesus, upon His glorious return, will come to Israel. The Palestinian people – who have been abandoned by all of Israel’s Arab neighbors – have cultivated an entire culture and identity of hate, and have refused to accept multiple opportunities to come into peace agreements. Like Iran and other countries, they are more interested in promoting evil and seeking the destruction of the Jews than seeking the truth and helping themselves. Everything about this affirms the truth of the bible. Ephesians 6:12 (NKJV) – “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, [and] against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.”