Cheering for Israel?

What should our attitude be toward the Hamas-Isreal conflict?

On October 7, 2023, Hamas launched 5,000 rockets into Israel from the Gaza Strip, and 6,000 Palestinians rushed across the border. They killed 1,200 people, most of whom were civilians.1 The invaders committed many atrocities, including acts of sexual violence and mutilation.2 They took 251 hostages, including women, children (at least ten were under six years old), and the aged (at least nine were over eighty years old).3

The Israeli government vowed to recover all of the hostages, to destroy Hamas, and to ensure that Gaza would never again be a threat to Israel. On October 27, 2023, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) initiated a large-scale invasion of Gaza. The IDF put in place a complete blockade of the territory and began a devastating bombardment that left at least 80% of the population homeless, the territory’s infrastructure demolished, and, as of this writing, over 40,000 killed; these include 6,000 women and over 10,000 children.4

Hamas claimed its attacks were justified, prompted by many years of Israeli oppression. The Hamas charter calls for the “obliteration” of Israel and says it is the religious duty of Muslims to “fight Jews and kill them.” Israel, Hamas says, has no right to exist.

Initial responses to the October 7 attacks were strongly supportive of Israel across the world. There were forty-four nations that “publicly expressed their unequivocal condemnation of Hamas and explicitly decried its tactics as terrorism.”5 At least 20 nations said that Israel had a right to defend itself forcefully.6

Over the fourteen months that have passed, the world has watched horrible scenes of destruction in Gaza. The full-throated support of Israel’s friends has quieted. Israel is increasingly portrayed as a heartless colonial aggressor that exists on stolen land. Its response is labeled as far from proportionate, and as a result, sympathy for the Palestinian cause has grown.

What should our attitude be toward all this, as Christadelphians?

Our Natural Sympathies

Our natural sympathies are with Israel for three reasons.

First, because the Jews are God’s chosen people, we think of God’s word to Abraham: “I will bless those who bless you, And I will curse him who curses you.” (Genesis 12:3). We recall God’s unbreakable covenant that Israel will abide forever (Jeremiah 31:35-37) and Zechariah’s word: “thus says the LORD of hosts… he who touches you touches the apple of His eye.” (Zechariah 2:8).

The second reason our sympathies are with Israel is our recognition of the long history of Jewish suffering and the deep yearning of its people for peace in their homeland. In fulfillment of the prophetic word, the Jews became dispersed through all nations.7 The Scriptures vividly portray the uncertainties and hardship of Jewish life among the nations:

Over the last thousand years, Spain, France, England, Switzerland, Hungary, Portugal, Italy, and other countries have expelled Jews. The countries of Poland, Russia, and Germany viciously persecuted them. And yet, for all this, they retained their identity as a people.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Zionist movement brought Jews back to their land, fleeing Russian persecution. German atrocities in the 1930s and 1940s resulted in many thousands of displaced Jews. The time was right for British colonial rule in Palestine to come to an end, and in 1947, the newly formed United Nations proposed a partition of the land into Jewish and Arab states. In 1948, the modern state of Israel became official, and over the next five years, more than 700,000 Jews immigrated to Israel,9 more than doubling its Jewish population.

This brings me to the third reason our natural sympathies are with Israel: The existence of a modern nation of Israel is one of the most emphatic proofs of the inspiration of Scripture. 

In 1848, John Thomas wrote:

The restoration of Israel is a most important feature in the divine economy. It is indispensable to the setting up of the Kingdom of God…here is, then, a partial and primary restoration of Jews before the manifestation, which is to serve as the nucleus, or basis, of future operations in the restoration of the rest of the tribes after he has appeared in the Kingdom.10

So, Christadelphians naturally feel a great excitement about the existence of a modern nation of Israel. We know that the Jews are God’s chosen people, that they have suffered terribly, and that the formation of a modern nation of Israel was an essential antecedent to the second coming of the Lord. We rejoice in Israel’s existence. 

And we condemn the aggression of Israel’s opponents. In its 1948 declaration of statehood, Israel said, 

We extend our hand to all neighboring states and their peoples in an offer of peace and good neighborliness, and appeal to them to establish bonds of cooperation and mutual help with the sovereign Jewish people settled in its own land. 

While the declaration was being read, six Arab armies pounced, their goal to drive the Jews into the sea. The present conflict has its roots in that aggression.

How Should Believers Feel About Israel’s War With Hamas?

Our thinking about Israel sometimes morphs from the spiritual to the political. I’ve heard brethren echoing Israel’s prime minister, saying that the destruction in Gaza is sad but necessary, that the devastation Israel has rained on Gaza is justified, that Israel has, in fact, been very careful to avoid civilian casualties, that Hamas deserves all the blame for using its people as human shields. Besides, all Palestinians are pro-Hamas, so they deserve to suffer.

Such casual hard-heartedness is not becoming of us as brothers and sisters of Christ. 

What’s more, there is no need for us to try to justify Israel’s actions. To do so is to overlook an essential feature of Bible prophecy, that Israel’s restoration would be as an unspiritual, hard-hearted nation. 

An uninspired prophet might have said, “Someday, Israel, everything will turn out fine for you because you are good people and deserve it.” But God’s word portrays the newly reborn nation as filthy and stony-hearted, in need of a new spirit.11 Israel’s behavior in Gaza is consistent with that picture. Her self-reliant spirit is epitomized by the words of her first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, spoken on May 19, 1948, just five days after the new state came into existence:

Never have we lost faith in the conscience of mankind. Always we shall demand of the world what is justly ours. But morning and evening, day in and day out, we must remind ourselves that our existence, our freedom, and our future are in our own hands. Our own exertions, our own capacity, our own will, they are the key.12

Stirring words, but with no mention of God! As John Thomas noted in Elpis Israel:

The pre-adventual colonization of Palestine will be on purely political principles; and the Jewish colonists will return in unbelief of the Messiahship of Jesus, and of the truth as it is in him.13

We love the Jewish people and are thrilled at the existence of the modern nation. But this does not mean that we should be politically pro-Israel or try to justify her bad behavior. 

Praying For The Solution

Seeing the terrible suffering in the holy land and throughout the earth, we should never harden our hearts. “Whoever shuts his ears to the cry of the poor will also cry himself and not be heard.” (Proverbs 21:13).

But what can we do? 

We can pray for the peace of Jerusalem and lament for the suffering of the afflicted. In the Olivet prophecy, Jesus said that “unless those days were shortened, no flesh would be saved; but for the elect’s sake those days will be shortened.” (Matthew 24:22). I have always read this as meaning that “for the elect” the days would be shortened, as they were during the Egyptian plagues.14 But that’s not what the passage says. It says “for the elect’s sake”—literally, because of the elect.15 I suggest the passage might also mean the elect will pray the days be shortened, God will hear that prayer and respond, and the suffering will end—for everyone, not just the elect.16

Let us pray for our Lord’s soon return and his reign of righteousness and peace when he establishes his house as a house of prayer for all nations, when “nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore” (Isaiah 2:4), and when Israel will have a new heart and spirit.

Bill Link,
Baltimore Ecclesia, MD