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Diary of a (Maybe) Retired Pastor

Tag: Israeli government

  • Jesus Wept

    mayberetiredpastor

    Jesus Wept

    I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. 3 For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my people, those of my own race, 4 the people of Israel. Theirs is the adoption to sonship; theirs the divine glory, the covenants, the receiving of the law, the temple worship and the promises. 5 Theirs are the patriarchs, and from them is traced the human ancestry of the Messiah, who is God over all, forever praised!

    Romans 9:1-5 New Testament, The Bible.

    Palm Sunday. Two thousand years ago, a man stood overlooking Jerusalem and wept. He wept because a people whose history should have led them to the light of God chose, instead, spiritual darkness. They welcomed Jesus as King but then crucified Him as blasphemer. They would not acknowledge the gift of divine grace that was being offered to them.

    Today, little has changed. Jerusalem remains the city over which Christ weeps. Its leaders still do not understand the grace to which their inheritance points and they continue to act as if they were children of darkness (1). The Old Testament teaches clearly that the orphan and the widow and the stranger are protected by God, but they kill and destroy the orphan and the widow. They starve a people into submission. They go back on their promises. Such a people, the Old Testament prophets say, will be broken beyond repair because they have turned away from God and done evil (2).

    The Jewish people are privileged because they were given the commandments of God and they were taught by Him in intimate and direct relationship. They were destined to be a people of light bringing goodness and blessing to the world. They were prepared to welcome the Son of God. Many Jewish people today live in the light of their inheritance bringing blessing to the world, but Jerusalem and her leaders have turned away from their inheritance. That way leads only to judgement.

    1. The Gospel of John 8:42-44, New Testament, The Bible
    2. The Book of Jeremiah 18:9-10, Old Testament, The Bible

  • The Statue of Ozymandias

    mayberetiredpastor

    The Statue of Ozymandias

    4 I have allotted to you as an inheritance for your tribes those nations that remain, along with all the nations that I have already cut off, from the Jordan to the Great Sea in the west. 5 The Lord your God will push them back before you, and drive them out of your sight; and you shall possess their land, as the Lord your God promised you.

    Joshua 23:4-5

    The last year has made it evident that the government of Benjamin Netanyahu is driven by the belief that the rightful borders of modern Israel are the borders of ancient Israel (variously defined in the Old Testament). They consider it not merely a matter of historical inheritance but the promise of God Himself. It is theirs by divine right. Consequently, ceasefire negotiations have merely been a smokescreen behind which the Israeli government can complete its effective annexation of Gaza. It is the reason why the return of the hostages has never been a major priority and why Israeli settlers in the West Bank are brazenly encroaching on Palestinian lands. It is the reason why the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) has been able to operate a ruthless campaign of mass civilian casualties even while claiming it is minimising civilian casualties (an essentially meaningless claim). The ethical framework of divine right provides the moral justification and moral imperative – what they are doing is not only justifiable, it is holy.

    The UK Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, has urged the UN Security Council this week to insist on a ceasefire by Israel, but western leaders, in particular, have not understood that conventional international responses will be ineffective because the Israeli government is no longer operating within the same political framework. Even if not stated in so many words, Netanyahu and his government are engaged in an holy enterprise.

    Israel is no longer talking the same language as the US or the West.  As a result, Israel is deaf to the blandishments of the West, which leaves only coercive actions – refusing to supply military equipment to Israel, economic sanctions – or hand-wringing. Netanyahu’s government has, probably rightly, judged that the latter is what will happen.

    Those who are religiously inclined in the West (and many western leaders, especially in the US, profess to be so inclined) may well struggle with what appears to be clearly stated in the Christian Bible concerning the borders of Israel. But the Christian Bible is not just the Old Testament, it is also, and primarily, the New Testament, and with the New Testament there came a hermeneutical shift of tectonic proportions initiated by Jesus Himself. Jesus read the Old Testament so differently from His contemporaries that it caused huge tension between Himself and the Jewish authorities. For the New Testament, Israel is so much more than borders on a map. Indeed, political borders are irrelevant. The Israel of the New Testament is a people knowing no borders, it is unbounded, encompassing peoples from every nation and language having no geographical limit. The promise of God in the Old Testament is fulfilled in the New Testament in an astonishing way beyond any mortal anticipation, and just as the Old Testament states, God does it Himself. The borders that Netanyahu and his government are pursuing are a mirage in the sands of history, no more holy than the statue of Ozymandias.  

  • What on Earth is Israel Up to?

    mayberetiredpastor

    What on Earth is Israel Up to?

    I don’t understand what the Israeli government is up to. Last week, IDF Special Forces triumphantly trumpeted the rescue of two Israeli hostages. That is, indeed, good news for the hostages and their families.  But, in the process, an entire hospital was put out of action for the foreseeable future and hundreds of patients had to be evacuated. The total number of hostages rescued by the IDF is 3. If I remember correctly, in the whole of this period since the Hamas atrocity, the IDF has managed to kill 3 Israeli hostages by accident, and 2 others (if we believe Hamas sources) died as collateral damage from one of their own bombing attacks (apparently, a total of 11 bodies have been returned1) . Rather crudely put, that seems like a score line of 3 rescues and 16 killed (at worst) or 3 rescues and 5 killed (at best) by IDF action. Regardless, it seems that we are dealing with bottom line negative numbers in terms of freeing hostages! And that’s after reducing most of Gaza to rubble and killing tens of thousands of Palestinians. In contrast, negotiation has managed to repatriate a total of 78 Israelis, 23 Thais and 1 Filipino2 – 102 people. It seems that further negotiations in Paris are close to seeing a further 30 – 40 hostages being released3. The IDF appears to be hopelessly inefficient at repatriating hostages, so why bother?

    Of course, the Israeli government has never stated (I think) that the deployment of the IDF was to rescue the hostages – a fact that the hostage families seemed to have quickly realised when they marched on the Knesset to demand the rescue of their loved ones. The deployment was to ensure the eradication of Hamas. Even so, comprehension struggles. How, exactly, does reducing most of Gaza to rubble, killing tens of thousands of Palestinians and generating worldwide opprobrium against Israel eradicate something as nebulous as Hamas? As I understand it, its main organs lie outside of Gaza in any case! And even if the IDF were able to kill every single Hamas “operative” currently in Gaza, the actions of the IDF has already sown the seeds of the next generation of Hamas fighters. In the next generation, there will still be no peace for Israel.

    But there is one explanation that makes a kind of sense. In an early BBC interview4, a member of the Israeli Knesset candidly affirmed that the aim was to “encourage” the Palestinians to leave Gaza. This makes sense of the mass destruction, the mass killing, the throttling of energy and supplies, and the forced migration within Gaza. If the aim is that the Palestinians leave Gaza en masse so that it can be occupied by Israel then the IDF appear to be doing an effective job. Of course, they would be committing  a few war crimes and, perhaps, genocide along the way, but no one really cares about that, do they?

    1 https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog-february-24-2024/#liveblog-entry-3231521 acc. 15.40 24/2/24

    2 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-67477240 acc. 15:49 24/2/24

    3 https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/hamas-source-deal-sees-6-week-truce-200-300-prisoners-in-exchange-for-35-40-hostages/ acc. 15:55 24/2/24

    4 https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001t18r/hardtalk-simcha-rothman-member-of-the-israeli-knesset-religious-zionism-party +13:23 mins ;  acc. 17:41 24/2/24