What is wrong with the war between Israel and Hamas? Who is to blame? I have raised some common objections and my response to each one.

1st objection: Hamas and militant Muslims will not rest until Israel is wiped off the map and the country is under Islamic rule. Therefore, Israel should protect itself by responding to evil with force.

My Response: If this is so, what kind of action is going to dissuade them, military action or ideological interaction? Ideological engagement is better because it deals with their underlying worldviews and theological basis for believing the land and the city of Jerusalem is theirs. Should Israel be waging a mental war that is filled with academic, philosophical and religious debate\conversation or one that leans more upon warfare strategies and geographical suppression? Even America's war on terror will not be achieved by subjugating people in Iraq or Afghanistan or with military might. Last, I remember in scripture the only way to win your enemies heart is with "truth" and "grace"(John 1). This doesn't negate a countries need for strong military defense. But, an offensive war is going to be best accomplished through peace building. A good sales person knows to answer a prospect's objections, to win their trust and find areas of connection to dialogue about are essential in accomplishing one's goal of selling. Isn't Israel trying to sell an idea and get a certain response?

This ideological war of convincing Muslims that Israel has a right to the land is theological, cultural, historical and deeply emotional\personal. It's like a Turk trying to convince an Armenian that the genocide never happened and the land of Armenia belongs traditionally to them (TURKS). There is so much more in that premise for an Armenian than just words. There are many unidentified emotions that will be evoked. Thoughts affect behavior. So the thoughts must be engaged. The same strategy that was used in the Christianizing of the Greco-Roman world and the civil rights movement of India and America could be employed. There needs to be a non-violent ideological and theological engagement by the West and Israel. But, we are not wiling because we are powerful. Like the Imperialist British and Spanish our missionaries are following the military and trying to clean up the mess and then Christianize the desperate souls who are just about open to anything that will relieve them from the poverty, sickness and pain that war caused.

Also, "intent" (Hamas wants to....) does not justify Israel's radical military response. If someone tells me one day after an argument, "I am going to cut your car tire to pieces". It doesn't mean I have a right to remove all their household knives and never let them use a knife, scissor or sharp object again. A pre-emptive response like we did on Iraq is not sensible or else the world will be fighting wars based on potential threats. How many times have you said you were going to do something mean, but later realized how insensible and dangerous such an action would be. But, even if you did do it we don't arrest and sentence people on intent, but on intent and actual crimes committed. The intent can determine what kind of punishment you get, but it can never alone sentence you to a severe punishment. Hamas' intent to take over the land does not justify a pre-emptive strike or the oppression of  a people so they never rise up to power and potentially attempt such a vice. The only true way to prevent anything like that is to come to terms with your enemies and work towards their repentance. If they refuse all preliminary efforts of reconciliation then you have a justified war based on the actual actions of evil and your countries need to self protect.

Hopefully your response to their evil will be in proportion to their actual actions. May we never wipe out an entire country with NUKES for crimes committed on a few number of our people. Oh I forgot that has been done before!

2nd objection: Hamas started this war by shooting rockets into Israel and now they should be revenged or prevented from doing so again.

My Response:

This may be true and it may not. I have heard reports that both countries at certain points broke their peace agreements. But let’s say it is true. Hamas shot rockets 27 miles into Israel and barely hit a home and killed a very few people. Yes this is not a nice thing to do and it deeply disturbs that national peace and should be dealt with. The question is: HOW? That is the age old question. In 2006 the war with Hezbollah was in response to the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers. Read the following article:

“Hezbollah released a statement saying "Implementing our promise to free Arab prisoners in Israeli jails, our strugglers have captured two Israeli soldiers in southern Lebanon".^[62] Later on, Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah declared that "No military operation will return them… The prisoners will not be returned except through one way: indirect negotiations and a trade of prisoners."^[63]

According to CNN:

The Israeli Cabinet authorized "severe and harsh" retaliation on Lebanon . . . Israel's chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz, told Israel's Channel 10, "If the soldiers are not returned, we will turn Lebanon's clock back 20 years."^[64]

According to the Washington Post:

But retired Israeli army Col. Gal Luft, a former commander in the town of Ramallah, said, "Israel is attempting to create a rift between the Lebanese population and Hezbollah supporters by exacting a heavy price from the elite in Beirut. The message is: If you want your air conditioning to work and if you want to be able to fly to Paris for shopping, you must pull your head out of the sand and take action toward shutting down Hezbollah-land."^[65]

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_operations_of_the_2006_Lebanon_War)

The question we need to ask is: Was Israel's air attacks upon Lebanon a proportionate response to the kidnapping of their two soldiers?

Let me give you an analogy. Imagine you get a phone call from your school that your son or daughter was stabbed in the neck with a pen by another student. They were playing basketball and your child on purpose fouled the student. They were in such rage and so determined to make a statement to other students that they are not a "punk" that they stabbed your child with a pen, in the neck.OUCH! The first thing you would think is, "All that over an intentional basketball foul"! Would that seem fair? Would that seem right? Would that seem proportionate Now look at Israel response to Hamas' bombings. According to the BBC report today,

"More than 600 Palestinians are now believed to have been killed since Israel began its offensive 11 days ago. Palestinian health ministry officials say at least 195 children are among those killed" (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7814772.stm)

The death toll of the Israelis is so small that no one even reports it. If you’re a Christian and have a view of justice that springs forth from the scriptures then you must allow God to define the principle and practice of justice. According to God justice is fairness, equality- Prov. 16:11 Honest scales and balances are from the LORD;
all the weights in the bag are of his making.

Getting what you deserve, nothing less and nothing more. The Bible calls God "just". That is why even though He is gracious and loves us, He still had to pour out His wrath upon Jesus Christ, who became our judgment or sin bearer (Romans 3). There was no simple removal of sin, but a payment had to be satisfied to appease God's justice. Since we sin our payment or wage is death (Romans 6:23). But God in his righteousness pays our penalty. Throughout the Old and New Testament this idea of justice prevails. That is why Paul says in 2 Thessalonians 3:10 that if a person does not work he does not eat. That is why God told Noah,

Gen 9:5-6
And from each man, too, I will demand an accounting for the life of his fellow man.
6 "Whoever sheds the blood of man,
by man shall his blood be shed;
for in the image of God
has God made man.

The principle is to be practiced by the courts: equal punishment for the crime.

Ex 21:23-25
23 But if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life, 24 eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, 25 burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise.

When the woman was caught in adultery Jesus was not negating the law of justice by saying she doesn't deserve to be stoned. He was just pointing out their hypocrisy of only bringing the woman and not the man (biased judgment). Also, they had not considered the fact that they too, most lilkely, had sins worthy of the same punishment of death (hypocritical judgment) (John 8). So, when judging others of their sins, people in authority should ask themselves, do I have the ability to exact this punishment and if so, do I the same thing in private or public yet see myself as exempt and do I show a bias towards others who are caught in the same sin.

Favoritism in the exercises of justice even towards yourself is an oxymoron. That is a sin that God hates:

James 2:8-9
8 If you really keep the royal law found in Scripture, "Love your neighbor as yourself," you are doing right. 9 But if you show favoritism, you sin and are convicted by the law as lawbreakers


Ex 23:2-3
2 "Do not follow the crowd in doing wrong. When you give testimony in a lawsuit, do not pervert justice by siding with the crowd, 3 and do not show favoritism to a poor man in his lawsuit.

Matt 7:1-5
7:1 "Do not judge, or you too will be judged. 2 For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. 3 "Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? 4 How can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? 5 You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye.

This is what Israel has been doing. They have not been exercising eye for an eye, but a "family for an eye"! They did it in the war with Lebanon in 2006 and are doing it again. It acted in that war to make a point and not execute justice. Not only did Lebanese civilians die, but some were Arabic Christians. Some of those people where worshippers of Jesus. Yet many evangelicals would never criticize Israel, and would give them more status than even a Christian. This goes against the thought of the New Testament, which is to love all people, especially the people of the same faith family.

Gal 6:10
10 Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers.

3rd objection: Israel has kept the people in Gaza under sever subjection for years, even under the so-called peace treaty. They, Hamas, have a right to be angry and respond violently.

My response:

Hamas and oppressed people will never win the hearts and minds of their oppressors without a clear strategy of non-violent protest, engagement\conversation, prayer, possible martyrdom and logical and rational arguments for truth, justice and love.

All true and lasting revolutions are as ideological and emotional as the conversion of unbelievers to Christianity. There is a cultural revolution where people exchange one set of values for another. Oppressed Palestinians must learn from Jesus, Apostles, Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and the early Protestant Reformers who preached and shed their blood and eventually persuaded much of Europe to abandon the dead practices of the Roman Catholic Church during that period. This is what Peter was talking about in 1 Peter 2:18-25. He is not endorsing slavery as we know it in America. Rather He uses Jesus as model for all those who are oppressed and "how" they should respond:

18 Slaves, submit yourselves to your masters with all respect, not only to those who are good and considerate, but also to those who are harsh. 19 For it is commendable if a man bears up under the pain of unjust suffering because he is conscious of God. 20 But how is it to your credit if you receive a beating for doing wrong and endure it? But if you suffer for doing good and you endure it, this is commendable before God. 21 To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps.

22 "He committed no sin,
and no deceit was found in his mouth."  

23 When they hurled their insults at him, he did not retaliate; when he suffered, he made no threats. Instead, he entrusted himself to him who judges justly. 24 He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed. 25 For you were like sheep going astray, but now you have returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.

Peter was not talking about passivity or naïveté. He himself exemplified courage, open proclamation and rebuke to the authorities (Acts 4). Yet he did not protest with guns, bombs or swords. But, his WORDS, PRAYERS, LOVE and COURAGE were the persuading elements. Eventually the blood that he spilled would be his final witness to His Christian message. Palestinians need to be challenged and taught how to bring about true justice and change under the hand of Israel by following such a pattern as outline in 1 Peter 2.  There is no other way to find liberation from social oppression, but through non-violent protest, embodied with deep spirituality and love for your enemies. Jesus did it in person and through the generations of early Christians, until.... YOU know the rest of the story!

4th objection: The land belongs to Israel, since God himself promised it to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Arabs and their Islamic faith is connected to Shem, the son God kicked out of the land.

My Response:

How do we know God is not removing Israel from the land by bringing their enemies to take it from them? By resisting them as a Christian couldn't you be fighting God's will as did the people of Jeremiah's time who refused to believe that God was sending the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar (Jeremiah 6)? They had settled in their mind that their inheritance of the land made them immune to exile and destruction. As far as they were concerned they were “Ok with Yahweh!” and there would always be peace.

Jer. 6:11-15
11 But I am full of the wrath of the LORD, and I cannot hold it in.
"Pour it out on the children in the street and on the young men gathered together; both husband and wife will be caught in it, and the old, those weighed down with years. 12 Their houses will be turned over to others, together with their fields and their wives, when I stretch out my hand against those who live in the land," declares the LORD. 13 "From the least to the greatest, all are greedy for gain; prophets and priests alike, all practice deceit. 14 They dress the wound of my people as though it were not serious. ‘Peace, peace,' they say, when there is no peace. 15 Are they ashamed of their loathsome conduct? No, they have no shame at all; they do not even know how to blush. So they will fall among the fallen; they will be brought down when I punish them," says the LORD.

In fact, this promise of destruction and removal of military protection was part of the Mosaic Covenant. God had established an "if" relationship. "If" you worship me acceptably and practice the moral and ceremonial laws with proper motives and methods I will bless, "if" you don't I will be your worst enemy.

Deut 28:20-26
20 The LORD will send on you curses, confusion and rebuke in everything you put your hand to, until you are destroyed and come to sudden ruin because of the evil you have done in forsaking him.   21 The LORD will plague you with diseases until he has destroyed you from the land you are entering to possess. 22 The LORD will strike you with wasting disease, with fever and inflammation, with scorching heat and drought, with blight and mildew, which will plague you until you perish. 23 The sky over your head will be bronze, the ground beneath you iron. 24 The LORD will turn the rain of your country into dust and powder; it will come down from the skies until you are destroyed. 25 The LORD will cause you to be defeated before your enemies. You will come at them from one direction but flee from them in seven, and you will become a thing of horror to all the kingdoms on earth. 26 Your carcasses will be food for all the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth, and there will be no one to frighten them away.

Judges 2:10-15
After that whole generation had been gathered to their fathers, another generation grew up, who knew neither the LORD nor what he had done for Israel. 11 Then the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the LORD and served Baal. 12 They forsook the LORD, the God of their fathers, who had brought them out of Egypt. They followed and worshiped various gods of the peoples around them. They provoked the LORD to anger 13 because they forsook him and served Baal and the Ashtoreth. 14 In his anger against Israel the LORD handed them over to raiders who plundered them. He sold them to their enemies all around, whom they were no longer able to resist. 15 Whenever Israel went out to fight, the hand of the LORD was against them to defeat them, just as he had sworn to them. They were in great distress.


2 Chron 36:15-21
15 The LORD, the God of their fathers, sent word to them through his messengers again and again, because he had pity on his people and on his dwelling place. 16 But they mocked God's messengers, despised his words and scoffed at his prophets until the wrath of the LORD was aroused against his people and there was no remedy. 17 He brought up against them the king of the Babylonians, who killed their young men with the sword in the sanctuary, and spared neither young man nor young woman, old man or aged. God handed all of them over to Nebuchadnezzar. 18 He carried to Babylon all the articles from the temple of God, both large and small, and the treasures of the LORD's temple and the treasures of the king and his officials. 19 They set fire to God's temple and broke down the wall of Jerusalem; they burned all the palaces and destroyed everything of value there. 20 He carried into exile to Babylon the remnant, who escaped from the sword, and they became servants to him and his sons until the kingdom of Persia came to power. 21 The land enjoyed its Sabbath rests; all the time of its desolation it rested, until the seventy years were completed in fulfillment of the word of the LORD spoken by Jeremiah.

Even Jesus pronounced a future curse and judgment upon the land and their people because they rejected their Messiah:

Luke 23:27-31
27 A large number of people followed him, including women who mourned and wailed for him. 28 Jesus turned and said to them, "Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me; weep for yourselves and for your children. 29 For the time will come when you will say, 'Blessed are the barren women, the wombs that never bore and the breasts that never nursed!' 30 Then "'they will say to the mountains, "Fall on us!" and to the hills, "Cover us!" '   
31 For if men do these things when the tree is green, what will happen when it is dry?"

Has Israel become Christian today? Have they accepted their Messiah and escaped God's wrath? What makes them exempt from the land promise of blessings and curses of the Mosaic Covenant? Jesus said the land and the temple would be trampled upon until He returns? Are we positive that this return to the land of Israel is the final one, or could it be a Book of Judges kind of experience? Did God save them because of a righteous judge or leader, like in the book of Judges only to turn them over to their enemies again?

Could the British or the Zionist Movement leaders be a type of righteous judge?

In actuality have the people really repented according the Christian definition? Or is there another kind of Gospel for Jews and another for Gentiles as some evangelical pastors believe? Is our current situation in Israel since 1948 really a fulfillment of Luke 21:24?

24 They will fall by the sword and will be taken as prisoners to all the nations. Jerusalem will be trampled on by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.

Was the time of the Gentiles fulfilled or is that a secondary view of prophecy that we think is true, but not 100% certain? Is this uncertain view shaping how we view Israel position in the Middle East and somehow exempting them in our minds from doing any evil that might mitigate land cursing again. This may mean that Arab, Muslims rule Jerusalem like they did during the Middle Ages again.

I don't know for sure, but what I do know is that the areas of scripture that are clear (such as the practice of evangelism, love, worship and justice) seem to be more obscure for some as it relates to the middle east conflict, while secondary views of prophecy and unbiased Israeli support based on particular passages of scripture seem to take precedent. Like the scripture that declares "Pray for the peace of Jerusalem" being equivalent to never criticize the Jews and show support in any way to Arabs or Muslims. Last time I checked, not even Christians should be exempt from criticism and correction. Those whom you love, you discipline and correct.

Revelation 3:19
19 Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline. So be earnest, and repent.

Proverbs 27:5-6
5 Better is open rebuke
than hidden love.
6 Wounds from a friend can be trusted,
but an enemy multiplies kisses.

I am not negating the fact as a Christian that God gave the land to the Jews. He DID! But, their residence is always conditional and their treatment of foreigners and aliens should consider the fact that they to have lived in exile and mistreated by oppressors. It is Yahweh that showed them mercy and they to should extend it to others.

Ex 22:21
21 "Do not mistreat an alien or oppress him, for you were aliens in Egypt.

Conclusion: I think this issue needs to be approached with sensitivity and balance. There are many components to the struggle. Each rock needs to be moved and what is under that rock needs to be examined. Simple Evangelical Christian Cliches will not work. There is more to the issue then religious intolerance. It is emotional, it is social, it is theological, it is philosophical, it is financial, it is political, it is a mess! God has conflict resolution prescriptions laid out in scripture and they need to be examined in totality and applied holistically. No simple answers to a very complex situation. No stereotypes for a people who have all suffered more than we Americans can understand. These are some of my thoughts concerning the Israeli and Muslim conflict.

Written by :

Jack Hakimian