Early last Saturday, Hamas, the military wing of the Palestinian liberation movement, launched a surprise attack on Israel inflicting some grievous wounds on her. An Israeli minister described Hamas and the entire Palestinians as animals and vowed revenge. I was expecting that when the retaliation comes, it will come in a decent form that will show the whole world that the Israelites, the acknowledged people of God, are different from the people they were describing as animals.
They will show clearly that they are a refined, decent people with a milk of human kindness who will prove that they are different from the people they just described as beats. Where Hamas killed and abducted persons who were not supposed to be harmed in a war, I expected to see Israel showing the sacredness of human blood. But Israel came and has embarked on a massive collective punishment of every Palestinian. I am greatly disappointed. It is the soul that sinneth that ought to die.
For days now, the Palestinians have been reduced to rubles; there has been relentless pounding of Gaza from air and sea. Besides, a ground offensive is being contemplated with the goal of driving the Palestinians to nowhere because there is no where else they can possibly go to. No Arab nation will be willing to receive them. What, with many of them already friends of Israel and many more seeking to become Israel’s friends? Electricity, fuel and food have been cut off from them. Israel has won the Palestinians on the war field. It has also comfortably defeated them on the world diplomatic stage as well. Today, Palestine is an orphan. Yet, Israel is not ready to show mercy. Israel, a supposed people of God, does not seem to know what forgiveness is or looks like.
Are these Israelites truly the children of God? Do they know what is called fairness, large-heartedness and even the fear of God of whom they are said to be his chosen? The God I know does not take pleasure in the shedding of human blood. Do they know the doctrine called proportionality?
In fact, are the people of Palestine and Israel truly the children of father Abraham? What is going on in the Middle East? Abraham, we are told, fought a war but he did not exhibit the kind of beastliness that we see in his two children today. When his nephew Lot was among those abducted from Sodom, we are told that he mobilized and armed his three hundred and eighteen trained servants who were born in his household and went in pursuit of King Chedorlaomer and three other kings that did the evil thing. He retrieved Lot, all the goods stolen as well as the women and the people abducted. He did not seek revenge or the goal of showing his power.
But my greatest shock of all is that the whole world is watching in silence, afraid to speak boldly lest they offend Israel which has the backing of the lone policeman of the world, the USA. President Joe Biden has ordered an aircraft carrier laden with an intimidating array of aircraft to station nearby Israel to intimidate anyone to dare say or do anything in support of the besieged Palestinians. Is what is being carried out by Israel a war of God or a war of occult people to satisfy their gods their taste for blood? Most presidents, prime ministers and members of parliament of most Western nations today who are supporting Israel are serving Satan and not God which explains why even when the Palestinians have been reduced to a beggarly state, the whole world is still asking Israel to do more harm to them. Are we people of the world now initiated into a deadly cult of silence when the big and powerful among us commence their beastliness?
While we watch the massacre of the Palestinians, blaming them for savagery against the innocent people of Israel, no one is asking about the two-state solution that has been put forward as the cure for this relentless fratricidal war. Why is Israel against the two-state solution? Why did the Oslo agreement not deliver a state to the Palestinians?
More importantly, why did we allow the world to be reduced to the command of one unfair, unjust and very partial Government? As far as I am concerned, the action of USA President Joe Biden is a war crime. Biden has hamstrung one party to a war and has armed and allowed the other more powerful one to pound and grind his weaker opponent to a mince meat. Is this how peace, justice and fair play will be promoted in the world? Besides, Israel, the party Biden supports, does not even observe the fair rules of war. The man who does these must be declared a war criminal and Biden should be declared a war criminal, arrested and tried at The Hague.
As a Christian, I am expected to exhibit an unconscious affinity with Israel, to support their wars against the Arabs unquestionably. But I know the God I truly serve. He is a God of justice and abhors violence and a hand dripping with blood even if you are fighting wars supposedly his own. When David, a warrior in God’s war causes, wanted to build God a temple God said no. he should wait for Solomon his son whose hands do not flow with blood.
What is happening in the Middle East with the rest of the world beholding in fearful silence is a scar on the conscience of humanity. If sinners rise up one morning in furious savagery and wreak havoc on an enemy they obviously loathe so much, the world should condemn them but ask why they carried out such acts of loathsome savagery. When Israel and her blood-thirsty backers are done with Gaza, let sane and God-loving people of the world demand that one last meeting that will bring peace between the Palestinians and Israel and the world be held.
As I was writing this, Israel, the man who holds the yam and the knife, had ordered the 1.1 million Palestinians living in northern Gaza to evacuate to southern Gaza within 24 hours, the type of order that only a wicked and heartless conquistador can give to a conquered people. Let the sane world at least plead with Israel to tamper justice with mercy because obeying that order will be worse than remaining and dying where the people are now. And that is the kind of treatment that breeds the type of resentment and frustration that led to the type of horrific and horrendous Hamas’attack exactly a week ago.
