DITTO, THE RETURN

Life often feels like another scene in the 1993 film Groundhog Day. Some things change, some things seem to never change.

I just finished a successful set of meetings with some of my Israel Allies Foundation colleagues. We gathered with State Legislators from around the U.S. at the annual American Legislative Exchange Council where we received broad support for our efforts to promote faith-based political advocacy for an undivided Jerusalem. We are fighting for Israel’s right to exist with Jerusalem as its eternal Capital at the legislative level to avoid the need to battle with military forces.

Still in the afterglow of progress made I'm headed home after ten days, listening to CNN's reporting as I await my plane in Dallas, Texas. This network, along with the majority of the worldwide media seems intent upon framing the current Israeli operation in Gaza as a conflict between two governments.

On the one hand, Israel is a sovereign nation, a member state of the United Nations and a country that is a world leader in technology, medicine, agriculture and manufacturing. It has a diverse culture, religious freedom and democratic rule.

Hamas on the other hand is a terrorist organization and is not a legitimate government in the traditional sense. They have violently broken every “humanitarian cease fire” brokered so far in this conflict. The so-called “governing leadership” of Hamas does not even reside in Gaza, their leader, Khaled Meshaal, lives in luxury in Qatar while the Gazans live under the tyrannical rule of multiple Islamic factions loosely governed by Hamas. Instead of building infrastructure that would improve Gazan life they build extensive tunnels from which to wage war against Israel.

While Arab leaders strangely remain mostly silent, protestors, fueled by unbalanced reporting in Europe are attacking Jews in the streets. Rather than addressing the realities of the situation, both the U.N. and the U.S. leadership seem fixed upon temporarily stopping the conflict without addressing the underlying issues.

All the while, the latest humanitarian cease-fire in Gaza that was agreed to last 72 hours only lasted less than 2. And “why?” you may ask. The answer is obvious, as has been the case in every other brokered cease-fire in this conflict, as soon as it began Hamas and its coalition of terrorists killed two Israeli soldiers and kidnapped another. This is what terrorists do. Why do we expect differently?

It is high time that the U.S. Administration quit pressuring the Israelis to accept cease-fires until they are finished dismantling Hamas’ capacity to fire missiles into the State of Israel and to slip terrorists into Israeli communities to murder and kidnap.

Sane people never want the devastation to families and individuals war brings. At its core, war is evil; its very nature is the antithesis of Judeo/Christian values. May this conflict end soon.

Please pray for peace in Gaza. Pray for the peace in all the Middle East. Pray especially for the peace of Jerusalem.