Tuesday, July 22, 2014

THE ENEMY ABOVE

The principle problem Israel faces as it seeks to protect its citizens within its own borders is not the enemy it faces on the ground, rather, it is the enemy it faces in the air. No, Hamas does not have an air force; the enemy in the air is the international meddling promoted on the airwaves around the world.

In a recent article, José María Aznar, former Prime Minister of Spain stated: “Israel's problem lies largely in the international community. At minimum, Hamas leaders know from their own experience that Israel fights with one hand tied behind its back: Israel cannot respond intensely because it would be accused of "disproportionality;" Israel cannot inflict neither much damage nor many enemy casualties because it would be accused of crimes against humanity; Israel cannot take too much time for its military response because nobody wants to see how horrible all wars are.”

Israel must constantly defend its people and property while the rest of the world debates its right to exist. Its leaders must weigh every step, every action and every response to attack against how it will be portrayed by the worldwide media. No other nation in the world is so constantly scrutinized as it seeks to protect its citizenry.

Never has a nation been treated with such insolence as has Israel. They are constantly threatened and attacked. While the Israeli government and people are not without flaws, there is no moral equivalence between a rocket fired toward a town with the intent to terrorize innocent people and a retaliatory, precision airstrike of a rocket launcher in Gaza that has purposely and continually been fired toward homes, schools and synagogues.

While both Israelis and Palestinians alike must ultimately examine the “man in the mirror”, assess their own positions and find a way to live near one another in peace, the attempt to frame terrorism and military retaliation in defense of one’s nation as morally equivalent must stop.


Please pray for the peace of Jerusalem and all the surrounding lands and peoples.

Monday, July 21, 2014

DRILLING DEEPER

The worldwide media almost never puts news stories into sufficient context. The result is a barrage of “urgent” stories that are superficially covered, only to be replaced by the next news flash. A great example is the article published by CNN yesterday under the Headline: “As death toll rises, fighting between Israel and Hamas lights up Gaza skies”

The report outlines many of the events in Gaza over the last couple of days. Buried toward the end of the article is the following: UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency) admitted Thursday it found 20 missiles in one of its schools in Gaza and suggested the missiles belonged to Hamas, which is using U.N. sites "to commit a double war crime by targeting Israeli civilians while hiding behind Palestinians civilians."

While the UNRWA officials did “strongly condemn” the find, there is more to this story than a discovery of a few weapons.

The Qassam rockets used by the Palestinians are over seven feet in length and weigh just under 200 pounds each. There were twenty of these “hidden” in a school run by the United Nations. Does anyone actually believe that twenty rockets, each with a warhead containing 22 pounds of explosives, were secreted into the school and stored without the complicity of those managing the school? In other words, were not the UNRWA personnel involved?

How does this not become a major story? Imagine a private school in your town storing this kind of military weaponry to be used to terrorize, maim and kill innocent civilians. Now imagine that your local government (Hamas in this case) in complicit cooperation with the United Nations was behind it.

It is no longer sufficient to casually trust the general news media’s capability to get the story right.


Pray for truth to prevail and pray for the peace of Jerusalem.