Posted on 01/26/2025 2:01:46 PM PST by CondoleezzaProtege
When I first heard news of airstrikes in Gaza, I remember thinking, Good. I recoiled at the thought and was even more alarmed at my lack of ability to sympathize with the Palestinian people’s suffering. I was taken aback because even though my family is Jewish and we love Israel, I was raised to have compassion and empathy for Palestinians.
My mom is a Middle Eastern history scholar and passionate about advocating for Palestinians. When we’d travel to Israel, we’d make it a point to also visit Arabs in Israel as well as in the West Bank. In college one summer, I volunteered at a camp for Israeli and Palestinian children that focused on reconciliation. I was brought up to see caring about Palestinians as an extension of Jewish values and as an implication of our faith in Yeshua. Nonetheless, I am not immune to the tendency to side with my “tribe” and to dehumanize my “enemies.”
...While I do not claim to speak from an Israeli perspective or to understand the complexities of Israel’s national security, I do believe that the Bible has a lot to say about how God calls his people to respond to moments like this.
Although the teaching in the Bible about war and peace is complex and there are different interpretations, there is a dominant theme that unifies Scripture’s approach to this question: the God of the Bible is a God of compassion and loves all people. He also requires His people to reflect this aspect of His character by imitating His love for all of humanity.
One of the most striking and disturbing examples is the book of Jonah..
(Excerpt) Read more at jewsforjesus.org ...
With lard lubed bullets from their Uzis.
It’s hard to understand sometimes, that God loves the worst people in the world just as much as he lives His children, and that His greatest desire is for them to repent and receive Him.
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The first thing she needs to do is to stop calling them Palestinians. Once you identify who they really are, the second part becomes a lot more clear.
You love your enemies for exposing their evil intentions and acts so that you can eliminate the intentions and acts from ever occurring again.
You love your enemies for exposing their evil intentions and acts so that you can eliminate the intentions and acts from ever occurring again.
Exo. 15:3 “The Lord is a man of war...”
Love them by sharing Christ with them, but that does not require giving them the world on a silver platter or pandering to their demands while they plot to kill you.
There’s a world of difference between loving someone and enabling them. People need to learn how to not cross that line.
Maybe she missed this gem from her God....and her Book.
The book of Joshua as referring to what would now be considered genocide.
When the Israelites arrive in the Promised Land, they are commanded to annihilate “the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites” who already lived there, to avoid being tempted into idolatry.
Deuteronomy 20:16–17 reads “From the cities of these peoples which YHWH your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not let anything that breathes remain alive. You shall surely annihilate them just as YHWH your God has commanded you so that they may not teach you to do any of the abominations that they do for their gods, and you thus sin against YHWH your God”. Joshua is depicted as carrying out these commands.
And keep your powder dry.
“It’s hard to understand sometimes, that God loves the worst people in the world just as much as he lives His children, and that His greatest desire is for them to repent and receive Him.”
That, in my view is the perfect response. What many people miss and the article writer seems to ignore is the word “repent.”
And the LORD does not change. This is something that has puzzled me. It is a mystery.
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