A Blog from David Crump
The video speaks for itself. This is a former member of the Israeli Knesset (Israel’s parliament).
I wish I could say that this man’s speech is an outlier. But I have now seen far too many video clips declaring the same message from average citizens and government officials alike to remain that naive.
A former Israeli sniper explains the circumstances in which soldiers are instructed to “shoot anything that moves.”
The recent shooting of three Jewish hostages — shirtless, waving a white flag and shouting in Hebrew — was anything but accidental or a mistake. It was the direct result of explicit rules of engagement in the Israeli army.
If Israel will flagrantly murder three of its own people in this way, just imagine how many Palestinian civilians have been gunned down under similar circumstances.
The murder of these three hostages illustrates the moral bankruptcy of Israel’s claims to having “the most moral army in the world.” Moral armies don’t teach 18 to 20 year olds to “shoot anything that moves,” no matter the circumstances.
The Rev. Dr. Munther Isaac is the pastor of the Bethlehem Evangelical Lutheran Christmas church. He is also a professor at Bethlehem Bible College.
This Christmas Eve, he delivered a power prophetic, gospel-inspired message directed at the western Christian church.
As the Gaza Strip is demolished, its people massacred, and ethnic cleansing continues unabated throughout the West Bank, far too many US evangelicals approve of Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
As pastor Isaac says, “Silence is complicity.” Yes, too many remain silent, but even more damnable are the “Christian” voices raised in support of Israel’s war against Gaza because, some how or another, this slaughter is preparing the way for the return of Christ.
There are three things that I know with certainty about following Jesus. Walking with Christ never requires us to sanction, much less to embrace, ignorance, prejudice or bloodshed.
Those now approving of Israel’s genocide are committing all three of these inexcusable sins.
The following clip of Rev. Isaac’s message is 17 minutes long. Please take the time to listen to it in full. We all need to listen, lament, repent, and become activists for peace and justice in the name of Jesus Christ. We can begin by calling for a ceasefire in Gaza:
The following clip is a 12 minute interview with pastor Isaac broadcast by Democracy Now. Listen to him explain how the Palestinian people feel abandoned by the world, the Palestinian church abandoned by their western brothers and sisters. Remember — Gazan churches are being bombed; Gazan Christians are being murdered along with everyone else.
Have we no compassion for the Arabic-speaking family of God trambling in terror, huddled in the ruins of bombed out churches, desperately praying for God’s deliverance?
Rev. Dr. Munther Isaac is a professor at Bethlehem Bible College as well as the pastor at the bethlehem Lutheran Christmas church. Terry and I often worship at this church whenever we are in the West Bank.
Pastor Isaac understands that now is the time for a prophetic word addressed to the western church. He declares hard truths powerfully.
He is a Christian leader speaking to his fellow believers in the western Church — a Church that largely approves of Israel’s current campaign of destruction against his people. How can this be?
Our only proper response is repentance.
I am privileged to count both the Rev. Drs. Mitri Raheb and Munther Isaac among my friends. You will meet them in this video from Democracy Now.
Together with the other Christian leaders of Bethlehem, they are speaking prophetically to the rest of the world as public celebrations have been cancelled in Bethlehem this Christmas.
Oh, they are not neglecting the wonder of Jesus’ birth. But they are grappling with the contexual realities of remembering Jesus’ birth while also suffering brutal Israeli attacks in both Gaza and the West Bank.
Thus, they haver turned to the Old Testament tradition of lament, that is crying out to God in protest against both worldly injustice and his apparent absence.
The western Christian church has become immune to the biblical concept of collective, corporate lament. Even when we try to construct a lament service, we don’t really know how to be comfortable with it.
In part, this awkwardness is due to American isolationism, ignorance, and lack of empathy for others.
We fail to identify with our Palestinian brothers and sisters in Christ because many don’t realize that Palestinian Christians exist.
We ignore the news of literal genocide occurring in Gaza because we are generally disinterested in the rest of the world.
And when we go to visit Israel, we are more feverish about visiting Zionist synagogue services than we are about worshiping with Palestinian brothers and sisters.
The Palestinian church is showing us once again what biblical lament means as they endure a multitude of the cruelest war time injustices.
Never before has the Jewish settlement movement held as much power as they do today. Several of their leaders are members of the Israeli cabinet. They now call the shots in the West Bank, accelerating Jewish attacks against Palestinians, stealing their homes, destroying their crops and killing them with impunity.
The following video compilation offers a glimpse into this world of daily threats and violence:
Our friend, Layla, is a journalist working for the online news magazine, Mondoweiss. She filmed some members of the Amira and Al Azzah families after the Israeli soldiers, who had physically attacked them all, had finally left with Munther laying in the back of their truck.
This is our extended family in the West Bank. I admire their fortitude and resilience. I wish I was with them right now.
President Biden recently condemned Israel’s “indiscriminate bombing” of Gaza. Israel’s defenders reply by insisting that Israel’s bombs are carefully calculated to hit only designated targets; there is nothing indiscriminate about them.
A recent investigation by journalists at +972 magazine now explains how to resolve this seeming contradition. The massive bombing campaign is not indiscriminate. It only looks that way because of a new Israeli computer program linked to artifcial intelligence.
The new AI program can isolate a vast array of possible targets within seconds and send misssles to each of them. As a result, the massive levels of damage caused by Israel’s bombing campaign is not only deliberate but well calculated.
It is precision bombing on a massive scale.
The Israeli military has so much confidence in this new AI killing program that it has been labeled “The Gospel” — a most repulsive, ghoulism blasphemy, in my view.
Below are selected excerpts from the article written by Yuval Abraham. It is titled “‘A Mass Assassination Factory’: Inside Israel’s Calculated Bombmg of Gaza.” (All emphasis is mine):
The Israeli army’s expanded authorization for bombing non-military targets, the loosening of constraints regarding expected civilian casualties, and the use of an artificial intelligence system to generate more potential targets than ever before, appear to have contributed to the destructive nature of the initial stages of Israel’s current war on the Gaza Strip, an investigation by +972 Magazine and Local Call reveals. These factors, as described by current and former Israeli intelligence members, have likely played a role in producing what has been one of the deadliest military campaigns against Palestinians since the Nakba of 1948.
. . . has seen the army significantly expand its bombing of targets that are not distinctly military in nature. These include private residences as well as public buildings, infrastructure, and high-rise blocks, which sources say the army defines as “power targets” (“matarot otzem”).
The bombing of power targets, according to intelligence sources who had first-hand experience with its application in Gaza in the past, is mainly intended to harm Palestinian civil society: to “create a shock” that, among other things, will reverberate powerfully and “lead civilians to put pressure on Hamas,” as one source put it.
Several of the sources, who spoke to +972 and Local Call on the condition of anonymity, confirmed that the Israeli army has files on the vast majority of potential targets in Gaza — including homes — which stipulate the number of civilians who are likely to be killed in an attack on a particular target. This number is calculated and known in advance to the army’s intelligence units, who also know shortly before carrying out an attack roughly how many civilians are certain to be killed.
In one case discussed by the sources, the Israeli military command knowingly approved the killing of hundreds of Palestinian civilians in an attempt to assassinate a single top Hamas military commander. “The numbers increased from dozens of civilian deaths [permitted] as collateral damage as part of an attack on a senior official in previous operations, to hundreds of civilian deaths as collateral damage,” said one source.
“Nothing happens by accident,” said another source. “When a 3-year-old girl is killed in a home in Gaza, it’s because someone in the army decided it wasn’t a big deal for her to be killed — that it was a price worth paying in order to hit [another] target. We are not Hamas. These are not random rockets. Everything is intentional. We know exactly how much collateral damage there is in every home.”
Give special attention to Israel’s bizarre rationale for excusing this murderous behavior. Israel is “not like Hamas,” we are told, because Israel deliberately targets civilians; knows exactly how many civilians will end up as ‘collateral damage’; and so is killing massive numbers of innocent men, women and children knowingly, intentionally.
And this makes Israel superior to Hamas?
Really?
Here we have a good illustration of how the arrogance of privileged power-brokers can scorch the conscience, twist our sense of right and wrong, and rationalize even the most ludicrously cruel, murderous calculations.
Read the entire article here.
I am happy to say that these two men are both friends of mine. In this video from the Network of Evangelicals for the Middle East (NEME), Bruce asks the questions and Jonathan offers a discussion drawing from his years of experience as a lawyer of international and humanitarian law.
Jonathan does a good job of explaining the Christian perspective on the horrors of war.
I have numerous acquaintances who argue that Israel is not committing genocide in Gaza. There argument turns on the question of intent.
The legal definition of genocide requires that the aggressor explicitly states an intention to eradicate the victims. Without an explicit statement of genocidal intent, there can be no genocide.
Well, let’s skirt the word games, shall we?
Numerous Israeli leaders, both in and out of the governement, have clearly, deliberately, purposefully called for the genocidal eradication of all Palestinians from the area known as “greater Israel,” which includes Gaza and the West Bank.
If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it’s a duck — even if others insist on calling it a turkey.
Regardless of what my pro-Zionist friends may say, what is happening now in Gaza is a genocide. Confirming evidence is provided below. Just click the link:
https://www.facebook.com/share/r/Q9pFdq6rA9naFKeE/?mibextid=Ki DqeK
