Christians must care for both Israeli and Palestinian victims of war—and that means actively rejecting hatred of the Jewish people.
One day after Hamas’s Simchat Torah massacres in Israel, crowds gathered at a rally in Times Square promoted by the Democratic Socialists of America. “Our resistance stormed illegal settlements,” shouted one speaker, “and paraglided across colonial borders.” The crowd responded with rousing cheers.
It was an unapologetic celebration of the terrorists’ multi-front assault on Israeli cities, kibbutzim (progressive, communitarian farming villages), and an outdoor music festival. Hamas members have murdered more than 1,400 Israelis, raped, tortured, and injured thousands, and kidnapped around 200 more. Most of the victims were civilians, and many were children, the elderly, or infants. The vast majority were Jews.
The Times Square gathering was not an isolated case of pro-Hamas activism. Pro-Hamas demonstrations were held by the Chicago chapter of Black Lives Matter and Students for Justice in Palestine at California State University in Long Beach and the University of Louisville, each of which included images of paragliders in their promotional materials—a reference not to the Palestinian cause generally but to this specific Hamas attack on thousands of Israeli innocents.
The parent organization for those campus groups called the initial Hamas assault “a historic win for Palestinian resistance,” encouraging its members not merely to rally but to consider “armed confrontation with the oppressors.”
This war is still in its early days. It may be difficult to parse truth from lies and understand exactly why this kind of activism—which is misleadingly portrayed by its supporters as defense of the oppressed—is wrong. But we’ll have a clearer moral vision …
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