The 2023 Gaza War – Some Initial Thoughts and Observations

In reference to the recent attacks based out of Gaza, I found it very interesting that a Hamas spokesman mentioned a movement to re-establish the Solomonic Temple as one motivation among others. That's not something you're going to typically hear in the mainstream media.

Those familiar with this line of discussion will know that the Jewish groups pursuing this project are deeply entangled with American Dispensationalists who also help to fund some of the extremist settler groups in the West Bank – some of the same people recently seen spitting on Christians. Like Netanyahu, they actually despise American Evangelicals (and Christians in general) but are happy to use them, along with their political support and their money.

There are many people and groups that have blood on their hands in all this, and that would most certainly include the American Dispensationalist community – which is more or less continuous with American Evangelicalism. They have done much to aid and empower Israel and in particular the Likud Party and its fascistic policies. And their doctrinal errors have also played no small part in guiding American foreign policy, its wars and spin-off wars which have resulted in millions of deaths.

Lots of reasons are given for the recent attack on Israel and there's probably a bit of truth to all of them. For the Palestinians the hour is desperate. If the Saudis and some of the remaining Arab powers sign a deal with Israel, then there's little hope left for them – apart from an increasingly marginalised Iran, an Iran that also seems eager to find a modus vivendi with not just the West but the Saudis as well.

Western media is of course deeply biased in its coverage of not just these events but all things related to Israel and the Palestinians. The pro-Israel slant has been blatant in recent days. I don't mean in any way to downplay the violence and evil of the Palestinian incursion or the hostage taking or the suffering of Israelis – but the media is just doing all it can to stir the passions in favour of Israel and against the Palestinians. It reminds one of how the Ukrainian refugees are painted with such sympathy while those escaping wars across the Middle East and Africa are not.

Everything being done to the Israelis has been experienced by the Palestinians ten times over – and yet the media almost never portrays them in sympathetic fashion. The images of Hamas fighters in ultra-light aircraft (fronted by machine-gunners) is meant to be terrifying. Others might find it kind of pathetic. This is their air force. And the rockets they fire? They look like something high-school kids make and shoot off in the backyard. If they directly hit someone they can be deadly but these are hardly like the artillery rockets Israel might fire or what we've been seeing in Eastern Ukraine.

They are fighting with sticks and stones against a first-class military with cutting edge weaponry and yet they're presented as the 'scary' ones. The public is brainwashed into thinking that guys with makeshift aircraft (to traverse the walls that imprison them) and pick-up trucks with mounted guns is scary because it's unconventional. Men in uniforms flying multi-million dollar jets who drop bombs that kill hundreds and thousands – they are legitimate. It's a longstanding but effective farce.

For the Palestinians, the Israelis have put thousands of their people in prison (including children), and thousands have been killed by Israel just over the past couple of decades. Some of the Hamas leaders have had wives and children killed and some have also been maimed by US-made bombs dropped by US-made Israeli aircraft. They are livid to say the least and the anger now spans generations.

And these are the traumatic events. The day to day suffering is an unspeakable grind and there are multitudes more that have died from lack of medical care – blocked by Israel, and other basic necessities. Their lives are miserable and this isn't just an unfortunate result of the circumstances. No, this is the policy of Israel, a deliberate strategy rooted in a form of angry nationalist hubris and frankly a kind of racism. This is especially true when it comes to Likud – the party that once formed a quite cozy relationship with Apartheid South Africa. Their outlooks and ideology were oddly similar.

And when viewing these events and mulling over the history, let's not forget what led to the rise of Hamas. When the PLO had been more or less defeated and driven from Lebanon to Tunisia during the 1980's, Yasser Arafat decided to flip – and recognize Israel. This led to the 1993 Oslo Peace Accords. This created the Palestinian Authority and (more or less) a formalizing of the Two-State solution peace process.

Figures like Benjamin Netanyahu did all they could to derail this process and through his efforts and rhetoric the Israeli Right became more and more radicalised leading to the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin in 1995. Many people directly blame Netanyahu for creating the conditions leading to this murder.

A few years later the Second Intifada erupted and one of the results was the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza in 2005. Some will remember Ariel Sharon's order to force the settlers out and leave the Gaza Strip completely to the Palestinians. I remember wondering if he would be assassinated too. His subsequent stroke was viewed by some American Evangelicals as Divine retribution for Gaza. As far as they are concerned the Palestinians have no standing and must vacate these lands – or die.

And yet this attempted autonomy seemingly backfired as Gaza rejected the corrupt and ineffective Palestinian Authority (then under Mahmoud Abbas) and in 2006 voted in Hamas – a group formed in the late 1980's and one that rejected the recognition of Israel – a refusal that led them to be designated as a terrorist group. Hamas was viewed as the legitimate voice for the Palestinian resistance, a group that had not compromised like the PLO under Abbas and Arafat (who died somewhat mysteriously in 2004).

Since 2006 the Peace Process has been effectively dead. There have been attempts to rekindle it but it can't go anywhere and under Netanyahu's long tenure the settlements in the West Bank have grown to such an extent that there's no longer any way to create any kind of continuous Palestinian state. Under the current conditions, there's no hope of a solution. The strategy of Likud is one of attrition. Through creating misery it is hoped that the Palestinians will leave or die. In the meantime, Israel continues to expand in the West Bank. Gaza has remained a giant prison subject to endless hardship and regular outbreaks of violence and aerial bombing campaigns.

Additionally Netanyahu is not an honest player. Obama realized this and this led to their falling out. Netanyahu was not sincere, made misleading statements, and was happy to play the GOP game and make Obama look the fool. Likewise his dealings with Trump were never about peace but rather the appeasement of the buffoonish president (and his political allies) along with a great deal of theatre which masked and obscured Netanyahu's real aims – continued expansion of settlements, the campaign of attrition and hostility to both Syria and Iran.

With Saudi Arabia ready to change sides, with Israeli politics in turmoil, with America focused on Ukraine and also facing a new season of political turmoil, I'm sure the time seemed right to Hamas. It's now or never and yet what their goals (realistically) are – I don't think anyone is sure. The only strategy that I can see is that the Israeli retaliation will lead to a breakdown in the Abraham Accords and perhaps Hezbollah opening a new front in the north. Israel is still smarting from the 2006 war which ended in a stalemate – which for Hezbollah is effectively a victory. The only hope Hamas has is for the conflict to proliferate.

Everyone is speaking of the major intelligence failure on the part of Israel. It's well known they have all these groups infiltrated – everything is tracked. They used talk about how they would know every time Arafat stepped out to 'take a piss' in the alley. For them not to know of something this big is dubious. Either there was indeed a major failure or they did in fact know. Pardon my cynicism but with Netanyahu I'd believe anything. He is cunning and every bit as evil as the leadership of Hamas. This war is a gift to him. In just a matter of hours, massive and historical protests against his Right-wing coalition were turned into a unity government. That's a pretty stunning turn of events.

And it's in his interest to stretch this out – a war on Hamas almost starts to sound like a potentially endless 'War on Terror' like Bush sold to an ignorant and cowering American public.

I must say I am very troubled over how the American Right is trying to spin this into an anti-Iran story – even arguing that the recently returned Iranian money (which the Americans stole) was used to bankroll this Hamas operation. It's pure rubbish. It's just a line being used by the Right which remains angry over any attempt to make peace with Tehran. Just tonight, headlines are emerging of Trump blaming it all on Biden. These people have no sense of decency or shame.

I find it very interesting and beyond coincidence that these same figures on the American Right (and within Evangelicalism) are close friends and collaborators with Benjamin Netanyahu and his fascist coalition.

They want a war with Iran and are going to do all they can to see if they can tease one out from these events. You can be sure Netanyahu is on board with this. He's been tirelessly advocating for a bombing campaign in Iran for years.

If the mainstream media is bad, it's much worse in Evangelical media circles. Again, due to the errors of Dispensationalist doctrine, the Zionist state receives a kind of hyper-veneration. Remember that (contrary to the clear and repeated teaching of the New Testament), they believe the Jews are still God's chosen people and their equally Judaized eschatological system finds it fulfillment not in Christ but in Israel, the Jewish people, and in a re-established Temple-Mosaic order that will be fully operable in the so-called Seven Year Tribulation period. This latter concept is rooted in another misguided framework which emerges from their erroneous assumptions being imposed on Daniel chapter 9.

I think the most striking thing about the coverage is the fact that Israel is openly declaring a strategy that in any other context would be considered a war crime. Gaza is being collectively punished and under a strict siege. Can you even imagine if Russia did this to part of Ukraine – cutting off electric, water, food – everything? The world would be screaming and world leaders would be issuing threats.

But Israel is untouchable as long as the United States backs it. And the Dispensationalist Evangelicals are one of several powerful factions that will make sure this is the case. They will even turn their eyes away from the aforementioned episodes of settlers and Orthodox Jews spitting on Christians. It's ironic that even as American Evangelicals find common cause with the ethnic Christian communities in places like Iraq, Egypt, and more recently Ukraine and Armenia – the ethnic Christian communities in Russia and especially Palestine don't count. They're not 'real' Christians.

In truth, all the ethnic Christian communities (if examined at all) stand in doubt. Their Christianity is not Evangelical, Protestant, New Testament, or otherwise. For most it's an ethnic identity rooted in culture and traditions and little more. There's no gospel and for many the New Testament might as well be a closed book to them. This is not to say I wish any of them ill but it's hard not to be cynical regarding the clearly politically motivated arbitrariness of American Evangelicalism when it comes to such questions.

I know one person who is really unhappy about all of this – Volodymyr Zelenskiy. The spotlight has been removed from him. I chuckled when he was quick to make a media appearance and condemn Hamas. And let's not forget that his standing with Israel can be used as a talking point – a means of deflecting the fact that his government and military is in alliance with a bevy of Ukrainian fascists and Neo-Nazis.

His analogy between Hamas and Russia is absurd. And if Ukraine has the right to resist occupation, then why don't the Palestinians? The people of Ukraine have suffered terribly and have been duped – as have many in Russia, but Zelenskiy is total clown, a ridiculous figure, a stooge and a fraud.

There will be many things to watch over the next few days. For my part I will be interested in the Evangelical response to Israeli violence and the large-scale death that is sure to result in Gaza. Israel tends to exact a pretty high death-for-death ration when it comes to their citizens – sometimes 10:1 or even 100:1.

Will the Evangelicals cheer on this bloodbath? It's hard to imagine otherwise. Prepare to hear some very heretical apologias and hermeneutical gymnastics in order to defend this conduct. Like their theology, their ethics are also best described as a display of smoke and mirrors.

Secondly, as the deaths mount and the media is forced to report on some of the violence (and war crimes) of the Israelis, will Biden stand firm? It will be difficult and all the more if he realizes that the American Right and Likud are attempting to maneuver him into a war with Iran.

Pray for peace.

If in the end Hamas is removed, I would hardly weep. But for Netanyahu to stay would be an outrage. The man and his party are evil.