Israel and Hamas with Dr Michael Brown

Well, welcome to another edition of The Rap Report. I'm your host, Andrew Rapport, the executive director of Striving for Eternity and the Christian Podcast Community, of which this podcast is a proud member.

With over 50 podcasts, we produce about 40 plus hours of content, so I guarantee if you go there, you will find something you will enjoy and probably more than you'll have time to listen to in a week.

But hey, you could try. I'd do it. But I am joined this week with a brother in Christ who I would like us to hear from because we're both going to talk about something, a topic we are moved by, we have a lot of love for, and that is the situation currently in the state of Israel.

Now, I'm going to say up front, my brother, Dr. Michael Brown, and I have differences. I'm going to let him introduce himself and let him share how he came to Christ. Both of us are from a Jewish background.

Though we came about it differently, our understandings of Judaism, we had a little bit of a different upbringing there, came to Christ obviously the same way, and have moved on in different paths within Christianity.

Our differences, we will actually be debating them sometime soon. I'll let him explain that since he's the one that requested it. But Dr. Brown, welcome to The Rap Report. And like I said, start by introducing yourself quickly, how you got saved, and then how you and I got to talk to.

One another. Yeah. And it's actually warmed my heart in recent weeks to speak with you on the phone, to pray with you on the phone, to exchange emails, to hear your graciousness and the camaraderie we have as Jewish believers in Jesus.

I'm 68 years old. God saved me in 1971. I was a shooting LSD using 16-year-old, long-haired, hippie rock drummer. And may God's mercy then. I was raised in a conservative Jewish home. Those listeners that don't know what conservative means, it doesn't mean conservative like conservative morally or politically.

It's just a branch of Judaism, but it tends to be very liberal. And I was actually raised in, it's a very wishy-washy form of Judaism. And, you know, we didn't go to, didn't observe the Sabbath, go to synagogue regularly or anything like that.

But I was born in Mitzvah 13. That was more of a social event than a spiritual event. To give you an idea, I had to learn to chant a portion of the Hebrew Bible, and I did that well, but I never knew what it was.

No one ever said to me, Michael, you should read this in English now and meditate on this. I was just saying words. I didn't even know the meaning of. The big thing that impacted me at the age of 13 was seeing Jimi Hendrix in concert.

And as the counterculture revolution, I wanted to be a rock star. So that's opened the door, getting high and all this. And then my two best friends, they were Gentiles, but nominal Christians. They liked these two girls who were going to a little Italian Pentecostal church.

So that's what we get to debate later. God willing, you know, Pentecostal charismatic beliefs versus scripture, et cetera, compared to scripture. Anyway, God starts to work in their lives, starts to change them.

I go to pull them out. The people in the church begin praying for me. I don't know they're praying for me, but the Holy Spirit begins to bring me under deep conviction because I was not just a sinner.

I was a proud sinner. I boasted in the evil that I did. And God begins to convict me. I come under deep dramatic conviction. God's love is revealed to me. And December 17th of 1971, I said, Lord, I'll never put a needle in my arm again.

He'd been dealing with me. I had started to believe that Jesus was real, but I wasn't willing to give my life to the Lord. And that night I was instantly set free. And when I went home and told my dad, you know, he didn't know what to make of it.

But as the days went on, he saw his change. And he said, Michael, I'm glad you're off drugs, but we're Jews. We don't believe this. And he brought me to meet the local rabbi. And the local rabbi and I became friends.

He gave me a book on anti-Semitism in church history and then challenged me that I didn't know Hebrew. So once I started college, I thought, well, I should take some Hebrew classes. They only had modern Hebrew.

So I took that, but I taught myself biblical Hebrew, then started to add other languages. Then thought, you know, I've got to be able to study this myself and not rely on commentaries and dictionaries.

And so I ended up getting a PhD in Near Eastern languages and literatures from New York University. And that's been a major part of my life. You know, the academic scholarship, Old Testament scholarship, debating rabbis, and I've written five volumes on answering Jewish objections to Jesus.

But my heart's always burned to see the church come alive and be fervently devoted to the Lord, living passionately for him. So true revival, renewal in the church is a great burden of mine. And then out of that, out of the church being revived, let the society be awakened.

So we've really been on the front lines of standing for a gospel-based moral and cultural revolution, being the salt of the earth, the light of the world. And then, of course, the great burden for the redemption of Israel.

So I've got a daily live radio broadcast, The Line of Fire. I normally write about four or five op-eds a week on what's happening in the world around us, and then just keep active in these other areas of ministry.

And when the cessationist movie recently came out, and then there was a cessationist conference, and then the G3 conference teaching on cessationism, an announcement of a big conference next year, Christianity Today reached out to me to do an op-ed explaining why I was not a cessationist.

And in it, I said, hey, listen, let's, and I did this on the air as well, to anyone involved with the movie or anyone speaking at the conference or involved with Strange Fire previously, let's have an open, moderated, full-length debate.

One reason being to model as brothers and sisters in the Lord, how we can respect one another and have differences, and then hopefully present things in an educational, edifying way so people can sort the issues out better for themselves.

And you were the one that responded. And it's been a delight to get to interact since, and especially to emphasize before we ever do that, the common ground that we have and the deep, deep concerns that we have about what's happening with our.

People these days. Yeah, which brings us to today's topic, because as I have been on many different podcasts talking about the state of Israel, I have been amazed at, I guess, the ignorance that even professing believers have on Israel, the state, how it became a state, its history.

I've been amazed at how much the Palestinian myths have been understood to be fact, even amongst those who I would think would have more of a heart for Israel. And I'm saying this, I know that a lot of people think that, oh, I'm just for Israel because I'm a dispensationalist.

No. As I said to one person, it probably has more to do with the fact that I'm Jewish. I have a love for Israel. Somewhere in Israel, there's a tree planted for my bar mitzvah. But I'm glad that I was able to get to Israel last year.

We were planning on returning in 2025. I don't think that's going to happen. But I heard you on a podcast talk about Israel. There was a lot that you brought out that I hadn't. And I wanted to have you on to discuss this, because I find that there's a lot of things people don't understand about the nation of Israel today, how it came about and things like this.

So would you be able to give us just a thumbnail history of the state of Israel that we know of now, which people think really 1948, that's when it was official, but even 1914, the discussions had started, but last 100 plus years.

Sure. So we know with the scatterings of the Jewish people in 70 AD and 135 AD after the first and second Jewish revolt, that continued with our exile and dispersion around the world had begun by the Assyrians in 722 BC and then the Babylonians in 586 BC.

Now 70 AD, 135 AD, further scatterings, further dispersions. But over the centuries, there remained a Jewish presence in the land. There was an Arab presence and the land was led and conquered by different groups.

It was under Christian control. Then with the rise of Islam, it was under Muslim control. Then after Crusades for time again, Christian control, then Muslim control under the Ottoman Empire. And that continued into the early 20th century.

But we have to remember that in the Jewish consciousness, this was always the homeland. There was no such thing as a Palestinian people or Palestinian homeland. Various peoples live there. Arabs, people from the surrounding Muslim nations, Christians, Jews, but there was no Palestinian state.

It was part of greater Syria. It was just part of the Ottoman Empire, et cetera. Even the modern divisions we have, states like Jordan, states like Iraq, these are more modern innovations in terms of drawing these borders and boundaries.

A lot of this was tribal, just tribal affiliations and things like that. So what happens though, is there's always been a Jewish presence there. Jews around the world over the centuries have prayed facing Jerusalem.

And we know that goes back to Solomon's prayer in 1 Kings 8. We know that goes back to Daniel praying in the same way in Daniel 6. So this is an ancient tradition. The Passover tradition developed say next year in Jerusalem.

If in contrast, you're a Muslim living in Jerusalem, even though Jerusalem is the third holiest site in Islam, you would pray with your back to Jerusalem at your face facing Mecca. So towards the late 1800s, there begins to be an increase in Aliyah and Jews returning to the way, mainly secular.

It was not a religious based thing. There had been Jews that lived there. There was a command if you could live in Israel to live in Israel. So people would do that. But there was the prayer for the Messiah to regather the Jewish people, the Messiah to rebuild the temple, et cetera.

But it begins to increase as antisemitism worldwide begins to increase. More and more Jews start coming in the late 1800s, early 1900s. Now at this point, there are far more Arabs in the land than Jews, but it's a fraction.

We're talking about hundreds of thousands of totals. It's a fraction of the current population, plenty of room for everybody. As more Jews are coming in, they're now buying the land from local Arabs. More Arabs are coming in to work the land.

So they're coming in from surrounding areas. So yes, there are Arabs slash Muslims who lived there for many centuries, but that's the very, very small minority. The great majority also came in more recently.

So basically now after World War II, this comes under the control of the British mandate. The Balfour Declaration says that there will be a home for the Jewish people. And what happens in the late 1920s under the influence of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, is you have what would be really called the first intifada of the slaughter of scores of Jews in Hebron by Muslim militants.

And now the situation, this is the late 1920s, begins to get very testy, ugly, difficult. And the whole mandate for a Jewish state, there's a little withdrawal under Arab pressure. So the Peel Commission looks into this.

And in 1937, it's a multi-hundred page document, they come up with a plan for there to be a Jewish state. I mean, it's very little portion of the land. At one point, it's almost not even connected. Jerusalem under international control, the great majority of the land for the Arab population.

This was debated among the Jewish leaders, hotly debated. Ultimately, it was going to be accepted, but the Arab leadership said no. And now the tensions are increasing. Now you've got violence now, back and forth, starting to increase more and more hostilities rising.

And you have a long history of Islamic anti-Semitism as well, because remember the Jewish population that Mohammed preached to rejected him as a prophet. And then Jerusalem was ultimately conquered, and mosques that are built there to say Islam rules.

So any place that Islam has taken, in Islam you have Dar al-Kharab and Dar al-Islam, the world of the sword and the world of Islam. So everything that is under Islamic control, that's now like part of the family.

And if someone takes that back, that's a grave insult. And the rest of the world is at war with Islam. So finally, during the Holocaust, very few Jews were allowed to enter the land. This could have saved so many lives.

Again, violence now both ways, Jews fighting against the British rule, just like we did many centuries, a couple of centuries earlier here. So ultimately, out of the ashes of the Holocaust, probably the only way there would be world Jewish sympathy, the UN 1947 votes for the partition plan, Golda Meir, David Ben-Gurion, all the Jewish leadership, they accept it.

They say to the Arabs living there, let's live in peace together. There's room for both of us. The Muslim leadership says, no, we will destroy you. We will drive you into the sea. So there could have been a two-state solution, massively unfavorable to the Jews.

That could have happened in 1937. That was rejected by the Muslim leadership, Arab leadership. Same thing in 1947. Israel is now attacked, leading to full-blown war when Israel declares its independence in 1948.

And now as a result of that, you've got 800 ,000 Jews who live in the surrounding Muslim countries. They are kicked out. They are expelled because of the war. So they now, most of them move back to Israel.

Others go to other parts of the world, US, Canada, etc. You've got six or 700 ,000 Arabs who are now living within what becomes Israel. And some flee on their own accord because the leadership said, Canada can't distinguish between a Jew and a Muslim.

Get out. When we drive the Jews in the sea, you come back. Others left just because it's a war and they fled. And others were expelled by Israel. And when you read about war atrocities, yes, they happen.

But in the history of war, when you analyze them, they're actually minimal in comparison to other wars in terms of Israel. When you hear genocide and cleansing of all ethnic clans, these are these horrifically exaggerated terms.

So since then, Israel is surrounded by hostile neighbors. That has been the situation. In 1967, as the surrounding nations are about to launch another war, Israel hits the first preemptive strike and is able in the six-day war to now capture further territory.

And this happens, you know, boundaries of nations around the world are written out by wars and conflicts. And that's, you know, you have this, you didn't have it before. So Israel occupies and I'll sum this up quickly.

Israel occupies all the way down to the Sinai, right on the border of Egypt, Gaza Strip, which had been under Egyptian control. It occupies now the so-called West Bank, Judea, Samaria, which had been under Jordanian control.

And now they take this back and now Jerusalem is reunited, which is such an incredibly emotional thing. As part of the peace treaty with Egypt, early 70s, they give back to Sinai Peninsula. So this large portion of land.

They maintain control of Gaza Strip. They maintain control of West Bank to this day. 2005, under pressure from the Bush administration, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon turns Gaza completely back over to the Palestinians.

There are about eight or 10 ,000 Israelis living there. They've lived there for many, many years. They had vineyards, businesses, synagogues. They are physically uprooted. The Israeli army has to physically uproot them because they don't want to leave.

Pulls them out. It is now completely under Palestinian control. What will you do? They elect Hamas. Hamas came into existence in 1987. Its specific goal, the eradication of the When you hear people chant from the river to the sea, Palestine must be free.

That does not mean a two-state solution. That does not mean let us live in peace side by side. That means make this land Judenrein, cleansed of Jews. No more Jews living here. No more Israel. It calls for the annihilation and extermination of Israel.

That is the Hamas charter and viewpoint and belief system to this moment. Remember, this is radical Islam, like ISIS, like Al Qaeda. Israel has no right to be there. The Jews, who are the despised descendants of apes and pigs, have no business being in what is Islamic territory.

Once Hamas was elected, that is why there's been a blockade. That is why hundreds of millions of dollars that have come in, that should have been for the development of the people of Gaza, for jobs, for infrastructure, for hospitals, for humanitarian work, instead has gone for terror tunnels, for missiles, weapons, and to enrich the coffers of some of the Hamas leadership.

That's what Israel has been faced with ever since, having terrorists living next door to you, ruling the government, raining rockets down on you, digging tunnels under your land to come into a kindergarten and kidnap children.

I mean, this is who they're dealing with. And they've still been providing electricity and water and gas and things like that, just in a humanitarian level. That is the current reality. Israel got, there is no occupation of Gaza.

And the only reason this quote, an open air prison is simply because you have terrorists there trying to kill you.

The Historical Roots of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

Yeah. And I want to spend time because that's the biggest thing that people don't understand is who really is the oppressors when it comes to Gaza. A couple of things you said that people may not realize, it's kind of interesting.

You mentioned about the Muslims facing with their back to Jerusalem toward Mecca. That actually wasn't how Muhammad started. He started by looking at, having everyone face Jerusalem until the Jewish people rejected him as a prophet.

And then that changed. So even within early Islam, they had done the same thing as Jewish people do with looking to Israel. Another myth that I want people to pick up as you gave that history, prior to 1948, the Jewish people that lived in this land were called Palestinians.

So the Palestinians were not a Muslim. And that's the view it is today that these are these Muslim people that were, there were a lot of people that lived in that land that got moved around. People don't realize that when it was under Muslim control, the Jewish people did live there.

We know that because they paid an extra tax for living there. They had to pay a very heavy tax that Muslims didn't have to pay. So there were many people, both Arab and Jewish people that lived there for a long time.

I'm glad you pointed out the fact that during war things do change. I mean, no, I don't hear anybody complaining about Russia coming in to take over land, Ukraine fighting back to say, no, we're going to push back.

I mean, when that is all done, do we expect that Ukraine, if Ukraine was to win to say, you know what, Russia, okay, we're done. How about we give you back the land that you just fought? You know, you fought and lost over.

Like no one wants some of the bad on some of the borders of the United States, things that were attained in war. Correct. It's around. It's the way things happen around the world. What's different here is that this refugee situation is different than any when the 800 ,000 Jews were expelled from countries around the world.

Well, Israel took it. Israel would have taken them all. If they came, but whoever came, Israel took in and you have refugee situations in the late seventies, early eighties. My family took in, in our church, almost everyone did.

We took in families from Vietnam and Cambodia. They had fled boat people crisis. We heard there's an urgency with refugees. They became part of our families for years and live with us until they were able to get settled on their own, but not this refugee crisis.

Oh no, you have now several generations later, this is the one that is a multi-generational crisis. It was, it was an edict of the Arab league in the 1950s, not to give citizenship to the Palestinians.

So, and you just think right now, okay, the war in Syria, I believe there are about a million and a half Syrian refugees living in Lebanon. There are hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees living in Iraq, and they've gone to other places as well as the result of the war in Syria.

Well, why is it right now with Egypt on the border that the people of Gaza are not just giving refuge? Hey, just come and be part of our country. Even temporarily, let's set up camps for you, et cetera.

Let's get everybody out and let's come off in Israel, fight it out. No, no, you can't give home to the refugees. Why is it Andrew, that in Judea, Samaria and the West bank in Gaza, there are still Palestinian refugee camps within these very places.

Why is it in countries like Syria and Lebanon, you still have Palestinian refugee camps? Why don't they have full status in the society? Because this is the one thing to make Israel look bad. And now because of high birth rates, this is very common in religious Muslim families, their numbers have grown to millions and millions.

And they say, well, we want the right to return back to our land. And this is what people are.

Advocating for. It's absolute madness. And yet, I don't hear Gaza giving the right of the Israelis to come back to Gaza. If the Palestinian authority had its own state,.

So right now, the controversy about Jewish settlements there, et cetera. But the bottom line is, if there wasn't two state solution, they've made clear no Jews will live here. So you say, hang on, hang on.

What happened to the Arabs that stayed? And you did mention the identity, the Palestinian orchestra was Jewish. The Jerusalem Post used to be called the Palestine Post, right? So if there was a Palestinian people, it was the Jews living there.

But let's think of this for a moment. You have this whole history now with people coming back, being accepted, being part of the land. So if you have a two state solution, no Jews living there. What happened to the 200 ,000 that remained within Israel?

The Arabs that remained, so the Palestinians that remained with this, and they weren't called Palestinians, and they were just the local Arab population. Well, they're about 2 million now. They have seats in the Knesset.

They've had Supreme Court justices. They are professors and doctors and lawyers and everything else. And they can freely protest. They can burn an Israeli flag. They can do what they want. They can convert to whatever religion they want.

They have more liberty than any Arabs living in any of the surrounding nations. So this whole idea of ethnic cleansing, apartheid, those that stayed are full citizens. That's what happened. If it was ethnic cleansing and genocide, they all would have been wiped out.

Instead, they've gone from 200 ,000 to 2 million.

Refugees, Citizenship, and the Myth of Ethnic Cleansing

And that's a very key point because that undermines so much of the rhetoric we hear today, right, is the fact that the ethnic cleansing is not on the side of the Jewish people. I think what bothered a lot of the Arabs, I mean, you look at Israel, size of New Jersey, not very big.

You go look at a map and look at the rest of the Arab world. I think what upset them is one of the policies that Israel had in 1948 was that anyone from a Jewish descent could get citizenship there, except, of course, you and I, we would not be able to.

Once you convert to Christianity, you are not allowed. So I tried. I actually had tried to get citizenship. My daughter even had tried. And they actually have it in there that if you convert to Christianity, you cannot get citizenship.

But she tried being a second generation, but still rejected. But a big thing of it is the fact that as we look at this, the narrative that they say is somehow Israel wants to be the ones to, they're oppressing the Palestinians, they're trying to wipe them out.

You pointed out the fact that in the charter of Hamas, it is to wipe Israel out. This is a major point of understanding. I know Christians who, I know professing Christians that have claimed I'm not saved because of my support of Israel, have told me I'm a heretic, that I believe in a cult of Israel, and will not listen to discussion on the facts that you're bringing out.

And yet these facts directly undermine the narrative that we are hearing, that Israel is the oppressor. You know, you mentioned 2005, that becomes essential. So who is the oppressor? If there are people, if there's someone oppressing Palestinian people in Gaza, can a case be made that it is Israel?

Or is it, can we look to someone else factually to see where the oppression.

Is? Yeah, of course, it's Hamas, and all this lays at the feet of Hamas, and they're the ones responsible for the death of their own civilians. I believe if God is looking down and judging, he would hold them primarily responsible for the suffering of their people.

Right now, Ephraim Karsh, a great Middle Eastern scholar, wrote a book a few years back called Palestine Betrayed. And he basically said, it's been the leadership that has hurt the people, the leadership that has betrayed the people.

But let's just think for a moment, just go down through some facts. Okay. What would have happened if after the end of any Israeli control of Gaza, and even any Jewish presence in Gaza, no Jews there, no Jews, no Jews living there.

Okay. So it is now given over to people of Gaza, let's just say that they have the option of a peace-loving government that said, we fully recognize Israel's right to exist. And let's work together cooperatively, they'd be prospering today.

There'd be beautiful buildings instead of rubble, there'd be a better educational system, there'd be a better hospital system, there'd be better job opportunities, the border would be open for Gazans to be coming in and working in Israel back and forth, etc.

It'd be beautiful. It'd be wonderful. You say, well, that hasn't happened in the West Bank. Well, when you're still having kids in Judea and Samaria, Palestinian kids who are growing up and watching TV shows where martyrdom is glorified, where their elementary schools are named after jihadists who blew themselves up killing Israeli children, and this is something heroic.

When you have constant propaganda being put forth, when you have not that many years ago, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, citing the famous Hadith, that the end will not come until Muslims fight against and kill the Jews, which is also in the Hamas charter.

Well, you don't exactly have a complete, well-meaning peace partner. But let's go back over to Gaza. What would happen again, if the hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars that have been spent on endless tunnels and missiles and weapons, where are they getting all the money from for the weapons?

This is a lot of bombing and technology and everything. If that had been poured into the people, what would be happening? If Hamas did not set up headquarters under a hospital and put rocket launchers next to children's schools and stop people from fleeing, what would this look like?

When Israel drops leaflets over areas saying, we are going to bomb, leave here. When Israel says, everyone evacuate, and we are giving you time to evacuate, and we'll send humanitarian aid down to where you evacuate.

And from what we understand, Hamas has blocked people evacuating. Hamas snipers have killed them on the streets as they're trying to evacuate. And then there's other evidence that's been published now of Hamas going to hospitals and other places to take fuel so they can continue to support their war efforts.

Who are the oppressors there? Who are the ones causing the bloodshed? And then let's just remember, Hamas has confessed to this with their own words and said, what do I mean? They gave an ultimatum to Israel.

If you bomb us without notification, we will kill one of your hostages each time and make it public. So Hamas is saying that the Israeli policy is to notify before they bomb. Picture we're in a boxing match.

Okay, Andrew, I'm about to hit you with a left jab on the right eye. I mean, this is what Israel is doing to preserve civilian life. The loss of life is on Hamas. And there are Hamas leaders saying we need this bloodshed for our cause.

And it is a strategy to make Israel look bad. And then one last thing. Let's remember who Hamas is. We can never take our eyes off this. Journalists, I read a report that some of the journalists who saw the 43 minutes that the IDF put together from body cams of Hamas terrorists, from other footage they had from cell phones that were used by Hamas to pick what was happening, to capture what was happening.

Some of those who watched this recently went into shock and had to be hospitalized. Just watching. Knesset members who were shown it had to leave weeping. They couldn't watch any more. When you are talking about putting babies in ovens and burning them alive, decapitating babies, cutting open pregnant women before killing them, raping elderly women until their pelvises are broken before shooting them in the head.

Burning whole families alive. That is who Hamas is and shouting allahu akbar as they do it. That's what we're dealing with. And then to add insult to injury but to further expose the spiritual madness here, you have, and this has been for many years now, pro-Hamas demonstrations.

Queers for Palestine. Radical feminists for Palestine. Go ahead, do your march. Queers for Palestine. That's the last thing you will ever do out of a prison cell or alive there. Go ahead. Hey, you ladies who really are pro-Hamas and evil Israel, just go in your typical daily outfit, your summer outfit.

Walk down the streets and see if you ever do anything again publicly or if you're even alive. I'm sad to say you can have a gay pride march in Israel and be celebrated for it. You could be a radical feminist.

You could walk around in a skimpy bikini and that'd be just fine. I don't celebrate that in Israel, but that's the reality. You do that in Gaza, you're dead. And yet all of these stand together for Hamas.

It is the irrational, demonic spirit of Jew hatred that is behind it. The demonizing of Israel and Jewish people. And any Christian that has a heart for justice, first and foremost says, I categorically, without equivocation, denounce Hamas.

They have no justification for what they did. And I stand with Israel's desire to eradicate terror. Now you could say, I want Israel to use more restraint, or I think there should be a ceasefire, or let's look for a two-state solution.

You can have all those other positions, but unless you make those other things morally clear, I say you are not morally right.

Hamas, Civilian Shields, and the Ethics of War

You hit something that always amazes me because Christians get attacked from the transgenders, homosexuals. Let's look at that message. You put me in a room with someone that's practicing homosexuality.

I am going to share the gospel with them. You put that same person in Gaza, and they're dead. They're going to be thrown off a building. I just am amazed, but I shouldn't be because we know the source of that.

The source behind this is the enemy of God, the demons and the world system that hates God, that will agree. I mean, here you got transgenders for Palestine, and yet the Palestinian, if they were left in Hamas, Hamas would kill them, and yet they're going to support that.

It's crazy to think about, but they're on the same side spiritually than we are. So you mentioned, I think, a lot of, there's been talk, but I don't think a lot of people understand fully who are not following Israel.

You mentioned that they dropped these leaflets. Why would Israel feel the need to warn? Tactically, that doesn't seem to make sense in war. Okay, I'm going to bomb here. I'm going to let everyone know, we're going to bomb this location right here.

It doesn't make sense. So why would Israel feel the need to do things like that? Because I think the underlying thing here is it helps us to realize some of what we're hearing with the rhetoric from Hamas.

And by the way, Israel in recent days has placed more than 20 ,000 phone calls to families saying, we're bombing this area, we're bombing this building, get out. I mean, who else does that? And when an Israeli soldier starts in service, the first thing they do is they learn ethics.

And they even have a card that lays out their ethics. They're not allowed to leave base without their identification and that ethics card in their possession. And when they'll be going in on the ground, we'll get calls and emails from friends of ours saying, hey, my son's about to go into battle.

Please pray because they have to go through so many precautions before they do certain things that they put their own lives at risk. So here's the unique thing about Israel. Even though it's obviously a far from perfect country, I always say Jews are like everybody else, except more so.

Our good qualities are exaggerated, our bad qualities are exaggerated. And I think it's partly the gifts and calling of God are irrevocable. In Romans 11, 29, there is something on the Jewish people for good or for bad.

And we've been called to be priests to the world and represent God. If we get things wrong, it's really wrong. If we get things right, it's really right. But even in the midst of the sexual immorality, like in Israel and other parts of the world, and then the ultra religious Jews that so strongly reject the gospel, there is a recognition that Israel is supposed to be moral, that there is a history of being a chosen people, that there are ethical commands from God.

That's why within Israel, you have left-leaning organizations that are very strong critics of Israel, that are critics of the war, that are critics of the settlements. This is right within Israel. And they're in political parties because you have this liberty to do this.

And Israel is the most self-critical planet on the. You think our political fights get intense? Just watch in Israel. They savage each other, but you can do that. But the point behind all of it is that there is a belief that there should be a certain ethic and that there is a morality on which Israel must operate.

Let's say Israel has the opportunity to assassinate a terrorist. It goes through a whole series of ethical evaluations. And Israel's not the only country that does it, but they do it on a high level. Legal scholars evaluate it, and then it has to get ultimate approval.

It could be from the prime minister himself, because they're going to dot their I's and cross their T's before they do this. So Israel has an ethical goal of preventing civilian casualties. Hamas, PLO have the history of using civilians as human shields.