The tragic events in Israel on October 7, 2023, and the response in the following months have caused many—some for the first time—to take notice of the conflict Israel has long faced. It’s easy to sit in our safe homes and workplaces and discuss the war in Gaza and Lebanon. “It’s complicated,” many of my friends and family have told me in our conversations over the last year. But is it really?
Watching the world turn on Israel after the nation was invaded on that quiet October Saturday holiday morning, its people kidnapped, raped, burned, and murdered, lit a fire of justice under me that has yet to be extinguished. It has been hard to convince Israel’s detractors that the nation’s response to the war is justified. The truth almost completely contradicts what the legacy media feeds the West by covering the nightly news with innocent, lifeless Gazan babies.
The small nation of Israel operates uniquely compared not only to the rest of the Middle East but to the world. (By the way, it cannot be said enough: Israel is small! It could fit inside my home state of Tennessee five times!) But what separates this nation from other Middle Eastern countries?
Israel’s Desire For Peace
The State of Israel always has sought to live peacefully with its neighbors. At its inception in 1948, the last thing Jewish settlers and immigrants wanted was war. After all, many had just left war-torn countries in Europe, where they were enslaved in concentration camps, watching their loved ones tortured and murdered.
In 2005, Israel withdrew entirely from Gaza, an approximately 140 square-mile strip of land along the Mediterranean Sea, bordering both Israel and Egypt. Israel gave this land, purchased by Jewish settlers in 1946, to the people of Gaza, hoping to stop increased violence in the area.
This was a heart-wrenching moment in Israel’s modern history. The Jewish people had cultivated this formerly barren land, which many Arabs believed cursed, and transformed it into a place of agricultural beauty. The Israeli military forcefully removed its own citizens living in these communities. Israel built walls between itself and Gaza, stopping almost all suicide bombings and attacks on Israeli civilians in the area.
Once the wall was built, only a few Gazans were granted daily working papers, allowing them to enter Israel to work in the surrounding communities known as the Gaza Envelope. Many Israelis wanted Gazans to work in their communities. They paid these workers a better living wage than they would be paid in Gaza. Many of Israel’s communities along the Gaza border were home to peace activists who believed in achieving harmony with their neighbors in Gaza. Sadly, many of these activists were murdered or kidnapped on October 7, 2023.
Life Above All
Just like the Israeli settlers of Gaza in 1946, the entire State of Israel is full of those who bought and restored barren land. The prophet Ezekiel wrote “They will say, ‘This land that was desolate has become like the garden of Eden; and the wasted, desolate, and ruined cities are now fortified and inhabited’” (Ezekiel 36:35). Land was purchased and cultivated, swamps were drained, streams rerouted, and cities renewed. Life was brought back to this forgotten land.
I once stood with a group at a kibbutz in northern Israel on the border of Lebanon and Syria. Our guide showed us the boundaries of Israel, Syria, and Lebanon by pointing out the brown, arid landscape on the Lebanese and Syrian side and the green, lush vegetation on the Israeli side. Israelis call the line separating the two sides the “Green Line,” crafted in 1949 as a line of demarcation that briefly served as Israel’s de facto international border. While it earned its name for the green ink diplomats used to mark the map, it’s also appropriately named because it delineates where Israel’s green land begins. Although God “sends rain on the just and on the unjust” (Matthew 5:45), His blessing on the land of Israel is apparent. The difference between Gaza and southern Israel appears eerily similar.
Israel desires to bring life back to the once-fertile land. Yet their neighbors seem to focus only on the Jewish people’s destruction.
The day after October 7, 2023, Ali Baraka, a senior Hamas official, said on national television, “The Israelis are known to love life. We, on the other hand, sacrifice ourselves. We consider our dead to be martyrs.” Hamas hoped it could use Israelis’ hope for peace and love for life against them. The hate Hamas cultivated inside of Gaza manifested on October 7, 2023, when Hamas invaded southern Israel, killing more than 1,200 innocent Israelis and migrant workers from other countries. Why? Because it hates the Jewish people and believes the land they bought and cultivated for decades belongs to Palestinians. Stripping away deceptive media and emotion, we see Israel grow in love and Hamas in hate.
