Dear Friends,
During one of my trips to Israel decades ago, I toured Gaza before Israel turned it over to the Palestinians in 2005. It was a flourishing, healthy land then. I was impressed by the orchards and the farmland, as well as the overall prosperity I saw and experienced firsthand there.
Not long after, Gaza was subsequently put in the hands of Hamas, a terrorist regime elected by the people there, it began to look like a ravaged land. I saw pictures of the same places I visited, but now it had become a woeful skeleton of what it once was. The Palestinian people are clearly suffering and really have no escape other than peace with Israel as other Islamic states and countries such as Egypt will not offer any help or way of escape.
The billions of dollars of aid did not trickle down to the people and the land. Instead, the major amounts were spent on destruction. They built massive tunnels and stockpiled massive amounts of rockets and missiles that began to rain down on Israel almost on a daily basis. Tens of thousands of them, while all the world, and particularly America kept cautioning Israel to not respond in kind. And during all this time, the Palestinian people have suffered tremendously.
The attack on October 7th changed everything. The scope, brutality and horror of that day changed Israel forever. They said no more. They said Hamas must be fully routed out and they went to war.
Let me say that there are no winners in any war. I was a youngster during WWII but remember more than I should of the destruction and deaths. I saw the films of American and Allied bombers dropping so many thousands of bombs into German cities, indiscriminately killing German citizens along with the factories.
I remember when the United States dropped the Atomic bomb Japan, killing 90,000 to 146,000 people in Hiroshima and 60,000 to 80,000 people in Nagasaki. I was there for the Korean War and the Viet Nam War and few more. Each of them brought atrocities, destruction and horror.
We brought the Japanese to their knees, but at what cost to both sides.
American deaths in WWII were about 141,000American ground troops were killed in Europe — more than twice the number of those killed in the Pacific. An additional 42,500 were killed in the skies and at sea
Almost a quarter of a million families with dead sons, daughters, mothers, and fathers. War is brutal and barbaric. It is horror personified.
Today, we can only pray for peace. In fact, the Bible clearly tells us to pray for the peace of Jerusalem.
Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: “May those who love you be secure.“
We can only hope that those weapons of war, the missiles, and the rockets from Gaza and from the Hezbollah from the north and the hundreds of missiles from Iran and Lebanon and those from Israel responding to its lethal enemies will all soon fall quiet, and peace will reign across the entire Mideast. That is my earnest prayer today.
My Heart is filled with a grim dread at what happened October 7th in Israel and what is happening right now in Gaza, will happen right here in America. I see the hatred spewing towards our Jewish citizens and especially those in colleges, universities and even in high schools. America is fast becoming the Germany of the late 1930s. Unfortunately, History repeats itself and that is due in part that the history books are written by the victors, thus neglecting both sides of the conflict, we end up with a perpetual cycle of revenge generations later.
I picked up my book, Crescent Moon Rising and skimmed through it today. I was amazed to see that the things that I said would be coming with the uncontrolled masses of Muslims pouring into the United States are already happening. The outrage and all the screaming, incoherent curses against America and its Universities isn’t going to change a light bulb in Israel or Gaza. While as Americans we are barely able to protect our Freedom of Religion.
Sharia Law is NOT compatible with the US Constitution, nor is Sharia Law compatible with the Bill of Rights. We must respect this fundamental truth and act accordingly by sharing the Gospel personally with LOVE for Muslims, and civically with our votes.
As Christians, we must keep a Godly perspective about all of this. Jesus died for every Muslim in Gaza, and in America as did He for every Jew in Israel and America. We need to look at this turmoil through His eyes and pray for peace with the knowledge that such prayers are our certain responsibility.
Finally, you need to know that my mother’s Jewish family fled Europe at the end of the 1890s, during the first holocaust. The majority of the rest of her family died in the holocaust of WWII. This battle to destroy the Jews is not a remote issue to me. It’s part of my broken heart. The heart that Jesus healed.
