Category Archives: Israel

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Daily Broadside | Israel Must Utterly Destroy the Life of Hamas

As we watch events unfolding in Israel, waiting for the ground offensive to begin, waiting on whether Hamas will release hostages in return for a ceasefire (nah), waiting to see if Iran will intervene or conduct a “preemptive strike,” waiting to see if two American aircraft carrier strike groups will deter Iran or Hezbollah in Lebanon, I’ve been mulling over where I stand on the issue.

Bottom line for me is this: Israel must totally and utterly annihilate Hamas. They have to go in and destroy the ability of Hamas to attack, regroup or reconstitute itself in any way, shape or form.

I can hear the cries of horror as readers react. “Sure, but what about all the innocent Palestinian women and children? What about the elderly Palestinians and those who don’t support Hamas? What about proportionality? How can you support such bloodshed?”

Here’s my position: Hamas chose this.

Hamas is a terrorist organization. Their attack on Israel wasn’t an act of “war,” it was an act of terrorism. They indiscriminately murdered men, women, children and the elderly in cold blood. And they didn’t just kill them; they tortured them and desecrated their bodies. The committed atrocities against their neighbors simply because their neighbors are Jews.

What they did was indefensible. I don’t care what excuses are made for their savage slaughter of innocent Israeli citizens. They may have grievances with Israel, but civilization is not required to tolerate their barbarism. Hamas has proven that it is incapable of moderating itself; it’s time to eliminate them.

As far as the women and children go — it is a terrible thing to kill the defenseless, even if they are members of the enemy. I do not advocate for the killing of civilians and if it can be avoided, it should be.

But Hamas does not show that level of concern for their own people. They deliberately position their weapons of war in civilian buildings and neighborhoods in order to create a moral dilemma for civilized nations when it comes to killing innocent: Wipe out the terrorists and take innocent lives with them, or allow the terrorists to survive in order to avoid civilian deaths?

In this case, I place that responsibility squarely on the terrorists. Hamas are the violent enforcers of a religious death cult, and the wives and children of Palestinians are indoctrinated to hate Jews. I don’t want to see impressionable children used as pawns or human shields, but I don’t want the terrorists to survive and launch more attacks.

It’s an imperfect metaphor, but I once discovered that paper wasps had built a nest under the eaves of my garage. There were three larvae in the nest and two adults caring for them. They aren’t a particularly aggressive insect, but will attack if they feel threatened. So I ventured out there with my wasp and hornet spray and gave them a maximum dose, killing both the adults and the larvae. Why the kids? Easy—nest building and attacking is in their nature, and I didn’t want them to grow up and be a threat to me or my family (or any other family). I wanted to completely annihilate them, and I did.

Not only so, but in this post by Rev. Donald Sensing, he argues that Israel is not only battling a physical army of psychopaths, they’re battling an ideology, which can survive physical defeat.

Having formed a “unity government” for the war, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu has stated clearly that the permanent end of Hamas as the principal war aim. That this objective requires a land invasion of Gaza is also clear. But what can it take to destroy Hamas? Netanyahu has said that killing its terrorists fighters is a specific goal, but Hamas is not merely an organization. It is also an ideology. How does Israel end with not only the present Hamas organization destroyed, but also the ideology?

He goes on to write that both the American Civil War and World War II provide examples of how to achieve the end of Hamas. First, the Civil War:

After more than two years of indecisive, though bloody fighting, the Union’s strategy took a linchpin turn when Gen. U.S. Grant was appointed commander of the US Army and he unleashed Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman to invade the South. Sherman stated his goal very plainly.

“War is the remedy that our enemies have chosen, and I say let us give them all they want.”

“This war differs from other wars, in this particular. We are not fighting armies but a hostile people, and must make old and young, rich and poor, feel the hard hand of war.”

Sherman’s tactics were ruthless, but they did do what he set out to do. His and Grant’s maneuvers and battlefield victories made it very plain not only to the Confederacy’s leadership (especially Gen. R.E. Lee) that they could not win the war, it was also crystal clear to ordinary men and women throughout the South, including those never actually touched by the fighting. Slavery was ended by the war and it is worth noting also that no state has attempted to secede since then. 

Then, the objective of the Allies in World War II:

One of the preludes to the massive landings on Normandy’s beaches to “enter the continent or Europe” in 1944 was sustained, large-scale aerial bombing of Germany by American and British aircraft. As the war went on and German (and Japanese) resistance failed to slacken, President Roosevelt decided that the German and Japanese peoples must realize after the war that not only had their armed forces been defeated: the entire nation, as a nation, had been beaten. He and Churchill were well aware that German militarism had survived World War I because its apologists had successfully propagated the myth that the Kaiser’s army had not really been defeated, it had been “stabbed in the back” by disloyal factions at home.

Hence, wrote Roosevelt in a letter to Secretary of War Henry Stimson,

It is of utmost importance that every person in Germany should realize that this time Germany is a defeated nation. . . . The fact that they are a defeated nation, collectively and individually, must be so impressed upon them that they will hesitate to start any new war.

[…]

One notes that Japan and Germany have been well behaved since 1945. But we also have to note that massive, destructive bombing was alone not the reason. It was simply impossible for either country’s armed forces to claim that they had prevailed, or at least held their own, on the field of battle. German and Japanese orphans, widows and grieving parents were in almost every other household, and a lie that their armed forces had not really lost could not possibly have found legs to stand on.

Hamas and the civilians who support them (at least 90% of the population) must be made to see, to feel, to know that they are thoroughly and utterly defeated. They must be made to see that abhorrent tactics they displayed on October 7 will be answered with overwhelming force, and that such savagery will not be tolerated in this world. They must be made to experience “the hard hand of war” and their defeat “must be so impressed upon them” that they spend the next 20 years recovering from their experience.

I am with Israel and pray that God gives them the victory over their enemies.

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Daily Broadside | The U.S. Has Blood on Its Hands

Don’t look away. SEE what the Hamas terrorists are doing. There’s no excusing or rationalizing it.

I hate to say it, but it looks like American policy in the Middle East played a more than significant role in the bloodshed being waged in Israel. I love my country, but I hate what my leaders have done and are doing.

For the better part of the past decade, the United States has pursued a foreign policy designed to strengthen Iran and enable it to form a strong sphere of influence in the region. This is the idea behind what Tony Badran and Michael Doran called “the realignment,” a vision of a new world order in which America partners with Iran in order to “find a more stable balance of power that would make [the Middle East] less dependent on direct U.S. interference or protection.” Those words aren’t Badran and Doran’s; they’re Robert Malley’s, Barack Obama’s lead negotiator on the Iran deal who, as Semafor reported this week, helped to infiltrate an Iranian agent of influence into some of the most sensitive positions in the U.S. government—first at the State Department and now the Pentagon, where she has been serving as chief of staff for the assistant secretary of defense for special operations. Biden himself, in an op-ed in The Washington Post, spoke of “an integrated Middle East,” using the phrase no less than three times to make clear that his administration was intent on pursuing his predecessor’s commitment to seeing Iran not as a U.S. foe but as our collaborator.

We are lead by idiots and treacherous imbeciles.

And the Biden administration wasn’t just talking the talk. It was also walking the walk, from unfreezing billions in assets to make it easier for Tehran to support its proxy Hezbollah-controlled Lebanon to sending huge cash infusions used primarily to pay the salaries of tens of thousands of unvetted “security personnel.” And while the previous administration halted all aid to the Palestinians—directly because of the “pay for slay” policies that support the families of those who slaughter Israelis—the Biden administration was quick to reverse the decision.

At least Trump had the good sense to cut off aid, but it barely slowed Hamas or Hezbollah with the “””election””” of Brandon. We need to not only cut off aid to these animals, we need to get Trump back in the White House.

In addition to creating the external circumstances for terror, the Biden administration did everything in its power to derail Israel’s democratically elected government and prevent it from being able to see an attack like today’s coming. That the Israelis let themselves fall for this was stupidity of criminal order. But the invisible hand here was America’s. Biden himself took to CNN to call Netanyahu’s government “the most extreme” he’s ever seen, and lost no opportunity to lecture his Israeli counterpart about democratic values. The former U.S. ambassador to Israel, Tom Nides, took the unprecedented step of intervening in the country’s domestic affairs, announcing ominously that he “think[s] most Israelis want the United States to be in their business.” And if words weren’t enough, the administration also sent American dollars to support the anti-Netanyahu NGOs organizing the protests that brought Israel to a halt for months. Netanyahu was famously denied an invite to the White House; his key opponent, opposition leader Benny Gantz, had no such problem.

It’s outrageous and embarrassing for us, not to mention deadly for the Israelis and the Palestinians who are being killed in the war they’ve started.

We need to get clear-eyed, and quickly. There is no negotiating or “managing” a nation or people group that seethes with hatred toward another nation. Iran and its proxies in Gaza and Lebanon, and other nations around the Middle East loathe Israel and the United States. When they chant “Death to America” or talk about pushing the Jews into the sea, they mean exactly that. More importantly, they mean to do it.

I once told an Arab in Jerusalem’s Arab quarter that I had heard that the Palestinians don’t want to share the land with Jews, but that they want to rid the land of them and he affirmed my statement.

The reason is eschatological: fighting the Jews will hasten the “last day.”

Media analysts are describing the latest attacks as a retaliation for Israel’s supposed desecration of the al-Aqsa Mosque, or for “settlement” activity, and all the usual half-truths, distortions and outright lies that characterize establishment media coverage of Israel. Ultimately, however, this is happening not because of al-Aqsa, or because of any “occupation,” since the “occupation” is a propaganda fiction anyway. It’s happening because of the Islamic imperative to fight Jews.

A hadith says: “Abu Huraira reported Allah’s Messenger (may peace be upon him) as saying: The last hour would not come unless the Muslims will fight against the Jews and the Muslims would kill them until the Jews would hide themselves behind a stone or a tree and a stone or a tree would say: Muslim, or the servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me; come and kill him; but the tree Gharqad would not say, for it is the tree of the Jews.” (Sahih Muslim 6985) Read the beginning of the words attributed to Muhammad again: “The last hour would not come unless the Muslims will fight the Jews and the Muslims would kill them.”

So this is not a hadith about the “last day.” It is a hadith about the conditions under which the “last day” will come about, and how Muslims can bring about the “last day”: by killing Jews. The true believers of Hamas are busy doing it now.

That’s why Muslim nations don’t rest in their harassment and abuse of Jews, Christians and other infidels. They are commanded to fight in the name of Allah. While territorial claims may be part of the mix, the hostility is driven by an apocalyptic vision of Islam conquering all nations and their part in bringing it about.

It is a fanantical death cult that the U.S. has further enabled.

As far as that $6 billion that Brandon freed up for Iran: even though it hasn’t been distributed yet, here’s a former State Department advisor on Iran explaining to Fox News’s hapless Jennifer Griffin how Iran’s budgeting works. Go read the whole thing here.

How does it feel to know that your country funded the murder and mayhem in Israel?

Awful.

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Daily Broadside | Terrorist Organization Needs to Be Eradicated

What’s there to write about except the war that’s broken out in Israel? Hamas, a Palestinian terrorist organization, attacked southern Israel and of this writing, have launched 3,500 rockets, have infiltrated nearly 30 Israeli communities, have taken more than 100 hostages including the elderly, women and children, and have killed 1,100 in the terrorist attack.

There are reports that several Americans are among the dead and captured.

Israel responded by declaring war—not just an “operation”—and has vowed to crush Hamas. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving PM, called for a massive military response after the attack, which occurred 50 years to the week after the surprise attack on Yom Kippur in 1973.

Reports say that 450 Palestinians have been killed so far.

I am an unwavering supporter of Israel. I believe that God has a plan for the Jewish people, and that the hostility we see toward them today is a continuation of the hostility they’ve experienced since they were slaves in Egypt.

I also believe that there are innocents on both sides of the conflict. I don’t doubt that there are Palestinian families who wish for peace just as there are Jewish families who wish for peace. I encourage all of us to pray for the peace of Jerusalem, that both Arabs and Jews would come to know the Lord Jesus Christ.

But I will denounce in no uncertain terms that Hamas is a barbaric entity that deserves to be completely annihilated. They may be fighting for what they believe in, but there is no place in a civilized world for such morally repugnant behavior.

Israel has every right to defend itself against this evil.

Here’s his daughter and the video of her being taken prisoner.

Iran is undoubtedly behind the attacks; even Hamas has claimed Iran’s support for their war against Israel. We should cut off funding for Iran, for Palestinians, for any terrorist state or entity of any kind.

But what do our current leaders do? Fund Iran as they chant, “Death to America!”

Insanity.

Here in the states, we’re beginning to see the benefits of all that “diversity” we’ve been importing.

Just wait until our “diverse” citizens and guests start attacking those who support Israel. It’s going to happen.

While the U.S. is moving a carrier group to the eastern Mediterranean, we can hardly afford to enter a third World War. But it’s beginning to look a little dicey.

Pray for peace.

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Daily Broadside | Israeli Politicians Tried to Criminalize Talking About Jesus

It’s been a week. Yes, it’s been a week since Monday when I last posted, and now it’s Friday, so it’s been a week since I last posted. But it’s also been a week, if you know what I mean. We’ve got work going on in the house, it’s tax season, work is picking up, the kids need support, and it’s garbage night. What’s a guy to do?

The good news is that I am going to keep daveolsson.com going for another year with the Daily Broadside. Now that I’ve got three years under my belt, I’m going to explore what more can be done with this exceptionally small publication with famously quiet and loyal readers.

Instead of closing the week with the latest moronic effort by our political betters to deceive us into believing that the walls are really closing in this time on Donald J. Trump and that they’re not building a surveillance state that will eventually help them easily label you as a friend or foe of the regime and limit your personal opportunities and purchasing power, here’s an encouraging story from the Middle East.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu vowed to block a bill by members of his own governing coalition making it illegal for followers of Jesus in Israel to discuss the Gospel message with other Israelis.

An article on Sunday by ALL ISRAEL NEWS first broke the story of the dangerous bill in which two ultra-Orthodox members of Knesset – Moshe Gafni and Yaakov Asher – were determined to outlaw anyone from sharing the Gospel of Jesus the Messiah in Israel, and punish violators with prison sentences.

Nothing like alienating 660 million supporters in a world that hates you.

Sam Brownback – former U.S. ambassador for international religious freedom in the Trump-Pence administration – was the first American leader to publicly sound the alarm about what a threat to religious freedom and human rights the bill posed.

Brownback also became the first to praise Netanyahu for taking a strong stand against the bill.

“Bibi Netanyahu is an amazing leader of courage,” Brownback told ALL ISRAEL NEWS in a text message on Wednesday. “I applaud his quick and decisive move to address what could have become a major issue.”

I’m not sure that such a law would have turned away evangelical support for the nation of Israel, but it would have made it awkward for those evangelicals who visited the holy land and would have earned a rebuke from US lawmakers. Still, it’s clearly a better policy choice to avoid offending the one block of people across the globe who believe not only in Israel’s right to exist, but in the ongoing role that Israel plays in God’s redemptive work.

“For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile.” (Romans 1:16)

The bill, which was withdrawn following Netanyahu’s threat, would have imposed a one-year prison term on anyone caught violating the law. It was conspicuously aimed at evangelical Christians by the bill’s authors.

This bill would apply to people having spiritual conversations with Israelis of any religion.

However, in their official explanation of the bill, the two Israeli legislators specifically emphasized the warning to stop Christians, in particular.

The bill’s primary objective, therefore, appears to be making it illegal for followers of Jesus (“Yeshua” in Hebrew) to explain why they believe that Jesus is both Messiah and God with the hope that Israelis might consider following Him.

Fortunately, the freedom to share the good news of Jesus with others in the holy land remains intact.

Have a good weekend.

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Daily Broadside | New Discovery Boosts Christian Confidence in the Bible

As a believer it is helpful to my faith when archeological discoveries reinforce or directly prove the historicity of the Bible. In three scriptures, we read of the Pool of Siloam.

2 Kings 20:20 —

As for the other events of Hezekiah’s reign, all his achievements and how he made the pool and the tunnel by which he brought water into the city, are they not written in the book of the annals of the kings of Judah?

Nehemiah 3:15 —

He also repaired the wall of the Pool of Siloam, by the King’s Garden, as far as the steps going down from the City of David.

John 9:7 —

“Go,” [Jesus] told him, “wash in the Pool of Siloam” (this word means “Sent”). So the man went and washed, and came home seeing.

And now, if you want to go see the pool, you can.

The Israel Antiquities Authority, the Israel National Parks Authority and the City of David Foundation announced days before the new year that the Pool of Siloam, a biblical site cherished by Christians and Jews, will be open to the public for the first time in 2,000 years in the near future.

“The Pool of Siloam’s excavation is highly significant to Christians around the world,” American Pastor John Hagee, the founder and chairman of Christians United for Israel, told Fox News Digital. “It was at this site that Jesus healed the blind man (John:9), and it is at this site that, 2,000 years ago, Jewish pilgrims cleansed themselves prior to entering the Second Temple. 

“The Pool of Siloam and the Pilgrimage Road, both located within the City of David, are among the most inspiring archeological affirmations of the Bible…

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The pool was first built roughly 2,700 years ago as part of Jerusalem’s water system in the eighth century B.C. The construction unfolded during the reign of King Hezekia as cited in the Bible in the Book of Kings II, 20:20, according to the two Israeli agencies and the City of David Foundation. 

According to estimates, the Pool of Siloam passed through many stages of construction and reached the size of 1¼ acres.

Atheists, secular humanists and mainline scoffers often characterize the Bible as being mythological or fictional. Yet there has never been an archeological find that has disproved any biblical record; in fact, any archeological discovery relating to a biblical text has only validated the Bible’s historicity.

For instance (and appropriately, as we exit the Christmas season), it was long thought that the Bible was in error when Luke wrote (2:1) that, “In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.)” Critics charged that Quirinius was governor at a later date than what the Bible claims, but Sir William Ramsey (1851-1939), historian and archaeologist, demonstrated that Quirinius was twice governor of Syria, the first being at the time of Jesus’ birth.

So, when another bit of archeology verifies the scripture’s record, it serves as a reminder that my faith is based, at least in part, on solid evidence of its historical accuracy. The reinforcement comes in handy when facing a culture that is not just increasingly hostile, but increasingly militant and violent towards Christians in ways that would have been unthinkable just 30 years ago.

The Pool of Siloam is one of those significant historical discoveries that can encourage us.

Ze’ev Orenstein, director of international affairs for the City of David Foundation in Jerusalem, told Fox News Digital, “One of most significant sites affirming Jerusalem’s biblical heritage — not simply as a matter of faith, but as a matter of fact — with significance to billions around the world, will be made fully accessible for the first time in 2,000 years.”

The Pool of Siloam doesn’t prove that Jesus was who he said he was but taken with hundreds of other pieces of archeological evidence, we can trust that the biblical authors were accurate in what they wrote about the times and places in which they lived. And if they were accurate in those details, then a person could reasonably conclude that they were accurate in other details — like Jesus being the Son of God.

I thought Rev. Johnnie Moore, president of the Congress of Christian Leaders, nicely summarized what the discovery of the Pool of Siloam means for us.

“In the Pool of Siloam, we find evidence of history preserved for us, revealed at just the right time. This is a truly historic event. Theologically, it affirms Scripture, geographically it affirms history and politically it affirms Israel’s unquestionable and unrivaled link to Jerusalem. Some discoveries are theoretical. This one is an undeniable. It is proof of the story of the Bible and of its people, Israel.”

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The Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem closes its doors to the public.

This is the moment The Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem was closed due to Coronavirus.

Last time this happened was in 1349, during The Black Death, a bubonic plague pandemic.

What’s fascinating about this story is the guy with the keys.

A comment from the thread: “The (sic) Christianity’s holiest shrine is guarded by Muslim Family Joudeh Al Goudia. The Family has been Gatekeepers of the Holy Sepulchre Church since 1187.”

The reason a Sunni Muslim keeps the keys is to prevent conflict among the many Christian sects that have some claim on the site.