‘Operation Finish Them Off’

“…should be what it’s called,” was my mother’s response yesterday to the announcement of Israel’s carefully named Operation Protective Edge, the same day her grandson’s unit was told to move from the Golan Heights down to the Gaza Strip.

“What sort of a name is that?” echoed another concerned watcher. “I hope what they mean is Operation Annihilation. For once, Israel, just go in and do something hard-hitting, ruthless and permanent, without apology. Be completely deaf to world insistence on restraint and hit hard, hard, hard until Hamas is obliterated.”

On July 1, upon hearing that the kidnapped Jewish teenagers, Naftali Fraenkel, Eyal Yifrah, and Gilad Shaer, had been murdered, my immediate thoughts and prayer were these:

“Now God…pull/drive Israel into Gaza and crush, dismember, devastate the Hamas in all its forms. And imbue Benjamin Netanyahu with the calculated craftiness to draw on this to eviscerate Abbas and the PLO/PA.”

Hamas – whose entire raison d’être is built upon a hatred of the Jewish people and the desire for Israel’s complete destruction; the PLO/PA – whose entire future hinges upon maintaining the myth (and the funding of that myth by both Israel and the nations) of a disenfranchised indigenous ‘Palestinian people’ denied statehood by the Israeli ‘occupier.’

Since that prayer burst out of my heart, flames, a revenge killing, rioting, missiles and Israeli strikes in Gaza have filled the days – and the airstrikes are now very intense. With infantry and armored units massing on the fence, and the IDF activating 40,000 reserves, Israel stands poised to enter the all-Arab enclave.

After rockets fell on Jerusalem and Hadera – north of Tel Aviv – the IDF hit 160 targets across the Strip. In less than a half hour last night (Wednesday) 80 more were struck.

(On holiday in South Africa, I was talking with my IDF soldier son – who was recovering in Jerusalem after minor surgery – when the first rockets hit the capital on Tuesday. A few weeks ago he was granted permission to take 14 days leave from later this month to join us on this visit to his ailing grandparents. Yesterday he was called back to his base, and today his unit is relocating for what the IDF has warned will be a long operation. If things continue to move forward, instead of flying to Cape Town next week, he could be going to war.)

The IDF’s mobilization raises two questions:

Why is the operation set to be a lengthy one? asked one of my readers. Is it because Hamas has been given free rein to build up the kind of terror infrastructure that will require time to demolish?

And why is a ground offensive a key part of this operation?

There is essentially one answer and this is that, yes, employing techniques it has used since the early history of the PLO, Hamas and the other terror sub-groups operating under Hamas’ protection have been burrowing underground all over Gaza, smuggling in weapons, building rockets of their own, caching them in private homes and public buildings and firing them from within civilian population centers.

For those who may have forgotten, Gaza was vacated by Israel nearly 10 years ago when 10,000 Jews were evicted by their own government. The territory was surrendered to the PLO which immediately began to build its long-envisioned state, erecting and emplacing the infrastructure for the kind of terror-operations base it hopes to one day replicate in the ‘West Bank’ – a base from which to attack what would be left of Israel.

In Gaza these terrorists are well entrenched. What’s more, according to numerous surveys, they have the zealous support of the majority of the civilians in among who they have dug themselves.

Because of its tohar haNeshek (purity of arms) ethics doctrine, the IDF – should it undertake a ground offensive in Gaza – will send its soldiers from house to house in an effort to avoid harming civilians even at the cost of its own soldiers’ lives. Israel has done this before – and paid the price.

“Stupidity,” cry some critics. “Criminal,” charge others. “The majority of Arabs in Gaza hate the Jews and support all efforts aimed at destroying their state. The lives of these civilians are not worth the death of one Israeli soldier.”

I want to agree. Quoting a friend: “The term ‘carpet bombing’ sits and rolls itself over and over in my mind. It feels like a terrible thought but I tell myself that God raining hailstones from Heaven doesn’t sound very selective either.”

And it happened, as they fled before Israel and were on the descent of Beth Horon, that the Lord cast down large hailstones from heaven on them as far as Azekah, and they died. There were more who died from the hailstones than the children of Israel killed with the sword. (Joshua 10:11)

That was God – the unchanging, eternal YHWH God of Israel.

What has He got to do with the unfolding war against Gaza?

Everything.

There is a Jewish state in the land of Israel in the Middle East, and a strong Jewish people in that state today, because God is restoring Israel. He has pledged to do so – and this restoration is a central part of His plan of redemptionthat will see His Kingdom come one earth.

This is undiluted Biblical truth.

So is the fact that God’s enemy – who is the enemy of all mankind – spends sleepless nights working to reverse this restoration. Satan is totally committed to this cause, because Israel’s completed restitution will signal the termination – forever – of his reign.

As he angles for the actual physical obliteration of the Jewish people (a destruction desired by and prayed for by hundreds of millions of Muslims and others in the world), one of his primary aims is to get Christians onside.

He utilizes every opportunity; harnesses even our own sometimes off-center grasp of godliness to deflect us.

Take the murder of the Arab boy Muhammad Abu Kh’deir. Hearing that Jews had committed that crime, some Christian supporters of Israel immediately began calling for a ‘more balanced’ approach towards the groups on both sides of the conflict.

How quickly and easily our focus can be sidetracked away from the core of the battle Israel is waging – and what our position should be on it. By being diverted we abandon the field to the scoffing, God-hating, Allah-lauding foe!

When it comes to Israel, the Christian who relinquishes the fight – or who is seduced into adopting an ‘even-handed’ position on it – will find himself siding against the purpose and plan of the Lord.

As I watch the Golani Brigade soldiers with their Tavor rifles and the Merkava tanks of the IDF’s Armored Corp massing across the way from Gaza; as the air force jets and helicopters continue to surgically strike the Hamas leadership and infrastructure, I pray Israel on into the battle, using the words of the psalmist in chapter 144:

Blessed be the Lord Israel’s Rock, Who trains their hands for war and their fingers for battle— Israel’s lovingkindness and fortress, her high tower and her deliverer, her shield and the One in whom Israel takes refuge.

And I pray back to the Lord the words He Himself used about Israel’s conquest of the land from Canaanite enemies long ago:

For they did not gain possession of the land by their own [weapons], nor did their own arm save them; But it was Your right hand, Your arm, and the light of Your countenance, Because You favoured them. (Psalm 44:3)

Favour your people again today, LORD God. For Your ‘set time to favour Zion has come.’

Israel’s presence today in the land given her by God is as Divinely sanctioned as was her presence in that same land more than three millennia ago. And Israel’s adversaries today are being directed from the same command and control center as they were directed from back then.

Let us not forget the freshly spilled blood of Gilad, Naftali and Eyal, so recently killed just because they were Jews. Surely something massive and life-changing and historic has to happen if there is to be any point at all to the terrible taking of their lives?

Let’s not be duped by the Machiavellian and devious designs of our adversary the devil.

And let us remember that it has always been God’s plan and purpose that Israel will be used to bring peace to all of the people of the Middle East.