A month ago today, Hamas launched a barbaric attack on civilians in Israel. When the news broke, who would have guessed that such horrific atrocities would provoke rising animosity, not against the perpetrators but against the people they seek to eradicate? So why is antisemitism rising?

Cornell University canceled all classes recently after a student was arrested for allegedly threatening violent attacks against Jewish students at the college. There has been an increasing police presence on campus since the threats were made.

After Harvard alumnus and hedge fund manager Bill Ackman met with students and faculty last week, he described antisemitism on campus as “much worse” than he realized and said, “Jewish students are being bullied, physically intimidated, spat on, and in several widely-disseminated videos of one such incident, physically assaulted.” He called on Harvard’s president to take immediate steps to reduce antisemitism on campus.

The Anti-Defamation League has documented a nearly 400 percent rise in antisemitic incidents across the US since October 7. As part of this escalation, it reports fifty-four antisemitic incidents at American universities.

What explains this surge in antisemitism on our college campuses?

Two crucial factors

Protests against Israel at America’s universities are nothing new. For example, a movement to “boycott, divest from, and sanction” Israel has been popular on college campuses since it was launched in 2005. Opposition to Israel escalated after Hamas’s invasion on October 7 even before Israel began a military response. In the weeks since, such opposition has become deafening.

In response, I wrote a website white paper yesterday explaining in detail two factors involved in this complex issue.

First, I responded to the claim that Israel is an “occupying colonizer” who stole its land from its rightful Palestinian owners. I noted:

• The original owners of the land were Canaanites from whom Jews conquered the region under Joshua. Their descendants now live in Lebanon and bear no genealogical relationship to the Palestinians.
• Present-day Palestinians are descendants of the Arabs who first conquered the land in AD 640, not the Philistines for whom the region is named. These Arab Muslims took the land from the Jews and Christians who lived there prior to their conquest.
• Since the time of Joshua, there has always been a Jewish presence in the land; Jews repopulated it alongside Arab Palestinians in recent centuries.
• An autonomous nation called Palestine would have been created by the United Nations in 1947, but Arab leaders rejected it.

Thus, Israel did not steal the land from its rightful Palestinian owners. If anything, the Palestinians’ ancestors stole it from the Jews who were there prior to AD 640.

Second, I addressed the claim on college campuses that Israel is oppressing the Palestinian people with its military response to Hamas.

I noted that Hamas is using the Palestinian population as human shields, hiding its soldiers and weapons in tunnels beneath hospitals, schools, and mosques. Just one such tunnel requires enough construction supplies to build eighty-six homes, seven mosques, six schools, or nineteen medical clinics. In addition, Hamas continues to steal fuel, medical supplies, and provisions intended for the civilian population.

Israel must respond to Hamas’s atrocities in order for its citizens to be able to live in their own land. However, the cease-fire being demanded on college campuses would only enable Hamas to strengthen its position in Gaza. As the Wall Street Journal noted, “No other country on earth would agree to the terms of defensive engagement that much of the world wants to impose on Israel.”

“His dominion is an everlasting dominion”

As you can see, two simple but erroneous concepts—that Israel is an occupying colonizer and oppressor of the Palestinians—are inflaming opposition to Jews on college campuses and across America today. They illustrate the fact that ideas, whether right or wrong, change the world.

I have visited Cuba ten times over the years and grieve for the suffering of its people under the tragic ideology of Communism. I have visited Yad Vashem, the holocaust museum in Jerusalem, many times over the years and grieve each time as it explains Hitler’s claim that the Jews were to blame for Germany’s decline and must be eradicated.

I also grieve for our nation as the intellectual cancer of moral relativism continues to metastasize across our culture. C. S. Lewis warned in his 1943 work, Abolition of Man, that abandoning objective values based on unchanging principles would lead to our decline and “abolition” as humans. We are watching his prophecy come to pass more and more each day.

This is why God’s admonition is so urgent: “These are the things that you shall do: Speak the truth to one another; render in your gates judgments that are true and make for peace” (Zechariah 8:16). Said differently, we are to “contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3).

The best way you and I can do this is to know Christ and make him known. When Jesus returns, he will be “given dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him” (Daniel 7:14a). This is because “his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed” (v. 14b).

Accordingly, let’s make these words from the Book of Common Prayer our intercession today:

Lord Jesus Christ, you stretched out your arms of love on the hard wood of the cross that everyone might come within reach of your saving embrace. So clothe us in your Spirit that we, reaching forth our hands in love, may bring those who do not know you to the knowledge and love of you, for the honor of your Name.

Amen.

Denison Forum

A White House fence was vandalized Saturday night as pro-Palestinian protesters shook the gate to one entrance to the executive mansion. Some chanted obscenities about President Biden.

This was just one of many such events across the country over the weekend as protesters rallied to demand a ceasefire in the Israel–Hamas war. They were not alone in their sentiments: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken called for “humanitarian pauses” in the fighting to allow more deliveries into Gaza of food, water, medicine, and other supplies, echoing a similar call by President Biden earlier in the week. The New York Times editorial board agreed, as have numerous US political leaders and Arab ministers in the region.

The Palestinian death toll has risen above nine thousand since the conflict began; more than 3,900 of the total, roughly 40 percent, were under the age of eighteen. A journalist, grieving the death of a fellow journalist and eleven members of his family, said, “We can’t bear this anymore. We are exhausted, we are here victims and martyrs awaiting our deaths, we are dying one after the other and no one cares about us or the large-scale catastrophe and the crime in Gaza.”

In the face of such tragic suffering, widespread calls for a ceasefire or at least a “humanitarian pause” in the fighting are understandable. But there’s more to the story.

Why the “true fight” has not yet begun

The Wall Street Journal editorial board warns that a “pause” in the conflict would only strengthen Hamas. In their view, “The way to help Palestinian civilians isn’t to slow the Israeli advance. The less control Hamas has over Gaza’s streets, the more civilians can escape the fighting and the more aid can be brought in securely.”

They note that “the ground invasion has already allowed humanitarian assistance to ramp up, with more than one hundred truckloads now arriving each day.” And they warn that “Hamas would use freedom of action to keep civilians as shields and pilfer more aid—limiting what Israel can let in.”

All this while, according to the Jerusalem Post, the “true fight” has not yet begun. It notes that most Hamas terrorists are in the southern part of Gaza, where Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers have not yet advanced. The IDF’s incursion into Gaza has not killed or arrested the vast majority of Hamas’s forces, which number approximately forty thousand and prepared for Israel’s invasion by creating a vast web of fortified tunnels. Nor has the IDF’s advance slowed, much less eliminated, rocket fire by Hamas on southern Israel and the Tel Aviv area.

“If we do not defeat Hamas, we cannot survive here”

Hamas officials and soldiers are known to hide in hospitals and among civilians. For example, an Israeli airstrike on Friday hit an ambulance that the IDF claims was being used by a Hamas terrorist cell.

Hamas has also spent years stockpiling enough fuel, food, and medicine in its tunnels to keep fighting for three or four months without resupply. Meanwhile, Palestinian civilians face massive shortages amid a growing humanitarian crisis.

All this to say, if Israel continues its offensive against Hamas, things are likely to get much, much worse for civilians in Gaza. However, as I noted a few days ago, if Israel does not defeat Hamas to such an extent that Jewish citizens feel they and their families are safe in their country again, many may immigrate to other countries, imperiling the future of the nation and fulfilling Hamas’s stated goal to “obliterate” Israel from the region.

This is why one Israeli commander stated, “If we do not defeat Hamas, we cannot survive here.”

So, Israel has to defeat Hamas without incurring civilian casualties to the degree that America stops supporting the war and jihadist groups in Lebanon and the West Bank join the conflict. But incurring such casualties is a central part of Hamas’s nefarious strategy to turn world opinion and Muslims in the region against Israel.

“Peace is not the mere absence of war”

My purpose today is twofold: First, to explain briefly why the conflict between Israel and Hamas is so complicated, defying simple resolution. Second, to use this crisis to illustrate our abiding need for the only true peace humans can experience in this fallen world.

In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus declared, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied” (Matthew 5:6). He also stated, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God” (v. 9). In Gaudium et Spes (Latin for “joy and hope”), the Second Vatican Council noted:

Peace is not the mere absence of war or the simple maintenance of a balance of power between forces, nor can it be imposed at the dictate of absolute power. It is called, rightly and properly, a work of justice. It is the product of order, the order implanted in human society by its divine founder, to be realized in practice as men hunger and thirst for ever more perfect justice.

As a result, “peace” is a “fruit of the Spirit” that proceeds from “love” (Galatians 5:22). Accordingly,

If peace is to be established it is absolutely necessary to have a firm determination to respect other persons and peoples and their dignity, and to be zealous in the practice of brotherhood. Peace is therefore the fruit also of love: love goes beyond what justice can achieve.

Thus, peace ultimately depends on knowing the One who promised, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you” (John 14:27). As a result:

Peace on earth, born of love for one’s neighbor, is the sign and the effect of the peace of Christ that flows from God the Father. In his own person the incarnate Son, the Prince of Peace, reconciled all men to God through his death on the cross.

Paul greeted his readers, “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ” (Philippians 1:2). Note the order: we must experience God’s grace to have true peace with him, others, and ourselves.

The old truism is true: No God, no peace. Know God, know peace.

What will you do to know God and make him known today?

Denison Forum