Why did Israel assassinate Hamas and Hezbollah leaders?

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, issued an order yesterday for Iran to strike Israel directly in retaliation for the killing in Tehran of Hamas’s leader, Ismail Haniyeh. According to the New York Times, it is unclear how forcefully Iran will respond and whether they will calibrate their attack to avoid escalation. Iranian military commanders are considering a combination attack of drones and missiles on military targets in the vicinity of Haifa and Tel Aviv, but they would reportedly make a point of avoiding civilian targets.

Israel also killed Fuad Shukr, a senior Hezbollah commander they hold responsible for the Golan Heights massacre. They claim that Shukr had been orchestrating rocket and UAV attacks against Israelis since October 7 and was involved in developing and integrating precision-guided missiles that “have the potential to threaten the lives of millions of Israeli civilians.”

Multiple governments and news outlets warn that these strikes will delay talks over a ceasefire in Gaza and could intensify the regional war.

Why, then, does Israel do this?

“Single points of vulnerability”

Israel said this morning that they killed top Hamas military commander Mohammed Deif in a July airstrike, eliminating a planner of the October 7 atrocities. The IDF has carried out numerous assassinations of enemy leaders over the years, including Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the founder of Hamas, who was killed by an Israeli missile in 2004.

Danielle Pletka, a distinguished senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, reports in Foreign Policy that “targeting senior leaders critical to an enemy program makes strategic sense from Israel’s perspective.” She explains:

Even among sophisticated democracies, there can be single points of vulnerability—think J. Robert Oppenheimer’s crucial role in the Manhattan Project—and that weakness goes double and triple for nondemocratic governments and terrorist organizations whose power and operational knowledge are concentrated among a select few.

Israeli leaders especially target enemies who cannot be extradited for trial. They believe these actions have caused the number of Israeli deaths from terrorism to decline. In addition, they consider it moral to cause individual deaths that prevent widescale terrorism and mortality. Critics respond that such assassinations generate worldwide condemnation, disrupt diplomatic negotiations, fuel Palestinian anger, and increase the number of terrorists.

Now we are waiting for the response of Iran and Hezbollah to Israel’s latest targeted killings. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised yesterday that his nation would “exact a heavy price for any aggression against us.”

Nazi salutes at the Paris Olympics

As the Israeli national anthem was played recently at the Paris Olympics, individuals holding the Palestinian flag in the stands gave the Nazi salute. Such atrocious antisemitism in support of terrorism against Israel actually makes the case for Zionism by demonstrating that Jews aren’t safe without a homeland.

Ironically, this horrific act took place in the city where Zionism originated.

In 1896, Theodor Herzl, a Viennese journalist, published a manifesto calling for the establishment of a Jewish homeland in the biblical land of Israel. He did so after witnessing the trial in Paris of Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish officer falsely accused of betraying France.

Even though Dreyfus was a proud Frenchman, he was treated as a traitor because he was a Jew. Cries of “Death to the Jews” reverberated in the Paris streets, convincing Herzl that Jews needed their own nation to be safe from persecution. His leadership resulted ultimately in the creation of the modern State of Israel in 1948.

“To wish that he were not bad”

I am deeply grateful that Theodor Herzl’s vision came to pass. Having led more than thirty pilgrimages to Israel, I love the Jewish nation and her people. Experiencing for myself Israel’s diminutive size and close proximity to enemies who seek her annihilation, I am convinced that she has the right and responsibility to defend herself.

At the same time, I follow the biblical injunction to “pray for the peace of Jerusalem” (Psalm 122:6) every day.

I am convinced that the ultimate answer to peace in this war-torn land will not come through arms but through hearts. Imagine the difference if those on both sides of this perennial conflict obeyed the call of Scripture: “Do not repay evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary, bless” (1 Peter 3:9).

Jesus taught us to “love your enemies” (Matthew 5:44). As C. S. Lewis explains in Mere Christianity, loving our enemy means “to wish that he were not bad, to hope that he may, in this world or another, be cured: in fact, to wish his good.”

You might say that such forgiving love is humanly impossible, and you’d be right. However, as Jesus reminded us, “all things are possible with God” (Mark 10:27).

Consider Saul of Tarsus, a Pharisee who hated Christians before he met Christ and became the church’s greatest missionary and theologian. Or Peter, who considered Gentiles to be “unclean” before a heavenly vision prompted him to lead Cornelius to Christ (Acts 10), opening the door to Gentile evangelism in the early church (Acts 11).

The three-fold gift of salvation

As you “pray for the peace of Jerusalem” in these perilous days, please join me in praying that Israelis and Palestinians, Jews and Muslims would turn to the Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9:6). Pray for Jesus to continue revealing himself to Muslims in visions and dreams. And pray for the messianic Jewish movement to continue and expand in Israel.

Rick Warren was right:

“Through salvation our past has been forgiven, our present is given meaning, and our future is secured.”

Will you pray now for every person in the Middle East to experience such transforming grace, to the glory of God?

• Note: For more on the war in Israel, the origins of Hamas and the other groups involved, and a practical guide to praying over and discussing the conflict there, see denisonforum.org/Israel.

Thursday news to know:

• Venezuela’s Maduro moves to silence opposition after disputed election
• Hopes of finding survivors fade in India’s Kerala after landslides kill 167
• Boeing names new CEO after losses more than triple
• Fed clears path for September rate cut
• On this day in 1936: Hitler oversees Berlin Olympics opening ceremony

*Denison Forum does not necessarily endorse the views expressed in these stories.

Quote for the day:

“The greatest enemy to human souls is the self-righteous spirit which makes men look to themselves for salvation.” —Charles Spurgeon

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Why the Majdal Shams attack could spark a conflict no one wants

“We are nearing the moment in which we face an all-out war.” This is how Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz responded to a missile attack last Saturday in the Golan Heights town of Majdal Shams that killed at least twelve boys and girls ranging in age from ten to sixteen. Dozens more were injured and taken to hospitals.

The massacre was the deadliest attack on Israeli civilians since Hamas’s invasion last October 7. If it does, in fact, lead to an “all-out war,” it will be a conflict no one wants. It will devastate two nations and could spark a global conflict.

And all over what might be a mistake.

Hezbollah, the Iranian terrorist proxy in Lebanon, denied responsibility for the strike, claiming that the tragedy was the result of an Israeli anti-rocket interceptor hitting the soccer field. However, the Israel Defense Forces denied this charge, and a US official said, “There’s no real doubt this was Hezbollah.” Israel’s military chief spokesman added that the rocket used in the attack is “owned exclusively by Hezbollah.”

The Majdal Shams attack came hours after an Israeli airstrike on south Lebanon killed three Hezbollah members. The militants then targeted an Israeli base on the slopes of Mt. Herman about two miles from where the explosion happened, raising the possibility that the missile missed its target. Israeli analysts said Hezbollah most likely did not target the village; US officials are likewise working on the assumption that the strike was an accident. It is also noteworthy that the Majdal Shams victims were Druze Arabs, not Jews.

If this was a tragic accident, why could it lead to “all-out war”?

Why would Hezbollah escalate?

Hezbollah does not want a wider war with Israel because such a conflict would devastate Lebanon. The country’s economy has collapsed in recent years, with 80 percent of the population now estimated to be in poverty.

As geopolitical expert Mohanad Hage Ali reports in Foreign Affairs, the country would be hard-pressed to rebuild after a ground war. Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and other regional actors aided their reconstruction efforts after the 2006 war, but Saudi Arabia downgraded its diplomatic ties in 2021 in response to Hezbollah’s support for the Houthi rebels in Yemen.

But here’s the other side of the issue: Hezbollah is unlikely to sign a cease-fire with Israel before Hamas does. Hezbollah began launching rockets at Israel the day after the October 7 invasion, both in solidarity with their fellow militants and also to exercise their leading role in Iran’s “axis of resistance” in the region. A cessation of conflict with Israel now would cost them credibility with their Palestinian and other Middle Eastern allies.

If Israel escalates the conflict, it’s hard to see how Hezbollah would not respond in the same way.

Why would Israel escalate?

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited the site of the attack yesterday and said, “Our response is coming, and it will be severe.” Israel struck Hezbollah targets deep inside Lebanon the day before, targeting weapons caches and infrastructure.

However, the Washington Post reports that this attack “fell short of the furious response Israeli officials threatened” after Saturday’s Majdal Shams massacre. And two Israeli officials said yesterday that Israel was preparing for the possibility of a few days of fighting. Unidentified officials said the response would be “limited but significant.”

Here’s their dilemma: Hezbollah is the most heavily armed group in the Middle East.

They are estimated to have about 150,000 rockets and missiles, which could overwhelm Israel’s sophisticated air defense systems. Their arsenal also includes precision-guided missiles that could strike deep into Israeli territory. As an Israeli friend told me recently, many of these missiles fly below Israel’s detection capacities and thus would not be stopped by the Iron Dome and other defense systems.

In an all-out war, virtually every person and place in Israel could come under attack. A major operation against Hezbollah could also bring other Iranian-backed proxies in the region into a multi-front conflict.

But here’s the other side of the issue: When Hamas invaded on October 7, Israeli officials were alarmed that Hezbollah’s terrorists could do the same to its northern villages. They immediately evacuated sixty thousand of these residents, placing most of them in hotels around the country.

Hezbollah then bombed many of these evacuated towns, rendering them uninhabitable. Nine months later, these refugees, along with many of Israel’s military leaders, are pressing for the IDF to force Hezbollah back from the border to create a buffer zone in northern Israel so they can return to their communities.

Saturday’s tragedy could instigate such an offensive and a larger war could result.

Could this become a global war?

Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian warned that any Israeli attack on Lebanon would have “serious consequences” for Israel. If the conflict brought Iran into the war, its alliance with Russia and China could make this a world war. If that were to happen, the US and Israel’s other allies in the West could be forced to join the war in defense of the Jewish state.

However, my point is not to predict that such a global war is imminent. Rather, it is to illustrate how the Majdal Shams massacre could be the spark that ignites one.

And to remind us that the only source of true peace in the world cannot be produced by the world.

So long as Jews and Muslims both claim the same land, this regional conflict will continue. So long as Iran, Russia, and China aspire to regional and even global dominance, geopolitical conflict will continue.

Only when people everywhere make Jesus their Lord will they be empowered to forgive and love their enemies (Luke 6:27), treat all people as sacred bearers of the divine Image (Genesis 1:27), and trade the “will to power” for hearts of humility and service (cf. John 13:35).

This is why God’s word links peace with godliness:

Strive for peace with everyone, and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord (Hebrews 12:14).

Will you pray for such peace through holiness right now?

Will you work to answer your prayer today?

NOTE: Can you imagine growing up in today’s culture? Our children and grandchildren must navigate these confusing times while they’re not yet adults, so let’s commit to consistently praying for them. Christian Parenting, a brand of Denison Ministries, has released this year’s best-selling annual A Life of Faith prayer journal. This weekly journal includes a short devotional with relevant and timely topics, scripture verses, guided prayer, and space for you to write down your specific supplications for your child or grandchild. Please join me as I pray for my kids and grandkids this school year that they may know Jesus deeply and change the culture around them with his love. Order your copy of A Life of Faith prayer journal today to pray for your kids and grandkids.

Tuesday news to know:

• US, several Latin American nations doubt Venezuelan strongman’s election claim
• Members of a bipartisan task force to probe Trump assassination attempt unveiled
• 2 children killed and more injured in a knife attack in an English town
• Triple meteor showers set to dazzle the night sky over the next two weeks
• On this day in 1965: President Johnson signs Medicare into law

*Denison Forum does not necessarily endorse the views expressed in these stories.

Quote for the day:

“We look forward to the time when the Power of Love will replace the Love of Power. Then will our world know the blessings of peace.” —William E. Gladstone

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