Israeli tanks advanced yesterday to the gates of Gaza City’s main hospital. According to the World Health Organization, al-Shifa hospital is no longer functioning after three days without power. A Gaza health ministry spokesperson said thirty-two patients had died in the last three days, including three newborn babies, as a result.

President Biden stated yesterday that Gaza’s hospitals “must be protected.” While hospitals are granted special protection under international humanitarian law, the International Committee of the Red Cross notes that they can lose such protections if combatants use them to hide fighters or store weapons.

This is just what Israel says Hamas is doing in Gaza. It claims that the terrorist group operates its command headquarters beneath the al-Shifa complex; the Israeli military has released an illustrated map of the hospital marked with locations it claims are underground military installations. A US official with knowledge of American intelligence has confirmed this claim. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also states that Israel offered “to give them enough fuel to operate the hospital, operate the incubators and so on, because we (have) no battle with patients or civilians at all,” but Hamas refused the offer.

Palestinian medical workers, by contrast, accuse Israel of mounting an all-out attack on infrastructure in Gaza to punish the population and force a surrender. Accordingly, three Palestinian human rights groups have asked the International Criminal Court to investigate Israel, accusing it of perpetrating genocide in its war in Gaza.

This accusation that Israel is committing genocide is common in the press, on college campuses, and at other pro-Palestinian rallies these days.

But is it true?

“Any civilian loss is a tragedy”

In December 1948, in the aftermath of the Second World War, the United Nations adopted the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. It defines genocide as acts intended “to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group.”

By this definition, Hamas is a genocidal group. Its founding charter, published in 1988, explicitly calls for the obliteration of Israel. As Bret Stephens writes in the New York Times, “had the Hamas terrorists been able to kill one hundred or one thousand times as many [Jews] as they did on October 7, they would have done so without hesitation.” He adds that Hamas’s goal is “homicidal: to end Israel as a state by slaughtering every Jew within it.”

By contrast, Israel wants to destroy Hamas, not the Palestinians. When Hamas uses civilians as human shields, their deaths are the fault of Hamas, according to Prime Minister Netanyahu: “I think any civilian loss is a tragedy . . . and the blame should be placed squarely on Hamas.”

Cultural commentator Andrew Sullivan noted: “If Israel were interested in the ‘genocide’ of Palestinian Arabs, it has had the means to accomplish it for a very long time. And yet, for some reason, the Arab population of Israel and the occupied territories has exploded since 1948, and the Arabs in Israel proper have voting rights and a key presence in the Knesset.”

He concludes: “The only people actively and proudly engaged in genocide are Hamas.” Those who march for Hamas are not opposing genocide but “defending its perpetrators.”

Supreme Court adopts a code of conduct

In other news, the US Supreme Court issued its first-ever code of conduct yesterday. According to the Court, the fifteen-page document “largely represents a codification of principles that we have long regarded as governing our conduct.” However, the code provides no penalties for violations of ethical standards.

This fact highlights the problem with legislating morality: if even our nation’s highest court cannot anticipate and respond to every possible ethical violation its nine members might commit, how can a nation of laws possibly legislate for every misuse of human freedom? United Nations regulations against genocide have clearly not kept Hamas from seeking and committing it. Nor have they protected Israel’s critics from falsely claiming that it is doing the same thing.

This is why the Christian gospel is so urgently needed in our post-Christian culture. Only in Christ can we become a “new creation” for whom “the old has passed away; behold, the new has come” (2 Corinthians 5:17). Only Jesus can cleanse sinners so that we are “holy and without blemish” (Ephesians 5:27).

In my latest website paper, “Are the Jews still God’s chosen people?” I relate the transforming power of the gospel to the war in the Middle East. After examining in detail the theological debate regarding Israel’s status in biblical prophecy and God’s kingdom today, I close with three biblical facts:

1. God intends all people—Jews and Gentiles—to experience his transforming love (Ezekiel 36:26; 2 Corinthians 5:17).
2. God wants to use all people—Jews and Gentiles—to bring the good news of his love to the world (Genesis 12:3; Acts 1:8).
3. We should join Paul in praying earnestly for Jews who do not know Jesus to turn to him in faith (Romans 10:1).

“Faith is like a window you look through”

In light of these facts, let’s close with this truth: God’s love in Christ can change any human heart, including the terrorists of Hamas. If we think this is impossible, we just need to remember the conversion of Saul of Tarsus. The Bible records that he “was ravaging the church, and entering house after house, he dragged off men and women and committed them to prison” (Acts 8:3; cf. 22:4). Of course, that persecutor is known to the world today as Paul the Apostle.

If God could change his heart, he can change any heart.

Will you pause now to pray for God to bring the terrorists of Hamas into conviction of their sins and salvation in Christ? Ask Jesus to reveal himself to them in visions and dreams, something he is doing across the Muslim world today. And remember: it is always too soon to give up on God.

Br. Geoffrey Tristram of the Society of St. John the Evangelist notes: “It’s not great faith that you need, but faith in a great God. Faith is like a window you look through. It doesn’t matter if the window is six feet high or six inches, or just the tiniest peephole in a telescope. What matters is the God that your faith is looking out on.”

How great is your God?

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South Carolina Senator Tim Scott surprised many—including some of his campaign staff—on Sunday Night when he told Trey Gowdy with Fox News that he was dropping out of the race for president. Struggles in the polls and with generating new donors made it unlikely that the senator would be able to qualify for the next Republican debate, so Sunday’s news was seen by most as an eventuality.

Still, Scott began the race with one of the most substantial war chests in the primary and ended September with $14 million remaining, a figure he recently claimed was “the most money of any candidate running for president other than Donald Trump.” The hope was that his reserves would allow him to continue after others were forced to drop out, giving him the chance to make up ground in a narrower field. However, the combination of relatively poor debate performances and fellow South Carolinian Nikki Haley emerging as the chief rival to both Trump and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis left Scott without a clear path to improvement.

So now he returns his focus to the Senate and takes his message of positivity and hope with him. That message has been somewhat lacking among the other candidates in the election, but, as one of Scott’s supporters lamented, such optimism is “not where the Republican base is right now.”

To be honest, though, it’s not where most of the country seems to be either.

A recent poll showed that 63 percent of Americans are very or somewhat pessimistic about “the moral and ethical standards in our country” while only 12 percent said they had “quite a lot” of confidence in the nation’s future.

In short, if Tim Scott’s message of positivity failed to resonate with voters, it is likely because there’s simply not much to be positive about in the views of most Americans.

But, as lamentable as that perception may be, there are far worse fates for a country than a disenchanted populace.

Are you proud to be an American?

While we should not embrace negativity to the point that we can no longer see the good in the world around us, Chris Anderson was correct in writing of America’s shifting views on national pride that we have moved past the days when “being proud of America was treated as a prerequisite for being patriotic.”

To be sure, there is much in this country of which we cannot be proud. Upticks in abortion, the continued rejection of biblical morality, and the rampant animosity on both sides of the political aisle are real problems. Moreover, the state of the economy, the threat of proxy wars pulling the country deeper into the fray, and a host of other national problems weigh heavily on many Americans as well.

And while I would still argue that the good outweighs the bad when it comes to assessing America’s present and future, that will not always be the case if we ignore the very real issues we face.

So how should we proceed?

Consider your true citizenship

First, we must embrace the fact that, as Christians, we are called to be citizens of heaven before we’re citizens of America or any other nation. In our increasingly politicized culture, maintaining that distinction can be a difficult, though essential, proposition.

As Justin Giboney noted, “Our ideological tribes come with articles of faith. The least we can do is take the time to understand which of those conflict with Christian principles. If you think ideological conservatism or progressivism is biblically sound then you’re sadly mistaken.”

At Denison Forum, we often say we’re a nonpartisan ministry. I’ve heard from enough readers to know that stance can prove irritating at times, but we take that approach because we genuinely feel it is more in keeping with God’s call for us as individual Christians and as a ministry. The reason is that there is not one single political party that aligns itself with the totality of God’s word, and there never will be.

That perspective is important because it can grant us the necessary degrees of separation to take a more objective look at the country, judging it in light of God’s word rather than through a more political lens.

“Ask what you can do for your country”

Second, we need to do our part to make the nation better. Taking responsibility for our role in the state of the country is essential because it helps us avoid the temptation of simply blaming all that’s wrong on someone else.

And, to be sure, each of us can make a difference.

Ultimately, the way you treat others and the degree to which each day of your life draws the people around you closer to the Lord will have a far greater impact on the trajectory of this nation than anything you can do in a ballot box or political forum. Voting is still important, but no politician can fix what seems broken in our country (and that’s always been the case).

Holing up and trying to wait out the storm as the culture implodes around us is not a biblical option, no matter how appealing it may seem at times (Matthew 5:13–16). Doing so implies that we believe God has either given up on our nation and its people or he is incapable of making a difference.

While there are times in Scripture when the Lord turns a people or country over to face judgment, it is never without the hope of redemption, and Jesus came to make that redemption available to everyone.

So regardless of how you feel about the trajectory of the nation or who seems to hold the most blame for its faults, remember that (this side of eternity) it’s always too soon to give up on God making a difference. And he wants to use you to help.

Will you let him?

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