lost friends??

[Stan]

I made a post on a social media, which was my opinion, that Israel and friends need to liberate Gazians from Hamas just as the Allies and Russia liberated Germans from Nazis.

I still believe that.  I do not expect everyone else to.

If you befriend a Gasian so they will trust you, most would say the same thing.  They are aware that Hamas has paid informants who try to abstract that from Gazians and then remove their remaining family from being alive. They may never trust you enough; they all have heard stories, fictional or not, of such.

Back to the topic, many long-term friends blocked me over that. I suspect most of them were left-leaning, but I could be wrong.

Has anyone else had that kind of experience?

Stan

[Kevin H]

Stan, I'm left-leaning, but fully agree with you. There are wonderful people living in the land. For centuries they lived together until Western nations started to interfere, and now you have extremists on both sides that hold everyone else hostage. A child of a Palestinian friend of mine made a comment about how the press very much distorts the just concerns that the Palestinians have but make it more extreme than what is being said and twisted to make it anti-Israel. The father, despite being in agreement,  had to denounce the child because of death threats. 

Palestinian Christians worry for their lives, there are different religions among the Arabs who each believe that their version of the faith is the correct version and needs to be imposed on everyone else.  Some in all the faiths respect the history of the land of the Bible which helps us to understand the Bible even better, but others want to destroy and forget the history. 

The original role of Israel was to first, make the most important intersection for trade routes safe from the dangers that the Canaanite superstitions had caused. Then if faithful God would have blessed them and the trade caravans would bring stories about these people to the farthest reaches of the world. If not faithful, they would get curses to encourage them to change, and if nothing else worked, they would go into exile. In exile they were to share with their neighbors God's faithfulness and their unfaithfulness, and thus spread the gospel. If faithful the exile would end in a second great exodus lead by the messiah. 

In short two possible paths: Live faithfully in the land and the caravans will reach out to the world and the world would come to them for the gospel. The other is Go ye into all the world and spread the gospel. 

The Hebrews had the land until the Babylon exile, returned for 70 weeks of years of the land, and even got to stay in the land for nearly another 40 years before going back under exile theology. The age of navigation (and even more so aviation) no longer made this piece of property the center of the world, no God's people, no matter where we live, are still living under the framework of "Go ye into all the world."

Those who are living on that piece of property can no longer follow the land framework. But they have a secondary job under the framework of exile: That from all the Jews suffered that they can have the joy of the land that means so much to them. Second to protect the history of the land so that we can study the Bible deeper. Third, they are holding in check the multifaceted civil war that would develop by so many of the subgroups wanting their true religion be forced upon everyone else when we look at the extremists. I pray for the more moderate Palestinian people to be freed from Hamas. 

[Stan]

Very well written, thank you.

Israel, as a nation, has some of the best laws for the protection of religious liberty. That is seldom talked about.

In the Israeli military, there are Muslims fighting against Hamas to protect their country. That is seldom talked about.

We have all benefited from the inventions and innovations of the Children of Israel. That is seldom talked about.

[Joe Knapp]

On 2/17/2026 at 4:56 AM, Stan said:

f you befriend a Gasian so they will trust you, most would say the same thing.

Stan, my friend, you need to understand this in the cultural setting. People from Gaza have no friends. 

In the Middle East, you cannot separate history from culture. They are interwoven. 

No Arab country wants to be friends with Gaza. The largest border wall is in the south on the Egyptian border. 

They are not nice people. They are hated by other Arabs. Even though Israel is doing those terrible things, other powerful Arab countries are not lifting a finger to help. 

"In the latter part of the 1950s, Yassar Arafat co-founded Fatah, a paramilitary organization which sought Israel's replacement with a Palestinian state."   Israel will never forget this. 

Quote

Arafat functioned best as a symbol and worst as a leader. He never evolved. Different aspects of his legacy are not as flattering.

He failed in attaining the goal he set for himself, the establishment of a state in his lifetime.

Many, including President Bill Clinton, scored Arafat for not saying yes to statehood in the final months of the Clinton presidency, which would have ended the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.

If he did not like what was offered, he could have counter-offered at the table and not in the streets, where he pointedly refused entreaties from leaders around the world to halt or at least delegitimize violence of the second intifada. As such, the occupation and Israeli settlements are part of his legacy.

Now I do not condone the terrible things that Israel has done, but when you poke the bear for 20 - 50 years, something bad is going to happen. 

Gaza's population has grown and was a serious threat to Israel. And remember, through all the terrible things in the last few years, no Arab country came to their aid. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Yemen, Oman, Bahrain, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates, Iraq, Turkey (Türkiye), and Egypt. No one helped. Because they are disgusting people in their eyes. 

So we all know that the Middle East is a very complicated place. But to really understand it, we need to see it with a Middle East lens. 

 

[phkrause]

On 2/16/2026 at 11:51 PM, Kevin H said:

I'm left-leaning, but fully agree with you. There are wonderful people living in the land. For centuries they lived together until Western nations started to interfere, and now you have extremists on both sides that hold everyone else hostage.

Exactly!!