In July of 2006, Hezbollah terrorists from Lebanon, attacked northern Israel. Their first target? Not Israeli soldiers or military defense positions. No. Hezbollah terrorists bombed B’nai Zion Medical Center in Haifa.
This act initiated a war between Israel and Lebanon that was finally ended with a UN brokered cease fire on August 14, 2006. The weeks of war, again initiated by Hezbollah terrorists attacking from Lebanon, resulted in tens of thousands of displaced persons and many hundreds of deaths. Hezbollah claimed after the war ended that it was for them a “divine victory.”
After the 2006 war began, the American Jewish Committee (AJC) in Cleveland invited me to go to Israel during this war to see the efforts being made by Israel to defend its borders and protect its vulnerable civilian population of senior citizens, children, and all persons living in Haifa, the Golan Heights, Galilee, and along the southern border contiguous with the Gaza Strip.
Those days in Israel during the war were a profound learning experience for me. I saw first-hand, example after example of courage, resolve, humanitarian effort, and caring for others put in action to save innocent lives. All this taking place amid a mobilization of IDF – Israeli Defense Forces – to defend the country militarily.
When we learned of the attack against Israel this past Saturday (10-07-2023) by Hamas terrorists located in the Palestinian controlled Gaza, my first thought was, “Here we go…again.” But I was so very wrong.
While Hamas is comprised, just as Hezbollah, of religious fanatic terrorists, what is occurring now is much different. The level of Hamas’ attack, the preparations for it, the weapons supplied to accomplish it, the loss of life from it, makes the intensity of the resulting war already many times greater than what took place in the late summer of 2006.
Several things, however, are the damnable same.
The terrorists are being supplied with weapons from Iran. Hezbollah terrorist training is being enhanced by Iranian military support. And once again entire populations are placed in jeopardy by cowardly terrorists who target, not soldiers, but unarmed civilians.
If this great damnable similarity were not over-the-top enough, there is one more. Just like Hezbollah terrorists, the Hamas terrorists believe that their cause of terrorizing and killing Jews is powered by God and will result in “divine victory.”
There is no question that many Palestinian people suffering under Israel’s apartheid measures – in place because of Israel’s more than understandable fear of terrorist acts – have legitimate grievance. But that said, there is no empathy that comes from me for terrorists who imbed themselves among non-combatants, hide behind children for protection against military and police response, and think of themselves as righteous warriors representing an aggrieved people. This is more than tragic religious nonsense. It is the God damnable act of taking the Lord’s name in vain.
God will not be mocked. God will – as God always does – respond.
Perhaps God’s response will be, in part, through the people of all faiths who will never be party to the twisted, arrogant, soul-killing, verbal excrement of religious extremism.
What honor is there in attacking young people at an outdoor music concert in Southern Israel? What honor is there in taking children hostage? What honor is there in beheading babies? What honor and integrity of a spiritual life is there in claiming this to be a holy war which will result in a divine victory?
There are those who say that religion has little to do with the horrors taking place across this world. Such an opinion is a great misunderstanding of the power of religion gone amuck in our time.
Political and financial corruption may be at work in pitting armed combatants against innocent civilians who are desperately trying to stay out of harm’s way. Twisted politics and love of money, no matter the amount of blood on that money, may indeed provide the means and the method of all manner of killing. But religious extremism is the self-righteous, spiritual sickness that enables human beings to pull the trigger.
The tragedies perpetrated by religious zealots of every age and certainly rampant in our own are damnable evidence of human, sanctified hatred, not the act of a divine Creator. How else can one even begin to grasp how there can be rallies taking place across the globe by people cheering their support for Hamas? What power other than religion gone bad can enable the motivation of sick spirits to murder children and feel righteous in doing so?
One of the great terrors in life occurs when religion gone bad is preached by self-righteous bigots masking their ignorance, hate, bigotry, and prejudice as a righteous cause.
Such religion be damned.
Such religion must be exposed for what it always is; the ranting of manifested evil behind the megaphone of human complicity that has taken root in the vacuum of spiritual indifference.