Gaza: different views
Editor’s note: There have been a huge number of reports and comments on the horrific scenes at the border of Gaza and Israel. The dreadful loss of life is a humanitarian emergency, but also raises again the complex and intractable political and religious conflict in the region. Rather than attempting to justify one side and/or condemn the other from far away, perhaps a helpful approach is to read and listen to reports and interviews from different perspectives, and offer prayers for peace as we approach Pentecost:
Who’s responsible for these Gaza deaths? The Hamas and their Western media enablers, by Melanie Phillips
“We’re dying slowly in Gaza, it’s better to die along the fence trying to be free”. Interview with Gazans before the protest and attempt to cross the border fence with tragic loss of life. By Meron Rapoport, +972
Hamas trying to use deadly Gaza clashes to secure humanitarian relief, Israel believes, by Amos Harel, Haaretz
Interview with Mark Regev, Israeli Ambassador to UK, BBC World Service
Israel faces international condemnation over ‘massacre’ at Gaza border, from The Independent (with many other articles and videos)
The toll of 58 dead and around 2,700 injured – many shot in the legs – was the steep price paid by those who protested at the security fence…
Although the air force dropped leaflets warning people their lives would be in danger if they protested at the border, and said the protests were being used by Gaza-based militant group Hamas as cover for attacks, the resulting heavy casualties have been strongly criticised by the international community.
Bishops condemn Israel ‘unequivocally’ over ‘horrifying’ use of live bullets in Gaza, by James MacIntyre
Evangelicals and Israel’s birthday, by Richard D. Land, Christian Post
[…] millions of evangelicals believe that if they want God to bless them individually, and America collectively as a nation, then they need to bless the Jews.
This means among other things, that anti-Semitism must be resisted vigorously wherever and whenever it rears its demonic head. It also means supporting the Jewish people’s aspirations to have their own homeland in the ancient God-given land of Israel….
…Supporting the Jewish people’s right to govern themselves in the ancient homeland that God promised them in perpetuity so many millennia ago, does not mean blind affirmation and support for anything and everything Israel does. If we truly care about Israel and the Jewish people, we are compelled to tell them when we believe she is acting wrongly or contrary to her true best interests.
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