Soldiers Hiding Behind Children: How Will God Judge Hamas and Israel?

In early October, soldiers from Hamas invaded Israel. They killed babies in their beds, kidnapped wives and grandmothers, and in general, attacked without any moral constraints on their behavior, deliberately and intentionally attacking non-combatants. Over 1300 people were killed and hundreds were taken hostage. Naturally, Israel is responding and firing upon Gaza. The media almost always reports on this story the same way, saying that Israel has a clear right to respond, but that since the Hamas soldiers hide in civilian housing, the Israelites are killing children. And while it is true that Israel's counterattacks do result in the death of women and children, the question is, how should they respond when their enemies hide behind women and children. What should a nation that is trying to be moral do when enemy combatants use children as shields?

In this episode, we discuss the challenge of responding righteously when your enemy has no regard for the innocent. In particular, we talk about the often-overlooked fact that Hamas is the elected government of Gaza, and has strong support from Palestinians living there and in the West Bank. When you consider that Hamas is very open about both their hatred for Israel and their tactics of attacking from positions where they are surrounded by civilians, who should we hold to blame for the children that are killed? Does that not fall on the parents who chose Hamas? This is worth pointing out, because Christians often try to play games when it comes to difficult moral situations. We like to absolve certain parties of guilt, and in doing so, we shift the blame to someone else. And God is never ok with this. He sa