\n<\/p>\n
By now you will have heard of slaughtered Israeli babies<\/a>, seen the graphic video of a kidnapped Jewish teenager being pulled by her hair<\/a> with what appears to be blood between her legs, read of the 85-year-old grandmother taken to the Gaza strip without her medicines<\/a> to die alone and in great pain.<\/p>\n By now you will know that Hamas terrorists have shot children<\/a>, raped women<\/a>, snatched infants<\/a> from their families. By now you may have heard the account of one survivor of the massacre<\/a> at the music festival<\/a>: \u201cThe guy who was with me didn\u2019t stop crying and begging for his life. \u2026 And then he didn\u2019t scream anymore. They murdered him in front of my eyes.\u201d<\/p>\n At this writing, Hamas has killed more than 1,400 Israelis<\/a>, injured 3,000<\/a>, and is holding around 200<\/a> hostage. This attack has been called Israel\u2019s 9\/11. It could equally be called its Dunkirk<\/a>, the beginning of a war for survival whose outcome is uncertain.<\/p>\n For Christians watching these horrors from afar, it is imperative to condemn the evil perpetrated by Hamas\u2014and to recognize that it must be resisted.<\/p>\n This should go without saying, but some American Christians refuse to denounce Hamas for its barbaric atrocities. A statement from the Episcopal Church in the United States, for example, mentions \u201ca time of violence\u201d<\/a> but fails to say that Hamas was its instigator, suggests that \u201coccupation\u201d is the underlying cause, and charges that Israel\u2019s response is \u201cdisproportionate.\u201d The United Methodist Church similarly refers merely to an \u201cescalation of violence\u201d<\/a> and urges \u201cboth sides not to resort to further violence.\u201d<\/p>\n No further violence? Would we say the same if a terrorist group killed a proportionate number of Americans? (Scaled to our population, that\u2019d be about 40,000<\/a> dead.) As The Wall Street Journal<\/em>\u2019s Elliot Kaufman contends, equivocation about the evil of Hamas is arguably a call for Israel to surrender<\/a> instead of fighting back, because then Israel\u2019s enemies will return to resume their massacres.<\/p>\n That\u2019s not the only part of such equivocations which deserves scrutiny. Is \u201coccupation\u201d the cause of Hamas\u2019s savagery? It cannot be, for Israel stopped occupying<\/a> Gaza in 2005, and Hamas has run that city-state since 2007.<\/p>\n But more importantly, speaking of \u201coccupation\u201d suggests to many that Hamas wants to share the land with Jews. Yet Hamas declares openly that it wants to drive every last Jew into the sea\u2014this is the meaning of the popular slogan<\/a>\u2014and kill all who try to remain.<\/p>\n This is not an unfair allegation from the group\u2019s enemies. Article 7 of Hamas\u2019s own founding charter<\/a> quotes a saying of the prophet Muhammad: \u201cThe Day of Judgment will not come about until Moslems [sic] fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say, \u2018O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n And Hamas has not drifted from its antisemitic roots. The senior Hamas official Moussa Abu Marzouk said in 2021<\/a> that his organization wants Israel \u201cto come to an end just like it began.\u201d This war that Hamas has launched on Israel is not about occupation. It is about the elimination of the state of Israel and all its Jews.<\/p>\n So is Israel\u2019s planned response\u2014to destroy Hamas<\/a>\u2014disproportionate? Article 51 of the United Nations Charter<\/a> states that any nation has an \u201cinherent right\u201d to defend itself against armed attack. The response needs to satisfy the principle of proportionality, which involves avoiding as much as possible the killing of noncombatants.<\/p>\n More than any other world power, Israel has gone out of its way<\/a> to avoid killing civilians. But that is impossible when Hamas uses human shields\u2014both Palestinian and, now, Israeli hostages\u2014by putting its command centers in hospitals and schools and mosques. Hamas is now ordering<\/a> Gazan civilians not to move to escape Israeli bombs. <\/p>\n This is why simply comparing the number of Palestinian and Jewish civilians killed misses the point. Hamas deliberately targets civilians, while Israeli forces try to minimize civilian casualties. And even when those efforts fail, Hamas is responsible for Palestinian civilian deaths because it cruelly forces Gaza residents to remain with terrorists whom Israel will rightly target. <\/p>\n Hamas\u2019s \u201cdesire to destroy Israel has brought only war and death to the Palestinians,\u201d writes<\/a> Middle Eastern scholar Bassam Tawil. \u201cTo achieve its goal of murdering Jews and eliminating Israel, Hamas appears ready to sacrifice endless numbers of Palestinians.\u201d<\/p>\n These distinctions matter deeply for Christians\u2019 response to the war. First, we are called by both Testaments to hate evil. Proverbs says to fear the Lord is to \u201chate evil\u201d (Prov. 8:13), and the apostle Paul urges us to \u201chate what is evil\u201d (Rom. 12:9). We should hate the evil of Hamas\u2014and not be afraid to say so publicly.<\/p>\n It is not hyperbolic to compare Hamas\u2019s antisemitism to Nazism, for, in fact, Hamas comes out of the<\/a> Muslim Brotherhood, which counted among<\/a> its early leadership in Israel Amin al-Husseini, the mufti of Jerusalem, who was paid by the Nazis<\/a> to make radio broadcasts<\/a> that urged Muslims to kill Jews everywhere.<\/p>\n Opposing Hamas is not Islamophobia. There are many Muslims who also hate Hamas and hope Israel destroys it. We can seek the destruction of the Nazi-like Hamas without demonizing all Muslims. <\/p>\n Jesus hated evil. He commended John in Revelation 2 for hating the works of the Nicolaitans \u201cwhich I also hate\u201d (v. 6). These were works of idolatry and sexual immorality (vv. 14\u201315). <\/p>\n Jesus also suggested he was not a pacifist but believed, as Ecclesiastes puts it, there is \u201ca time for war\u201d (3:8). In his parable of the wicked tenants, he said the vineyard owner punished the tenants who had killed his servants and then his son by \u201cbring[ing] those wretches to a wretched end\u201d (Matt. 21:41). This is the same Jesus whose robe is dipped in blood and from whose mouth comes a sword that slays the wicked (Rev. 19:13, 21)\u2014and the same Jesus who, according to Jude, \u201cdestroyed those who did not believe\u201d (v. 5, ESV). <\/p>\n While Jesus calls us to love our enemies, this love does not mean we do not hate evil. It does not contradict the tragic need for nations to defend themselves against those who seek their elimination.<\/p>\n This is a bit of the biblical grounding (there is much more) for a second Christian response: analyzing this conflict within the framework of the just war tradition<\/a>. <\/p>\n Fundamental to that tradition is the idea that the genocidal attempt to exterminate a people, nation, or ethnic minority is always a great moral evil. This is precisely what Hamas intends and precisely what Israel is trying not<\/em> to do. <\/p>\n A second principle of just war is that of discrimination: Noncombatants should never be directly and intentionally targeted. Yet again, this is what Hamas did in its horrific attacks on babies, children, unarmed women, and the elderly, while Israel warns<\/a> innocent Gazans to flee before it attacks.<\/p>\n A third principle is proportionality: Retaliation should be proportionate to the harm suffered, and secondary effects, such as unintentional killing of civilians, must be proportional to the military advantage of the attack. Israel\u2019s purpose is to defend itself against an enemy bent on its elimination, which makes its war against Hamas justified. And when Hamas uses Gazan civilians as human shields, it is Hamas that is disproportionate<\/a> in its brutal endangerment of its own people.<\/p>\n Finally, Christians should recognize that Hamas\u2019s war on Israel is also a war on Christians. Its aim is the elimination of Christianity from this planet. \u201cWe are not talking about liberating our land alone,\u201d a co-founder of Hamas, Mahmoud al Zahar, said last year<\/a>. \u201cThe entire 510 million square kilometers of planet Earth will come under [a system] where there is no injustice, no oppression, no Zionism, no treacherous Christianity<\/em>\u201d (emphasis mine).<\/p>\n Jewish tradition has a saying<\/a>: \u201cWhoever is kind to the cruel will be cruel to the kind.\u201d Christians agree it would not have been just to be kind to Nazism, and we must equally support our \u201celder brothers<\/a>\u201d in Israel in their determination to end the cruelties of Hamas.<\/p>\n Gerald McDermott is an Anglican theologian who teaches at Jerusalem Seminary and Reformed Episcopal Seminary. He is the author of A New History of Redemption: The Work of Jesus the Messiah Through the Millennia<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/div>\n