Tuesday, September 3, 2024

Part I

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Hamas Attacks Israel and Now Kills More Hostages, While Israel Faces World Pressure: The Moral Reality in Gaza is Being Turned Upside Down Before Our Eyes

Just absolutely horrifying news coming from Israel when the Israel Defense Forces found bodies of six hostages as they were seeking to make progress in one of the tunnels under Gaza. The IDF reported that it appeared that the six hostages had been executed with gunshot wounds, something like 36 to 48 hours before the bodies were recovered. This was devastating news in Israel, and quite frankly, it has led to a political crisis there. Massive demonstrations in the street, thousands turning out for some of the funerals of these victims.

Among the victims, a young man, 23 years old, who was both Israeli and American in terms of citizenship. Hersh Goldberg-Polin was just 23 years old. He was known to have been horribly wounded in the October 7 attack there in Israel. And in particular, the attack upon a music festival there with several of the people who were attending the festival killed, others taken as hostages. But we really are looking at a very, very severe political crisis there in Israel, and it’s a crisis that’s been building for quite a long period of time.

But this also requires us trying to think through these issues in terms of world view and understanding. It requires us to telescope back just a bit and understand the kind of challenge that Israel is here facing. And quite honestly, the way so many people in the mainstream media and the heads of government around the world are fumbling this issue and fumbling it badly. In my view, at the very top of that list is the current president of the United States Joe Biden, who when asked if Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was doing enough to try to bring about a ceasefire in the release of the hostages, he responded with a terse, “No.”

Well, that’s not only too short, it is grossly unfair, and yet it’s indicative of the problem that Israel faces. Many of us just need to take a step back and understand Israel faces an existential crisis. Now, that’s a somewhat overused term. I used it intentionally here because it means a threat to the very existence, and that’s exactly what Israel faces. It is a threat to its very existence. Israel’s enemies, and at the very top of that list you’d have to put Hamas, you’d add to that the Nation of Iran and its satellite groups as well. Hamas is dedicated to the non-existence of Israel. This is something that many people in the West just don’t want to face.

When it comes to the United States of America, we have enemies, we have threats. We face the reality of terrorism. But the United States in this sense has not faced an existential threat for a very, very long time. Israel is in a very different position. It has never known a moment since the Declaration of Independence of Israel. Going back to 1947, 1948, it has never known a moment in which its existence was not threatened. And not only threatened in a general sense, but threatened specifically by Arab nations in its earliest period and then in recurring wars, but also Iran and groups such as Hamas.

Hamas and its leadership are absolutely determined to bring about the end of Israel. That’s something that’s just not adequately acknowledged by the Western press and by many Western heads of government. But before we turn to that international situation, let’s look at the situation inside of Israel because once those six bodies were found and once the news got out, one of the immediate responses in Israel was massive protests, and that included a general strike that covered a good bit of the business day on Monday.

Thousands upon thousands of people poured into public spaces in Israel demanding that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu achieve an immediate ceasefire with the release of the hostages. Now, let’s just step back for a moment. How would that happen in Israel? And the fact that it did happen, what does this mean? Well, there are multiple issues here we need to consider. The very first is that Israel has always had a very volatile political climate, and that’s been true of the nation from the beginning and it’s explainable when you consider the facts of Israel’s history and its existence, its multi-party system of government. Israel was started in the context of world crisis, and it has existed in the context of world crisis. And furthermore, it has experienced many internal political crises. It’s a multi-party state, as I said, and it simply goes down as historic fact that Benjamin Netanyahu is now the longest serving prime minister in Israel’s history, more than 16 years.

And Benjamin Netanyahu has been, for all of those years, a major figure on the world stage. And he, at this point, is what is holding together the fragile coalition that represents Israel’s current government. Now, that government is going to bear some responsibility for the failures of October 7, 2023, nearly a year ago, we should note. But at the very same time, it is the conservative posture and the defense experience of Benjamin Netanyahu that has held the coalition together. And so at the same time, Benjamin Netanyahu is not only the longest serving Israeli prime minister, he is a figure of simultaneously political unity in the nation and disunity.

The disunity was just made graphic with the thousands of people who poured out into the streets. But you’ll notice again what they were calling for is the prime minister to reach an immediate ceasefire agreement with Hamas that would lead to the successful release of the hostages. Okay, so let’s just pause for a moment. Let’s remember that we’re not talking about two states here. We’re not talking about two sovereign nations. We’re talking about a terrorist group, Hamas, and we’re talking about the nation of Israel.

So when we talk about Israel and Hamas, we need to be very, very careful to keep our categories straight. Furthermore, when it comes to Hamas, Hamas launched the deadly attack upon Israel. Hamas kidnapped all of those hostages. Now, still more than 100 Israel hopes are alive. It massacred the largest number of people in Israel’s history going all the way back to the war of its founding. And you look at this and you understand, wait just a moment, you now have people in Israel demanding an immediate ceasefire, but let’s just keep in mind that Hamas has rejected the ceasefire.

Now, it’s also true that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that he will agree to no ceasefire that does not allow for a continuing Israeli military presence in Gaza. And the explanation for that is quite simple. He is not about to put his nation in the position it was in on October the 7th of 2023. At the same time, it’s also clear that internal Israeli politics are very much at work here, but there’s something else going on. And this has to do with a part of Israel’s history that is deeply rooted in its historic memory, but they would also say is deeply rooted even in biblical history.

But the most important thing at this point has to do with Israel’s posture related to hostages. Now going all the way back to 1947, 1948, Israel has been confronted with the fact that some of its own, some of its citizens, some of its soldiers have been taken as hostages. But over the course of the last several decades, Israel has basically set some very bad precedents in terms of the price it has been willing to pay for the release of hostages.

Now, this leads to massive questions with worldview dimensions. Just think about this. What would be the rightful posture of a constitutional government when it comes to some of its citizens or soldiers being taken as hostages? Would that nation bear the moral responsibility to do whatever it takes to free those hostages? Or would the nation have to be put in a position where it said, “We can’t create an industry of hostages, we cannot create moral incentives, financial incentives for terrorist groups or other nations to take our citizens and our soldiers as hostages”?

Well, Israel made the decision that it would pay, frankly, extraordinary costs when it comes to recouping or freeing its hostages. It did so in what was declared to be a moral argument, that is for a moral cause. So there have been prisoner swaps, for example, when Israel has, no exaggeration, released hundreds of prisoners for just a handful, and sometimes just a couple of Israeli soldiers or citizens who were held. And Israel has explained that these outsized deals are just because the nation sets, as one of its highest priorities, the return of those who are taken as captive.

But you know who has been listening to that? Well, Hamas has been listening to that. It’s one of the reasons why the hostages were taken. And I’ll simply state that looked at honestly, it is hard to imagine a deal in which Hamas would actually free those hostages because then they would lose whatever leverage they have had in terms of the threat to harm those hostages over the course of the time since October the 7th. And you can see the political value of that Hamas action when it comes to the protests on the streets of Israel, but it is also a moral calculation that goes far beyond Israel. And by the way, before we leave Israel on this sense, it’s important to recognize that even as the national media there in Israel and international media have given all kinds of attention to the protests and to the strike, the reality is that it is not clear that the majority of Israeli citizens believe that Benjamin Netanyahu should do whatever is necessary, just imagine what that could mean, to reach an immediate ceasefire agreement with supposedly the release of the hostages.

There is a realism that, for good reason, is deeply baked into the character of the people of Israel. But as I mentioned, the international picture is also filled with all kinds of issues that demand a worldview analysis. For one thing, consider this editorial that has just been published by The Wall Street Journal. Here’s the headline, “Hamas Murders Six Hostages. Israel is Blamed.” So just think about this. Think of the moral message of that headline. “Hamas Murders Six Hostages. Israel is Blamed.” That’s one of the problems we see, especially in many liberal Western countries. Many of them look at Israel, and whether they do this intentionally or not, they transpose their own situation onto Israel’s situation and they imagine that Israel can respond the way they imagine they might respond.

Now, just think of the United States again. We have oceans to the east and to the west. We have Canadians to the north, Mexicans to the south. We do not face, just to state the obvious, the kind of constant hostility from nations determined to destroy us that frames our daily existence. And so Israel has to look at this differently. And frankly, Israel’s government, above all, has to look at the situation very differently. But the Western press and so much of the Western sentiment is reflected in that very lamentable Wall Street Journal headline, “Hamas Murders Six Hostages. Israel is Blamed.”

It is Hamas who launched the attack on October the 7th. It is Hamas who was taken the hostages. It is Hamas who has been holding the hostages. It is Hamas that has continued to carry out terrorist attacks on Israel. It is Hamas that insists that it can’t be satisfied until Israel no longer exists, and it is Hamas who killed the six hostages whose bodies were found just over the weekend.

The editors of The Wall Street Journal got it exactly right with this sentence, “Hamas probably can’t believe its luck or the lack of moral seriousness by its enemies.” The next sentence, “The terrorists murder six Israeli hostages including one dual citizen American, and Israel is suddenly under pressure to make concessions to Hamas.” Those two sentences demonstrate, along with the headline there, a moral world turned upside down. And as Christians, we need to note when moral reality is turned upside down or when people attempt to turn that moral reality upside down. That’s exactly what is going on in this case, and we need to call it what it is.

Yahya Sinwar, who is the head of Hamas there in Gaza, continues to operate out of those tunnels and he continues to follow the methodology and ideology he has made so clear. Again, his effort is not to achieve a ceasefire with Israel, it is to achieve the non-existence of Israel. Benjamin Netanyahu cannot for a moment forget that fact, and forget the intention of Hamas from the very beginning. All too clear, all too deadly.

Part II

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A Realist and Honest Approach to Donald Trump on Abortion: We Need to Compare the Political and Moral Terms of the Policies of Donald Trump vs. Those of Kamala Harris

All right, coming out of the Labor Day weekend, I felt that morally that was the most important story we needed to consider first, but the second has to do with controversy over the same period, but frankly, extending over the course of the entire 2024 campaign. Controversy about Donald J. Trump, the former president of the United States and the issue of abortion. This has turned out to be absolutely crucial, not to say controversial in recent days. But when it comes to this larger question, I think we need, as Christians, just to step back for a moment and think with a bit of honest realism and frankly say some things out loud.

For one thing, I do not know, I would not claim to know what Donald Trump really thinks about abortion. I am not certain that Donald Trump, if honest, could tell us exactly what his understanding of abortion is. Looked at it in an historical perspective for most of his life, he held something apparently like a pro-abortion or a pro-choice position. He made campaign contributions, he made comments that were very much along those lines. He was very proud of his sister, a federal judge who, by the way, was a pro-abortion federal judge saying that she would represent a very good appointment to the US Supreme Court.

All that began to change with the 2016 election. So think of the years 2015, 2016, something changed. Well, what changed? Well, for one thing, as Donald Trump was considering that run for the presidency and he entered the Republican primaries, it became very clear that abortion was going to be a defining issue, and this is where Donald Trump changed his position. He came out and described himself as pro-life. He came out and made a pledge in the course of the 2016 primaries that he would appoint justices to the United States Supreme Court who would hold to a strict constructionist position, conservative justices, the fight against Roe V. Wade that was eventually fulfilled with the reversal of Roe V. Wade in 2022 by the Supreme Court. That was very much the background. That was the context.

Donald Trump came out on the issue of abortion and frankly surprised many of his competing candidates for the 2016 presidential nomination for the Republican Party. Surprised many people who had known him for years, but there is no doubt that his affirmation of a pro-life position was absolutely instrumental in his gaining of the 2016 nomination and eventually his win of the 2016 presidential election. When he made those arguments, by the way, just consider one of the debates against Hillary Clinton.

When he made the argument against the pro-abortion position and actually Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party’s platform position in 2016, he did so not only with great effectiveness, but with what appeared to be a lot of personal conviction. Now, again, I would not claim to understand or to know Donald Trump’s heart on this issue. I cannot explain all of his thinking on this issue. I’ll repeat myself by saying I’m not sure he can either, in one sense. But even as we’re trying to think about this issue in the most serious of context, the 2024 presidential election, Donald Trump is clearly in a different position now, and that’s come as a great disappointment to the pro-life movement in the United States.

Donald Trump has come out, among other things, criticizing the current Florida abortion law saying that a ban on abortions after six weeks is, in his words, “Terrible.” It’s something that needs to be changed. And even in recent days, he’s repeated the fact that he thinks that the ban on abortion should start sometime after six weeks.

It’s also clear that President Trump has muddied the issues with statements such as what he posted on Truth Social, his own social media platform, when he said that a second Trump administration would be, and here are the words, quote, “Great for women and their reproductive rights.”

Now, one of the things you need to note is that that phrase, “reproductive rights,” is one of the dark inventions of the pro-abortion movement, seeking to avoid using the word abortion and instead speaking euphemistically in false advertising of a woman’s reproductive rights. Of course, right now in the Democratic Party, I guess you’d have to say a pregnant person’s reproductive rights. But nonetheless, without chasing that rabbit, let’s go back to the issue of Donald Trump and abortion.

And he has also muddied the waters by declining to indicate that he would vote against the abortion referendum, which is coming in in Florida, a radical referendum that would actually nullify the pro-life gains in the state. Now, let me be very fast to say that the Trump campaign and Trump himself came back and said, “No, he would vote against that Florida referendum, that vote coming in Florida in November.” That’s good news for the pro-life movement.

But it’s not good news that Donald Trump and controversy over abortion has become a mainstay of the 2024 presidential. The president has made some other statements. He has also indicated that, to use his own language, “The abortion issue doesn’t lean toward Republicans in this election cycle.” Well, I’m not going to argue that it does in political terms, but I am going to argue that the sanctity and dignity of human life is the moral priority regardless of the politics of the age.

Now, Donald Trump is clearly making the argument, it doesn’t matter what your position is if you can’t get elected, but an immediate response to that would have to be that given his role on the issue in 2016, given his three historic appointments to the US Supreme Court, given the fact that Roe was reversed in 2022, and he deserves a lot of credit for the reversal of Roe, given the fact that he has accepted that credit even in recent weeks in terms of the overturning of Roe, V. Wade, it’s very hard to imagine how former President Donald Trump thinks that voters who are highly pro-abortion would ever be motivated to vote for him. And lamentably instead, he has sent mixed signals that have highly traumatized his pro-life base in the Republican Party, and quite frankly, raised giant question marks.

Now, this is where we’re going to have to think very, very carefully, very carefully. In political and in moral terms, I’m going to argue that pro-life voters have to think of two very different things, they’re inseparable, but they’re two different questions. Number one, what does Donald Trump really believe about abortion? And the key question aligned to that also is what does Kamala Harris, vice president and current democratic presidential nominee, what does she believe about abortion? And in both cases, we can’t read their hearts, but we can follow their words.

But the second huge issue is even more important, and it’s good for Christians to think this through. It is less important to know in political terms what exactly Donald Trump believes about anything, what Kamala Harris believes about anything. The big question is what would their government do? What would their administration do? What would they seek to do when in office? What actions would they take? What nominations would they make? What appointments would they make in terms of the administrative state? What laws would they support? What executive orders would they issue?

It is the effect, it is the governmental action that is the key issue here. And by the way, this has been true, and Christians need to think about this throughout political history in the United States. We would want a situation in which we would know what a candidate believes in his or her heart on these issues. But that’s impossible since most of us don’t know Kamala Harris and don’t know Donald Trump. It’s impossible, in this case, even for people close to Donald Trump to be able to read his mind on some of these questions.

Kamala Harris is much more easily read. There’s a consistency in her position, and this is where we need to understand that the election of Kamala Harris as president of the United States and Tim Walz, the Minnesota Governor, her running mate as vice president of the United States, would put in place the most radical pro-abortion government, the most radical pro-abortion administration in American political history, period, no contest.

Now, realism forces us to concede that the pro-life movement in the United States has taken some very serious setbacks. After the historic win reversing Roe in 2022, we’ve seen a line of referenda and state votes, we’ve seen them fail. We’ve seen the pro-abortion argument prevail. We’ve seen the Democratic Party and particularly the Harris campaign, decide that it is going to just campaign on abortion and abortion rights. It believes that’s a winning strategy. The issues here are very clear. The contrast between the two parties is still clear.

Honestly, it is nowhere as clear as I think it should be or I would want it to be, but it’s still clear. The clearest distinction is this. Former President Donald Trump says that he is opposed to federal legislation on abortion. Kamala Harris says that she is absolutely determined to achieve federal legislation on abortion. And even though they euphemistically say what they want is to legislate Roe or codify Roe V. Wade, you and I both know that the Democratic Party is far beyond that. And the clearest evidence of that is that she chose as her running mate, Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota, who in the aftermath of Dobbs passed one of the most radical abortion laws ever to be passed in the United States. Basically, no restrictions whatsoever. Abortion declared to be a fundamental right. Parents don’t even have to be informed of abortions on their minor children. It is an absolute disaster.

And so even as Donald Trump isn’t saying as much as I want him to say, even as Donald Trump isn’t saying as much as he said in 2016, the fact is that his opposition to a federal law on abortion is in itself right now a very significant political firewall. So two things we know: Number one, a Kamala Harris administration would be the most radically pro-abortion administration in American history. And she basically has told us exactly that. The second thing is that a Trump administration will be light years more pro-life than a Harris administration when it comes to those issues of appointments and policies, executive orders and nominations. And it reminds us that, as I have to argue very often, when you elect a president in the United States, increasingly, and I say this as something of a metaphor, you elect a government, you elect an entire complex of persons and appointees and judges and justices and just go down the list.

And frankly, it’s an outsized influence that in the case of someone who’s pro-abortion could cause immense danger, particularly if the composition of the Congress is also tilting democratic after the November election. In any event, we have to be very careful to understand that if a Democratic president is elected and if there is a Democratic majority in the House and in the Senate, we are looking not only at something very much like Roe being put back in place by legislation, we are looking at far, far worse being put in place, a generation-shaping disaster on abortion, a disaster when it comes to the sanctity and dignity of unborn human life.

Part III

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The Stakes for the Unborn in 2024 Election: Trump Needs to Make His Defense of Unborn Life Clear, Consistent, and Urgent

There are so many other issues at stake in the election, and one of the key questions we simply would have to pose to the former president at this point is why the former president would send such an uncertain and confusing sound on abortion when what he needs to do, not only politically but morally, is make very clear the pro-life commitments of the Republican ticket and hold fast to the confidence of pro-life voters in his political base? The alternative is disaster in the November election for the Trump campaign.

The former president needs to be more and more clear in terms of his stand for unborn human life and his opposition to abortion. And we understand that yes, the political situation is changed in 2024 from where we stood in 2016, but the moral issue of the sanctity and dignity of unborn human life has not changed. And the calculus former President Donald Trump needs very much to keep in mind is not how many pro-abortion voters will vote against him, but instead, how many pro-life voters will vote for him?

So many big issues loom before us even just coming out of this weekend looking at the week ahead, but those two issues above all demanded our attention and in moral and in worldview terms, will continue to demand our attention for days to come.