Thursday, February 13, 2025

Part I

---

Is the Ceasefire Between Israel and Hamas About to Fall Apart? Hamas Threatens to Halt Hostage Returns Remains Committed to the Non-Existence of Israel

Is the ceasefire in the Middle East about to fall apart? The ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, the ceasefire that has been holding for the last several days, even the last couple of weeks, surprising many observers, a ceasefire that is fragile from the start, and, at least in terms of many moral issues, should be controversial from the start.

But let’s just remind ourselves of what is happening. Most immediately, Hamas has said that it is not going to move forward on Saturday’s exchange of the hostages they are holding and prisoners Israel is holding as well. Now, we’ll have to come back to the lopsided nature of that in a moment. The fact is that Israel has said in response that if the hostage exchange does not take place on Saturday, Israel will resume full military activities in the region, which means the ceasefire would be over.

Now, I said the ceasefire was controversial from the start. Just the way I described it should set up the most controversial part of this, a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. When you think of the traditional context and the traditional morality of war, the traditional understanding of the ethics between nations, you are talking about just that, ethics between nations. Israel is a nation. Hamas is not a nation, it is an Islamic terrorist group. And so when you’re talking about a ceasefire between a nation, Israel, and a terrorist group, Hamas, we understand that only under the most excruciating moral conditions would this kind of arrangement become thinkable, not to mention actual. And so when you talk about the fragility of it, understand the fragility of believing that you can enter into a formal negotiation with some kind of formal agreement with a terrorist group. But the political pressure inside Israel was huge, and the political pressure from outside Israel was, if anything, even more intense.

There is also the reality of a genuine humanitarian crisis there in Gaza, just to look at the images and understand that entire neighborhoods have been completely destroyed. Now, the blame for this has to be placed upon Hamas itself, but nonetheless, we are talking about people who are suffering who need medical care, who need food, who need basic services, so who is the threat to their flourishing, their security, their food and their health? It is not Israel, ultimately; it is Hamas. Hamas is the terrorist organization that launched the deadly October 7th, 2023 attack on Israel that led to the current war.

But that has to be put in the context of a far longer war, a larger war that goes all the way back to Israel’s fight for independence in the late 1940s. And so in one sense, this is just a terrorist representation of the war against Israel going back to Israel’s founding, the absolute determination of the Arab nations in that region, that Israel would be a temporary aberration; it would not continue to exist. But Israel was even more determined to exist, not only to exist, but to thrive. And Israel has been seeking to do just that.

Hamas, among other terrorist organizations, Islamic terrorist organizations, that’s not incidental, Hamas is committed and has been committed from the beginning to the extinction of Israel as a state. That would include in some sense the eradication of the Jewish people, but Hamas is mostly defined as calling for the absolute extinction of the Jewish state and thus the return, as they would say, to a Palestinian rule. And that, of course, increasingly as the late 20th and early 21st centuries approved, under far more radical Islamic regimes. That’s the reality of what Israel is facing.

Israel is made very clear after the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack so deadly, the second deadliest event in the history of Israel, Israel has been determined ever since then to eradicate the threat of Hamas. Israel has been at this for more than a year. It has not eradicated Hamas. It has significantly weakened Hamas, and at the same time, in other regions, including right there across the northern border in Lebanon, it has really reduced the lethality of another Islamic terrorist group, Hezbollah.

But when it comes to Hamas, Hamas is still present and Hamas is still basically in control. The most fundamental evidence of that is the fact that the ceasefire is between Israel and Hamas that really defines the situation, even if there is some kind of official covering, that there is some kind of Palestinian authority or organization representing the people, the reality is it’s Hamas. It’s Hamas in the beginning, it’s Hamas in the end. Hamas is a clear and present danger to Israel.

And we’re also looking at the human exchange, a part of the ceasefire, the Israeli hostages to be released. In light of that, Israel’s been releasing legitimate prisoners. That is to say prisoners who are in Israeli prisons because of criminal actions against the Israeli state. And so now you’re looking at this false equivalence falling apart on its own.

And there’s something else here, and that is the fact that in the last prisoner exchange, the prisoners, it’s even hard to think or to say what I’m about to say, the prisoners looked like images hauntingly from the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps at the end of World War II. These Israeli hostages clearly have been starved. The images are horrifying. And this has reignited the sense of moral indignation within Israel. It should reignite that moral indignation of all freedom-loving peoples around the world who affirm human dignity.

Again, this is not to say that the people of Gaza are not suffering. They are suffering. They’re suffering horribly. The question is how can that suffering be alleviated? How can some alternative arrangement for them be put in place in which they can have a constructive future? Some of that falls on the Palestinian people right now. But honestly, given the status and the urgency of this kind of crisis, it doesn’t fall mostly on the people. And even if it did fall on the people, say there could be a vote, the reality is that the experience there in the Gaza Strip has been that Hamas has gained an influence. Remember, it was elected in one sense in a legitimate election years ago, and it has turned itself from what was claimed to be a legitimate government into what it was from the beginning, a terrorist organization.

Interesting things have been happening on this front. I want to go back to the prisoners for just a moment. We’re talking about the exchange of hostages for legitimate prisoners held by Israel, and the numbers are way off. Three hostages, and then by the time this is over, the ratio will be completely out of any moral sense except for one thing: Israel from the start has operated under the determination that it will regain its hostages. I’m not going to say whatever the cost, but in fact it’s pretty close to whatever the cost.

Now, I’ve pointed out before that in moral calculation and a moral understanding, there’s a problem there because then you incentivize the taking of hostages. You create a market in hostages. But that kind of discussion, if Israel enters that kind of discussion, will have to come later. The urgency right now is to gain the release of the hostages. Israel’s current threat to Hamas is that if Hamas holds back on the prisoner exchange, Israel will no longer hold back on military actions.

And there is a huge debate inside of Israel, and that is a debate between those who say, “Regardless of international opinion, we have to eliminate Hamas as a threat,” and others who are saying, “No, we need to press this only so far, and then we need to try to gain some kind of new normal on the other side.”

There are problems with both of those arguments. I would say in moral terms, the first argument has the greatest traction, the greatest credibility. The problem with that first argument, that Hamas needs to be eliminated, is that it is incredibly difficult to imagine how you can in truth eliminate Hamas as an organization. And so you say, “Well, let’s state that sentence more carefully. Let’s state it the way some careful people have been careful to state it.” It is to eliminate the potential of Hamas as a threat.

But this is where we need to see that many people in Israel and outside are pretty honest about the fact that it is very likely that any declaration of victory over Hamas will be a false claim or a temporary claim, and that is because it is very difficult to defeat an idea, especially an idea or ideology as toxic as that of Hamas. That’s not to say Israel shouldn’t press the case further, it’s just to say it’s going to be very, very difficult to know exactly when you could declare victory under that goal, an admirable goal in its own way, an admirable goal in itself.

The second argument is based somewhat on that, but also says, “Look, we’re in an international context. This is a very, very long struggle, and Israel cannot afford to appear to be a monomaniacal state bent on destroying Hamas, even if that means destroying Gaza totally in a war that will never end.” And there are political realities behind that argument as well. I think the problem with that argument is that eventually you argue against any effective military action to support your own nation and your own cause. I think one fair question for American Christians to ask, looking at this excruciating situation, is what would the United States itself do under similar circumstances? And I think you know that political pressure in the United States would mean that any kind of deadly force would be met with even greater deadly force, period, without American apology.

We may have to wait a few days to know how this latest twist and turn will work out. But the important thing for us to recognize in worldview terms is that this is not just a matter of some kind of traditional ceasefire between warring parties, this is the nation, Israel, looking at the terrorist organization, Hamas. Hamas from its origins was about the destruction and extinction of the nation of Israel. Israel is now in the position of wanting the elimination of Hamas as any kind of threat to Israel. It’s really difficult to know how any permanent ceasefire could be arranged with that set of incommensurate goals. It seems to me that a bit of honesty along these lines would be extremely helpful.

Part II

---

Climate Change Hypocrisy or Something Deeper? Has Silicon Valley Changed its Stripes?

Okay, speaking of honesty, let’s shift gears. Let’s shift to climate change. And let’s shift to a very interesting twist in the development of this issue, and that has to do with not so much what’s being said but what’s not being said. If you go back to the first term of President Donald J. Trump, in 2017 he withdrew the United States from the Paris Accords. Now, remember, that was an international agreement, the United States was a signatory to the agreement pledging so-called mandates and goals towards reducing carbon emissions and thus supposedly bringing about a mitigation of climate change.

Here’s the issue. President Trump withdrew the United States from that agreement in 2017 and Silicon Valley, and so many of the rich and powerful in the American business, community came out in absolute protest. The big issue here is Silicon Valley, in this case. The high-tech corridors on the American West Coast came out in absolute horror at President Trump pulling the United States out of the Paris Climate Accords. Now, as he is in his second term in office, and we’re talking now several years later, President Trump did exactly the same thing.

Just to rehearse the history, president Trump pulled us out in 2017 very quickly after assuming office. President Biden put us back in, put the United States back in. President Trump’s now pulling the United States back out. But what happened in 2017 that did not happen in 2025? Silicon Valley was up in arms in 2017. Right now, barely a peep.

The New York Times, which has been a major champion of the issues related to climate change and mandated changes in American life and business and the economy and all the rest, David Gelles recently wrote an article for The Times with the headline, “Billionaire Climate Champions Go Quiet.” This is a marked contrast to 2017. What explains it? Well, there’s some people who say they’ve just been politically co-opted. They have been basically put in the position where they don’t want to confront the Trump administration, and so even though they still hold to the same conceptions, the same ideologies, the same commitments they had in 2017, they’ve been bought off or they’ve been intimidated. But of course there’s a different way of looking at this situation, and that is that they really didn’t mean it as much as they wanted to appear to mean it back in 2017. And back in 2017 when they complained so much and went ballistic, they could do so without making any real changes of their own.

Fast forward to 2025, the situation’s different. It’s different at every point of the equation. It’s different because, quite honestly, the Paris Accords haven’t held up over time. It’s also different because by now it’s pretty apparent that many of the people who were pushing all of that agenda didn’t really mean it. And it’s also evident the Silicon Valley, which was selling itself in 2017 as a part of the solution, in 2025 it increasingly looked like a part of the problem.

Well, what happened? This is something you don’t see much conversation about. What happened in terms of the Silicon Valley tech community? What happened between 2017 and 2025? In 2017, they were trying to say, “Look, high-tech is going to save us from this climate crisis. High-tech is going to allow us to do all kinds of things through solar power and through miniaturization. And through high-tech solutions, we’re going to help fight this thing. And it’s fightable. Just invest in us to do that.”

Well, what’s different in 2025? You can reduce it to two initials, A and I. Artificial intelligence has taken off as few technologies have in the history of humanity. It has taken off as a project, it’s taken off as a technology, and it has taken off as an energy hog. It turns out that artificial intelligence is high-tech, but it’s high thirst and high hunger when it comes to old-fashioned energy, most importantly electricity. Electricity is so crucial that you’ve got Silicon Valley titans looking to bring back on, brace yourselves, buckle your seat belts, dormant nuclear power plants in order to fuel artificial intelligence. Wow, how things can change in a hurry.

Okay, you have all these big companies, you can name them. Just think about Google and Apple and Meta. You just go down the list. It turns out The New York Times reached out to them for comment. How many of those big companies commented? The net number is zero. They were all eager to hold press conferences back in 2017. It turns out they’re in a very different place in 2025.

But here’s where in worldview terms we need to understand everybody’s in a different place in 2025. There are those who have been very suspect about the agenda from the beginning. What we’re talking about here is what the climate change ideologues and many political activists have talked about as human caused climate change. Well, here again, the Christian worldview comes in say, when you think about human activity, you think about the number of human beings on the planet and you think about the increase of image bearers in the population, that’s a good thing, but it’s going to come with some adjustments in terms of the human impact on the world. And so when you talk about human impact or human activity related climate change, for Christians that’s not necessarily an alarm bell. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. We want to be good stewards, but not at the cost of saying we want fewer human beings.

But here’s another extension of that. The fact is that the vast majority of human beings aren’t willing to sacrifice in any major way the gains of the industrial revolution, the technological revolutions. They’re not willing to do without refrigerators and air conditioning. They’re not willing to do without modern medicine. They’re not willing to do without their laptops and their iPhones. And so a lot of this has been hypocritical from the start.

And it is a trade-off. This is where the Christian Biblical worldview reminds us that we’re looking at trade-offs all the time. You have a certain amount of money, you can invest it here. You can’t invest it in two places, the same dollar that is, at the same time. You have to make choices. Things are trade-offs. How much do you spend now? How much do you save? How much do you plant now? How much do you reap? All of these things are complex equations. And honestly, they come with a potential for both benefit and for cost. The issue is how we balance those things. And the fact is we’re not going to sacrifice human flourishing for the sake of some mark on a thermometer. I’ve not said it that way before, but I’ll state it again. I’ll say I think it’s emphatically true that we’re just not to make that exchange. And you also have the fact that hypocrisy has been built into a lot of this along with ideology and activism from the beginning.

Part III

---

Celebrity and Climate Ideology: Those Pushing Climate Change are Often the Most Hypocritical – Just Look at Their Private Jets

This takes me to the reality of celebrities driving so much of this. And so much of it has been, especially in the American and European context, driven by celebrities. But as one report said just recently, the average carbon footprint per person in the world averages 4.7 metric tons of carbon dioxide. That’s per year. That’s a surprise in itself. The average of the carbon footprint per person in the world, 4.7 metric tons of carbon dioxide. I don’t know about you, but as I exhale, that seems like an awful lot.

I want to be clear here. Let’s be really careful and honest with these numbers. We’re talking about a distinction between the average person on the planet at 4.7 and we’re talking about celebrities at 3,376. That’s a radical disparity. Let’s put in a little bit of honesty here. The average American is going to be way up there from the average person around the world. That’s just an honest statement. We need to make it. And as you think about the American economy, you think about the American culture, you think about air conditioning and lights, and you think about high-tech and all the rest, we are very dependent on a carbon economy.

Now, the United States is also, along with other nations, innovators when it comes to energy. We are far more energy efficient than anyone could have dreamed a matter of a generation ago. But there is also the fact that we are using more and more energy all the time. We’re talking about using less, but we’re actually using more. Again, I want to be clear here. I’m not just talking about celebrities being outsized with 3,376 tons of CO2 annually compared to the world average of 4.7. It has to do with the fact that our average is pretty high too but nowhere near the celebrities. Why do the celebrities have such huge scores when it comes to, let’s just say CO2 emissions and all the rest? It’s because they have things most of us don’t have like yachts and like giant houses of multiple thousands and thousands of square feet.

As in private planes, the private jets turn out to be the greatest illustration of what the celebrities have that other people don’t have. And you’re talking about private jets using not just more than would be consumed by a seat on a passenger airliner, it is actually a multiplication factor beyond what you might even imagine. Those private jets, they use fuel and they leave a carbon footprint all out of size when you compare it to commercial aviation. It’s a stunning distinction. And, as many people have pointed out, that distinction is just exacerbated when you have celebrities get on their private jets to fly themselves to some swanky place in the world in order to protest a lack of activity against climate change.

Barton Swaim, an opinion columnist of The Wall Street Journal, gets this exactly right. He says, “For three decades you were labeled a crank, a climate denier; someone who pigheadedly rejects settled science. If you didn’t embrace the belief that life on earth faces imminent extinction from global warming and later climate change. The possibility that in an entire academic discipline, climate science could have gone badly amiss by groupthink and self flattery wasn’t thought possible in many quarters. This orthodoxy still reigns unquestioned.” He continues, “The climate ideology was alarmist and in no way settled should have been obvious. For many, it was. The conclusions of genuine scientific inquiry rarely reinforced the social and political biases of power brokers and influencers. But climate science, like some of the softer social sciences, did exactly that.” Here’s where he goes on to say this, “It purported to discover foreboding trends and inscrutable data and assured us that the only way to arrest them was to do what America’s liberal cultural elite wanted to do anyway, amass political and economic power in the hands of credentialed technocrats, supposedly for the good of all.”

But Barton Swaim’s very compelling argument is that those particular messages, they grow stale and they begin to look really hypocritical when you look at what the people offering them actually do. He asked this question, “Why aren’t the moguls and corporate executives who claim to be unnerved by the predictions of climate science giving up their carbon-heavy lifestyles and living in caves, or at least in simpler dwellings than mansions? If progressive VIPs and media politics and entertainment believes sea levels are ready to rise precipitously, why do they keep buying properties in Martha’s Vineyard, Bar Harbor, Providence Town, Santa Monica, and Malibu?” He makes a big point with this, “The climate lobby can wave aside these questions if it wishes, but appeals to reports and studies weigh little against the appearance of insincerity.”

Barton Swaim’s article came out days before the report there in The New York Times pointing to the lack of response of the Silicon Valley moguls to President Trump’s second announcement in his second term about a withdrawal from the Paris Accords. It really is very interesting that you see these parallel tracks. And the silence coming from Silicon Valley this time around really is very powerful. And of course it’s not just silence from the US withdrawal, it’s also the presence sitting in rows of very tight seating of so many of those moguls at the inauguration of Donald Trump to his second term in office.

Part IV

---

A Refreshing and Right Message: The Department of Transportation is Prioritizing Areas with High Marriage Rates and Birth Rates

But okay, in conclusion, I want to point to something that has earned just a few headlines but not much media attention. The Hill, a publication directed at the political class in Washington, DC, recently ran an article with. The headline, “Transport Chief Prioritizes High Birth Marriage Rate Areas.” Well, this looks interesting. Lauren Irwin reporting for The Hill tells us, “Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy in a memo told the Department of Transportation to prioritize communities that have higher birth and marriage rates.” The secretary said, “To the maximum extent permitted by law, Department of Transportation-supported or assisted programs and activities, including without limitation all grants, loans, contracts, and DOT-supported or assisted state contracts shall prioritize projects and goals that mitigate the unique impacts of DOT programs, policies and activities on families and family-specific difficulties such as the accessibility of transportation to families with young children and give preference to communities with marriage and birth rates higher than the national average.” 

Well, you can imagine what many in the cultural elites think of that. But I just want to say it is refreshing. It is tremendously refreshing to see someone who believes that the United States, and in particular its federal government, you could generalize that just to say government, should actually see a responsibility to support marriage and families as a part of a national mission. But we understand with any kind of biblical and worldview sanity that that is exactly what it is, it is a matter of our national strength and our national security. Now, there are those, and of course you know the party structure here. There are those who argue that the problem is too many humans, too many babies. But any sanity says the threat to the United States is not too many babies but too few.

Now, what does that have to do with the Department of Transportation? Well, given the responsibility of that department, you might not think of it on the front line, but it is, and it’s saying, “Okay, let’s prioritize the projects of DOT, Department of Transportation funding to communities that have higher than average birth rates and marriage rates.” Okay, people are going to say, “That’s ideological.” Well, of course it is, and I’m all for it. But the second thing is people are going to say, “What’s the argument for it?” And at least one argument for it is, hey, look to the future. Guess what. That’s where the future citizens are going to be. You do the math. Press on, Mr. Secretary.