Monday, August 4, 2025

Part I

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The Media Fail on Gaza’s Famine: Hamas is Primarily Responsible for Gaza’s Famine, Not Israel

Over the course of the last several weeks, there have clearly been a couple of headlines that have dominated, and one of these has to do with Israel’s continuing military effort in Gaza, the other has to do with conspiracy theories, Jeffrey Epstein, Donald Trump and others. We’ll take them in turn. 

First, let’s go to Gaza and understand the big headline news there, is a continuing effort by the IDF, the Israel Defense Forces, to dislodge Hamas. The resistance of Hamas has been long and it is horrifying, and it is very clear that Hamas is quite willing to expend nearly endless Palestinian blood and endless Palestinian lives to meet its own political purposes.

But the big news right now is the fact that the suffering in Gaza has become very much a world concern. Now, I think there’s a wrong way to respond to that and a right way to respond to that. The right way to respond to that is to be concerned with people in need, whoever they are, wherever they are, and when we see people suffering, to do everything we can to alleviate that suffering. It is clear there is grave human suffering there in Gaza, there is grave human suffering when you look at so many of the Palestinian people. It is also clear that they are being victimized by the terrorist group that has been in political control, and when you come to understand what is going on there and you see that Hamas is very much still in control.

And you had the headlines coming out where there are people saying that Israel took that action, but it turns out that was Hamas, and then it turns out it was Hamas. Most famously, when you are looking at a tunnel that ran there in Gaza to a hospital and it was intentional, this was an intentional thing that has been uncovered time and again, where the terrorist organization is located near a hospital so that there will be maximum casualties if Israel were to take any action against it. But that’s now just thoroughly documented.

But it’s also incredibly well-documented that the people in Gaza are suffering tremendously, and this is where there is a genuine, massive strategic question for Israel. It’s a moral question, yes, it’s also a strategic question. The strategic question is, what do you do with a force like Hamas, a terrorist organization that is not going to surrender, and quite frankly, is going to take advantage of any opportunity it will get now or in the future, and quite frankly, cannot be totally exterminated or expunged just in terms of military neutralization, that just isn’t going to happen. And it is also clear that so any of the people of Palestine, though they were somewhat complicit with Hamas in putting them in power, as you look at the history of Hamas and its leadership there, its control there, especially in Gaza, the reality is that the people there are suffering and the photographs, the evidence is overwhelming.

But even here, we need to put in a bit of caution, because several of the world’s leading newspapers have had to retract stories just in the last several days, the New York Times most spectacularly, which actually had a photograph of an emaciated child, and of course, your heart goes out, rightly, immediately, and any Christian’s heart must go out to a child and to the child’s mother and father and family in that kind of suffering, and there are children suffering. That child, as it turned out, the newspaper had to clarify, with a correction, was suffering from a genetic disease, and I’m sure that the lack of food did that child no good, but it turns out that that was not a typical child in a typical situation, as seemed to be insinuated by the New York Times news story.

And you look at that, by the way, and you say, well, there’s the liberal press just doing what the liberal press does. Yes, that is true to an extent, and it is very, very clear that there is a liberal angle on all of this, which is always going to say that Israel’s the aggressor, Israel is always breaking international law, Israel is always doing the wrong thing in defending itself. And yet, at the same time, it also points to the fact that there are still journalistic rules, and to the credit of the New York Times, and there’s some other papers that have had to do the same thing, they’ve come back and said, “No, that was a mistake, here’s the clarification.” It just shows how vigilant we have to be in engaging all these sources, and more about that in the very next issue we’re going to discuss.

But let’s just try to take apart the situation there in Gaza in terms of Christian thinking. Obviously, Christians would have a first impulse, and it’s a rightful impulse, to be very, very concerned with people who are suffering, people who are suffering injustice, people who are suffering, for instance, because of the military action undertaken by Israel, and so we have to put that just on the table right now. We also have to say that it is equally true that Israel has the right and even the responsibility to defend itself, and there is an historical context here. That historical context includes the people of Gaza, the Palestinian people there in Gaza, voting to put Hamas in power at a certain point. And then, of course, the ultimate responsibility falls on Hamas, which is after all an Islamic terrorist group. It was founded as a terrorist group, it undertakes terrorist attacks to further its political goals. Most importantly for our consideration right now, the October 7 attacks there in Israel, murderous attacks, the most deadly attacks on Israel indeed since its war of independence in 1948.

And so, you look at all this, you recognize, okay, so we have a guilty party here, it’s Hamas. I think Hamas is by any moral estimation the guilty party here, guilty in terms of the murderous attacks of October 7, guilty in terms of their terrorist mode of operation, guilty in terms of their ideology, guilty in terms of their just unbelievably evil, say, embedding of themselves along with civilian populations, even the most vulnerable civilian populations. They’re also guilty of stealing the food that others have tried to bring into Israel, and that’s now very well-documented, Israel released a video of Hamas and terrorists of Hamas stealing the aid there in Gaza, and by some estimations, including by neutral parties, almost as soon as some of that aid lands and arrives there in Gaza, it is basically just taken by Hamas. Hamas does not have the interest of the people in Gaza in mind.

So the other question that comes is, is Israel just, is it right in defending itself in this way? And here, we just need to understand there’s an historical context to this. So some people would say, well, they’re taking this too far, they could take it this far and then they could stop. But I just want to remind American Christians, just speaking specifically to American Christians, although European Christians will be included in this as well in terms of Western Europe. Think about World War II, at several points, at several points, the question was, where short of taking this to its ultimate conclusion and the surrender of Berlin, where could we stop? And the answer is that there wasn’t any place to stop until the Nazi regime was completely eliminated as a threat, and the regime was toppled, and that was untold human suffering, and battle after battle in World War II, that turned out to be the moral equation, horrifyingly enough.

There’s nothing short of victory that is going to lead to surrender here, there’s just nothing short of that, and it is very clear Hamas is not surrendering to the IDF, to Israel. It is very clear that Israel has a just cause in pressing its war against Hamas, frankly, however long it takes, and it is almost to the point where it’s just hard to believe that this is going on as long as it has. But it also points to the determination of Israel to survive, and that does not make Israel wicked, it makes Israel, I think, realistic in terms of its place in the world, particularly in terms of geography, a very, very dangerous part of the world.

And Israel has had to be vigilant about its defense going back to its origins in 1948, this is not a new story for Israel, which is one of the reasons why you’ll notice enormous national cohesion even when there’s a lot of political controversy, and going into this, a lot of political controversy, even about the Netanyahu government and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself. That controversy in Israel will pick right back up at the soonest opportunity. But there is amazing unity in Israel that ought to tell you something here.

One other issue here before I wrap this up on this issue, and that has to do with the fact that there’s another big moral issue at stake here, and that is the holding of hostages by Hamas. Hamas took so many hostages, killed so many people, and a lot of those hostages have died. There are still about 50 of those hostages still in custody. And let’s just understand, this is like the age of piracy. Let’s just remind ourselves of morally what is at stake here, we’re talking about kidnapping, holding people hostage. And the news coverage over the weekend showed one man, consider the psychological and the psychiatric warfare that’s going on here, one man forced to dig his own grave, and to do so in a way that was documented so that his friends and family could see it. This is a form of evil, undiluted, and frankly, undisguised. And so, that’s one of the most frustrating things is the moral equivalence that some people try to bring to this as if Hamas and Israel are on moral terms. They’re not on moral terms, even from the get-go, Israel is a nation, a nation with democratic legitimacy, by the way, and Hamas is a terrorist organization, it has no legitimacy. And then, you also look at what ideology is represented here, and the ideology of Hamas is just unspeakably horrifying, so is their behavior.

And so, the people there in Gaza, to return to the biggest moral issue right now, does Israel bear responsibility for the people in Gaza? And the answer to that is “no” on the one hand, but an emphatic “yes” on the other hand. So no, what has happened to the people of Gaza at the hands of Hamas and in terms of its leadership, that’s not on Israel. What’s on Israel is the fact that it’s pretty much like the old sign in the store, “you break it, you bought it.” And I think it was in the United States, former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff Army General Colin Powell who said it’s the Pottery Barn rule, you break it, you bought it. That was said by Colin Powell to then President George W. Bush, it is something the world is saying now to Israel, you break it, you bought it.

I don’t think anyone with any moral sense can deny that Israel not only had the right, but the responsibility, to do everything it could to retaliate against Hamas after the October 7, 2023 attacks. But at the same time, Israel, just like the United States in a different situation, has basically been handed moral responsibility, simply because when you do have a legitimate nation taking this kind of legitimate military action, there are consequences that fall, and there are people, real lives, that are at stake. And I think it is absolutely unfair to suggest that Israel has been trying to conduct itself there in Gaza in such a way that it has absolutely no concern for the people there in Gaza, I don’t believe that’s so. I do believe that Israel believes that it has learned by hard experience that there is no way to negotiate with a group like Hamas, and unless you have the ultimate defeat of Hamas, you’re never going to have peace, at least from that situation, from that particular threat, for Israel.

I also think you have most people around the world, including American military specialists, international specialists, who have come to the conclusion that there’s no way Hamas is going to be completely eradicated. So that means that something short of that goal is going to take place, and they have to weigh that over against the massive suffering that is documented. And a lot of it has been misrepresented, the New York Times, other major newspapers, news sources, have spoken falsely and Israel has been charged with doing things it didn’t do, in particular, one attack on terrorists that included civilian deaths. And you can check for yourself, you can do a quick computer search, that was unsubstantiated. And it’s also true, this is a fact in the morality of media, that a report, once corrected, it doesn’t disappear, so the damage is done by a false report.

It is also true that Israel bears responsibility here, and this is not only just a matter of moral responsibility falling on Israel, Israel makes a moral claim by its existence as a Jewish state, and thus there is a particular responsibility that falls on Israel here. I don’t doubt for a minute that Israel knows that that responsibility is there. I think Israel may underestimate what it looks like right now in the eyes of the world trying to weigh this in a moral balance. And so, I have to come back to the beginning to say Israel had the right, and has the right, to defend itself, and frankly, to secure that territory in the best way possible. The point is the best way possible also has to take into full consideration the humanity and the needs of the people who are there in Gaza.

Part II

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The Moral Responsibility of Israel: Israel Has Every Right to Defend Itself, But It Also Bears a Particular Moral Responsibility Based Upon Its Legitimacy as a Nation

Sometimes in a situation like this, we just need to remind ourselves of the basic set of facts before us. Israel was attacked, Israel has the right to defend itself, not only the right, but you could argue the responsibility to defend itself. Israel is the only democratic nation in the midst of a very undemocratic sea there, so to speak. And Israel has been threatened by surrounding nations from its inception, it has had to bravely contend for its existence. That savage attack on October the 7th, 2023, gave Israel not only the pretext, it gave it the moral responsibility to defend itself and to go after the forces of Hamas. Even as it’s been quite successful in going after Hezbollah and so many others, it’s not doing so just because it has the right to, it certainly does have the right to, it’s doing so because if it doesn’t, Israel could cease to exist and Israel knows that. The phrase “existential threat” has to play into this in a very legitimate way.

At the same time, it’s true for the United States, it’s true for the United States and our allies and, say, two cataclysmic world wars in the 20th century, it is true that having a righteous cause doesn’t mean that everything you do in war is righteous and it has to be evaluated in moral terms, and a righteous nation will do that evaluation. Israel right now has a situation in which the world is newly aware of the suffering of the people in Gaza, and regardless of media misrepresentations, there’s clearly an incredible amount of suffering going on there, and Israel needs to be responsive to that too, to the best of its ability without surrendering its military objectives, quite frankly.

And this gets to something else in terms of Christian ethics, there are two things, they’re not exactly the same thing. One is to do the right thing, number two is to be seen doing the right thing. And there are times in which the Christian simply has to understand priority goes to number one, doing the right thing. But you also understand, over time, you have to be seen as doing the right thing if you’re going to be respected for doing the right thing, and that’s true of individuals, it’s also true of nations, it’s true of Israel, it’s also true of the United States of America. I think we as Americans are pretty aware of that.

Part III

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We Need the Truth About Epstein: When You Look at This ‘Conspiracy Theory,’ There is No Doubt a Conspiracy – But Just How Far Does It Go?

But next, just because of the moral importance of the issues and the political volatility and the fact that the nation’s talking about it, I want to come back to the Jeffrey Epstein situation. It’s hard to know even what kind of noun to use when talking about this particular controversy or a news story. I want to zero in on one particular aspect here, so let’s talk about what we know and what is now irrefutable. What we now know is that Jeffrey Epstein, who had so many powerful connections and had made himself the center of a social circle that now seems almost unfathomable. How do so many rich and powerful people get inside the network of this one man? He must’ve been an incredible operator.

That’s seen in the fact that the only way he got rich was getting rich off of someone else, whose money he basically gained control of, and you trace that and you understand, here’s a man who had all these rich and famous people around him, he enjoyed the publicity of it, he wanted to turn himself, like so many who gain a big fortune and are quite flashy about it and flamboyant about it, and frankly have other things to hide, he tried to reinvent himself as a philanthropist at one point, trying to associate with institutions with a lot of moral cachet in society and institutions that have big names and big reputations, like Harvard University or something like that, where you have somebody who says, “I’ll just buy my respectability.” It’s an old game, and you can see it taking place there.

But it’s also clear that there were people who had significant questions about Jeffrey Epstein long before he was headline news for anybody, because they all started to back off from him at a certain point. Now, they may try to post-date that a bit in terms of telling the story. But it’s clear that there were enough people who knew enough to know this man is really an evil foul man and they started to distance himself from him. And then, you have Ghislaine Maxwell who enters in the story, and you’re not talking about something just “How does that happen?” You’re talking about the daughter of a tycoon in Britain who was himself the source of scandals, and then you understand, well, it looks like scandals hang together, the people involved in scandals hang together.

When you talk about Ghislaine Maxwell, you’re talking about something evil indeed, because she was convicted, this isn’t just some kind of tabloid issue, she was convicted of multiple felony counts of procuring young women for the sexual services, and that includes illegal young women, young women who were not of age, minors, for his sexual services. And as you know, she’s the only surviving part of that duo, because Jeffrey Epstein was found dead, convenient video slippage, a gap just about the time he died.

Okay, so what’s going on right now? And you see this on the Right first, but now you see it on the Left, it’s conspiracy theory writ large. Now, here’s one of the first things I want to say. When someone says conspiracy theory, we’ll pause for a moment and try to figure out if there is a conspiracy in the theory, and in this case, there is a conspiracy in the theory. It was a criminal conspiracy that went on over years in which a lot of people had to know what was going on, and of course, this gets to scandal that involves a prince of the United Kingdom, Prince Andrew, it includes two men who became president of the United States, Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, it involves, well, just a lot of names that I’m not going to go through.

A lot of names who were at least at some point on someone’s A-list who ended up on Jeffrey Epstein’s list, and at some point, in photographs with him, and at other times, even on his private jet. But of even greater moral concern here, there were young women whose lives were devastated by the sexual predation of a man who frankly carried that sexual predation out on a scale which defies, staggers, the imagination, and had to include the complicity of many people, even if they were just servants and staffers and all the rest.

And then, you have another big issue, which is what about all the controversies, the scandals? As I say, the conspiracy theories really began on the Right, but they’re now very, very active on the Left. 

On the Right, one of the things that emerged over the course of the last 10 years or so, and it began somewhat in the internet and has shown up in more reputable circles, it is the accusation that there is a cabal, a conspiracy of rich, powerful globalists who are also pedophiles and child abusers. And here’s where the Jeffrey Epstein story just lands and says, well, guess what? That was true, it was true. How big was that conspiracy? To what extent was it aided and abetted by others who knew about it, who covered for it, who was complicit in it, who participated in it? All kinds of things there. Is it Jeffrey Epstein or is it a very large number of persons? Well, when it comes to sex trafficking, pedophilia and all the rest, there is good reason to believe, international police authorities say, there are international networks for human trafficking that do just that, it’s just unspeakable evil.

And on the Right, leading up to the 2024 election, for example, you had conservatives make reference to it and say, “You elect the right people to office, you elect Donald Trump as president, then you’re going to get the files and you’re going to find out what was going on all along.” Well, that hasn’t happened, it hasn’t happened in any satisfying way, and here’s the new political reality, it hasn’t happened in any way satisfying even to President Trump’s MAGA base. It is because they were expecting files, raw files, big files, undiluted files, files that would reveal what’s really going on here.

I said that the conspiracy theory’s now spread to the Left. Well, on the Left now, you have NBC talking about it a lot these days, from the Left, and others, and what they’re trying to say is, look at the horrible situation that the Trump administration, President Trump and the White House are in right now, because you had statements made, you had, well, I’m not going to recite all of it. Clearly, at some point, Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump had a friendship, and the same thing was true, at least to some extent, like riding on planes. with Bill Clinton and others. It raises the question, “who knew what when?” Well, I can’t answer that question.

Part IV

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The Big Truth About Conspiracy Theory: We Rightly Demand the Truth, But Can Never Be Sure We Have It…Or Have All of It

And that gets to the most important issue after the sex abuse issue, the child sex abuse issue, the minor sex abuse issue, the sexual immorality here, that has to be the first thing, which is a criminal conspiracy. The second thing has to be the nature of a conspiracy theory. And by the way, to use the phrase conspiracy theory doesn’t mean that the conspiracy wasn’t there or isn’t real. It is to say that a part of a conspiracy theory, the way it operates in our culture is you’ll never know when you get to the bottom of it and you’ll never know if you get the ultimate truth. This is one of the issues in terms of global cosmic justice that is most dissatisfying to us. Who was completely responsible in terms of the complete list and accountability, who did what, what powers were involved in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on November the 22nd, 1963? The fact is that there have been millions of pages written and released, and you still have people who say, “We don’t know.” And any honest person would have to say there’s still a lot of questions we don’t know, there’s still a lot of forensic evidence in the assassination of President Kennedy that doesn’t add up to any theory, or to whatever theory you want to make it serve.

It seems intellectually implausible that one man, a disaffected former Marxist, former would-be Russian agent, Lee Harvey Oswald, could have pulled this off by himself. On the other hand, all the claims of an evidence of a conspiracy that tries to specifically line it out, they’ve all come up short in terms of evidence. 

When it comes to Jeffrey Epstein, I just want us all to understand, with tremendous moral gravity, we need to know the truth here, we really do need to know the truth. That is a very legitimate concern, that’s legitimate drive, and whether you’re coming from the Left or the Right, yes, let the sun shine, let as much information be released as possible. But secondly, we have to understand, because precisely we’re talking about sex abuse, and child sex abuse, or minor sex abuse, the sex abuse of persons that are not of age, an awful lot of that is going to be redacted under the most exhaustive set of circumstances.

And furthermore, here’s the thing, and as a Christian, I have a particular take on this, here’s the thing, we’re never going to have everything we want to know. We’re never going to have every dot connected, we’re never going to have every single document, we’re never going to have the unredacted copy, and even if we had all of those things, we might still be missing the one thing necessary to understand who was morally responsible in terms of allocating it out. And that is because in a fallen world, in a world of sin, conspiracy is actually not all that rare, it’s the order of the day. And the sad thing is that the more complex the conspiracy, if we’re talking about, say, President Kennedy’s assassination or you’re talking about the Jeffrey Epstein crime ring, frankly, when you’re looking at these things, you just don’t know when you know enough or know everything.

A court knew enough, a jury knew enough to convict Ghislaine Maxwell of several felony counts. The court of public opinion certainly knows enough to draw some immediate conclusions. The arrest and eventual death of Jeffrey Epstein says something. But here, again, to our moral frustration, we don’t know exactly what it means because we don’t know those circumstances, and the missing video just plays into the fact that we have to assume that was just too convenient to be an accident. 

But, and this is what Christians call epistemological humility, we also have to admit there are certain things we can’t know, we won’t know, there are certain things we won’t know how to put together even if they’re put before us, and there are a lot of things that will never be put on the table because there are very strong, powerful interests who will never allow them on the table, and there are also legal principles for the protection of quite innocent people, those also have to be observed and those rights and responsibilities protected.

And I want to say this in conclusion, if you operate from a purely secular worldview, you know what? You’re going to go to the grave not knowing and never knowing, having no assurance of anyone ever knowing the truth about these things and the responsible parties being identified and justice being accomplished. If you operate from a secular viewpoint, I don’t know how you’re able to sleep at night, because you’re never going to be able to get to that. As a Christian, I can get to that, all Christians can get to that, because there will be a day when all things will be revealed and nothing’s going to be redacted and justice will be fully satisfied, and not just human justice, the justice of God, and all things will be revealed and God’s justice will be perfect. That doesn’t let us off the hook to do the very best to accomplish justice on this side of the judgment of God, but it does give us assurance that our inadequate attempts will be, well, followed by a very adequate, eternally, infinitely adequate justice.

So understanding all that, it’s not wrong to be intensely, morally concerned about these issues, it’s not wrong to demand the right thing be done, it can’t be wrong to do that. It is wrong to believe that when it comes to a conspiracy theory, any one of us can unravel it satisfactorily. It doesn’t mean, by the way, we shouldn’t try and at least come to a reasonable assurance of what we can know this side of the judgment of God. All right, lots for us to talk about, we’re going to have to wait until another day.