Skip to main content

Opinion: Israel Held to a Different Standard

Share This article

JERUSALEM, Israel -- Israel's death toll in the struggle to restore calm and protect its citizens from Hamas rocket fire reached 63 by Friday afternoon and it's not over yet. Operation Protective Edge resumed within hours after the latest attempted ceasefire.

A statement released earlier Friday confirmed Israel's acceptance.

"In accordance with the authority granted by the Security Cabinet to the Prime Minister and the Minister of Defense, Israel has accepted the UN/US proposal for a 72-hour humanitarian ceasefire beginning 8 a.m. Friday, August 1, 2014," the statement read.

The rockets never stopped and by noon, Israel informed the U.N. the ceasefire was over due to rocket fire. A short time later, two soldiers were killed and another abducted, the IDF Spokesman's Office reported.

Palestinian sources in the Gaza Strip claim that more than 1,000 Arabs have been killed in Israeli airstrikes -- some of them innocents used as human shields and terrorists dressed as civilians making up those numbers.

But despite Israeli efforts to explain what's really going on, the world in large part supports the jihadists and condemns Israel.

That's mostly because Israel is held to a diff/pent standard.

There's the rest of the world -- and then there's Israel, set apart by the nations, but more importantly by God Himself, according to the biblical account.

The Bible says God ordained the Israelites to be a light to the world. He told Abraham his descendants would be as numerous as the sand on the seashore. He called Abraham's son, Isaac, the son of promise, saying his descendants would be set apart for His own purposes. Through Isaac's son, Jacob, came the 12 tribes of Israel.

God commanded the Israelites' history be preserved in written records. And so it was. Throughout the centuries, Jewish scribes faithfully copied the prophetic text generation after generation.

But here's the catch. If you don't believe the Bible is the Spirit-breathed, inerrant Word of God, this historical record is meaningless.

If you do believe that everything you need to know is found in God's Word, your perspective will be altogether different.

A large percentage of the world's population believes otherwise. Muslims, for example, are taught that God commanded all people to follow the teachings of its prophet, Mohammed, and its holy book, the Koran. And an estimated 1.8 billion people follow that teaching.

Also, among those who call themselves Christians are some who believe the Church has replaced Israel because by and large the Jews rejected Jesus as the promised Messiah. Some of them can be as virulent in their opposition to Israel and the Jewish people as their Muslim counterparts.

Fast forward through the centuries to the re-establishment of the Jewish nation-state and the re-gathering of a people scattered to the four corners of the earth, literally, for some two millennia.

In a relatively short period of time, this tiny nation has come a long way, contributing to the betterment of society in medical breakthroughs, agricultural techniques allowing arid countries to grow their own crops, advances in computer and digital technology, the arts and humanities. The list goes on and on.

But despite all its contributions to modern societies, the anti-Israel sentiment is on the increase today. Less than 70 years after six million Jews were systematically murdered in the Nazi Holocaust, most European nations are again singling out Israel as the most hated nation on earth. And they have the backing not only of the United Nations, the Arab League, and other countries, but some say the U.S. State Department and the Obama administration, despite claims to the contrary, have jumped on board.

How else to explain asking Israel to reach a peace agreement with a unity government composed of two Palestinian factions purposed to eradicate Israel and create a state from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea?

How else to fathom demanding a ceasefire with a terror group that's used international funds and materials to dig hundreds of arms smuggling tunnels from the Gaza Strip to Egypt's Sinai Peninsula and others under the border with the Jewish state to kidnap and murder Israelis?

But that's the reality today. The world, including many in the current U.S. government, sees Israel as the problem. It truly boggles the imagination.

Share This article

About The Author

Tzippe
Barrow

From her perch high atop the mountains surrounding Jerusalem, Tzippe Barrow tries to provide a bird’s eye view of events unfolding in her country. Tzippe’s parents were born to Russian Jewish immigrants, who fled the czar’s pogroms to make a new life in America. As a teenager, Tzippe wanted to spend a summer in Israel, but her parents, sensing the very real possibility that she might want to live there, sent her and her sister to Switzerland instead. Twenty years later, the Lord opened the door to visit the ancient homeland of her people.