Question: I have a friend who commented, "I'm so puzzled why the U.S. is giving Israel all the weapons they ask for...

Question: I have a friend who commented, "I'm so puzzled why the U.S. is giving Israel all the weapons they ask for. They're forcibly taking over Palestine, [that has] nothing...no weapons, nothing. Israel is just bombing the heck out of them...leaving nothing and taking over everything. More people need to learn about this....Israel's cause is not a good one, a Christian one, or a justified one in any sense of the word." How should I answer this?

Response:Your friend's errors concerning Israel need to be corrected. The U.S. has never given "them all the weapons they ask for." Neither is it true that the "Palestinians" have no weapons. One of the reasons for Operation Cast Lead, the last Israeli incursion into Gaza, was that the Arabs were constantly firing missiles, rockets, and mortars into Israeli cities. Have we forgotten Israel's invasion of Lebanon in the 1980s, where, after pinning the PLO in Beirut, the PLO was evacuated to Cyprus? In 1982, I was amazed to watch trucks loaded with all sorts of munitions being loaded for transport during this evacuation.

Have we forgotten that in 1948 the UN partitioned the promised land, and the Arabs were given Gaza, the West Bank, and substantial portions of the land? They refused to accept it, and shortly thereafter, five Muslim armies invaded. Had they accepted the land, the so called Palestinians would have had their state then. The term "Palestinian" was only adopted because the Arabs perceived its political value. Not too long before the Six-Day War, the Jews were called "Palestinians." During WWII, the British had a Palestinian Brigade, all Jews. The Palestinian Post(now The Jerusalem Post) was a Jewish newspaper. The Palestinian Symphony was an all-Jewish orchestra.

There is certainly enough documentation to demonstrate that Arabs wanted nothing to do with the name "Palestinian" or "Palestine" until they saw the advantage of the same. As Walid Shoebat has asked, "Why is it that on June 4th, 1967, I was a Jordanian and overnight I became a Palestinian?" Consider the following quote: "There is no such country as Palestine. 'Palestine' is a term the Zionists invented. There is no Palestine in the Bible. Our country was for centuries part of Syria. 'Palestine' is alien to us. It is the Zionists who introduced it" (Auni Bey Abdul-Hadi, Syrian Arab leader to British Peel Commission, 1937).

If Israel is "bombing the heck out of them...leaving nothing and taking over everything," why did they relocate settlers out of Gaza and turn it over to Hamas? It cannot be overemphasized that the Palestinian Charter has always called for the literal destruction of Israel. We often forget that Islamic prophecy demands the literal extermination of every Jew. Imams are often fond of quoting from the hadith: "Narrated Abu Huraira: Allah's Apostle said, 'The Hour will not be established until you fight with the Jews, and the stone behind which a Jew will be hiding will say, 'O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, so kill him'" (Volume 4, Book 52, Number 177). The "hour" means "the last day." So, for the last day to come, the last Jew must be killed. This is Muslim theology.

Some feel that the Jews no longer occupy a special position with the Lord. Jeremiah 31 spoke of the time to come when the Lord would make a new covenant with them. In that day, the nation of Israel would no longer need the old covenant that He had made with their fathers (i.e., the law). More wonderful yet, each one would know the Lord from the least of them unto the greatest (vv. 31-34). This same passage states that the Lord has given specific signs (the sun, moon, and stars), promising that He will never totally cast away the nation of Israel. If there is no sunrise, phases of the moon, or the stars cease shining, we'll absolutely know that the Lord has cast away Israel. We must not let our preconceptions dictate the pronouncement of Scripture.