Killing of Hamas and Hezbollah Leaders Sparks Potential War in Middle East

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, issued an order yesterday for Iran to strike Israel directly in retaliation for the killing in Tehran of Hamas’s leader, Ismail Haniyeh. According to the New York Times, it is unclear how forcefully Iran will respond and whether they will calibrate their attack to avoid escalation. Iranian military commanders are considering a combination attack of drones and missiles on military targets in the vicinity of Haifa and Tel Aviv, but they would reportedly make a point of avoiding civilian targets.

Israel also killed Fuad Shukr, a senior Hezbollah commander they hold responsible for the Golan Heights massacre. They claim that Shukr had been orchestrating rocket and UAV attacks against Israelis since October 7 and was involved in developing and integrating precision-guided missiles that “have the potential to threaten the lives of millions of Israeli civilians.”

Multiple governments and news outlets warn that these strikes will delay talks over a ceasefire in Gaza and could intensify the regional war.

Why, then, does Israel do this?

“Single Points of Vulnerability”

Israel said this morning that they killed top Hamas military commander Mohammed Deif in a July airstrike, eliminating a planner of the October 7 atrocities. The IDF has carried out numerous assassinations of enemy leaders over the years, including Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the founder of Hamas, who was killed by an Israeli missile in 2004.

Danielle Pletka, a distinguished senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, reports in Foreign Policy that “targeting senior leaders critical to an enemy program makes strategic sense from Israel’s perspective.” She explains:

Even among sophisticated democracies, there can be single points of vulnerability—think J. Robert Oppenheimer’s crucial role in the Manhattan Project—and that weakness goes double and triple for nondemocratic governments and terrorist organizations whose power and operational knowledge are concentrated among a select few.

Israeli leaders especially target enemies who cannot be extradited for trial. They believe these actions have caused the number of Israeli deaths from terrorism to decline. In addition, they consider it moral to cause individual deaths that prevent widescale terrorism and mortality. Critics respond that such assassinations generate worldwide condemnation, disrupt diplomatic negotiations, fuel Palestinian anger, and increase the number of terrorists.

Now, we are waiting for the response of Iran and Hezbollah to Israel’s latest targeted killings. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised yesterday that his nation would “exact a heavy price for any aggression against us.”

Nazi Salutes at the Paris Olympics

As the Israeli national anthem was played recently at the Paris Olympics, individuals holding the Palestinian flag in the stands gave the Nazi salute. Such atrocious antisemitism in support of terrorism against Israel actually makes the case for Zionism by demonstrating that Jews aren’t safe without a homeland.

Ironically, this horrific act took place in the city where Zionism originated.

In 1896, Theodor Herzl, a Viennese journalist, published a manifesto calling for the establishment of a Jewish homeland in the biblical land of Israel. He did so after witnessing the trial in Paris of Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish officer falsely accused of betraying France.

Even though Dreyfus was a proud Frenchman, he was treated as a traitor because he was a Jew. Cries of “Death to the Jews” reverberated in the Paris streets, convincing Herzl that Jews needed their own nation to be safe from persecution. His leadership resulted ultimately in the creation of the modern State of Israel in 1948.

“To Wish That He Were Not Bad”

I am deeply grateful that Theodor Herzl’s vision came to pass. Having led more than thirty pilgrimages to Israel, I love the Jewish nation and her people. Experiencing for myself Israel’s diminutive size and close proximity to enemies who seek her annihilation, I am convinced that she has the right and responsibility to defend herself.

At the same time, I follow the biblical injunction to “pray for the peace of Jerusalem” (Psalm 122:6) every day.

I am convinced that the ultimate answer to peace in this war-torn land will not come through arms but through hearts. Imagine the difference if those on both sides of this perennial conflict obeyed the call of Scripture: “Do not repay evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary, bless” (1 Peter 3:9).

Jesus taught us to “love your enemies” (Matthew 5:44). As C. S. Lewis explains in Mere Christianity, loving our enemy means “to wish that he were not bad, to hope that he may, in this world or another, be cured: in fact, to wish his good.”

You might say that such forgiving love is humanly impossible, and you’d be right. However, as Jesus reminded us, “all things are possible with God” (Mark 10:27).

Consider Saul of Tarsus, a Pharisee who hated Christians before he met Christ and became the church’s greatest missionary and theologian. Or Peter, who considered Gentiles to be “unclean” before a heavenly vision prompted him to lead Cornelius to Christ (Acts 10), opening the door to Gentile evangelism in the early church (Acts 11).

The Three-Fold Gift of Salvation

As you “pray for the peace of Jerusalem” in these perilous days, please join me in praying that Israelis and Palestinians, Jews, and Muslims would turn to the Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9:6). Pray for Jesus to continue revealing himself to Muslims in visions and dreams. And pray for the messianic Jewish movement to continue and expand in Israel.

Rick Warren was right:

“Through salvation our past has been forgiven, our present is given meaning, and our future is secured.”

Will you pray now for every person in the Middle East to experience such transforming grace, to the glory of God?

Note: For more on the war in Israel, the origins of Hamas and the other groups involved, and a practical guide to praying over and discussing the conflict there, see denisonforum.org/Israel.

*Denison Forum does not necessarily endorse the views expressed in these stories.