Modern and Ancient Israel

“As for me and my house, we will serve…” No, not the State, but “YHWH: The LORD,” said Joshua ben Nun, the man who actually founded ancient Israel way back about 1400 BC. We know that at least some Israelites did so for the 1500 years that ancient Israel existed. Even though many – maybe most – lived up to the meaning of the name “Israel” – those who contend or struggle with God. After the three wars between the Jews and the Romans, from AD 67 to about AD 155, they were no longer a “nation” but remained a people. According to the Bible, their primary role in history had been fulfilled by that time, as a people of God. But they were still around. Their culture, their heritage, their identity survived. Unlike many ancient peoples: we have no one today claiming or providing evidence that they are ancient Etruscans, or Edomites, or Amelekites, or Hittites.

But we still have Hebrews, or Jews. And once again, many of those Hebrews have a nation. Located in their ancient homeland of Canaan.

Today there are many sincere people (and a very high number of insincere scam artists) who conflate ancient Israel with the modern 20th/21st Century State of Israel. In particular, for various reasons, many try to apply the promises and prophecies about the people of Israel to the nation-state created in 1948 and embattled since.

We here at TPOL respectfully disagree. Israel, like every other nation and government and state on this planet, has no special designation or place in God’s eyes. There is no currently applicable command in the Bible or any other religious document that says we must treat Israelis as God’s own chosen people today – and that we must befriend the State of Israel.

No matter what stupid laws Congress tries to pass condemning those who do not either kowtow to, or cheer lustily, for Israel, Israelis, Israelites, Hebrews, or Jews today.

NO, we are not enemies of Israel. We are NOT friends or supporters of Hamas or of those people in Gaza, or those who claim to be Palestinians. We are as friendly and supportive of the people, the military, and the State of Israel as we are to any other people, any other military force seeking to defend its Constitution, its freedoms and liberties, its people, and its homeland. And that applies to the people of Gaza as well, and those who call themselves Palestinians. No more, and no less.

The State of Israel, like any human government, is subject to the same standards of decency, morality, and liberty that any other mandatory human government must meet. Or for that matter, any individual adult human who is capable of reasoning. And like every other government: national, state or provincial, local, tribal, etc, the Israeli government has a bad, a very bad, track record.

But we are confident in saying that the people of the modern State of Israel, whether Jewish or Christian, Muslim or Druse or Atheist, have significantly more liberty than the people in the Arab nations around them. We suspect that even is the case of the Arabs living in the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) and before the current war, even in the case of Gaza. (Or perhaps, given the known actions of Hamas, even more so than in Syria, Egypt, or Saudi Arabia, to name a few. Hamas in governing/controlling, and exploiting the Gaza Strip demonstrated a brutish and thuggish nature as harsh as Saddam in Iraq, Assad in Syria, or Ghaddafi in Libya.

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