The foundational reasons behind the conflict in the land of (Eretz) Israel.

By Kelvin Crombie

The current crisis in the land of Israel affects us all in different ways. Most of us in the West are shocked and even trauma sed by the evil and brutality that occurred on 7th October 2023, which can only be described as a demonically inspired massacre. Sadly, others have seized upon this act of pure brutality and made it a convenient pla orm on which to expound an-Jewish and an-Israel senment. As Israel endeavours to destroy the perpetrators of this heinous act of brutality and cowardice, such an-Semi c and an-Israel senment is bound to escalate. I have personally witnessed, numerous mes over the last fortyplus years, how quickly the world forgets atroci es against Israelis, including murder, which precipitates a response and then focuses solely upon Israel’s response. This dynamic is even more significant when many ordinary people, in or out of the Church, seemingly pay li le a en on to terrible acts of violence throughout the Islamic and Arab-speaking world and get very agitated and opinionated when it comes to perceived and actual Israeli violence against the ‘Pales nians’. This is not nega ng the fact that many innocent Arab-speaking people in Gaza, Judea and Samaria do suffer and are caught up in the conflict – but there is most definitely an imbalance in people’s a tudes and responses, fed by the o en-erroneous media repor ng. Why is this so? But, more importantly, why did this cowardly act of barbarism occur in the first place, and why has it so quickly escalated into an an-Jewish and an-Israel worldwide crusade? The main purpose of this paper is not to analyse the events of 7th October and the subsequent response of the Israeli government, as there are numerous other avenues covering these aspects, but to hopefully provide some broader background and context to the current crisis. The Middle East situa on is neither simple nor straigh orward, especially to the western mindset. It is composed of many layers 1and is therefore quite complex and complicated, and cannot be even remotely understood unless one looks at these different layers. Some of these layers stretch back for thousands of years, while some are more recent in me. But all of these layers are connected. The very founda onal layer relates to the cosmic ba le between Almighty God and the adversary, named Satan, Lucifer or the devil, between the Kingdom of God and the kingdom of darkness. This brief analysis by no means covers all such layers, nor does it pretend to cover all aspects of those layers, although hopefully it might provide some comprehension to this dynamic, a dynamic that affects every person in the en re world.