Spiritual consequences of leaders’ political choices regarding Israel: Three keys based on the Bible

Mass hysteria against the people of Israel

After the horrendous, vile, and sadistic actions by Hamas October 7th 2023, the world was in shock and had empathy for the Jews for about a week. But from the moment Israel started to strike back at terrorists in Gaza, the mood and media framing quickly flipped from ‘victim’ to ‘aggressor’ worldwide. As a consequence, we saw worldwide societies spiral into a form of mass hysteria against Israel, and in a way have not seen since the end of the second World War. There has been a quickly rising number of antisemitic incidents. This past summer of 2024 we have witnessed many (seemingly) ‘bottom-up’ initiatives to in an attempt to defame, ‘cancel’ or boycott Israel and people affiliated with Israel in the areas of business, arts & entertainment, politics, colleges and universities. Protestors’ demand was for university leaders to boycott Israel and cut all ties with them. The nation of south-Africa took Israel to court, accusing them of committing ‘genocide’. Quickly after that, we saw that frame being used by anti-Israel protestors. In Dutch universities, mass student anti-Israel protests quickly spiralled out of control and transitioned into overt antisemitism, intimidation, violence and looting. Many at the university were amazed how something intended to be social could turn out so sinister. Some of my colleagues who watched these protesters observed some of them to be in a state of delirium. In June, university deans of the Netherlands finally made a collective decision not to cut ties with Israel. After this decision, the protests subsided.

This is where the political topic of the Israel-Gaza conflict comes to touch upon local leadership, and – as I will argue – spiritual leadership in particular. The global mass hysteria against Israel that we see today, resembles a word of prophecy about the end times in the book of Zecheriah 12: 2

“Behold, I will make Jerusalem a cup of drunkenness to all the surrounding peoples, when they lay siege against Judah and Jerusalem. And it shall happen in that day that I will make Jerusalem a very heavy stone for all peoples; all who would lift it away will surely be cut in pieces, though all nations of the earth are gathered against it.”

This text should cause us to pause, reflect, and sober up. We’re seeing this scripture fulfilled before our very eyes, but we haven’t yet seen the end of it. The Hebrew word for ‘cup’ (saph) used for ‘cup of drunkenness’ can also be seen as a stairs that lead up to a door, like a portal. The phrase suggest that Israel will become for cup filled with an intoxicating drink, such that Jerusalem will cause the nations to stumble and fall. An intoxicated person is no longer fully in control of their own actions. Like many drunk people, people themselves initially don’t actually realize that they are intoxicated. The selective attention, obsession, aggression and mass hysteria against Israel has no natural explanation – it is a form of spiritual intoxication.

There has been a quickly rising number of antisemitic incidents.

Core of this message. The message here is that leaders in the realms of business, arts & entertainment, education, and politics should know that when decisions are made that pertain to Israel, that these decisions cannot remain limited from a “professional” or “political” form of rationality. Whether you want it or not, your words, actions and managerial decisions toward Israel inevitably have spiritual consequences. Dealing with questions around Israel does not compare to geopolitical issues around regular conflict areas, such as the ‘Balkan area, Ukraine, North vs south Korea, Brussels, etcetera. Why is that? I will discuss three keys on which I have based this, resulting from on a thorough reading of sacred scripture (the Bible). The first key, is that God takes your behavior toward Israel personally. Second key is that there are two opposing narratives regarding Israel that are spiritual in their very nature. Regular diplomacy that is effective elsewhere, is ineffective here.  A spiritual problem requires a spiritual solution, and there happens to be one in Christ Jesus. This is the third key. Through faith in Jesus, the spiritual battle can subside and Jew and gentile become one in faith.

This should make leaders extremely cautious when saying or doing anything against Israel. It should also give leaders a healthy degree of humility, namely that the situation is more complex (also spiritually) than you can imagine with your natural mind. 

Key #1: To attack Israel, is to attack the God of Israel

Reason one is that God takes your words and actions regarding Israel personally. The Almighty God (YHWH, El Shaddai) presents Himself in the Bible as the God of Abraham, Isaak and Jacob. God is a God of covenantal relationships and He has vowed to bless the whole earth via his covenant with the land and the people of Israel. And God does not break covenant, even if we (or Israeli politicians) do not hold up our own end of the deal. And this is great news. Otherwise, God would also break covenant with each one of us after we do unrighteousness. Let me be clear, there is suffering on both sides. And war is always horrible. And God loves people on both sides. That is not the question here. The question is: With which nation did God make a covenant? Covenants are eternal. For starters, in Genesis 12: 3 it is written:

“Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” (Genesis 12:1-3).

In a secularized society, many leaders have not read the Bible and are not aware of this verse. University teachers and students engaging in anti-Israel protests think they are standing there for so-called ‘humanitarian reasons’, are probably not aware of this verse either. This verse leads to the following conclusion: No matter how high you think your moral high ground is, to attack Israel is to put yourself on a path of destruction. Spiritually, it brings curse upon yourself and upon the organizations, people or systems that are under your control! Followers under such leadership are faced with the consequences. This is a rule is written in the principled fabric of the universe. This is quite something. In fact, to attack Israel is to attack the Almighty God himself. Those among you who have children now how emotional you can react when someone attacks, insults or hurts your own child? God says in Exodus 4: 22: “Then say to Pharaoh: Israel is my firstborn son.”

In Deuteronomy 32: 10 God says about Israel:

“In the desert land He found him, in a barren howling waste. He shielded him and cared for him; He guarded him as the apple of His eye.

Both a firstborn son and the apple of the eye are similes that signify that Israel is a highly sensitive, open nerve in emotional make-up of the Almighty God. To come against Israel, is to come against a sensitive nerve of the Almighty God Himself. Who in their right mind would think it is a good idea to pick a fight with the Almighty God? In a story in the book Numbers (22-23) we read that the king of Moab heard the Israelites tend to win their battles by miracles. He thought: If their wars are apparently fought supernaturally, let’s hire a conjuror, named Bileam, to work magic against Israel for us:

“Come now, curse this people for me, since they are too mighty for me. Perhaps I shall be able to defeat them and drive them from the land, for I know that he whom you bless is blessed, and he whom you curse is cursed... And God’s anger was kindled because he [Bileam] went, and the Angel of the Lord stood in the way as an adversary against him (Numbers 22:6, 22)

So it happened that Bileam on his road to curse and work his magic against Israel, found the Angel of the Lord (regarded by most Christian interpreters as a theophany of the Lord Jesus Christ pre-incarnate) as his direct adversary. The verb used here is to ‘act as an adversary’ (לְשָׂטָ֣ן), is ‘leshatan’, a verb from which we derive name Satan. The text implies that those who curse Israel, should be prepared to meet the Almighty God as their adversary.

About a 1000 years later, which is now about 3000 years ago, the psalmist Asaph famously prophesied about Israel (as a nation that has apparently come back from the diaspora into their home ground) being attacked by surrounding nations: The Psalm 83 starts like this:

“Do not keep silent, O God! Do not hold Your peace, And do not be still, O God! 2 For behold, Your enemies make a tumult; And those who hate You have lifted up their head. 3 They have taken crafty counsel against Your people, And consulted together against Your sheltered ones. 4 They have said, "Come, and let us cut them off from being a nation, That the name of Israel may be remembered no more."

Note in this text how coming up against Israel is interpreted as act of hate against God himself. The Bible is FULL with statements of judgment against nations who have the audacity to come against Israel, to claim the ground as their own. To me, it was quite shocking that these same lines were shouted by both teachers and students on university campuses. In Psalm 105: 12-15, the message is equally clear.

When they went from one nation to another, From one kingdom to another people, He permitted no one to do them wrong; Yes, He rebuked kings for their sakes, Saying, "Do not touch My anointed ones, And do My prophets no harm."

God protects the ones He considers His own, the ones who are sealed with His anointing oil, those that have entered into a covenant relationship with Him. This protective seal includes Israel (under the Abrahamic covenant in Genesis 12: 3: 15: 18) and all those who enter into the New Covenant on the basis of their faith in Yeshua the Messiah, who we know as Jesus Christ (see my key #3).

In a secularized society, many leaders have not read the Bible

Key #2: Which spiritual narrative do I commemorate in my actions toward Israel?  

Organizations like Hamas have been successful at influencing public opinion against Israel. In a secularized world, many now adopt the pro-Palestine narrative as the cultural consensus, without even realizing that this narrative is deeply rooted in a spiritual tradition, namely the Islamic tradition of faith and even in a geopolitical (i.e., ancient Roman) attempt to crush the identity of Jews. Let me explain why this is. The Arab alliance in 1948 lost, much to the dismay of Arabs (called Ishmaelites or Edom in the Bible, see Psalm 83) who created a counter-narrative of aggression, humiliation, scattering, expulsion and victimhood and claimed the ground as rightfully theirs, and even as sacred and sanctified by their deity. This makes the contradiction complete. As a result, to accept the legitimate status of the Jewish state of Israel, means to disavow the eschatological tenets of the Islamic faith. And these tenets are shared by the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran. But long before there were even Muslims, the roman emperor Hadrian in 135 CE changed the name of Judeah into Palestine after supressing the Bar Kochba revolt in 132-135 CE. Hadrian sought to erase all Jewish ties with the region. He named it Palestine, which was meant as a mockery, drawing on one of Israel’s perennial enemies in the Gaza strip called the “Philistines”. It was part of a broader effort to suppress the Jewish identity and deny them a connection with their historical land given to Abraham (Genesis 12: 3).

I wonder if students waving the Palestinian flag and crying “free Palestine” are fully aware of this historical fact? One may have the best intentions and have not confessed any religion, but by crying “from the river to the sea, Palestine must be free”, a protester is making a deeply spiritual declaration of allegiance, since it diametrically opposes God’s promise to Abraham in Genesis 15: 18, which reads:

“On the same day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying: “To your descendants I have given this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the River Euphrates”.

This is re-affirmed in three additional passages: “I will establish your borders from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean Sea, and from the desert to the Euphrates river.” (Exodus 23: 31; see also Deut 11: 24, Joshua 1: 4)

From a Judeo-Christian perspective, the mere fact that we now live in a time where there is a resurrected Jewish state, is a giant testimony in and of itself of the truth of the Bible. In fact, the start of the Jewish state in 1948 was prophesied many times by prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel more than 2500 years ago. For instance, about 600 before Christ (593-571 BCE), when Israel finds itself exiled from their homeland, the prophet Ezekiel, foresaw and correctly prophesied how God would bring his people back to their homeland from the Babylonian exile (from 538 BCE). But the prophets also foresaw a much greater exile, which become the diaspora of the Jews which lasted until 1948. After this event, Jews gathered from all over the world to go back to their homeland which, until that time lay waste and desolate. For instance, in Ezekiel 36 (8-11, 24) we read:

“But you, oh mountains of Israel, shall shoot forth your branches and yield your fruit to My people of Israel, for they are soon to come home. For behold, I am for you and I will turn to you... I will settle a large population on you, the whole House of Israel; the towns shall be resettled, and the desolated sites rebuilt....I will do better for you than at your beginnings, and you shall know that I am the Lord .... For I will take you from among the nations and gather you out of all the countries and bring you into your own land” (Ez. 36: 10-11, 24).

In 1948, Israel became a “nation, born in one day” (Isaiah 66: 8). Just before this prophecy, the prophet Ezekiel says the land of the ground of Israel is God’s own inheritance, His sacred ground (‘eternal high grounds’, Ez. 36: 2), and that “the Lord was there” (Ez. 35: 10). If the God of the Bible says the ground of Israel is His own, then this makes geopolitical conflicts around Israel as spiritual as it gets.  

It follows that any attempt by leaders to solve this geopolitical issue via regular diplomacy, is therefore both difficult and treacherous because you are basically asking one to disavow their faith, on both sides! Even if the region would be ‘forced’ into a diplomatic peace (which is prophesied to happen in Ezechiel 14: 2), it would be a false, unsustainable peace. The issue is, thus, spiritual in kind. In the nations, leaders’ choice between Israel or the Palestinian narrative, equals the contrast between the Judeo-Christian vs the Islamic narrative, tradition of faith, and even identity. This spiritual choice has been called in Joel 3: 14 a choice for the nations who find themselves in “the valley of decision.” The Hebrew word used here signals a binary choice, and also a winnowing where wheat is separated from the chaff. The question, is which tradition one wishes to adhere to. Choose, and reap the spiritual consequences.

Key #3: Through faith in Christ Jesus there is sustainable peace

I want to close with a hopeful message. After all, also for the sons of Ismael the Bible has a hopeful, loving and clear message. Long before the Bible was written, God knew there would be a tension between the two sons of Abraham (Isaak and Ismael). The bible is clear that the promises of redemption are through Isaak, not through Ishmael (Genesis 17:20-21). Yet, an interesting detail is that God Himself visits Hagar in the Desert (Genesis 16) and saves Ishmael from dying from drought. After this theophany, Hagar called the wellspring of the site: “YHWH who sees me”, a wellspring that is located between Kades (i.e., holy) and Barad (i.e., hailstones). The message is: God sees you, whoever you are. If you believe this, choose to allege with holiness personified (i.e., Jesus) rather than with hailstones (i.e., judgment). It is a subtle invitation.

From a Judeo-Christian perspective, the mere fact that we now live in a time where there is a resurrected Jewish state, is a giant testimony in and of itself of the truth of the Bible.

After all, a spiritual problem requires a spiritual solution: and there happens to be one! In the New Covenant, which is based on forgiveness of sin based on faith in Jesus, people groups do no longer have to compete with one another. The apostle Paul writes that upon faith in Jesus Christ where we have access to God in ONE Spirit, the Holy spirit (Ephesians 2: 14-17), regardless of where you come from:

For He Himself is our peace. He has made us both (Jew and gentile) a unified whole, and Who has broken down the wall of hostility between us. ... by creating a new man from two in Himself - unified into one body. And by connecting the two into one body, He atoned for us to become right with God through His offering at the cross. At His coming He declared peace to those who were near {the Jews} and peace to those who were far {gentiles}, for through Him we have access to the Father in one Spirit.

If you watch some of the testimonies documented by One for Israel (see https://www.oneforisrael.org/), you can see Israelis and Arabs throughout the Middle East coming to know Jesus as their personal Savior. What then happens after that is often priceless: the animosity between Israelis and Arabs disappears. Jesus is Himself the spiritual solution for geopolitical tensions around Israel. And He is the only way to durable peace in the Middle-East. After all, He is called the “prince of peace” (Isaiah 9: 5).