The value of life

"The bloodthirsty Muslims of Hamas may not give a rip about human life, but we do. Our Christian and Jewish faiths believe in the sanctity of life, as do our cultures. Whenever possible, we protect and preserve life. We only take life when we absolutely have to."

One of the things that us Americans as well as our friends and allies in Israel have in common, is simply this - we both value life. We believe life is a precious gift from God and should be preserved at all costs. The best example of how the Israeli people feel about this issue, is when hostages need to be exchanged with Muslim terrorists. No swap ever is a one for one exchange. Not even close.

Yesterday, agreement was reached with the never trustworthy group of thugs called Hamas. As we can remember, two years ago, they invaded Israel, killed over a thousand civilians, and took over 200 hostages. Note I said hostages, and not prisoners of war. These were innocent civilians. Part of the phase one agreement to the peace deal, is an exchange of hardened prisoners for innocent civilians. By now, many of the hostages have died in captivity. Maybe only 20 remain who are alive. For those 20, plus the remains of those deceased, Israel must release 250 terrorists who are serving life sentences in Israel. Plus, another 1,000 or so Hamas fighters from Gaza. 

Here is the irony of this exchange. The 20 living hostages will try and pick up the pieces of their lives and go on. That's it - end of story. This nightmare would be over, and all they want is to get back to the normalcy of living. The blood thirsty lifers however, many of those 250 will want to return to the battlefield. Continue fighting. Maybe even attempt another October 7th type attack. How do I know? They have as much as said so. But if Israel had not released them, the 20 remaining hostages would have remained in their underground prison. Like I said - Israel knows the value of life.

Here is where I fall short at times in my humanity. Two years ago, when the horrors of this attack were made public, when I heard about the killings and decapitations of babies, the raping of young girls, the execution of the elders - my blood ran hot for revenge. I wanted Netanyahu to gas up every F-35 jet he has, and bomb Gaza until he ran out of bombs. But that would not have been the right thing to do. Killing innocent Gazans and endangering innocent Israeli hostages would have been wrong for so many reasons. The most important of which was the primary one - the value of human life.

The bloodthirsty Muslims of Hamas may not give a rip about human life, but we do. Our Christian and Jewish faiths believe in the sanctity of life, as do our cultures. Whenever possible, we protect and preserve life. We only take life when we absolutely have to.

Will this peace hold? Probably not. How do I know? Hamas, Hezbollah, or whatever the Iranian proxy NEVER keep their word. And then it will be war and bloodshed again. It will be this way until the final battle when Jesus returns.