Inside View Mar/Apr 2025
Since Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, the magnitude of hatred for the Jewish state has been astounding.
Anti-Israel protests on university campuses and city streets and the way Western politicians antagonize the Jewish state demonstrate a brazen willingness to institutionalize antisemitism and demand Israel’s demise.
What we see today differs from the past. During the Holocaust, the world rightly condemned the Nazis’ genocide of the Jewish people. Today, it is quick to ignore or excuse—even applaud—the rape, torture, and murder of Jewish people.
Society’s clear redefinition of good and evil rejects biblical morality in favor of a postmodern worldview. The Bible’s opening chapters introduce good and evil, a moral tension that governs the affairs of men. In Genesis 1, good is attributed to God and His creative acts seven times. Evil first appears in Genesis 2 when God warned Adam not to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (vv. 9, 17). Evil took root in chapter 3 when the serpent told Eve that eating the forbidden fruit would open her eyes, making her “like God, knowing good and evil” (v. 5).
Good is activity that submits to God’s will: We choose His will over our own. Conversely, evil involves disobeying God’s will to pursue our own. A favorable relationship with God depends on our doing good, while separation from God results when we do evil.
Evil brings immediate consequences: God swiftly judged Adam, Eve, and the serpent for their sin. Cain (Adam and Eve’s firstborn son) chose evil and killed his brother Abel. Cain bore his punishment for the rest of his life (4:11–13). Historically, the world accepted the biblical concept of good and evil based on God’s standards of righteousness, which define right and wrong for us.
So, how did we get to the point where so many view Hamas’s brutality as good and Israel’s defensive actions as evil?
In our liberal-minded, postmodern world, many reject the traditional standards of good and evil. They view the terrorists, who commit monstrous acts against innocent citizens, as victims of supposed Israeli oppression and consider terrorist atrocities to be rational responses to their circumstances.
Postmodernism redefined the historical distinction between terrorists, like Hamas, and their victims, like Israel. This ideology divides the world into perceived evil colonizers (Israel) on the one hand and innocent victims (Hamas) on the other. Hence, regardless of its brutal and inhumane actions, Hamas is not held morally responsible for its actions.
Those embracing the false morality of this unbiblical world-view regard the October 7 assault as Hamas’s justifiable reaction to Israel’s evil colonization attempts. Conversely, Israel’s efforts to defend itself and remove the threat of future terrorism draw charges of war crimes and apartheid and of creating a humanitarian crisis. Many Western leaders are blind to true evil and ignorant of biblical justice.
God pronounced a stern warning to those who pervert justice: “Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; who put darkness for light, and light for darkness; who put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!” (Isa. 5:20). God will judge the world’s opposition to Israel and its support for the nation’s enemies.
King David pleaded with God, “Consider my enemies, for they are many; and they hate me with cruel hatred” (Ps. 25:19). We who fear the God of Israel recognize the Jewish nation’s righteous cause and its enemies’ evil intent. May we always stand with Israel, the apple of God’s eye (Zech. 2:8).
