Empathy for the Terrorists

Should we have empathy for the terrorists who killed Israeli citizens? Should we advocate for more humane treatment? These questions arise from an attitude I’ve noticed on a social media platform, and one Substack article called “Stop the Hangings.”

The writer says they can’t stop weeping about the proposed hangings and that it’s hard to think of anyone intentionally doing this in cold blood (“institutionalized lynching”. Within the same paragraph they assert that what Israel is doing to the children in Gaza is worse.

That same writer has occasionally employed the term “genocide in Gaza.” I’ve addressed this in Words and the Gaza Genocide.

This reaction arises from a worldview assuming several things: one is that terrorists, who kill innocent civilians, are driven do to it because of Israeli oppression and colonization; another is that genocide is actually happening in Gaza (see article linked above).

Think back to the attacks on the Twin Towers. After the fact, apologists for Islam excused the terrorists. In that mindset, the men were oppressed, desperate and underprivileged. However, the perpetrators were privileged Saudis who championed the cause of Islamic domination. And they wanted their heavenly virgins.

The Reason

In The Real Reason Behind Israel’s Death-Penalty, Seth Mandel notes,

The controversial swaps in which Israel trades a thousand or more Palestinian inmates, many who were responsible for deadly terrorism, for innocent Israeli civilians taken hostage by Hamas and other terror groups, have long been understood to incentivize future hostage taking. The most famous such trade came in 2011 when Netanyahu agreed to release over a thousand Palestinian inmates for Cpl. Gilad Shalit, who’d spent five years in Hamas’s dungeons by that point…

But it is not only the lopsided numbers that give many Israelis pause. Between April 2014 and July 2015, six Israelis were murdered by terrorists released in the Shalit deal. Much more was to come…

The death-penalty bill is performative. Its purpose is to make a statement about hostage deals. And that statement, in the post-October 7 world, has a larger audience than ever.

These men murdered Israelis.

Hamas: not the good guys

Please read From the River to the Sea. And Hamas in its own words

Hamas wants to destroy Israel completely. It won’t accept a Two State offer from Israel because it wants One Palestinian State. The Gazan “genocide” owes more to its own actions than the Israeli retaliation.

In Dreams and Visions, Pastor Tom Doyle recounts the story of a young Palestinian (Ali) who wanted to join Hamas. The context was Israel’s 2009 operation in Gaza following some ten thousand rockets launched into Israel from the strip. Ali told Doyle that he changed his mind after seeing Hamas trying to kill its own people to place the blame on the Israelis. According to Ali,

All my life I had heard horror stories about Israel… But the truth was 180 degrees different. Their soldiers were trying to protect Palestinians while Hamas wanted us dead. (Pages 196-198)

Selective empathy

Many who champion the Palestinian cause join Hamas’ chant “from the river to the sea.” But that is genocide in itself. These same people ignore or deny the October 7 atrocities committed by Palestinian terrorists on Israeli soil. Globally, people routinely ripped off posters the faces of Israeli hostages on billboards and lamp posts. What governs this mindset?

Often these same folk advocate Women’s Reproductive Rights. This misnomer really means aborting children that haven’t been born yet. How many? See this Pew Research. Isn’t that genocide? And as for children in Gaza and babies, listen to one Oct 7 terrorist’s confession HERE. Yes, they took kids and babies to rape them.

Read this ADL article. And watch this YouTube video of Oct 7 eye-witness accounts.

If one is going to routinely champion the cause for Palestinians being allegedly oppressed and killed by Israel, where is the outrage for the slaughter and persecution of Christians in other nations?

For example, see Palm Sunday attacks in Nigeria. Read this from the Catholic League. Read about the Slaughter in Syria. Find out about Churches and Christian homes burned in Syria HERE.

Weep for all these people as well.

Are my links biased? You don’t trust them? Do your own research; and not just in the Main Stream Media. Let’s not fashionably focus on Israel’s alleged crimes while ignoring atrocities committed against Christians around the world. It says something about us if we do that. There’s a word for it.

In conclusion, should we have empathy for the terrorists who killed Israeli citizens? Pray for them, pray for their salvation. But Israel must hold them accountable for their crimes.

Maranatha!