The proverb uses an illustration gleaned from the agricultural process of sowing and reaping. A farmer would sow seed. Of course, the type of seed he planted determined the type of plant that would grow and be harvested. This is the principle of duplication. In Hosea 8:7, God says that Israel had planted wind and would harvest a whirlwind. Taking the “wind” to mean something worthless and foolish (see Job 7:7; Proverbs 11:29; and Ecclesiastes 1:14, 17), we can surmise that Israel’s foolishness in the past would result in a veritable storm of consequence. Indeed, in the previous verses, Hosea decries Israel’s idolatry (verses 4-6). Their foolish pursuit of false gods would reap a severe judgment from the Lord.
[Acknowledgements to "Got Questions"]
Only if you have relied solely on the main BBC and ITV broadcasts for foreign news would you have been surprised by a violent response by Palestinians to increasing, and no doubt calculated, provocations by the extremist government of Israel. From the endorsement of illegal settlement, through the stepping up of seemingly gratuitous capture or killing of young men from Palestinian townships and the remorseless ethnic cleansing of East Jerusalem to the affronts to worshippers at the al-Aqsa mosque (and those instances are just off the top of my head), causes of resentment have been built up. Christians as well as Muslim have been attacked.
What was a surprise was the savagery of the Hamas response and its grim efficiency, which clearly caught Israeli security services on the hop. There will no doubt be an inquiry, but one possibility is that some of Mossad's informants and agents within the Hamas power structure have been "turned" and have fed back false intelligence about the nature and scale of the militants' response.
The gratuitous killings of Israeli citizens, including young people attending what should have been a joyous music festival, are to be condemned of course. But so too is the typical IDF over-reaction. Palestinians have been killed in both Gaza and the West Bank. Residential areas of Gaza, from which there is no escape, have been, and continue to be, bombed and shelled. There are even reports, as yet unconfirmed, that the IDF is deploying white phosphorus, a war crime for which they were condemned in 2009 following the Gaza War. It is a great concern that official statements from US President Biden and Secretary Of State Blinken have given unconditional support to Israel, without caveats about the nature of Israeli reprisals.
I recommend listening to the informed contribution of former Foreign Office minister Peter Hain to yesterday's Sunday Supplement. It begins 30 minutes in.
News is just coming through that Benny Gantz has agreed to join an Israel government of national unity only if the extremists, prominent among them the convicted criminal Itamar Ben-Gvir, are first removed. One trusts that other more liberal politicians follow his example.
1 comment:
I have seen a suggestion that Putin's Wagner group planned the Hamas attack and supplied the weaponry, which would have included NATO materiel captured in Ukraine. This is plausible. It would enable Iran to disclaim any responsibility, which she has done. If the planning was done "offshore" it would make detection by Israel difficult. Moreover it would suit Putin's interests both as a distraction from the Ukraine war and an attack on US interests by proxy. Allowing NATO equipment to be discovered in the hands of Hamas would add credence to Putin's propaganda that Zelensky helped to arm Hamas.
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