So Gideon and the hundred who were with him came to the outskirts of the camp at the beginning of the middle watch, when they had just set the watch, and they blew the trumpets and smashed the jars that were in their hands. So the three companies blew the trumpets and broke the jars, holding in their left hands the torches and in their right hands the trumpets to blow, and they cried, “A sword for the Lord and for Gideon!”
Every man stood in his place all around the camp, and all the [Midianites] in camp ran; they cried out and fled. When they blew the three hundred trumpets, the Lord set every man’s sword against his fellow and against all the army, and the army fled as far as Beth-shittah toward Zererah,[d] as far as the border of Abel-meholah, by Tabbath.
Judges 7: 19-22 NRSVue
On Friday President Trump left the Middle East after a brief visit having commented on the terrible plight of Gazans as they face starvation, a rare note of compassion on his part. Blessedly, no musing about forceable removing Palestinians from the land to which they had been relocated after the Nakba in 1948.
The next day Israel announced that it has launched a major operation in the Gaza Strip to pressure Hamas to release remaining hostages, following days of strikes across the Palestinian territory that killed hundreds of people. Defense Minister Israel Katz said that Operation Gideon's Chariots was being conducted with “great force.” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to escalate pressure with the aim of destroying the militant group that has ruled Gaza for nearly two decades. Of course, many of those who have died are children and women who are victims, not combatants.
It's sickening and blasphemous that the name for this military assault is Gideon's Chariots, a reference, presumably, to a story in the book of Judges, chapters 6 and 7. I was fascinated by this story as a kid because young Gideon led the Israelites against the far superior forces of the Midianites despite his misgivings. God comes to Gideon in a dream and assures him of victory, but instructs him to reduce his already outnumbered band of brothers. And yes, he does prevail, largely through clever nighttime confusion tactics.
What is happening in Gaza is the opposite of the premise in this story. Israel has the military superiority, the "chariots" in the form of tanks and jets and other sophisticated weaponry. In the story Gideon had no chariots or any weapons of mass destruction. While Hamas is a terrorist organization which should not exist it is sickening that the Netanyahu government trots out dubious biblical references to justify what is increasingly obvious as ethnic cleansing when the overall message is of justice, mercy, and compassion.
Sadly, we know people of the evangelical Christian persuasion who use other disturbing passages from the Hebrew scriptures to justify mass murder, as though this is Godly justification. I despise this twisting of the biblical message for ungodly purposes.
I wish Bibi and his minions of evil could be forced to write out the story of Gideon on the chalkboard (are there still chalkboards?) over and over until they get what it's all about. Or maybe they should be required to read George Orwell's 1984 with it's "Big Lie", the rewriting of history for manipulation and control.
“And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed—if all records told the same tale—then the lie passed into history and became truth. 'Who controls the past' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.”
― 1984
Gideon and His Army Attacking the Midianites -- 16th C manuscript illustration
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