The Hebrew prophet Amos lived some 2,700 years ago, during the reign of King Jeroboam II of Israel. At the time, the Israelites' main enemies were the Philistines of Gaza, reputed to be the most menacing tribe in the region and dedicated to the destruction of Israel.
Amos predicted dire punishment for the Philistines, who had taken "captive whole communities and sold them to Edom." The Philistines had attacked the Israelites, enslaved and sold them to another of their enemies, the tribe of Edom. According to Amos, divine retribution was at hand. Certain passages of Amos's prophecy cite the punishment of Israel's Gazan enemies:
"Because she took captive whole communities
and sold them to Edom,
I will send fire on the walls of Gaza
that will consume her fortresses.
I will destroy the king of Ashdod
and the one who holds the scepter in Ashkelon.
I will turn my hand against Ekron,
till the last of the Philistines are dead."
The original tribe of Philistines were indeed eliminated from the area, never to appear again. However, their ideological successors of hate, Hamas -- the jihad Islamists of Gaza -- arose in recent times to attack Israel, and also "took captive whole communities."
Hamas has been occupying Gaza, as did the Philistines. Both tribes had a similar agenda: eliminating all Israelites, the Israelis of today. Apart from the issue of territorial claims was the conflict of religions. While the Philistines worshipped Dagon and Astarte, the Israelites served the God of their ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The question of the identity of the true God became starkly apparent when the Philistines captured Israel's sacred ark at the battle of Aphek, later placing it alongside their own god, Dagon. That night, their great idol fell on its face, broken in pieces.
Israel's enemies in Gaza today, like the Philistines of old, constitute a mortal threat to the nation, although that threat diminishes as Israel again succeeds in overcoming its enemies. The Philistines had a long history of battles with the Israelites -- including David's encounter with Goliath, and King Hezekiah's successful battles in which the Philistines were significantly defeated. Similarly, the warriors of modern day Israel have a long and intense history of conflict with Hamas's jihadist forces in Gaza. The conflict commenced with the first intifada in 1987, continued through many subsequent outbreaks of violence, and culminated in the horrendous atrocities of October 7, 2023.
While Amos admonished the Israelites for their lack of faithfulness to the Torah -- the first five books of the Old Testament: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy -- he prophesied the eventual destruction of their enemies. Furthermore, Amos prophesizes the eternal redemption of the Jewish people after a difficult period which the prophet Jeremiah described as the "the time of trouble for Jacob but he will be saved out of it." As did Amos, Jeremiah predicted, after this period of immense hardship, the restoration of Israel.
Israel -- while frequently undermined by the West's weak politicians -- has again been facing dire circumstances through multi-front lethal attacks by fundamentalist jihadist hordes determined to eliminate the only Jewish nation from this earth.
Renowned professor, Leon R. Kass in his work, The Beginning of Wisdom, writes that "the beginning of Genesis shows us not so much the past but what will always happen."
Jewish interpretive methods, relating to prophecy, operate in a manner that provides guidance for both the present and future, derived from lessons of the past. "We study history," notes R. G. Collingwood, "in order to see more clearly into the situation in which we are called upon to act."
It might be said that the Islamist assault upon peaceful Jewish residents of Hebron, nearly 100 years ago on the Sabbath day of August 24, 1929, stimulated the subsequent pogroms of modern times. The stalwart Hitler-supporter and Muslim leader of Jerusalem, Grand Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini, incited the horrific bloodshed on the false allegation that the Jews were "plotting to destroy Al-Aqsa Mosque." The British police, mandated to keep the peace, refused to stop the madness until some 70 Jewish men, women, and children had been slaughtered.
The events of October 7, 2023, in Israel are similar. For instance, unfounded allegations of intended Jewish destruction or control of the Al-Aqsa Mosque preceded the jihadist attack. Many kibbutzniks, like the 1929 Jews of Hebron, lived under the same illusion, that they had peaceful relationships with the Palestinians, with whom they daily worked.
Just as the British commander in Hebron charged Jews for the murderous events, saying, "You Jews are to blame for all of this," so too British jihad-supporters accused Jews, the victims, of responsibility for the October 7 events. At a rally in Manchester on October 8, 2023, the co-founder of Palestine Action, Richard Barnard, declared:
"When we hear the resistance, the Al-Aqsa flood [the Arabic name for the attacks on Israel of October 7, 2023], we must turn that flood into a tsunami of the whole world."
In France, shortly after October 7, French far-left parliamentarian, Daniele Obono, notwithstanding their gruesome murder of civilians from assorted nations, religions and ethnicities, described Hamas as a "resistance movement".
Columnist Kathleen Hayes comments in her discussion of the Hebron events that "the past is but a prologue of the future" -- in accordance with traditional views of prophetic events, as foretold by Amos, Zechariah, Jeremiah, Daniel and other biblical prophets during millennia gone.
One hopes, with the astounding team of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President-elect Donald J. Trump, who successfully initiated the Abraham Accords, that jihads, pogroms and similar events will no longer take place, and that Israel will soon herald in a new dispensation of peace and redemption, as promised to Moses on Mt. Sinai, and live once again as "a kingdom of priests and a holy nation."
Nils A. Haug is an author and columnist. A Lawyer by profession, he is member of the International Bar Association, the National Association of Scholars, the Academy of Philosophy and Letters. Retired from law, his particular field of interest is political theory and ethics interconnected with current events. He holds a Ph.D. in Apologetical Theology. Dr. Haug is author of 'Politics, Law, and Disorder in the Garden of Eden – the Quest for Identity'; and 'Enemies of the Innocent – Life, Truth, and Meaning in a Dark Age.' His work has been published by First Things Journal, The American Mind, Quadrant, Minding the Campus, Gatestone Institute, National Association of Scholars, The James Wilson Institute (Anchoring Truths), Document Danmark, Jewish Journal, and others.
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