Israel/Palestine Without Works

Show Notes
Lemuel: I am Lemuel Gonzalez, repentant sinner, and along with Amity Armstrong, your heavenly host, I invite you to find a place in the pew for today’s painless Sunday School lesson. Without Works.

This week, we are going to discuss the events occurring in the Gaza strip, the history of the region, and the evangelical view of the situation. This is being recorded on October 28, 2023 and we are doing our best to give the latest information.

Amity: I have tried to keep this as straightforward and clear as possible. I am extremely emotional about this topic and have spent much of the past twenty days watching the news coming directly out of Palestine, sharing Palestinian voices and calling my representatives to demand a ceasefire and humanitarian aid to the people of Palestine. 
First things first - we have to state unequivocally the following:


Zionism is not Judaism, and a person can be anti-Zionist and not anti-semetic, as many, many American jews are. We will come back to this in a few minutes.
The attack on Israel on October 7, 2023 is abhorrent and terrible and we grieve with the survivors and families of those who were killed. May their memories be a blessing. 

Events leading up to October 7

Let’s start with some history, which I have put together from several sources. This is a very broad, very simplified overview of the history. In the show notes, we have included an extensive reading list to get a rounder view of the subject. 
Israel and Palestine: In the late 19th century, the Zionist movement called for the creation of a homeland for the Jewish people to escape persecution in Europe. Immigration and the purchase of land in Palestine, then part of the Ottoman Empire, was encouraged. The land known as Palestine at the beginning of the 20th century encompasses a 25,000 square mile piece of land bordered on the west by the Mediterranean Sea, on the East by what is now Syria and Jordan on the south by Egypt and on the north by Lebanon.

After the First World War and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, Britain was granted a mandate to govern the region of Palestine and Jewish immigration increased as Nazism took hold in central Europe. This brought tensions in the area with the Arab population, and after the Second World War a new plan was drawn up and agreed by the United Nations to create two separate Arab and Jewish states with Jerusalem remaining international.

The Arab state would include Gaza, an area near the border with Egypt, a zone near the border with Lebanon, a central region which includes the West Bank, and a tiny enclave at the city of Jaffa.But this was never implemented after Arab opposition.
At midnight on 14/15 May 1948, the Mandate for Palestine expired and the State of Israel came into being. The Palestine Government formally ceased to exist, the status of British forces still in the process of withdrawal from Haifa changed to occupiers of foreign territory, the Palestine Police Force formally stood down and was disbanded, with the remaining personnel evacuated alongside British military forces, the British blockade of Palestine was lifted, and all those who had been Palestinian citizens ceased to be British protected persons, with Mandatory Palestine passports no longer giving British protection.

Over the next few days, approximately 700 Lebanese, 1,876 Syrian, 4,000 Iraqi, and 2,800 Egyptian troops crossed over the borders into Palestine, starting the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. The war, which was to last until 1949, would see Israel expand to encompass about 78% of the territory of the former British Mandate, with Transjordan seizing and subsequently annexing the West Bank and the Kingdom of Egypt seizing the Gaza Strip.

The 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight, known to Palestineans as the Nakba took place both before and after the end of the Mandate.

The foundational events of the Nakba took place during and shortly after the 1948 Palestine war, as that 78% of Mandatory