Israel begins limited ground offensive in southern Lebanon

Israeli special forces are engaged in “limited and targeted raids” in southern Lebanon this morning, according to an IDF spokesman. Their purpose is reportedly not to occupy the country but to allow Israelis living in northern Israel to return to their homes.

Israel has been criticized for attacking “civilian” buildings in its latest conflict with Hezbollah, but this is because the terrorists have hidden their weapons and missile launching positions within civilian villages. In fact, the corrupt warlord Hassan Nasrallah and other senior Hezbollah leaders were gathered in a bunker more than sixty feet beneath a working-class neighborhood in southern Beirut when Israel’s air force struck the bunker with a series of timed, chained explosions to penetrate it.

According to the IDF spokesman, Hezbollah had been planning “to invade Israel, attack Israeli communities, and massacre innocent men, women, and children.” By contrast, he stated, “I want to make it clear: our war is with Hezbollah, not with the people of Lebanon. We do not want to harm Lebanese civilians, and we’re taking measures to prevent that.”

Israel has repeatedly warned civilians before staging strikes, using text messages and voice recordings to urge them to leave dangerous areas. It even warned an Iranian plane not to land in Beirut lest it be attacked.

When America stood behind Israel

Unlike Hezbollah and Hamas, who are pledged to the genocidal destruction of the State of Israel and the Jewish people, Israel’s war aim is to enable Lebanon to seize a post-Hezbollah future for its people while restoring stability to the region. In fact, in the wake of Nasrallah’s death, Lebanon’s caretaker Prime Minister said yesterday that his government is ready to fully implement a UN resolution that would end Hezbollah’s armed presence near the Israeli border and replace them with the Lebanese army in the area.

Nonetheless, in a speech to the UN last week, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan compared Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler. Anti-Israel incidents of assault, vandalism, harassment, protests, and divestment resolutions on US college campuses escalated 477 percent across the year following Hamas’s October 7 invasion.

There was a day when the United States stood unequivocally behind the Jewish nation and her people in the face of their enemies. For example, when the United Nations tried in 1975 to condemn Zionism (the belief that the Jewish people need and deserve a homeland) as “a form of racism and racial discrimination,” US Ambassador to the UN Daniel Patrick Moynihan denounced “this infamous act” as a “political lie of a variety well-known to the twentieth century, and scarcely exceeded in all that annal of untruth and outrage.”

That was then—this is now.

Here’s the good news: Condemnations on college campuses and behind UN lecterns are less threatening to Israel since they are coming from outside the country. My Israeli friends tell me the nation is united in its resolve to defeat the terrorists who threaten their lives and their future. After leading more than thirty pilgrimages to the Holy Land, I can tell you that her people, while enormously diverse on a wide range of religious and political issues, are passionately committed to the State of Israel.

By contrast, the “untruth and outrage” condemning America are coming from within our nation and imperil our very future.

Is America “among the greatest countries of the world”?

In 1980, the self-described Marxist socialist Howard Zinn wrote A People’s History of the United States: 1492 to Present. His book has sold more than three million copies; scholars claim that “no introductory work of American history has had more influence over the past forty years.”

In Zinn’s telling, a nation’s history is comprised of “the fierce conflicts of interest . . . between conquerors and conquered, masters and slaves, capitalists and workers, dominators and dominated in race and sex.” He applies such Marxist thinking to American history with devastating consequences.

He and the critical theory proponents who have popularized this ideology condemn the United States as a racist project built by white supremacists to advance themselves by oppressing others. Unsurprisingly, a cacophony of liberal scholars have been calling in recent years for the US Constitution to be abolished in response.

Such attacks on the moral foundations of our nation are having their effect. In 1998, 70 percent of Americans considered patriotism to be very important; today it’s 38 percent. The younger you are, the less likely you are to believe that the US is “among the greatest countries of the world.”

King David asked:

“If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?” (Psalm 11:3).

What, indeed?

“Be worthy of the gospel of Christ”

As Israel seeks to secure peace for itself in the face of virulent terrorist opposition, I am praying for “the peace of Jerusalem” (Psalm 122:6) to be extended to Lebanon and her people. I am praying for an end to Hezbollah’s bloody reign that has victimized so many Lebanese, Americans, Israelis, and Syrians over four decades. And for the same with regard to Hamas and other jihadist groups that threaten the Middle East and beyond.

I am similarly praying for a new regime in Iran, one that would serve the interests of its long-suffering people. And for a new stability in the Middle East that unites Jews and Arabs in building secure homelands for Israelis and Palestinians.

I am also praying for a renewal of American purpose and mission, one aligned with our founding proclamation that all people—from preborn children to racial minorities to the elderly and infirm—are endowed by our Creator with “unalienable” rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I am praying for a return to the consensual religious morality that George Washington and other founders considered so “indispensable” to political prosperity.

And I am praying for Christians to be submitted to the sanctifying Spirit of God so fully that we can be among the “righteous” to whom David referred (cf. Ephesians 5:18). Paul exhorted his readers to “let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ” (Philippians 1:27). America has never needed America’s Christians to live such lives more urgently than today.

Will you join me?

Tuesday news to know:

• Jimmy Carter turns 100: Long legacy of giving celebrated with new homes, benefit concert
• Death toll triples in Asheville area after Hurricane Helene guts North Carolina: “There were bodies in the trees”
• Dikembe Mutombo, a towering NBA presence, dies at 58
• Pete Rose, Major League Baseball’s all-time hit king, has died at 83
• On this day in 1988: Mikhail Gorbachev becomes head of Soviet Union

Quote for the day:

“To the distinguished character of Patriot, it should be our highest glory to add the more distinguished character of Christian.” –George Washington