A New Kind of Idolatry
For many people in the world, no matter how Israelis fight back against Hamas (and Hizbollah, Islamic Jihad, Iran, etc.) they will be accused of genocide. Expelling Hamas from Gaza comes with the price of lives lost on both sides; a price that is extremely high because of the way Hamas has used its citizens as human shields. But the way protestors frame their opposition to Israel’s war on Hamas in such a narrowly focused way (genocide), ignoring larger context and realities (as well as the death cult that is Jihadism) speaks to a troubling belief system. In a way, it’s a new kind of idolatry. We usually think of idolatry as worshipping idols, but in the history of religious thought, there are deeper understandings of idolatry. When we see only one side of a person and mistake that for the whole person, we ignore the full reality of who they are. When we take a small part of the world and say, “This is God,” or “This is the meaning of life,” we elevate that one part, and mistake it for