Many people around the world are rightly celebrating the Israeli hostages who have been released from Gaza and the fragile ceasefire that is currently in place. Moments of reunion — and the prolonged agony felt by families of the remaining 13 deceased hostages — remind us that human life is precious beyond words.
Yet there is still another group of hostages in Gaza: countless Palestinian children trapped in fear, parents trapped in rubble, and a generation trapped between grief and uncertainty. For many Palestinians, this is a time to mourn.
What do we believe about the people who are different from us politically, religiously, racially, socially?
To speak of hostages today is to speak not only of those taken, but of all who have been bound by violence and loss. Every image of a freed captive should remind us that freedom is God’s design for every person made in His image. This is true for Israelis and Palestinians alike.
The Christian scriptures teach that every human being bears the imago Dei: the divine imprint of dignity, value, and worth. When we forget that truth, we become capable of anything.
Earlier this year, I had the privilege of spending time with Rwandan Bishop Nathan Amooti. Rwanda is no stranger to pain. In the aftermath of genocide, Rwandans discovered that the first step toward national healing was re-humanizing one another — refusing to call a neighbor an enemy, rejecting demonizing language, and refusing to treat human souls as disposable.
That same work lies before us in Gaza. Rebuilding is not merely about bricks, electric lines, and water systems; it’s about reconstructing belief. What do we believe about the people who are different from us politically, religiously, racially, socially?
Rwanda’s recovery offers several lessons for all who long to see renewal in Gaza and beyond.
Bishop Amooti reminded me that genocide began when people stopped seeing one another as human.
The Hutus referred to the Tutsis as “snakes” or “cockroaches,” while the Tutsis called the Hutus “frogs.” Healing began when they rediscovered their shared humanity. Every act of compassion, every home rebuilt, and every hospital restored became a declaration that life is sacred.
Rwanda learned that forgiveness and rebuilding take years of patient, communal effort.
Reconciliation started when individuals faced their trauma and chose life over revenge. True justice meant rebuilding community rather than pursuing more bloodshed. Bishop Amooti said that when a person kills someone who harmed their loved ones, “They become exactly like the person who first caused the pain.”
It takes humility and courage to stop the cycle of dehumanization.
When Rwandans returned to their homeland after the genocide, every system was broken: schools, hospitals, banks, and trust itself. They became innovators and social entrepreneurs, not simply out of ambition but out of necessity. The church played a vital role in helping rebuild communities by reminding people that identity runs deeper than tribe or politics.
Rebuilding Gaza will likewise require more than international aid; it will require moral imagination, shared responsibility, and courage to believe that neighbors can once again live side by side.
In Rwanda, citizens didn’t wait for government capacity; everyone participated in reconstruction. Pastors, teachers, farmers, and business leaders worked together to restore life.
The same must be true for Gaza. Governments can broker ceasefires, but ordinary people — Israeli and Palestinian, Muslim and Christian, local and global — will have to be ambassadors of goodness and peace with their own hands.
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Followers of Jesus Christ have a special responsibility; they are invited into this ministry of reconciliation. We rejoice with the families whose loved ones have come home; this is good, beautiful, and right. But to stop there would be to miss the heart of God.
We must also mourn with those who mourn — to grieve the staggering loss of life in Gaza and to join the sacred work of rebuilding.
If we believe that every person is made in the image of God, then every broken city, every grieving mother, and every frightened child becomes holy ground, a place where the Kingdom of God still longs to reign.
Freedom for Israeli hostages must include freedom for the people of Gaza: freedom from fear, despair, and ongoing dehumanization.
President Donald Trump has sent Hamas a final warning just days after finalizing his historic peace deal in the Middle East.
Trump brokered and finalized his landmark peace deal between Israel and Hamas on October 13, over two years after the brutal conflict was ignited by the October 7 terrorist attack. Since the signing, skirmishes have broken out in Gaza, with Israel briefly resuming strikes and pausing aid in the region, killing dozens of Palestinians.
'They have to be good, and if they're not good, they will be eradicated.'
Israel justified the strikes by claiming two IDF soldiers were killed by Hamas militants. At the same time, other reports claimed the United States had intelligence that an Israeli bulldozer mistakenly ran over undetonated ordnance, prompting pressure from the White House to halt the strikes and continue providing aid to the region.
In the aftermath of the violent flare-ups that took place over the weekend, Trump cautioned Hamas that our allies in the region remain ready to eradicate the group.
"Numerous of our NOW GREAT ALLIES in the Middle East, and areas surrounding the Middle East, have explicitly and strongly, with great enthusiasm, informed me that they would welcome the opportunity, at my request, to go into GAZA with a heavy force and 'straighten out Hamas' if Hamas continues to act badly, in violation of their agreement with us," Trump said in a Truth Social post Tuesday.
"The love and spirit for the Middle East has not been seen like this in a thousand years!" Trump added. "It is a beautiful thing to behold! I told these countries, and Israel, 'NOT YET!' There is still hope that Hamas will do what is right. If they do not, an end to Hamas will be FAST, FURIOUS, & BRUTAL!"
Trump's repeated calls to eradicate Hamas have raised questions about the extent of America's involvement in the conflict. Last week, Trump said, "We will have no choice but to go in and kill [Hamas]," if Hamas didn't adhere to the term of the ceasefire. After violence broke out over the weekend, Blaze News asked Trump to clarify who "we" is.
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"When you say, 'We are going to eradicate Hamas,' who is 'we'?" Blaze News asked. "Does that include American boots on the ground?"
"No. It won't be on the ground at all," Trump replied from the Cabinet Room Monday.
Trump told Blaze News that allies in the region would voluntarily "eradicate" Hamas so long as the United States signed off on it.
"I mean, we've had countries calling me when they saw some of the killing with Hamas, saying, 'We'd love to go in and take care of the situation ourselves,'" Trump said. "In addition you have Israel would go in in two minutes if I asked them to go in. I could tell them, 'Go in and take care of it.' But right now we haven't said that. We're gonna give it a little chance, and hopefully there will be a little less violence, but right now, you know, they're violent people. Hamas has been very violent."
"They have to be good, and if they're not good, they will be eradicated," he added.
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At a time when conservatives are calling to divest from the Middle East and confront crises at home, Gaza is the last place America should pour time, treasure, or troops. What national interest do we have in defending a territory run by the most violent Islamists on earth?
Thanks to a coordinated online propaganda campaign — part cyber-jihad, part influencer echo chamber — some on the right have begun parroting communist and Islamist talking points about a “Gaza genocide.” Voices like Tucker Carlson now argue that Israel’s defense partnerships no longer justify U.S. involvement. From an America First perspective, that sounds reasonable: fewer entangling alliances, less foreign aid. But if Israel supposedly offers us nothing, what on earth does Gaza offer?
If we’re serious about an America First foreign policy, we should begin disentangling from the Middle East altogether.
On October 13, the entire communist world — and its pseudo-right allies — got what it wanted. Israel withdrew from Gaza’s populated areas and exchanged 2,000 terrorists for 20 hostages, trusting Hamas to disarm.
Peace in our time, right? More like no Jews, no news.
Hamas immediately reneged, of course, refusing to return most hostage remains and launching a campaign of public executions. The largest slaughter of Muslims in the Arab world wasn’t committed by Jews, but by other Muslims. Remove the Jews, and Gaza doesn’t grow peaceful — it turns on itself. Yet without Jews in the headlines, global media suddenly loses interest in reporting on “genocide.”
Once the internal purges were done, Hamas returned to its favorite target: infidels. On Sunday, terrorists emerged from tunnels in Rafah and attacked Israeli forces, killing two IDF soldiers. Snipers fired on Israeli positions near Jabalia. At the same time, Hamas used Gaza’s hospitals — Al-Shifa, Al-Ahli, Al-Aqsa, and Nasser — as makeshift detention and interrogation centers, confirming what Israel long claimed: Those “civilian” sites serve as terror bases.
Israeli troops now sit exposed, ordered to hold positions but forbidden to act pre-emptively. They’re surrounded by tunnels and terrorists, trapped in another international “ceasefire” that only empowers killers.
The “Free Palestine” lie has collapsed under its own weight. Rebuilding Gaza under Arab control isn’t just naïve — it’s suicidal. No society so steeped in religious violence can sustain peace or self-government. Hamas is not an aberration; it’s a symptom of a deeper rot in Islamic political culture.
So why is President Trump involving America in this mess through the so-called 20-point plan? For a movement that claims to oppose endless wars and foreign aid, the right’s silence on this scheme is baffling. The Pentagon has already confirmed plans to send 200 U.S. soldiers to the Gaza border. If Israel defending itself against Iran supposedly meant “Americans dying for Israel,” what exactly do we call Americans dying to protect Hamas from Israel?
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This entire plan was crafted by former British Prime Minister Tony Blair — the same man who recently declared Britain must become “a nation of global citizens.” No wonder it leads to deeper entanglement, not withdrawal. Once again, globalist bureaucrats are trying to pull America into Middle Eastern “peacekeeping,” which always means nation-building with American blood and money.
If we’re serious about an America First foreign policy, we should begin disentangling from the region altogether — starting by weaning Israel off U.S. weapons systems so it can act freely without American political interference. But under no circumstances should we send troops or tax dollars to Gaza. Peacekeeping there isn’t in our interest. In that part of the world, “peace” means paralysis, and paralysis means death.
President Trump’s desire to see the “wolf dwell with the lamb” is noble, even biblical. But Isaiah’s prophecy won’t be fulfilled through U.N. peacekeepers or Pentagon deployments. It won’t come through Islam, whose theology demands submission, not reconciliation.
Let Gaza be the Arab world’s problem. Let Israel defend itself without our restraint. And let America finally wake up to the rising threat of political Islam — in our own communities, not 6,000 miles away.
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