People are asking, ‘Is there a God?’ – Gaza War causes spiritual crisis among Israelis and Palestinians, Joel Rosenberg says

Speaking with The Washington Times this week, ALL ISRAEL NEWS Editor-in-Chief Joel Rosenberg emphasized how the current war in Gaza has a significant spiritual impact, in addition to its obvious material consequences.

“This [conflict] rattled Israel to our core,” said Rosenberg. “I believe, as a Bible believer, that this comes right out of … the Hebrew prophet Amos, chapter 9, verse 9, where God says: ‘In the future, in the end days, I will shake the whole house of Israel.’ And the house of Israel was shaken very badly.”

“People are asking questions: ‘Is there a God? Does he love us? Can he be trusted? And will he show us a way out of this?’”

Rosenberg said Israelis have different perspectives about the conflict’s spiritual impact, depending on their religious orientation.

“Some religious people are angry and saying, ‘God abandoned us, or maybe he’s not even there,’ and secular people are like, ‘We abandoned God. Maybe he is there. And it’s our fault … not that we got attacked, but that we were not under his care and keeping,’” he said.

In a recent episode of THE ROSENBERG REPORT on TBN, Victor Kalisher, a prominent Messianic Jewish leader in Israel and the head of the Israeli Bible Society, confirmed this sentiment.

“I think that there is much greater openness and seeking [in recent decades], especially now in this time of war,” Kalisher said. 

“You see much more people quoting scriptures, trying to go to spiritual things… They seek for spirituality… They search and seek for divine intervention.”

The spiritual impact of the war isn’t limited to Jewish Israelis, however, as many Palestinians in Judea and Samaria and the Gaza Strip could begin to reconsider their support for Hamas-style radical Islamism.

The “massive dislocation” after the Israeli military's ground operations in Gaza means “it’s going to take some time for the smoke to clear, literally and figuratively” before the impact on Palestinians’ spiritual lives can be measured, Rosenberg noted.

“But we have seen in other places when people are engaged in violent, radical Islamism, that when they start to be defeated, the culture starts to rethink,” he added.

During a recent episode of THE ROSENBERG REPORT, Rosenberg spoke with Iranian evangelist Hormoz Shariat, who said that tens of millions are questioning the Islamist approach of the Iranian regime, with many coming to the Christian faith.

“The Iranian revolution that’s cooking underneath the regime [is] for democracy, but also [where people are saying,] ‘Get out of our face in terms of your wicked, corrupt brand of religion, we don’t buy it, we’re not doing it. We’re out, give us the freedom to look for what’s true,’” Rosenberg said.

“Both in the Muslim culture and in the Jewish culture, there’s a lot of ferment as people are rethinking what they were taught, and sort of asking questions that maybe they never asked before,” he added.

“And many of them – not all, but many – are going to the Bible, both Old Testament and New, looking hungrily for answers.”