To us, Hamas is just a name, but put yourself in the shoes of Jews in Israel and there’s more to the name than just Hamas. Hamas, in Hebrew, means violence. The word has its origin in the days of Noah when Genesis 6: 11 and 13 records the land being filled with violence. It shows up again and again, like Psalm 11: 5 and 55: 9, and right up to the end of the Old Testament in Malachi 2: 16. Its lamentable context is often associated with cruelty and injustice.

The violence of terror from Hamas waged savagery on civilians from grandmothers to an unborn child. The way some people brutally suffered has been described as nothing less than Nazi-like barbarity.

However, the ideology driving such hatred into such heinous crimes was not derived from Nazism, but Islam itself. Hamas in Arabic is an acronym for Islamic Resistance Movement. The key word is Islamic, not Nazi. The evil perpetrators of the atrocity took to heart the commands for jihad in the Koran and the Hadith to inflict despicable deadly force on everyday ordinary people. For example, the Hadith in Al-Bukhari says, “You (i.e. Muslims) will fight against the Jews and you will gain victory over them. The stones will (betray them) saying: ‘O ‘Abdullah (i.e. slave of Allah)! There is a Jew hiding behind me; so kill him.”

On October 7, Jews were murdered in greater number in a day than anytime since the Holocaust. The enormity of the slaughter in Israel that day was equivalent to 35,000 to 50, 000 killed in America on 9-11.

Celebrations erupted in Gaza. Not just there, but sadly in America university student groups rallied for Hamas. AOC and the Squad defended Hamas. Tens of millions of Muslims buy into it, which thankfully means many more millions don’t, but the brute facts of this brutality being Islamically-driven must be understood even when the leftist media and politically-correct religion professors and clergy dismiss it.

We must recognize the world we’re dealing with over there. Rudyard Kipling seeing the contrast of that world over a century ago wrote, “East is east and West is west and never the twain shall meet.” In short, worldviews differ. True to their Islamic worldview, Hamas regards itself as “the house of peace.” Any nation not Islamic is “the house of war.” Guess what house Hamas sees Israel occupying. Only when the Jews are removed, subdued or exterminated will Hamas see what is now Israel become a “house of peace.” With “the house of war” still in place, a two-state solution to Hamas is unacceptable.

Dennis Prager, a Jewish social commentator on a PragerU video called “The Mideast Problem,” said, “The problem is easy to describe, but complicated to solve. Each side wants the other dead…The motto for Hamas is: ‘We love death as much as Jews love life.'” It is a matter of fighting to stay alive for the Jews, but a matter of fighting to the death for Hamas to eliminate the Jews. To put it another way, Prager said, “If Israel laid down its arms today, there would be genocide. If Hamas laid down its arms, there would be peace.”

So, to achieve peace under these clashing worldviews is at best barely tenuous, unless a worldview transformation occurs: the kind of transformational one expressed in a public prayer by a local pastor at the Rock. Though not felt in his heart, he yet willed from his heart to pray for the terrorists as Jesus instructed his disciples to pray for those who persecute you. That kind of praying reflects the redemptive and peacemaking purposes of the Prince of Peace.

The Rev. Mel McGinnis is a Frewsburg resident.