Israel faces international condemnation and charges of genocide for the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, but the Family Research Council says believers with a “biblical worldview” and “moral clarity” can see Israel is blameless.
“Why in the world are they not placing blame with the real culprits behind all of this?” said Buddy Carter, a Republican U.S. representative from Georgia, during the Aug. 1 episode of FRC’s broadcast.
Buddy Carter
Carter, who has called President Donald Trump “the peacemaker in chief” and nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize, said Hamas is responsible for all deaths and destruction in Gaza. He said the news media has fabricated a crisis.
“I don’t think it’s being represented accurately what’s happening over in Gaza,” Carter said.
Growing condemnation
Since Hamas fighters from Gaza attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing 1,200 Israelis and taking another 250 hostage, Israel’s war on Hamas has killed 60,000 people — mainly civilians — in Gaza. A recent blockade of humanitarian aid has fueled widespread hunger, malnutrition and deaths by starvation.
In July, 25 nations — including the UK, Australia, Austria, Canada, France, Ireland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland — issued a joint statement charging Israel with the “drip feeding of aid and the inhumane killing of civilians, including children.”
“The war in Gaza must end now,” said the statement from the 25 nations.
“Israel is using thirst as a weapon to kill Palestinians,” said a group of United Nations experts. “This catastrophe was not only predictable; it was predicted. Israel’s blockade and destruction of civilian infrastructure has left most of Gaza’s 2 million residents displaced and without access to the minimum vital amount of drinking water.”
Bible said to support US, Israel talking points
Family Research Council brushed off the criticisms, claiming Israel was doing “far more” than other wartime nations to protect civilians, and said the Bible supports Israeli and U.S. talking points on the conflict.
Jody Hice
“Israel is being held to expectations that no other country has in war time,” said broadcast host Jody Hice, a former Southern Baptist pastor and former Republican U.S. representative from Georgia, who joined Family Research Council Action in 2024. “When you look, they’ve actually been doing far more than other countries have.”
Hice said Americans “need to have a biblical understanding of what Christians should know about it all.”
“How does the Bible become a guide?” he asked a fellow FRC employee, David Closson, director of FRC’s Center for Biblical Worldview.
Closson cited the Bible and Just War Theory to argue Israel is going “above and beyond” any moral obligations in its conduct of the war. “If you apply that to the current conflict, you’ll see that Israel is going above and beyond kind of what most nations would do in the situation to ensure that they’re minimizing civilian casualties.”
David Closson
Closson cited two Bible verses that he said absolve Israel of blame for civilian deaths and hunger:
- In Romans 11, Paul describes God’s ongoing faithfulness to Israel after the coming of Christ
- In Genesis 12, God calls Abram to go and begin a new nation and promises: “I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth.”
Does Israel meet Just War criteria?
Closson said believers need “moral clarity,” a phrase that was repeated through the broadcast, in assessing the war. He claimed Israel is morally justified in its execution of the war because it has satisfied the criteria for a just war, including:
- Just cause: War is just when fought to protect innocent life from imminent danger but is not just when fought to punish attackers.
- Probability of success: War is just when the aims of the war are achievable.
- Last resort: War is just when all other options have been exhausted.
- Proportionality: War is just when harm to civilians and property is balanced against the military benefits.
Israel’s supporters claim it has met these criteria, but its critics disagree.
Closson neglected to mention one important Just War criteria: Distinction. War is just when a military power distinguishes between enemy combatants and innocent civilians caught up in the horror of war.
Israel’s critics accuse it of bombing civilian residential areas, thus violating the distinction criterion. But Israel’s supporters say Hamas hides military targets in civilian areas and is thus responsible for resulting civilian deaths.
New private charity doing ‘yeoman’s work’
Ken Isaacs, a vice president with the evangelical relief organization Samaritan’s Purse, offered a firsthand report on the distribution of aid in Israel and Gaza and praised the U.S.-based Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.
GHF was founded in May after conservatives in Israel and the U.S. claimed Hamas was stealing and diverting the majority of Gaza aid, a claim others reject. GHF has come under intense fire and been accused of restricting access to aid as a weapon of war. Hundreds of Gazans have been killed outside GHF distribution sites as they seek food.
But Isaacs was upbeat about GHF, which is partnering with Samaritan’s Purse in Gaza.
“I saw firsthand the work they are doing, and I came away very impressed,” Isaacs said. He said GHF was staffed by professional, compassionate people who are laboring “in a very chaotic situation” and “doing a yeoman’s work.”
Dobson’s ministry says critics ‘smearing Israel’
Meanwhile, Gary Bauer of the Dobson Policy Center wrote in an Aug. 7 post: “There is a vicious campaign of lies being waged against the state of Israel. Its purpose is to turn Americans generally and Christians specifically against our longtime ally. The smear campaign claims that Israel, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is intentionally starving the people of Gaza.”
“There is a vicious campaign of lies being waged against the state of Israel.”
Netanyahu repeated the claim in an Aug. 10 press conference in which he condemned photos he said were faked, including one published on the front page of The New York Times. The Times later issued a correction acknowledging that the boy in the photo suffered from a preexisting medical condition, but critics say that’s not enough.
Bauer used the issue to accuse critics of using Hitler-type propaganda to cast doubt on plentiful claims that people in Gaza face hunger, malnutrition and starvation: “We live in a world of mass communication saturated with lies. As Christians, we must constantly be discerning and seek the truth. The charge that Israel is starving Gazans is vile propaganda, similar to the ‘big lie’ technique perfected by Adolph Hitler. Sadly, this pervasive lie is eroding support for Israel and feeding the growing antisemitism in America, Europe and around the world. The more hatred grows, the more violence will follow.”
The United Nations, the UN agency UNICEF and other groups have reported on very real famine and starvation in Gaza.
Growing pressure
Sixty percent of Americans now oppose Israel’s military action in Israel, a new low, according to a July 29 Gallup survey. When the war started, 50% of Americans supported it. Some in Congress have called for cutting military funding for Israel.
Support for the war also has declined in Israel, where around 600 retired Israeli security officials have called for the war to end, according to the BBC. They say Gaza no longer represents a national security threat.
A number of groups have called the Israeli war effort a genocide, defined as the deliberate effort to use killing in order to destroy a nation or people group. These groups declared the war effort a genocide in 2024:
- Amnesty International
- European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights
- University Network for Human Rights
- Human Rights Watch
Other groups declared genocide in 2025:
- UN experts
- Israeli human rights groups B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights-Israel
- Progressive Jewish groups