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Two reasons Nicholas Kristof’s article on Israel is so significant · The Daily Article

• 0:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to the Monday, May the 18th, 2026 edition of the daily article podcast from Dinnison Forum.
• 0:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm Chris Elkins, narrator, giving voice to today's daily article, authored by co-founder and cultural theologian, Dr. Jim Dinnison.
• 0:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is one of those days when I wish I could write three daily articles.
• 0:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: One would respond to the massive prayer rally on the National Mall on Sunday, focused on reaffirming the United States as one nation under God.
• 0:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: A second would reflect on the World Health Organization's declaration of the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda as a global health emergency.
• 0:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: However, I feel a special urgency to think with you about Nicholas Christoff's recent article in the New York Times.
• 0:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: The transcendent issues it raises are critical for the Jewish people and especially relevant to Christian cultural engagement.
• 0:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: Christoff's May 11th column focuses on allegations of what he calls, quote,
• 1:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: Buy soldiers, settlers, interrogators, and the Shinbet internal security agency, and above all, prison guards, in quotes.
• 1:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: I will not go into the details, not only because they are extremely graphic, but also because they are not the focus of my article today.
• 1:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: Nor will I focus in depth on the vociferous response of his critics, except to note their observations that he rely significantly on a source that has a reported history of spreading libel against Israel and is designated by the Israeli government as a Hamas operative in Europe.
• 1:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: Critics also impune the credibility of many of Christ's other sources and the number of the abuse claims he reports.
• 1:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: Here's why this issue is so significant for the Jewish people.
• 1:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: The fallacy of false equivalents occurs when someone implies falsely and usually indirectly that the two sides on some issue have basically equivalent evidence.
• 2:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: Consider these statements in Christov's article.
• 2:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: First, the Israeli government rejects suggestions that it sexually abuses Palestinians just as
• 2:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: Next, Hamas has indeed brutally violated human rights.
• 2:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: Israeli officials should look to their own violations as well.
• 2:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: And finally, think of it this way.
• 2:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: The horrific abuse inflicted on Israeli women on October 7th now happens to Palestinians day after day.
• 2:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: My point is not that alleged violence against Palestinians should be ignored, a subject to which I'll return shortly.
• 2:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: But it is that so many people are likely to re-crystophs article and conclude that the sides in the Hamas Israeli conflict are morally equivalent.
• 2:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: 8298 page report by the Civil Commission on October 7, by Hamas against women and children was released the day after Christoph's article was published.
• 3:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: The Commission analyzed more than 10,000 photographs and video segments, along with more than 430 testimonies, interviews, and meetings with survivors, witnesses, and others.
• 3:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: The Israeli nonprofit methodology was conducted in accordance with internationally recognized standards.
• 3:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: Their analysis details at least 13 recurring forms of abuse, including rape, sexual torture, and other horrific crimes committed by Hamas in its October 7 attack on Israeli civilians.
• 3:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: The report noted that sexual and gender-based violence was widespread in systematic and constituted an integral component of both the October 7th invasion and the subsequent treatment of captives by Hamas.
• 3:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: However, as I have written repeatedly since the invasion, many in the West are philosophically opposed to Israel's existence, convinced that it stole its land as colonizers and continues to oppress the Palestinian people.
• 4:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is an application of critical theory, dominant in many elite universities, and explains the shocking support for Hamas on many campuses in the months after the invasion.
• 4:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: If Israel's enemies cannot dismiss or defend the atrocities committed by Hamas, then he will alleged that Israel is just as bad.
• 4:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: This false equivalence will feed the continuing rise of anti-Semitism across the West.
• 4:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: The ADL, the Anti-Defamation League, reported that in the three months following the start of the Israel Hamas War in October 2023, anti-Semitic incidents in the U.S. escalated by 360%.
• 4:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: According to the ADL, 46% of adults worldwide now hold significant anti-Semitic beliefs, more than double compared to the ADL's first worldwide survey a decade earlier.
• 5:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is the highest level on record since ADL began tracking these trends globally.
• 5:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'll close by focusing on the relevance of this issue for Christian cultural engagement.
• 5:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: Here, we need to consider a second logical fallacy that of collectivism or the collective fallacy.
• 5:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is the assumption that, quote, if a group comprising moral agents can act intentionally as a group, then the group itself can also be properly regarded as a moral agent with respect to that action.
• 5:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: in quote, if we employ this fallacy, those who support Israel will see all Palestinians as terrorists, and those who support the Palestinians will see all Israelis as oppressors.
• 5:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: Such thinking makes it easier to navigate a complex world, nuances fade, and motivations can be simplified and affirmed or condemned.
• 6:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: But the Bible gives the light to this fallacy.
• 6:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: In a day of tribal warfare, when a crime by an individual was punished against his entire tribe, the Old Testament declared in Ezekiel 18, 20, the soul who sins shall die.
• 6:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: In a culture where being Jewish was commonly thought to convey salvation, the New Testament declared in Romans 10, verses 12 and 13,
• 6:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: There is no distinction between Jew and Greek, where the same Lord is the Lord of all.
• 6:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord, shall be saved.
• 6:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: You and I should, therefore, grieve for every Jew and every Palestinian who has been victimized in this ages-long conflict.
• 6:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: Each is made by God in His image, each is an immortal soul, or whom Christ died.
• 6:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: Every Israeli and Palestinian I have known over my many trips to the Holy Land, wishes the other well.
• 6:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: We should join them.
• 6:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: And we should remember that God has no grandchildren.
• 7:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: The Apostle said of Jesus in X4, verse 13, there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven, given among men, like which we must be saved.
• 7:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: We can give Jews and Muslims no greater gift than praying and working to give them the gospel of saving grace, but it's hard to give what we do not have.
• 7:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: The more personally we experience the living Lord Jesus and His transforming love, the more passionately we will want to share it with our lost world.
• 7:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: This resolution by Jonathan Edwards is therefore relevant for us, resolved to examine carefully and constantly what that one thing in me is, which causes me in the least to doubt the love of God, and to direct all my forces against it.
• 7:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: Will you make his resolution yours today?