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Witkoff and Huckabee visit aid operation in Gaza · The Daily Article

• 0:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: Greetings on this Monday, August the fourth, twenty twenty five.
• 0:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to Denison forums, Daily Article Podcast.
• 0:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm Chris Elkins, narrating today's Daily Article, written by our co-founder Dr. Jim Denison.
• 0:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: Steve Whitkoff, President Trump's Middle East envoy, joined US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, on a visit to a US-backed aid operation in Gaza on Friday.
• 0:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: The Israeli military said two hundred trucks of aid were distributed by the UN and other organizations on Thursday with hundreds more waiting to be picked up from border crossings inside Gaza.
• 0:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: Food is now being air dropped into Gaza by six countries, including for the first time, France, Spain, and Germany.
• 0:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: By way of background, in March after a ceasefire with Hamas fell apart, Israel stopped the entry of all goods and supplies into the Gaza Strip in a move aimed at pressuring the terror group to accept a new proposal to extend the ceasefire.
• 1:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: Many in Israel also viewed the agency that had been aiding the Palestinians as complicit with Hamas and terrorism.
• 1:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: However, the Wall Street Journal reports, quote, photos of starving children are proved too much for most Israel's leaders to withstand.
• 1:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: As a result, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has reportedly bypassed extremist in his cabinet to expand opportunities for the delivery of vital supplies.
• 1:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: I must begin by stating the obvious, the suffering of even a single person greaves the heart of God who made them.
• 1:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: But there's more to this tragic story in Gaza, a factor that is relevant to the way we see all conflicts and all peoples today.
• 1:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: Ahmed Fuad al-Qatim is a native of Gaza and a political analyst.
• 1:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: His recent article in the Atlantic is titled, Hamas wants Gaza to starve.
• 1:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: He writes, despite the surge of hundreds of trucks into Gaza over the past four days, very few supplies have made it into warehouses to be distributed to the population.
• 2:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: Age shipments are being seized by a combination of desperate civilians, lawless gangs, plan-affiliated thugs, and merchants of death.
• 2:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: Chaos and apocalyptic scenery are the norm, not the exception.
• 2:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: Alcottib reports that he has spoken with dozens of gozans who are furious about what is unfolding around them, but their anger is directed primarily at Hamas, which they hold responsible for putting the people of Gaza in this position
• 2:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: and for its continued refusal to end the war that it started.
• 2:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: In Alcatib's analysis, Hamas actually wants a famine in Gaza.
• 2:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: Producing mass death from hunger is the group's final play.
• 2:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's last hope for ending the war in a way that advances its goals.
• 2:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: Hamas has benefited from Israel's decision to use food as a lever against the terror group, because the catastrophic conditions for civilians
• 3:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: have generated an international outcry, which is worsening Israel's global standing and forcing it to reverse course.
• 3:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: Since its horrific October seventh invasion that started Gaza on this road to ruin, Hamas has refused to return all its hostages unless Israel withdraws its forces and allows the terrorist group to remain in power.
• 3:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: This, of course, could only prepare the way for another October seventh.
• 3:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now, Hamas is using the starvation of its own people to leverage its power as a platform for continued attacks on the Jewish state.
• 3:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: Even the Arab world recognizes Hamas for the terrorists they are.
• 3:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: Cutter, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt have called for the group to disband and give up power, joining fourteen other countries in signing a statement that condemned the October seventh attacks.
• 3:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: Over my mini trips to Israel, I have met some Israelis who view a Palestinian state as an existential threat to the Jewish people.
• 4:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: They fear that if the Palestinians have their own nation, some will use it as a platform from which to attack Israel.
• 4:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: Some, therefore, support Jewish settlements in Gaza and the West Bank and view the subjugation of the Palestinian people as necessary for the security of Israel.
• 4:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: For example, Israel's National Security Minister, Edom Arben Gavir, and Finance Minister, Bezallot Smotrick, want Israel to block all humanitarian aid into Gaza, as long as Hamas holds Israeli hostages, whatever the consequences for the Palestinians there.
• 4:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: They have called for the war to continue and seek the quote-unquote voluntary migration of Gaza's population of two million Palestinians.
• 4:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: Hamas, by contrast, exists for the purpose of destroying Israel and the Jewish people.
• 4:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: They are convinced that Jews are hostess Humane Generous, the enemies of humankind itself.
• 5:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: Nor do they care for the people they are supposed to be serving, using Palestinian civilians as human shields and as pawns in their quest for power.
• 5:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: The son of a founding Hamas leader said, they don't care for the Palestinian people, they do not regard human life.
• 5:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: Viewing humans as a collective rather than as individuals is at the heart of this conflict.
• 5:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: For historical precedent, Wall Street Journal editorial writer Barton Swam points to historian Thomas Weber, who notes that Hitler wanted to eradicate the Jews, not because he thought the individual Jews were evil.
• 5:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: Rather, it was, quote, because of their racial destiny or racial determination, which made it impossible for them to act any other way than parasitically, in quote, reducing people to their race or the nation they occupy greatly simplifies geopolitics.
• 5:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: We can then support or reject them as a collective without the hard work of understanding their individual needs, stories, and merits.
• 6:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is tragically necessary in war, of course.
• 6:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: My father fought individual Japanese soldiers in World War II, just as his father fought individual German soldiers in World War I, both as a means to defending America from Japan and Germany.
• 6:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: But whatever we can, however we can,
• 6:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: We must resist the human tendency to value other humans by categorizing them as anything other than according to Genesis I, verse twenty seven, individuals made in the image of their maker.
• 6:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you have children, you love each of them as if there were only one of them.
• 6:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: Their Heavenly Father does the same.
• 6:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, please join me in praying for Palestinians who are suffering as a result of Hamas's invasion of Israel and Israel's response to it.
• 6:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: Pray for the hostage is still being held in horrific conditions by the terrorists.
• 6:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: Pray for this tragic conflict in a way that protects both Palestinians and Israelis from future violence.
• 7:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: and pray for all Palestinians and all Israelis to meet the one who died for them and whose love will give them the peace their hearts seek most.
• 7:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: I once heard a former Satanist tell how he came to faith in Christ.
• 7:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: He hated Christians with a passion.
• 7:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: One in particular, but nothing he did could dissuade this believer from continuing to love him, pray for him, and seek to serve him.
• 7:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: At one point, the Satanists became so angry that he struck the Christian, knocking him to the ground.
• 7:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: The believer touched his hand to his bleeding face, held it up to the persecutor and said, if you're good enough for Jesus, you're good enough for me.
• 7:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's the gospel.
• 7:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: Who will hear it and see it from you today?