This war smells a little like Armageddon

Hello, this is Darrell Castle with today’s Castle Report. This is Friday the 3^rd day of November in the year of our Lord 2023. I will be talking about the war between Israel and HAMAS¹ and trying to make sense of it as I am able at this time. What is the war about right now, and what does it have the terrifying potential to escalate into soon?

Armageddon – what that means

I can’t use a title with the word Armageddon in it without talking a little about what the word means. It is a word coming from the Christian Holy Bible in the book of Revelation.

Then they gathered the kings together to the place that in Hebrew is called Armageddon. Revelation 16:16

The battle of Armageddon is basically predicted to be the final battle between good and evil or God’s forces against the kings of the earth. Do I think this war is the actual battle of Armageddon? No, I don’t. But I am trying to say that unless cooler heads prevail it could morph into something at least resembling it.

The war propaganda

The war has been ongoing since October 7^th, so it has been only about two months. The thing that strikes me about it – other than killing and dying, which is what war is – is the propaganda. Real events are useful to inflame the populations of both sides as well as the populations of interested countries. One side portrays Israel as the persecutor of the Palestinian people, having kept them imprisoned in an open-air concentration camp for 15 years. The other side portrays HAMAS as bloodthirsty savages. How much of the propaganda is truth, and how much is fiction, is anyone’s guess right now.² We in the West sometimes think we know. But often our assurances are just guesswork based on our own innate prejudice.

As usual in the best propaganda there is at least a little truth on both sides. The attacks out of Gaza into Israel were savage and barbaric with no military objective. I mean that the objective was terror by killing, raping, and torturing. So it is hard to understand sympathy with its nature. Other than the rockets and missiles used, the attack itself was very low-tech designed to defeat the high-tech Israeli security systems with simple means. Communication between HAMAS leadership and soldiers was always written messages, hand delivered, never by email or text. They used paragliders that one can find in most beach resorts. They used bulldozers to breach the walls and fences, and then soldiers on motorcycles and in pickup trucks poured through.

A simple plan is hard to detect

The simple nature of the plan made it much harder for the Israelis to uncover. Thus explaining at least in part how it could have escaped Israeli defenses. The leadership of HAMAS (who live luxurious lives in Qatar, by the way, while their people suffer in Gaza) nevertheless must have known that the brutal savagery of the attack would inflame the Israelis and incite a desire for revenge. The stories of rape and murder, complete with photos of burned babies, I at first thought were exaggerated for propaganda purposes. But apparently, they are accurate.

Most recently the story of a young woman named Shani Louk hit the international press. She was a beautiful 24-year-old woman attending a music festival until she was captured. Pictures emerged of her paraded naked through the streets of Gaza. Just this week her body was found with her head in a different place. OK. If one wants to refer to people who do that as barbaric savages perhaps there is truth there. It’s the same type of mentality we’ve seen before with Hitler’s forces and the Jews he portrayed as sub-human. Acts of barbarism are justifiable because your enemy is sub-human.

Deliberate provocation

Does the average man, woman, or child on the streets of Gaza City see all Jews as sub-human? It really doesn’t matter anymore because that is the story they have from their leadership. Who apparently do it on purpose to make the struggle worse. Listen to the words of HAMAS leader Ismail Haniyeh from his luxurious home in Qatar.

We need the blood of women, children, and the elderly of Gaza … so as to awaken our revolutionary spirit.

So, they wanted the Israeli army in Gaza killing women and children to inflame the population and create more meat for the grinder. People in the Western tradition fight and sacrifice themselves for their women and children. That is what a warrior, a masculine warrior especially, does. That is why those in the West do not understand a culture, a religion which teaches sacrificing the very people for whom one is supposed to fight. I suppose that is because it is not about or for the people at all. Instead it is following the presumed dictates of a religion which teaches violent conversion. One would think that Islam would be questioned because of all this, but so far it has not happened. In fact the opposite has happened.

The war spreads – as mob violence

Well, the fighters of HAMAS, which their leadership admits exists to kill Jews, are now getting the chance to fight warriors instead of women, children, and old people. So maybe their brave leadership will come home and join them, but I wouldn’t hold my breath. Rather than creating sympathy for Israel there has been an outpouring of anti-Jewish activity around the world. In a Russian provincial capital, a mob invaded the airport to attack Jewish passengers returning home from the war zone. The Russian police and military stopped a massacre from happening, but it was just one example of many.

Unfortunately, murderous violence has occurred right here in America, primarily led by students at our finest, most prestigious universities. One might think that attending Harvard, Cornell, or Stanford indicates a degree of intelligence. But apparently it only indicates a lifetime of relentless propaganda and mind control to which young people are subjected. Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, the Brooklyn Bridge in New York, Cooper’s Union in New York and in many other places the demonstrations have turned violent.

Where the war propaganda comes from

Here in my city of Memphis, Tennessee there were demonstrations of support for both groups last weekend. They were loud but there were no reports of violence although there is always an undercurrent of it in each protest. The people who protest are angry and they feel aggrieved although they are half a world away from the war. That is the dilemma of the superpower, i.e., coming in on one side or the other thus making enemies of the other side and often making the conflict a lot worse.

All this worldwide anti-Jewish rhetoric comes most prominently from the propaganda machines of the Iranian client terrorist organizations called Hezbollah and HAMAS. Those organizations are all about terror. Furthermore, they openly state that the destruction of Israel and all Jews worldwide is their goal. Hezbollah is so large that it has taken on the role of government in Lebanon which has become an extension of Iran. Omar Bashir, former leader of Sudan, chimed in on things to sum it all up:

There is one battle—in Darfur, Iraq, in Gaza, in Somalia, in Afghanistan—against the Jews and we are fighting one enemy.

Is he then saying the enemy is not Israel, but Jews? It sure sounds like it to me. So I understand Jewish nervousness around the world.

First Saturday, then Sunday

Considering this rhetoric, we must steel our minds against propaganda. I have seen polls showing that most college students polled believe the slaughter of 1400 men, often elderly men, women, and children in Israel was justified. They express no sympathy, or remorse for Shani Louk or her survivors. Often these kids demonstrate remarkable ignorance about the struggle and the history of Israel and Palestine. All this barbaric violence and murder makes sense, I suppose when only Jews are the enemy. Considering what I have said, should we as Christians, if you are Christian, stand in defense of our Jewish brothers and sisters?

Throughout history, the persecution has started with the Jews, but it did not end there. Christians and others inevitably become targets as well. Western Civilization is the final target of these revolutionary forces. Indeed I see nothing to replace it but tyranny and violence. In due course Western Civilization will have to stand and fight, as it has done many times throughout history, or bend its knee. Time will tell whether those of the West still have the courage to fight or whether surrender is the best option.

What about this Armageddon stuff I mentioned earlier? Well, if all the players in this conflict do what they have said they will do, we are headed for a big war that will most likely not remain regional.

The dominoes ready to fall

The Israelis have said that every member of HAMAS is a dead man. I take that to mean they intend to roll up the entire Gaza Strip even if it takes house to house fighting and sorting through the rubble. In response the HAMAS leadership from their safe harbor in Qatar pledge to sacrifice their women and children to “inflame revolutionary spirit.” Hezbollah, sitting up in Lebanon on an estimated 150,000 missiles, courtesy of their masters in Iran, say they will launch missiles if the Israelis invade Gaza.

The Iranians, who are the suppliers of virtually every terrorist group in the area, and who are the instigators of virtually every Middle Eastern atrocity, say they will not sit idly by while their client terrorists are destroyed. Israelis say they will reduce Lebanon to the stone age and will destroy Damascus, Syria, if necessary. Mr. Erdoğan, up in Turkey, is usually one of the firebreathers. But this time he has offered to mediate the dispute to keep it from escalating. He did say, however, that Turkey would not hesitate to send troops into Gaza if they deem it necessary.

Are the real war planners satisfied?

The Russians just sit there apparently waiting. But Mr. Putin did have representatives of HAMAS and Iran to Moscow for a conference. I sure wish I could have been a fly on that wall, but I don’t speak Russian or Farsi. The Iranians also went to Qatar to meet with Hezbollah and the leaders of HAMAS. The players on the side opposite Israel are all there together. So we will have to see if they think the atrocity suffered by the Israelis has produced the reaction they wanted when they supplied, trained, and orchestrated it.

Unfortunately, the United States has not exactly been the voice of reason in all this. When you have a superpower, whose leadership is inflammatory and boisterous instead of using quiet diplomacy, it might make one of the players more aggressive than otherwise. The problem in all this is that the United States, my country, has no leadership in the struggle at all. For example, Republican Lindsey Graham has emerged as one of the least helpful members of the U.S. Senate. He told the Iranians that if Hezbollah launches missiles the U.S. will attack and destroy Iran’s oil producing, refining, and shipping. “If you launch missiles, we are coming for you.” He went on to say that the oil revenue that Iran has, despite severe U.S. sanctions, would be cut off and destroyed.

Closing the Strait

That reality would, of course, close the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz thus cutting of much of the world’s supply of oil and crushing the economies of many countries in the West. Let me flesh this out for a minute, folks if you will. While the U.S. has been building $13 billion aircraft carriers, the Iranians have been spending every dollar on their missile and rocket program to counter them. So, an aircraft carrier with 5000 sailors on board and 80 airplanes can be sent to the bottom by a relatively cheap missile which could be fired at it by the thousands.

In an all-out war which remained conventional, the combined efforts of Iran and its terrorist armies, Turkey, and perhaps Russia would quickly overwhelm the Israeli defense forces. I predict the Israelis would not accept destruction gracefully. They would therefore resort to nuclear weapons. The ultimate result of that could be Armageddon or the fast lane to it.

This war didn’t have to be

The problem here is that the United States has no leadership to calm down the adversaries, only threats of violence. For many years the borders of the U.S. have been open and inviting for terrorists and others who hate us and are perhaps agents of hostile powers. The president is senile and the whole world knows it. The vice president, Kamala Harris, the secretary of state, Anthony Blinken, and the secretary of defense, Lloyd Austin, are all apparently intellectual lightweights. If the U.S. hadn’t tried and finally succeeded in provoking war in Ukraine and then made it clear that Russia is the real target of that war, Russia could be approached for help. Tell Russia, if you will tell the Iranians to chill out, we will do the same for the Israelis. Then perhaps no one’s red line will be crossed and the world can be saved, again.

Finally, folks, is this Armageddon? Maybe, but I pray that it is not, and this whole thing can be pulled back from the brink. But if Hezbollah or Iran launches a few thousand missiles, it is game on and Armageddon is a real possibility.

At least that’s the way I see it.

Until next time folks,

This is Darrell Castle.

About the image

“APOCALYPSE” by lorraine_cormier is marked with CC0 1.0 (the public domain mark).

Editor’s Notes:

This article appeared originally at CastleReport.us and appears her by permission. – Ed.

1 That is to say, the Islamic Resistance Movement (Arabic Harakah al-Muqāwamah al-Islāmiyyah, abbreviated HAMAS)

2 Your editor makes every effort to know; that’s his job.