I met Sherri Mandell once. As we sat in a hotel lobby in Jerusalem, overlooking the Old City and the fabled Valley of Hinnom, we discussed her book, The Blessing of a Broken Heart. It is the wrenching account of her son’s murder at the hands of Palestinian terrorists. I would urge everyone to order a copy from Amazon.

In a cave a mile from his home, Koby Mandell and a friend were stoned to death. The killers were never captured, but the beastly crime plunged the Mandells — Sherri, Seth, and their children — into a life of grief. The Koby Mandell Foundation was born of the result, and much good has come from that. But it cannot undo the pain.

In her blog for the Jerusalem Post last week, Sherri wrote with hard-won wisdom about the international attitude toward Hamas. That is, toward Palestinian society that celebrates and justifies murder. She wrote that the Hamas response to the murder of a 13-year-old Israeli boy (he was murdered recently by an axe-wielding Palestinian) is obscene. Read what in effect was a Hamas press release after the crime:

“This attack was committed in the framework of the resistance," Ayman Taha, a spokesperson for the group said. "This is a reaction to the continuing occupation and the continued building of settlements."

"This is a natural reaction," he said, "especially against the backdrop of Israeli attacks. We are a people occupied, and it is our right to defend ourselves and to act in every way and with every means at our disposal in order to defend ourselves."

 As I read this statement from a psychopath, I was reminded both of my meeting with Sherri Mandell, and of my conversations over the years with those who attempt to justify Palestinian brutality.

As Sherri and I talked, I glanced at the Valley of Hinnom, which divided the hotel from the Old City walls. This scene, of course, is the place of “Gehenna,” mentioned in Scripture as a metaphor for hell. It was in the Valley of Hinnom that the ancients burned both trash and victims of pagan sacrifice.

Today it is lush, green…a park-like setting. In ancient Israel, it was ghastly, always burning. It was a macabre tribute to the sickness of mankind.

I also thought of the mainline church crowd (and, sadly today, a growing number of those who identify themselves as evangelicals), which allows for Arab “resistance” to Israel’s “occupation.”

In her blog, Sherri cuts through the nonsense:

“Defense??? Since when is hacking a 13-year-old boy with an ax an act of defense? Palestinians may have gripes about nationhood but to pretend that bludgeoning a child in cold blood is a defense is an abomination.

“Natural? If this is what is defined as natural, perhaps we should rethink what being human is all about.”

A decade ago, when I found myself as a member of the United Methodist Church, I got past my naïve thinking when I discovered that much of the leadership had a smoldering dislike of Israel. I’ll say it: as Sir Martin Gilbert has said: “People don’t like Jews.”

That’s the crux of it.

I soon saw that this dislike had spread to other denominations. Today, I fear it has taken root in some of the great evangelical institutions and denominations that heretofore ably defended the faith, including standing for Israel.

Hear Sherri again:

“One step toward preventing the killing is not allowing language and logic to be perverted, not allowing terrorism to be termed defense, and not allowing murder to be called natural.

“Hamas may be able to swallow the falsehood that the attack was a "natural defense to the occupation" but the sad truth is that too many otherwise fair-minded people also agree with Hamas's twisted definition of defense. And that, dear reader, is a hatchet job.”

Spot-on. If there is any “humanity” left in any of us, we will resist the propaganda that condones murder, even in the face of “occupation.”

(A side-note: Barack Obama has just announced that the United States is not at war with Islam. Is he out of his mind? Islam is most certainly at war with us.)

At the height of the Second Intifada, I was staying at the American Colony Hotel, in east Jerusalem. You will understand that that section of the city is primarily Arab in population.

 One morning, just after breakfast, a friend and I noticed a buzz of conversation in the lobby. We quickly found out that there had been a bus-bombing in the city. I raced outside and hailed a cab. Several Palestinian drivers argued over who would take me to the scene of the bombing. Finally one motioned me toward a car and we got in.

 As we sped through the streets, now on high alert, I was alert to the fact that those drivers outside the hotel were not upset in the least over the bombing (which, I would discover, took the lives of 11 school children). They were upset that only one of them would get cab-fare.

My driver parked in a very practical fashion. He was good at what he did. But he registered no emotion over the scene.

I walked a couple blocks to the scene of the wreckage. One cannot grasp such an event unless one has seen bodies hanging out the shattered windows.

I remember standing with a group of onlookers. An Israeli man and I spoke briefly. I wondered aloud why in the world Jerusalem bus drivers would not refuse any Arab male to ride the buses. The man standing beside me looked at me incredulously. “But that would be collective punishment toward the Palestinians,” he said.

Do you see?

In this neighborhood, where violence toward one group is justified by the world as “legitimate resistance,” the victim is condemned as the perpetrator. Israel is the bully, in the world’s eyes. Amazing. Yet that same victim does not respond in-kind, going so far as to remain sensitive to Arab bus-riders.

If a radical ethnic group — whatever skin-color that group might be — decided to murder using bombs on buses in American cities, I do not believe Americans would tolerate it. We would take steps to secure our security.

But the Jews, maligned and battered for so long, actually value life. Even the lives of their killers. What a perfect contrast to the Hamas animals.

Today, I call on those Christians who have sympathized with the Palestinians — leaders like Phillip Yancey and Brian McLaren — to address Arab brutality toward the Jews. Do it if you have any sense of decency.

 Sherri talked about Koby that day at the hotel. It was difficult to see the sadness in her eyes. But as she left, I also became aware of a great strength that is unique to the Jews.

And in that strength, I see the most glorious hope for their future.

May God have mercy on the rest of us. We do not deserve it.

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Originally published in Rapture Ready, Israel Watch. April 20, 2009

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