People who ask: ‘Is there a God?’ – The Gaza war is causing a spiritual crisis among Israelis and Palestinians, says Joel Rosenberg

Speak with The Washington Times this week, ALL ISRAEL NEWS Editor-in-Chief Joel Rosenberg highlighted how the current war in Gaza is having a significant spiritual impact, in addition to the obvious material consequences.

“This (conflict) rocked Israel to our core,” Rosenberg said. “I believe, as a Bible believer, that this comes right out of…the Hebrew prophet Amos, chapter 9, verse 9, where God says, ‘In the days to come, in the days of the end, I will shake the whole house of Israel. ‘ And the house of Israel was greatly shaken.”

“People ask questions: ‘Is there a God? Does he love us? Can he be trusted? And will he show us a way out?’”

Rosenberg said Israelis have different perspectives on the spiritual impact of the conflict depending on their religious orientation.

“Some religious people are angry and say, ‘God has forsaken us, or maybe he’s not even here,’ and secular people say, ‘We have forsaken God.’ Maybe he’s there. And it is our fault… not that we were attacked, but that we were not under his care and protection,” he said.

In a recent episode of THE ROSENBERG REPORT on TBN, Victor Kalisher, a prominent Messianic Jewish leader in Israel and the head of the Israeli Bible Society, echoed this sentiment.

“I think there has been a lot more openness and searching (over the decades), especially now in this time of war,” Kalisher said.

“You see a lot more people quoting scripture, trying to get to spiritual things… They’re looking for spirituality… They’re looking and looking for divine intervention.”

The war’s spiritual impact is not limited to Jewish Israelis, however, as many Palestinians in Judea and Samaria and the Gaza Strip may reconsider their support for Hamas-style radical Islamism.

The “massive disruption” following the Israeli army’s ground operations in Gaza means that “it will take some time for the smoke to clear, literally and figuratively” before the impact on the spiritual lives of Palestinians can be measured, Rosenberg noted.

“But we have seen in other places, when people are involved in violent, radical Islamism, that when they start to be defeated, the culture starts to rethink,” he added.

During a recent episode of THE ROSENBERG REPORT, Rosenberg spoke with Iranian evangelist Hormoz Shariatwho said that tens of millions of people are questioning the Iranian regime’s Islamist approach, and that many have converted to the Christian faith.

“The Iranian revolution that is cooking under the regime (is) for democracy, but also (where people are saying) ‘Get out of our face in terms of your evil, corrupt kind of religion, we don’t believe in it, we’ do it’s not. We are out, give us the freedom to search for what is true,” Rosenberg said.

“In both Muslim culture and Jewish culture, there is a lot of fermentation as people reconsider what they have been taught and ask questions they may never have asked before,” he added.

“And many of them – not all, but many – turn to the Bible, both Old Testament and New, and hungrily search for answers.”