From Gaza’s contested air strikes to settler violence and the strategic E1 development, this week’s events reveal how facts, political interests and competing narratives shape public understanding of Israel.
Truth is often the first casualty of war. In the conflict surrounding Israel, however, truth is not merely obscured by the fog of battle. It is actively fought over.
Hamas, Hezbollah and their allies understand the power of images and language. They seek to portray themselves as innocent victims even while attacking Israel and its civilians, presenting Israel in turn as a merciless aggressor. Yet Israel’s own message is frequently weakened by political division, delayed military disclosures and statements from leaders that do not always point in the same direction.
The result is a struggle not only over territory and security, but over public perception. Events in Gaza and Judea and Samaria, commonly known as the West Bank, show just how difficult it has become to separate substantiated fact from accusation, inference and political messaging.
Two accounts of a Gaza strike
On 13 August, an Israeli drone strike killed Colonel Jamal Abu Kmeil, 43, as he travelled in a vehicle near Gaza City.
Israel identified Abu Kmeil as a Hamas commander who had entered Israeli territory during the 7 October massacre. According to the Israel Defense Forces and Israel Security Agency, he had continued to advance attacks against Israeli troops and civilians.
“[He] was eliminated from the air in order to remove the threat,” the IDF said.
Gaza’s Hamas-run Interior Ministry presented a sharply different account. It described Abu Kmeil simply as the head of Gaza City’s police force. Gaza police denied that he was involved in militant activity, saying he was committed to his police duties and had “no connection to other activities”. Hamas condemned the strike as another Israeli crime against the Palestinian people.
These competing accounts illustrate the problem. Israel described a legitimate strike against an active Hamas commander; Palestinian authorities described the assassination of a civilian official.
The IDF did not publicly release evidence supporting its allegations. That absence does not establish that the allegation was false. Intelligence may be withheld for legitimate operational reasons, including the protection of sources and surveillance capabilities. Nevertheless, when evidence is not disclosed, journalists and readers are left to judge between rival claims.
Suspicion then rushes into the space where verifiable information is missing.
The Gaza City café strike
A second incident followed on 18 August, when an Israeli strike hit a café near Gaza City’s port. Palestinian reports said six people were killed, including a child, and 14 were wounded.
The IDF said the location was being used for a meeting of Hamas’s elite Nukhba force. It identified those targeted as a company commander, three platoon commanders and other operatives allegedly planning attacks against Israeli forces. The military also said members of the group had participated in the 7 October assault.
Hamas framed the attack as proof that Israel was disregarding calls for a ceasefire. Israel said it had acted against a developing terrorist threat and had taken precautions to reduce civilian harm.
Once again, the public received assertions before it received supporting evidence. The IDF initially released no names, intercepted communications or other independently testable material, saying verified findings would follow.
Israel’s Defence Minister, Israel Katz, placed the strike within a broader policy: “Remove threats, eliminate terrorists, and exact retribution from anyone who took part in the October 7 massacre.”
That language matters. Removing an imminent threat is a defensive justification. Exacting retribution is broader and raises different moral, legal and strategic questions. In war, governments must be precise about both their reasons and their objectives. Loose or expansive language can obscure legitimate security action and allow opponents to portray every strike as indiscriminate vengeance.
Israel has an unquestionable duty to protect its citizens from further attack. It also bears a grave responsibility to distinguish combatants from civilians and to explain its actions as fully and promptly as security permits.
When Israeli violence must be condemned
The battle over narratives is equally visible in Judea and Samaria.
Since January 2025, the IDF has conducted Operation Iron Wall in the northern West Bank, saying it is targeting armed organisations embedded in and around refugee camps. The operation and accompanying closures have also produced severe consequences for Palestinian civilians. United Nations reporting indicates that more than 33,000 people remain displaced from the Jenin, Tulkarm and Nur Shams camps.
Against that already tense background, Israeli settlers surrounded three Palestinian family homes near the village of Qusra. Residents reportedly endured days of restricted movement and dwindling supplies after water and electricity were cut. Israeli troops were accused of failing to intervene effectively.
This conduct cannot be defended merely because the perpetrators were Jewish or claimed devotion to the land of Israel. Nor should condemning it be mistaken for hostility towards Israel.
Israel’s Ambassador to the United States, Yechiel Leiter, called those responsible “a gang of hooligans” who had engaged in gratuitous violence and diverted Israeli military and law-enforcement resources.
“What we saw in the village of Qusra this week is not what it means to settle the land,” he said. “The land of Israel is not only a place we are commanded to inhabit. It is a place where we are commanded to live by justice.”
He described the extremists’ conduct as “a distortion, even a sacrilege” of that command.
Yisrael Ganz, chairman of the Yesha Council, which represents Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria, likewise declared: “The events in Qusra are severe and are not our way.”
Ganz continued to support the orderly expansion of Israeli communities, but insisted that individuals had no right to establish an unauthorised outpost in the courtyard of another person’s home. There could be no justification, he said, for violence against civilians or security forces.
US Ambassador Mike Huckabee used still stronger language, describing the perpetrators as “Israeli terrorists”. His distinction between genuine settlers and violent “unsettlers” made an important moral point: lawlessness does not become righteous simply because it is committed in the name of a cause one supports.
A government committed to justice must apply the law without partiality. Palestinian terrorism must be confronted. So must Israeli vigilantism and violence. Every person is made in the image of God, and the civil authorities bear responsibility to protect innocent life, restrain wrongdoing and administer justice fairly.
E1 and two incompatible political visions
Another contest of narratives surrounds plans to market the first 1,400 housing units in the strategic E1 area between Jerusalem and Ma’ale Adumim.
Supporters regard construction there as essential to Jerusalem’s security and to territorial continuity between the capital, Ma’ale Adumim and the Jordan Valley. They fear that unchecked Palestinian development around Jerusalem would leave the city exposed and strategically isolated.
Palestinian leaders and supporters of a two-state settlement see the same project very differently. They argue that Israeli construction in E1 would interrupt Palestinian territorial continuity and make a viable Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital considerably more difficult to establish.
Here, unusually, both sides largely agree about the project’s strategic significance. Their disagreement concerns which political future should prevail.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has made the Israeli Government’s intention plain, declaring that development in E1 would bury the idea of a Palestinian state. The Palestinian Authority, from the opposite perspective, has reached much the same conclusion.
This is not simply a dispute over houses. It is a contest between incompatible visions of sovereignty, security and national identity. Euphemisms will not resolve it, nor will slogans. Any serious account must acknowledge both the security concerns Israelis carry and the profound consequences these decisions have for Palestinians.
Discernment without cynicism
We live in an age of competing narratives. Governments, militant organisations, activists and media outlets all select facts, images and language that advance particular interpretations. Yet Christians must resist the temptation to conclude that truth is therefore unknowable.
The apostle Paul warned Timothy that the last days would bring terrible times, including people who were “always learning but never able to come to a knowledge of the truth” (2 Timothy 3:7). Jesus likewise warned that deception could become so persuasive that, if possible, even the elect would be deceived (Matthew 24:24–25).
Those warnings are not permission for intellectual laziness. Nor do they justify automatically believing whatever favours our preferred side. Biblical discernment requires more than distrusting “the media”. It requires testing claims, distinguishing evidence from assertion, listening carefully and refusing to excuse wrongdoing by those we otherwise support.
Christians should therefore pray for Israel and its leaders, that wisdom, unity and justice will prevail. We should pray that those who seek the destruction of the Jewish people will have hearts of stone transformed into hearts of flesh. We should pray for an end to terrorism, settler violence and the suffering of civilians throughout Gaza, Israel, Judea and Samaria.
We should also pray that the law will be applied fairly, that all inhabitants will be protected and that questions of sovereignty will ultimately be resolved under stable and equitable government.
Above all, we pray for the peace of Jerusalem and for the coming of the Messiah of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He alone can bring the final peace that no treaty, military operation or ceasefire has yet been able to secure.