A throng of keffiyehs and Palestinian flags packed the square outside the Sydney Opera House.[1] Signs held high in the air declaring “ISRAEL IS A TERRORIST STATE” and smoke bombs soared across the night sky. The police stood together, waiting in the wings of the outskirts of the demonstration. Chants rang out in the air, first heard as:
“Gas the Jews! Gas the Jews! F— the Jews! F— the Jews!”
This was later contested to have been a chant of “Where’s the Jews” instead of “Gas the Jews,” [2] but that isn’t better—which will be explained in a moment.
It was Monday night, October 9, 2024. In the Gaza envelope of southern Israel, victims of the October 7th pogrom were still being found and identified (and would be for weeks, sometimes months). Hostages were already dozens of meters below the ground of Gaza; Israel was still scrambling to figure out who exactly had been taken, still fighting to recover kibbutzim from the claws of the terrorists who’d breached the border to rape and massacre.
When Hamas ignited their attack at 06:29 the morning of Saturday, October 7th, it was already half-past two in the afternoon in Sydney that same day. By the time the fog of war cleared and the brutality shocked the world with its brazen confidence, filmed by Hamas themselves as they strapped GoPros to their chests, it was Sunday in Sydney. Local officials had decided to organize a space for the local Jewish and Israeli community to gather, and grieve. They projected the Israeli flag on the external walls of the Opera House on Monday night, inviting those affected by the global shockwave of Black Saturday.
The pro-Hamas crowd took advantage of the opportunity to extend Hamas’ reach all the way to Sydney, choosing to terrorize and intimidate anyone who had taken refuge in the local “place and space”[3] to mourn and grieve together. So while videos of the protest began to circulate online and the world was incredulous to hear a throng chanting “Gas the Jews!” all the way over in Australia not 48 hours after the massacre in southern Israel, the Sydney government was appalled and ashamed. Apologies were issued.[4] The Sydney police department subjected the audio to a forensic scan, and in early February 2024 released a statement that the chants did include the F-bomb, but instead of “Gas” they were actually chanting “Where’s the Jews?”[5]
Not 48 hours after the massacre, as bodies were still being found and identified, as terrorists were still hiding throughout Israel, as the IDF was still fighting to regain Israeli territory held by Hamas jihadis, more than 1,000 hostile people gathered in a space intended to provide solidarity and support to a grieving community and went looking for them. What do you think they wanted to do once they found “the Jews”?
“Where’s the Jews?!” was a hunting call. Frankly, it would’ve been better if they’d simply chanted their support for Hitler. Unable to find the Jews they were looking for, they instead burned tires and an Israeli flag and screamed expletive-laden curses at the victims of the Hamas massacre, high-fiving each other for several hours before going home.
This is the world of October 8th.
Sydney’s near-riot on October 9th was not the first global rally mobilized to celebrate Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, nor was it an isolated incident. Far too many in Arab world celebrated the attack online and in-person as it was still happening. Streets began to fill in major cities worldwide— London, Brussels, New York, Sydney, Perth, etc—by October 8th, 2024, and continue to do so today. “Zionist” has become the antisemitic slur of the hour.
THE COVENANTAL CAVEAT
Rewind, for a moment, to the day the Everlasting Covenant was cut with Abraham and the LORD wrote three provisions: (1) Seed, (2) Land, and (3) Blessing.[6] These provisions ensure the restoration of everything lost in the treason of Eden; “Seed,” so He can redeem mankind from death, “Land” so He can redeem created order subjugated to the curse, and “Blessing” that will extend the first two provisions from Abraham’s seed on Abraham’s inherited land to all nations of the earth. By including the third provision, the Lord fireproofed the covenant from nationalistic tribalism. It must reach all nations of the earth. Redemption and salvation must be extended to the ends of the earth, even to the masked keffiyeh-clad figures chanting horrible things in Sydney, Australia.
Yet as the Lord unilaterally made this covenant with Abraham, He made this curious caveat:
I will bless those who bless you, and curse those who curse you.[7]
We read this story now with no short degree of retrospect, but imagine, if you will, if you were Abraham hearing this. What questions would this produce in your heart? Why would it matter if other people bless me or not? Or perhaps, Really, how will anyone really know who I am anyway? And perhaps most pointedly, ….Why would people curse me?
Abraham had no idea how despised his sons would become— or that the most violent, longstanding fight in the history of both tribal and geopolitical nations would include his own sons, severed by the covenant’s inheritance of one and not the other…twice.[8]
For those of us who confess the name of Jesus, we are familiar with the “blessing” element. Hear me: faith is taking God at His word. When you believe what He said and behave in alignment with His word, He is pleased.[9] So “standing with” or “loving” Israel in order to “bless” Israel, even if we are just trying to get blessed ourselves, is, in fact, faith. Faith is obedience to the word of the LORD.
THE BROTHERHOOD
But if we stopped there, we’d become perpetual toddlers with inch-deep theology and immature faith. We are meant for maturity. When the “controversy of Zion”[10] kicks up a dust storm swirling the nations, those of us amongst the nations who received revelation of the saving work of the God of Israel through the very Everlasting Covenant now igniting the controversy enveloping the nations in the rage of the nations[11] must be a people of clarity. As everyone else is “tossed like the wind” on choppy waves, we are told to stand and stand again.[12] Maturity is what builds the fortitude provided by a backbone of conviction, and we must grow up. There is no going back to October 6th. In fact, it is the very storm of the covenantal controversy that is ordained to grow us up into the maturity required to stand in it— in the world of October 8th.
As the wisest man who ever lived (second to Jesus) put it:
A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for trouble.[13]
Friendship and brotherhood are both good things; King Solomon does not pit them against each other here. Friendship “loves at all times;” it is sentimental, affectionate, and consistent. Those are all good things. And—not “but”—“a brother is born for trouble.” The word “trouble” here is the same word Jeremiah uses when he speaks of “the time of Jacob’s trouble,”[14] the age-ending crescendo of the controversy of Zion just before the LORD comes to settle it forever. A brother is your blood-wrought companion for life— and in this brotherhood, the blood that binds you is the blood that bleeds for you.
We all love the parables of Luke 15; we love the prodigal father, the prodigal son. But the story ends on a cliffhanger; we don’t know what the older brother decides to do. We don’t know if he enters the party. And we don’t know what the younger brother, alive again after squandering all his family’s legacy and his inheritance on prostitutes and pigs, decides to do afterwards. But what if we Gentiles, what with all our cultural debauchery and bacon, are the younger brother? And what would happen if we could recognize the weight of stewarding the Everlasting Covenant resting upon the shoulders of our older brother? What if— inspired by what we’ve discovered about our Father— we left our party, went to him in the barn, and began to build a bridge of reconciliation? What if we became a tangible, incarnate witness of the incarnate Word that “filled up what is lacking” to demonstrate the “manifold wisdom of God” that “consigne[d] all to disobedience, that He might have mercy on all”?[15]
THE BLOODY BRIDGE
Now, metaphors break down. In this case, in the most literal sense, Israel’s brothers could include Abraham’s son and grandson who did not inherit the stewardship of the Everlasting Covenant. Isaac received it; Ishmael did not— and he went on to become “many nations,” per the word of the LORD,[16] and eventually populate the Arabian Peninsula. Further, his family tree directly produced the man who would write the Quran, inspire the Hadith, and begin the genocidal scourge across the 10/40 Window to bring the world under the “submission”— in a word, Islam.
Jacob received the Covenant; Esau did not. Esau’s family then grew to become Moab, now the Kingdom of Jordan, and to the degree that the Arab world governed the Middle East following Muhammad’s uprising through to the collapse of the Ottoman Empire after World War I, these torn tents of Abraham[17] have fought across this soil for multiple millennia. Why would the One who allowed the snake to enter Eden also guarantee these estranged brothers and uncles and cousins would all grow into “nations”—incidentally, the same ones Ezekiel called the “nations roundabout” the covenantal nation and city of the Great King?[18] Perhaps these are part and parcel to His “eternal purposes.”[19]
There is only one way to the Father, and it is through the Son of Man scourged at the Place of the Skull. He is the better brother whose blood speaks the better word that saves.[20] But we, the “people of the Cross,”[21] are the ones tasked with the privilege of bearing faithful witness to this Cross through our own. This is part of why it is so important that we carry our own every day, not looking back.[22] And it is this moment in human history, in the world of October 8th, that we must ourselves be the better brother willing to bleed to bear witness to Jacob, and to Esau, and to Ishmael. The Cross is the bridge of reconciliation; the Cross is the narrow way that leads us to the world without war.[23]
May we set our sights on it and not look back.[24]
Stephanie Quick is a writer/producer serving with FAI. She cohosts The Better Beautiful podcast with Jeff Henderson. Browse her free music, films, and books in the FAI App and at stephaniequick.org.
[1] Video of this event is available here: https://x.com/AustralianJA/status/1711501583295680694?t=VIGXwTZ_QTRK0Tj8GN9OMg&s=08
[2] Jessica McSweeney, M. M. (2024, February 2). Police Review finds no evidence “gas the jews” phrase chanted at Sydney Opera House protest. The Sydney Morning Herald. https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/police-review-finds-no-evidence-antisemitic-phrase-chanted-atsydney-opera-house-protest-20240202-p5f1v7.html
[3] Sydney government apologizes for pro-Palestine protest that had ‘gas the jews’ chants | The Times of Israel. (n.d.). https://www.timesofisrael.com/sydney-government-apologizes-for-pro-palestineprotest-that-had-gas-the-jews-chants/
[4] Ibid.
[5] Jessica McSweeney, M. M. (2024, February 2). Police Review finds no evidence “gas the jews” phrase chanted at Sydney Opera House protest. The Sydney Morning Herald. https:// www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/police-review-finds-no-evidence-antisemitic-phrase-chanted-atsydney-opera-house-protest-20240202-p5f1v7.html
[6] See Genesis 12:1-3; 15:1-20
[7] Genesis 12:3
[8] See Genesis 12:1-3; 15:1-21; 17:1-16; 18-22; 25:19-34; 27:1-40; Romans 3:1-4; chs. 9-11.
[9] See Genesis 15:6; Hebrews 11:1, 6
[10] Isaiah 34:8
[11] See Psalm 2; Zechariah 12
[12] See James 1:2-8; Ephesians 6:13
[13] Proverbs 17:17
[14] Jeremiah 30:7; the Hebrew translated to “trouble” in Proverbs 17:17 and Jeremiah 30:7 is tzarah; see Strong’s H6869
[15] See Colossians 1:24; Ephesians 3:8-11; Romans 11:32
[16] See Genesis 17:18-22
[17] Quick, S. (2024, October 5). The Torn Tents of Abraham & the Ordained Bridge of Reconciliation. FAI ONLINE. https://fai.online/articles/torn-tents
[18] See Ezekiel 5:5; 36:36; Psalm 48:2; Matthew 5:35
[19] Ephesians 3:11
[20] See John 14:6; Romans 10:9; Hebrews 12:24
[21] Quick, S. (2024, June 28). In the Words of Jihadi John. FAI ONLINE. https://fai.online/ articles/jihadi-john
[22] See Luke 9:23-26, 62
[23] See Isaiah 2:2-4; Micah 4:1-4
[24] See Hebrews 12:2; Luke 9:62
