Everywhere there is a tendency to substitute the work of organizations for individual effort. Human wisdom tends to consolidation, to centralization, to the building up of great churches and institutions. Multitudes leave to institutions and organizations the work of benevolence; they excuse themselves from contact with the world, and their hearts grow cold. They become self-absorbed and unimpressible. Love for God and man dies out of the soul. MH 147.3
Debora Patta, Tucker Reals, Agnes Reau
Tue, May 20, 2025 at 3:21 PM GMT+35 min read
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A soaring death toll in the Gaza Strip and an increasingly vocal outcry over near-famine conditions in the Palestinian territory are piling pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to accept a negotiated ceasefire with Hamas and drop his country’s near-total blockade of the enclave. Gaza’s Hamas-run Health Ministry said Tuesday that at least 87 people were killed by Israeli military strikes over the last 24 hours alone.
The Israel Defense Forces have ramped up operations in Gaza over the last week, killing hundreds of people, many of them women and children, in what Netanyahu’s government insists is legitimate self-defense and aimed entirely at securing the return of 58 hostages still held by Hamas and its allies in Gaza, and destroying the group. Israel blames Hamas — long designated a terrorist organization by the U.S., Israel and the European Union — for all casualties in Gaza, accusing the group of operating in and around civilian infrastructure.
Christ commits to his followers an individual work,—a work that cannot be done by proxy. Ministry to the sick and the poor, the giving of the gospel to the lost, is not to be left to committees or organized charities. Individual responsibility, individual effort, personal sacrifice, is the requirement of the gospel.
“Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in,” is Christ’s demand, “that my house may be filled.” He brings men into touch with those whom they may benefit. “Bring the poor that are cast out to thy house,” he says. “When thou seest the naked, … cover him.” “They shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.” Through direct contact, through personal ministry, the blessings of the gospel are to be communicated. RH December 24, 1914, par. 15 – RH December 24, 1914, par. 16
On Monday, for the first time in two and a half months, Netanyahu permitted a handful of trucks carrying aid to enter Gaza. He said he had been pressured into easing the total blockade by allies who could not tolerate “images of mass famine.”
There were unconfirmed reports on Tuesday that as many as 100 trucks had been allowed to cross the Gaza border. But the United Nations’ World Food Program said this week that a few trucks would be just a drop in the bucket given the vast and urgent need for food in Gaza, where more than 2 million Palestinians have been trapped for more than two years of blistering war.
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Thousands of trucks have been lined up for weeks just across the Gaza border, waiting to cross in. No food, fresh water or medicine had entered the territory for nearly 80 days under the Israeli blockade. Hunger is so rife that full-blown famine is once again stalking Gaza’s population, according to the WFP’s director for the Palestinian territories, Antoine Renard, who’s just returned from the enclave.
God never forces the will or the conscience; but Satan’s constant resort—to gain control of those whom he cannot otherwise seduce—is compulsion by cruelty. Through fear or force he endeavors to rule the conscience and to secure homage to himself. To accomplish this, he works through both religious and secular authorities, moving them to the enforcement of human laws in defiance of the law of God. GC 591.2
“You have around an estimated 14,000 children that I know are facing what we call severe acute malnutrition,” he told CBS News on Monday, meaning those children could die without rapid intervention. “We always wait for when ‘famine’ is on. But when famine is on, it’s already too late. That will be a failure of all the international community.”
Satan’s policy in this final conflict with God’s people is the same that he employed in the opening of the great controversy in heaven. He professed to be seeking to promote the stability of the divine government, while secretly bending every effort to secure its overthrow. And the very work which he was thus endeavoring to accomplish he charged upon the loyal angels. The same policy of deception has marked the history of the Roman Church. It has professed to act as the vicegerent of Heaven, while seeking to exalt itself above God and to change His law. Under the rule of Rome, those who suffered death for their fidelity to the gospel were denounced as evildoers; they were declared to be in league with Satan; and every possible means was employed to cover them with reproach, to cause them to appear in the eyes of the people and even to themselves as the vilest of criminals. So it will be now. GC 591.1
Until this week, Israel’s government had insisted there were no food shortages in Gaza. But for the first time, in a message posted Monday on social media, Netanyahu acknowledged that Gaza is nearing a hunger crisis.
“Our best friends in the world, senators that I know as enthusiastic Israel supporters, who I know for many years, are come to me and telling me, ‘we give you all the support for a final victory — arms, support on your maneuvers to destroy Hamas, support at the U.N. Security Council. There is one thing we cannot endure — pictures of mass famine. This is something we are unable to witness. We will not be able to support you.'”
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As a result of that pressure, he’s allowing the limited amount of aid into Gaza.
Renard said the WFP had sufficient food on standby, ready to enter, to feed the entire population of Gaza for a month.
“It must stop,” he said of the Israeli blockade. “The civilian population shouldn’t be trapped. There’s no reason, actually, to hold them accountable for what they are not part of.”
Netanyahu did not name any of the nations exerting pressure on his government to ease the blockade, and while Israel’s closest and most vital ally the U.S. was almost certainly the country he referred to when mentioning long-friendly senators, it’s not just the U.S. calling for a resolution to the crisis — and other countries have been doing so more assertively.
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In a strongly worded statement published Monday, the leaders of the U.K., France and Canada called the level of human suffering in Gaza intolerable, and they threatened to take action.
“The Israeli Government’s denial of essential humanitarian assistance to the civilian population is unacceptable and risks breaching International Humanitarian Law,” the countries said in a joint statement. “We oppose any attempt to expand settlements in the West Bank … We will not hesitate to take further action, including targeted sanctions.”
Netanyahu decried the threat, saying in a statement that by “asking Israel to end a defensive war for our survival before Hamas terrorists on our border are destroyed and by demanding a Palestinian state, the leaders in London, Ottowa and Paris are offering a huge prize for the genocidal attack on Israel on October 7 while inviting more such atrocities.”
“The war can end tomorrow if the remaining hostages are released, Hamas lays down its arms, its murderous leaders are exiled and Gaza is demilitarized,” said the Israeli leader. “No nation can be expected to accept anything less and Israel certainly won’t. This is a war of civilization over barbarism. Israel will continue to defend itself by just means until total victory is achieved.”
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Israel has escalated its war with a new offensive that has killed nearly 600 people over the last week, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health.
Doctors are running out of supplies — barely able to treat malnourished children, let alone the hundreds of people injured by the Israeli strikes who stream in day after day.
Satan delights in war, for it excites the worst passions of the soul and then sweeps into eternity its victims steeped in vice and blood. It is his object to incite the nations to war against one another, for he can thus divert the minds of the people from the work of preparation to stand in the day of God. GC 589.1
The war in Gaza was sparked by the Hamas-led terrorist attack on Oct. 7, 2023, which killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and left 251 others as hostages in Gaza. Israel’s retaliatory war has destroyed large swaths of Gaza, displaced 90% of its population — most of them multiple times — and killed more than 53,500 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run Health Ministry.
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