Part of our mission, at Christian Friends of Israel UK, is to stand in solidarity with Israel and the Jewish communities in our country, even as we see expressions of hatred toward Jewish people rise to unprecedented levels. One key way we can help is to PRAY – prayer changes things!
Dark forces use strategic days and anniversaries in Israel’s calendar as ideal moments to emphasise their messages. But many organisations stand with Israel, and We Believe In Israel is one of them.
Early in November when the horrors of Kristallnacht are remembered, we have seen terrible acts of antisemitism on the streets of Amsterdam after a football match. But this week also marks the 400th day of captivity for hostages taken from Israel’s border communiities on 7th October 2023.
Please use these thought-provoking words of appeal for the release of the captives in Gaza to pray for miracles of intervention by God and the supernatural strengthening of the hostages and their families in this difficult season.
“… These hostages—fathers, mothers, children—have been denied not only their freedom but their very humanity, erased from our collective consciousness and, in the eyes of political leaders and diplomats, reduced to mere statistics. It is a tragedy of monstrous proportions that these individuals, who committed no crime but were simply caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, have become almost invisible, abstracted into numbers and forgotten in the endless churn of geopolitics …
In the hands of Hamas, these civilians are not hostages in the conventional sense. They are instruments of terror, kept hidden and silent, their humanity stripped, their suffering exploited to extract concessions or project an image of unyielding resistance. It is a grotesque spectacle, one that should evoke the strongest condemnation. And yet, the world’s response has been largely one of studied indifference, a refusal to look too closely, lest we be forced to confront the ugliness of a tactic that flies in the face of every basic principle of human rights and decency.
To the families of these hostages, the silence is deafening with no end in sight ... These families are not merely waiting; they are in a state of suspended agony, forced to watch as the lives of their loved ones are dismissed as collateral damage in a conflict that cares little for individual lives.
Where are … the champions of human rights, those defenders of liberty who are so quick to raise their voices for causes deemed fashionable or politically expedient? The world’s indifference to this suffering is nothing short of complicity … They are the very essence of what it means to be human, and the fact that they have been so readily denied should be a source of profound shame for all of us.
Let this 400th day not pass in silence … It is time for those who care about human dignity, who believe in justice and the sanctity of life, to demand the immediate and unconditional release of these hostages. Anything less is an insult to their humanity and to the principles we hold dear. Let us not look away. Let us not let these people be forgotten, for to forget them is to lose a piece of our own humanity.”
[The words in italics are taken from a We Believe in Israel blog, see here]
Please pray and let us not give up hope.
Compiled by Julia Soakell
8th November 2024