Terrorists of the anti-Christian Islamist Boko Haram in Nigeria
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At the end of Shabbat recently, I drove to the Kotel (the Temple Prayer Wall). With me I had lists of people who had written us in the previous week asking for prayer. Returning to the car, I remarked to my son, Shimon: “There is absolute calm here. The leaves on the trees are completely motionless.” The usual strong winds were still and, for a few tranquil moments, not a sound could be heard.
I couldn’t help but think of that silence when I thought of the big news story in October and its consequences: A ceasefire had been declared and 20 barely alive hostages were freed from Gazan dungeons. In exchange, 2,058 Arab prisoners held in Israeli jails were released, including murderers, rapists and hundreds of convicted terrorists.
The next day, as Israeli troops withdrew from the perimeter of Gaza City, Hamas resumed its usual role. Its henchmen raided neighborhoods across Gaza, rounding up scores of rival clan leaders and executing them on the spot. Others were gathered in public squares, blindfolded and shot without trial. It was an extreme display of absolute, unyielding power.
The world was silent. News media didn’t raise a peep to object, world leaders remained mum. Where were all those protesters? Didn’t they care about the oppression of Palestinians? Where were all the moralists who (on fabricated evidence) so keenly accused Israel of genocide? Shouldn’t someone have done something–or at least said something? Apparently, if you can’t blame the Jews, it doesn’t really matter. It’s an old truism: “No Jews, no news.”
Conservative commentators pounced on the irony, declaring it hypocrisy of the greatest order. As long as Jews were firing guns, it was a story worth reacting to. Once the Israelis had withdrawn, nobody cared about Palestinians.
But wait! Israel wasn’t the only story on our planet last month.
Reports came from Sudan: According to the World Health Organization, “more than 450 people were massacred on Tuesday [October 28] in the last functioning hospital in the Sudanese city of El Fasher” (The New York Times, October 29, 2025). The city was the last refuge for 260,000 people, most of them starving or injured, as the RSF (Rapid Support Forces) “began its final assault [on the] city after over 18 months of brutal siege.” The RSF “built an earthen wall around the city in recent months, preventing food and medical supplies from entering.”
Members of the Islamist Rapid Support Forces in Sudan
Over 12 million people are homeless in Sudan and 400,000 have died in the war that began April 2023 (The New York Times, November 4, 2025). And this: “More people have been killed in the past week than in the entire two years of the Gaza war” (The Telegraph [UK], November 5, 2025).
Politicians uttered words of concern, but a collective yawn was the predominant reaction. The pro-Palestinian Muslim protesters were home asleep.
Other reports came from Nigeria: The Muslim terrorists of Boko Haram in the north have been attacking the Christians in the south since 2009, with hundreds of thousands of deaths (350,000 children, most under age five, Al Jazeera, June 24, 2021), mass kidnappings, rapes and forced conversions, 12,000 churches and 2,000 Christian schools burned so far (“Nigeria’s Genocide Against Christians ‘Spreading Like a Cancer,’” Gatestone Institute, October 29, 2025).
Will anyone be surprised to read that the world has done nothing? It seems that pious pronouncements were all world leaders could muster. The protesters? In absentia.
One exception was that on November 1, US President Donald Trump threatened Nigeria with military action if it does not halt the “killing of Christians.” He stood alone to act against the persecution of Christians (“Trump threat of military action in Nigeria prompts confusion and alarm,” The Washington Post, November 2, 2025).
Sooner or later, Israel will be involved in some incident again. The world will awaken from its sleep and chastise and spurn Israel once more, no matter who bears guilt. Truly, it is a lone people not “reckoned among the nations” (Num. 23:9).
For Israel, God’s assurance of protection contained in the words of a 3,000-year-old prophecy of Zechariah are especially timely today: “In that day will I make Jerusalem a burdensome stone for all people: all that burden themselves with it shall be cut in pieces, though all the people of the earth be gathered together against it” (12:3).