David Plat­t’s Poor Appeal to both Sides on Israel Attack

In the after­math of the blood­shed, kid­nap­ping, rape, and tor­ture of inno­cent Israeli civil­ians, pas­tor and author David Platt released a thread on Twit­ter (X) that failed to account for the one-sided nature of the bru­tal­i­ty. In the open­ing, Platt appeals to Chris­tians, claim­ing that we spend too much time focus­ing on the attacks on Israel, and not enough time in prayer:

This is a manip­u­la­tion tac­tic, a false dilem­ma, aimed to get you to accept his premise. We can, and should, pray, but that is not to the exclu­sion of, or in con­flict with, read­ing the news. He then goes on to write a prayer for the peo­ple of Israel and the Gazan Arabs, decry­ing “injus­tice, ter­ror­ism and war” and pray­ing for com­fort for “those who have died in Israel and Pales­tine.”

Platt fails to iden­ti­fy who is caus­ing the injury and suf­fer­ing, struc­tur­ing it in a way that makes it seem that he is engag­ing in both-sides-ism. The real­i­ty, that the news will show you, is that Hamas is respon­si­ble for the ter­ror­ism, the vio­lence, the suf­fer­ing, the inhu­man bru­tal­i­ty against inno­cents, includ­ing against their own peo­ple… or more maybe more apt­ly: hostages and human shields. This war, as trag­ic as all war is, with Hamas is jus­ti­fied for Israel to defend itself from fur­ther bar­bar­ic, sense­less acts of vio­lence. Chris­tians have the moral author­i­ty to con­demn evil, and when many are con­demn­ing Israel or even pro­mot­ing Hamas as the vic­tim, we need to be clear. This is in con­trast with is will­ing­ness to be clear and direct in con­demn­ing the church for racism, say­ing things such as “church­es in Amer­i­ca… are cur­rent­ly widen­ing the racial divide in our coun­try.” Platt has engaged in sim­i­lar moral equiv­o­ca­tion in the past, inten­tion­al­ly mud­dy­ing the waters when it comes to vot­ing, and argu­ing that Chris­tians should make space for oth­er believ­ers to vote Demo­c­rat if their con­science allows it. Though Platt nev­er direct­ly sup­ports Hamas, it is clear that he is, at the least, avoid­ing con­demn­ing evil.

EWTC News team com­ment: Platt has always seemed to be more “prag­mat­i­cal­ly woke” as opposed to “ide­o­log­i­cal­ly woke.” AKA: he is woke because it ben­e­fits him, in con­trast with his very ide­o­log­i­cal­ly dri­ven co-lead pas­tor. This is the prob­lem, though, there’s always a price to pay. Platt has to appeal to both sides, and thus hard­ly appeals to either while offer­ing a weak prayer that miss­es, or con­fus­es, the mark moral­ly speak­ing. “Wok­e­ness” will cost you, even if you’re just try­ing to “be more evan­ge­lis­ti­cal­ly broad.”