One of the first Jewish followers of Jesus in the modern State of Israel says Gaza war is not like 1948 War of Independence

Aryeh Bar David was born in Jerusalem to a family of Bulgarian Holocaust survivors in 1947, one year before then-Prime Minister David Ben Gurion announced the establishment of the Jewish state. At the time, there were only 23 Jewish followers of Jesus in the land. Bar David and his family were among them.

In a series of interviews with Joel Rosenberg for THE ROSENBERG REPORT on TBN, Bar David shared the story of how his family came to faith in Jesus. He described how their personal miracles are intertwined with those of the nation of Israel.   

“God is on our side,” Bar David told Rosenberg in Part One of their conversation.

He is convinced of it today – at the height of the Oct. 7 conflict in Gaza – just as his parents and the Jews of British-Mandatory Palestine were convinced when Israel's War of Independence broke in 1948.

“He brought us back from old age, from a Holocaust situation, because he promised to do it and he did it. He said, ‘I didn't bring you to a place to kill you – but the opposite… to build you, to wake you up, to make you hold in my name, save my name,” Bar David said.

In one of his first press conferences following the Hamas massacre, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu referred to the current war in Gaza as ‘Israel’s Second War of Independence.’

Bar David, who lived through that war as a toddler – and served as an IDF commander in five other wars – doesn't think the two conflicts are exactly compatible.

“We cannot compare… We lost 1% of our population in 1948. Six thousand people were killed out of 600,000,” he said.

Rosenberg agreed that the existential threat was much graver back then when the armies of Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon invaded the newly-established country.

“Israel and the Jews could have really, truly, been wiped out just as they were being wiped out in Europe,” argued the ALL-ISRAEL-NEWS editor-in-chief, “Oct. 7 wasn't that.”

“What is the greatest difference, to my understanding?” Bar David continued, “This feeling that God is on our side 100%.”

He claimed that during the War of Independence, which lasted more than a year, there was a sense that “God is with us” and that “somehow this is going to work out.”

A similar feeling resonates among IDF soldiers who are currently fighting Hamas terrorists in Gaza and there is “an excellent atmosphere” in the military, he noted. Yet, he expressed concern over a different sentiment that seems to be prevalent on the Israeli home front.

“Sometimes I feel that people are frustrated nowadays,” Bar David told Rosenberg. As a commander in the IDF in the Six-Day War, he learned that frustration during wartime can be as dangerous as a “plague.”

He noted that part of the national frustration is due to the hostage situation, as 109 Israeli hostages who were captured by Hamas terrorists during the terror attack on Oct. 7 are still being held in Gaza after more than 320 days.

However, he recalled that there were hundreds of Israeli captives in Jordan after the 1948 war but that the national attitude toward the situation was different back then – it did not cause a deep division within society.

Today, some Israelis believe that returning the hostages should be the top priority in the war – no matter what the cost. Others, like Prime Minister Netanyahu, insist it is one of the main objectives but the not only one. They believe ensuring that Hamas doesn’t stay in control of the Gaza Strip and that the enclave would never threaten Israel again are just as important and are not mutually exclusive.  

Watch Part One of Joel Rosenberg’s interview with Aryeh Bar David on the TBN website.

THE ROSENBERG REPORT airs Thursday nights at 9 p.m. EST and Saturday nights at 9:30 p.m. EST – on the Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN), the most-watched Christian television network in the United States.