This week, Benjamin Netanyahu stood before the cameras amid the smoke of his expanding wars and declared with the confidence of a man who believes history still belongs to the ruthless: “Jesus Christ has no advantage over Genghis Khan. Because if you are strong enough, ruthless enough, powerful enough, evil will overcome good.”
This was no gaffe. It was a theological confession delivered in the middle of a self-inflicted regional inferno. As Israeli forces strike Iranian cities, energy infrastructure, and naval assets in a naked campaign for regime change; escalate ground operations deep into Lebanon, carving buffer zones through force; and continue the merciless campaign against Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank – erasing families, raiding towns, turning life into rubble – Netanyahu revealed the pre-Christian heart beating beneath his rhetoric. He has chosen the way of the sword, the way of empires built on pyramids of skulls. He has rejected the living kingship of Christ.
The kingship of Christ is not the kingship of Genghis Khan. Jesus practiced a divine social aikido – a proactive nonviolence that absorbs the force of violence and treachery, redirects it, and exposes its rotten core for all the world to see. On the cross, the innocent Victim was lifted up. The mob, the religious authorities, the imperial power – all were revealed as participants in the same ancient mechanism: unite against the scapegoat, spill the blood, and call it peace. Myths once hid the victim and glorified the victor. The Gospels name names – Pilate, Caiaphas, the crowd baying for Barabbas – and God raised the Victim. The Resurrection turned the world upside down. Suddenly, the stories of the slain innocents no longer served the powerful. They judged them. This inversion is active rule. The kingship of Christ still governs events to this day. The scapegoat machine sputters. The crowd grows uneasy. The moral software installed by the Crucified One rejects endless cycles of “necessary” evil.
This is why Netanyahu must constantly present himself and the Jewish state as the ultimate slain lamb. It is a well-documented fact that he treated Hamas as an asset, bolstering it and transferring Qatari money to keep Gaza isolated from the West Bank and to thwart any Palestinian state. He pushed down moderates in Palestinian leadership, nurturing a more violent foil over secular voices precisely to manufacture the perfect enemy. His own IDF soldiers have indicated that his government likely issued a stand-down order allowing the horrors of October 7 to unfold. He funded, trained, equipped, and installed Hamas in Gaza as a useful instrument to harm and take land from innocent people – all while appealing to global public opinion for cover. The fact that he had to orchestrate this elaborate cynicism just to half-assedly sell the world on allowing him to slaughter civilians across the Middle East – and that it is spectacularly backfiring – reveals how much Jesus is King of the world, not him.
He weaponized the resulting atrocities to claim victim status and launch aggressive wars on multiple fronts. Simultaneous escalation in Lebanon: airstrikes flattening neighborhoods in Beirut, ground forces carving buffer zones through force. Relentless operations against Palestinians – entire families erased in Gaza, intensified raids in the West Bank. All while Israeli prison guards at Sde Teiman were filmed raping a Palestinian detainee – an act that left the man needing hospital treatment for internal injuries. The soldiers received standing ovations in court, were hailed as national heroes by politicians, and faced zero consequences as charges were dropped with impunity. When you dehumanize entire people groups, every evil can become legitimate. Reports confirm the use of the Hannibal Directive on October 7 – Israeli forces ordered to kill their own citizens and soldiers rather than allow them to be taken hostage. This nihilistic willingness to sacrifice even his own people exposes a soul dedicated to unwavering violence above all else.
Yet Netanyahu speaks openly of drawing U.S. troops into a ground confrontation with a newly unified Iran – an Iran whose country lies in flames from strikes, whose moderate leaders have been assassinated, yet who has shown remarkable restraint to avoid inflicting American casualties. Iran possesses the means for far greater escalation but holds back. Netanyahu demands American blood while keeping Israeli boots largely off the direct ground meat grinder he ignited. This is not alliance. This is contempt for American lives wrapped in world-defying hubris.
Jesus’ proactive nonviolence dismantles violence precisely by refusing to participate in its lie. He did not call down legions of angels. He forgave His executioners. He exposed the principalities and powers for what they are – fraudulent gods demanding blood. That exposure is lethal to empires. It turns the practitioner of treachery into the revealed villain. The Cross does not meet ruthlessness with greater ruthlessness; it absorbs it, forgives it, and leaves the violent man naked before the truth. This is the personhood revolution Jesus inaugurated. It is still unfolding. Images of dead Lebanese children, Palestinian babies pulled from Gaza rubble, Iranian civilians caught in the crossfire flood the world’s screens. The moral software rejects the old game.
Ancient Israel did not play these victim-manipulation games during its conflicts with Rome in the same calculated way. What changed? Jesus is King. The Resurrection inverted history. In a world shaded in the shadow of the Cross, even Netanyahu must bow to Christ’s rules. He tries to game them for his pagan sacrificial nihilism – cosplaying as the slain lamb to justify heathen savagery. But the active kingship of Christ swallows up his efforts. Every bomb dropped on Iranian soil, every Lebanese village shattered, every Palestinian home reduced to dust only amplifies the cry of the innocents. And that cry will not be silenced by F-35s or American troops. The scheme collapses. The backfire is total.
The kingship of Christ collapses Netanyahu’s entire frame. His conception of power – raw, ruthless strength – is revealed as profound weakness. It requires constant escalation, borrowed American lives, desperate victim cosplay, and manufactured enemies precisely because the Gospel has already won. Empires built on skulls fall. The kingdom built on forgiveness endures. Jesus does not merely have an advantage over Genghis Khan. He has already overturned the table of history. The Resurrection vindicates every innocent victim since the foundation of the world.
Christians in the West must see this clearly. The kingship of Christ demands we reject any alliance with this spirit of Antichrist violence. “Put away your sword,” Jesus told Peter. “Those who live by the sword will die by the sword.” The meek are inheriting the moral earth whether Netanyahu likes it or not. The path forward is not more strength in the pagan sense. It is repentance. It is the way of the Cross – proactive nonviolence that protects the weak, exposes the lie, and offers mercy even to enemies. Anything less is idolatry. Anything less lights more fires that will eventually consume us all.
The stones still cry out. The Lamb of God who judges all nations has spoken. Netanyahu, even though you grit your teeth in rebellion by your vicious actions, you still bend your calculus to His rules. And one day, like every one else on Earth, you will fully bend the knee to confess Jesus Christ as King. Repent now for He has come to set the world on fire. He “has brought down the powerful from their thrones.”
David Gornoski is a writer, public speaker and thought leader on mimetic theory. A fellow of the Moving Picture Institute, he founded A Neighbor’s Choice as a media platform to explore Jesus’s culture of nonviolence. Email him at david@aneighborschoice.com.
