Iraqis visit Israel to bless and pray for her in their time of grief and war
On October 7, 2023, Hamas fighters broke through the border fence and made their way to various villages in the Gaza Envelope.[1] Along the way, they encountered an unexpected target of opportunity – the Nova Music Festival.[2] In the end, about 100 Hamas aggressors murdered 344 civilians and 34 security personnel and took 44 hostages.
The parking lot of the festival site has been converted into a memorial to the slain and I wanted to visit it this trip. My fomer boss, Rev. David Pileggi, offered to drive me on Thursday afternoon, May 29. 2025.
Thursday morning, Mike Kerem of
Derech Avraham said that some Iraqi Christians had come from the United States and wanted to join us. They had recently been in Egypt and Iraqi Kurdistan, and Israel was their third stop on their “Isaiah 19 pilgrimage.” David agreed.
What Is the Isaiah 19 Highway?
In May 2009, I was in Jerusalem for the first time. A new friend invited me to Succat Hallel, a 24/7 house of prayer in the city. Most of the time, there was someone praying or worshipping in song. However, on Monday nights there was a teaching.
This particular Monday in May, the teaching was on Isaiah 19:23-25:
23 In that day there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria, and Assyria will come into Egypt, and Egypt into Assyria, and the Egyptians will worship with the Assyrians.
24 In that day Israel will be the third with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing in the midst of the earth,
25 whom the Lord of hosts has blessed, saying, “Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel my inheritance.”
I had traveled to Israel because study in the Complete Jewish Bible and Jewish New Testament Commentary by
David Stern had stoked in me a love for the Jewish people, the protagonists of the Scriptures.
Yet, at the end of Isaiah 19, God professes love and blessing over the greater Middle East. So the LORD began to expand my heart to love Israelis and Palestinians, Muslims and Jews, Egyptians and Turks, Iraqis, Syrians, and Lebanese.God chose Abraham to
bless the rebellious nations at the Tower of Babel.
Read more about Derech Avraham and the Isaiah 19 Highway.
Iraqis visit the Nova massacre memorial
The Gaza Envelope is about a 90-minute drive from Jerusalem. Our drive took us along the Gaza border. We could see the skyline of Gaza City. Was that a plume of smoke in the distance?
Sky News later reported an airstrike in Gaza City that reportedly killed 11 people.
Not long after we got out of our cars at the Nova site near Re’im, we heard booms in the distance. Now they were closer. “That sounds like a tank,” David said. Nobody at the memorial site seemed concerned. They all trusted that all the firepower was Israeli, pointed away from us into Gaza.
One of the Iraqi women came up to me and confessed that the sound of war in the distance was touching her trauma. “I know war,” she said.
She explained that she had lived through the Iraq-Iran War (1980-1988) and the Persian Gulf War (1990-1991). She spoke of seeing death and destruction, and how she could feel that same pain in the Gaza Envelope.
So many beautiful faces
Blood covers blood
Our visitors from Iraq and the United States had the murder of Abel on their minds. More specifically, they were meditating on
Hebrews 12:24, how Jesus’ sprinkled blood “speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.” They interpreted that while the spilled blood of Abel cried out for justice, the sprinkled blood of Jesus – the universal atoning sacrifice – spoke the better word of justice, healing, and comfort.
Our new Iraqi friends called us to pray and even to share in communion bread and wine in this place of devastation. I read the Mourner’s Kaddish. They read out God’s promise of Ezekiel 37 that the dry, dead bones of Israel will live.
4…O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord.
5 Thus says the Lord God to these bones: Behold, I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. … “Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. Behold, they say, ‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are indeed cut off.’
12 Therefore prophesy, and say to them, Thus says the Lord God: Behold, I will open your graves and raise you from your graves, O my people. …
13 And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves, and raise you from your graves, O my people.
14 And I will put my Spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you in your own land. Then you shall know that I am the Lord; I have spoken, and I will do it, declares the Lord.”
After we all partook of bread and wine, one of our visitors dripped the remaining wine out on to the dry dust of the Nova site – a prophetic action of the blood Jesus coming to join and cover the blood of those slain on October 7, 2023.
David then drove us to the junk yard where all the abandoned, shot up, and burned out cars from October 7 have been gathered. The junk yard, which exited before the Hamas invasion, has become a makeshift memorial site.
There, our new Iraqi-American friends prayed for David’s refreshment and strengthening as he continues to serve in wartime Israel. Then we parted ways.
The hope of the Isaiah 19 Highway
God loves the people of Israel. He has chosen them as his treasured possession (Exod 19:5). Jerusalem is his resting place forever (Ps 132:13-14). God also loves the nations, particularly those that surround Israel. He longs to see them reconciled. When one hurts, the whole region is inflamed.
In light of hundreds, even thousands of years of history, there is no reason that Palestinians, Iraqis, Egyptians, Jordanians, Lebanese, Syrians, and Turks would have any love for Israel and her people. Yet for years I have seen just that. I have seen people from enemy nations travel to Israel to bless the people, to pray for their peace and wholeness. They have done this because they follow Jesus of Nazareth, the Jewish Messiah, the King of Israel, the King of Kings.
When you see war raging in the Middle East – anywhere in the world – know that God is working his miracles. He is reconciling enemies. He is healing hateful hearts. He is restoring all the nations to himself.
Peace will come to the Middle East and the world.
I have seen the firstfruits, and they are very good.
Footnotes
- The Gaza Envelope is the area of the State of Israel that surrounds the Gaza Strip. For a list of the communities affected by the October 7 attack, see Mohnblatt, Debbie. “Gaza Envelope Devastation Mapped.” The Media Line, 24 October 2023.
https://themedialine.org/news/gaza-envelope-devastation-mapped/.
- Breiner, Josh. “Israeli Security Establishment: Hamas Likely Didn’t Have Advance Knowledge of Nova Festival,” Haaretz, 18 Nov 2023.
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