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Jan. 9, 2023 - Dinesh D'Souza
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LANGUAGE OF POWER Dinesh D’Souza Podcast EP491
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Coming up, I want to talk about the aftermath of the Kevin McCarthy speaker vote.
I want to show that this was actually an effective exercise of the use of power by Matt Gaetz, Lauren Boebert, and others.
Biden finally visits the border, but guess what?
It's not the actual border that the ordinary citizens at the border are living with.
I'll examine the penetration of woke ideology into America's premier business school, Wharton.
And Zev Ornstein, the Director of International Affairs at the City of David Foundation, is going to join us from Israel to talk about archaeological findings in Jerusalem that confirm the Hebrew and Christian scriptures.
This is the Nash D'Souza Show.
The times are crazy, and a time of confusion, division, and lies.
We need a brave voice of reason, understanding, and truth.
This is the Dinesh D'Souza Podcast.
Alright, so Kevin McCarthy finally made it.
He is House Speaker.
I guess he's now legitimately in the Speaker's office that he moved into before he actually had that position.
And the question is, how is this all turned out?
I think it's an interesting exercise to do a little bit of a post-mortem on, an exercise in the language of power.
Now, There are some people who, as soon as Kevin McCarthy got the votes, threw up their hands and basically said, that's it, a swamp creature is now in place running the Republican House.
My gosh, we have McConnell in the Senate.
We have Ronald McDonald still heading the RNC. This is very bad news.
We, the Republican base, are not even really represented by these people, so this is an unmitigated disaster.
I want to argue that this is not, in fact, the case.
Now, for a while there, you had these 20 holdouts led by, well, there was Bob Perry, Mary Miller, who's been on the podcast, of course, Matt Gaetz, Lauren Boebert.
And the phalanx of 20 were almost like the Spartans at the pass.
They were holding out.
They were holding firm.
They were sort of bent down with their shields above their heads, and they seemed immovable.
Vote after vote after vote, I think for 10 straight votes or so, McCarthy didn't seem to be making any progress at all.
And then you had something very interesting, which is it looked like It looked like McCarthy really upped the concessions that he was making to this group.
In other words, both the substantive concessions, things like I'm going to have this investigation and a COVID investigation, the origins of COVID, and I'm going to do an investigation of the border policies, and I'm going to defund the 87,000 IRS agents.
And also procedural concessions.
I'll give in on rules.
I'll give in on the number of House members who are needed in order to call a kind of vote of no confidence or a vote for support or non-support of the Speaker.
So McCarthy was basically giving away the store left and right and, in a sense, weakening his own future House Speakership.
Now, all of this, I think, is what caused the Gang of 20, if you will, to finally bend and finally relent.
A couple of people were still holdouts, and there were a few people who ended up voting present.
But even by voting present, they were facilitating, in the end, the McCarthy speakership.
Now, again, it seems on the face of it that this is a loss because it seems like, wow, the holdouts kind of threw in the towel.
They conceded. And let's remember that the 20 holdouts, you had a kind of an irony here, which is the holdouts, these 20 guys, in a sense, more accurately represented the values and the convictions of the base of the Republican voters.
Than the 200 or so Republicans who were committed to McCarthy.
For the 200 or so Republicans, it was mainly transactional.
Many of those guys, I mean, there are probably a few, maybe Dan Crenshaw, who really like McCarthy, who think he's amazing.
But the vast majority of Republicans are like, and we know a few, we've spoken to personally, and they want to be on certain committees.
Hey, I want to be on this committee.
I want to be on Ways and Means.
I want to be on Judiciary.
And so... They don't want to antagonize McCarthy because they want McCarthy to give them plum appointments.
So a lot of it was driven by that.
But look, let's look at the deal that emerged at the end.
I mean, if you listen to Kevin McCarthy now, he almost seems like a different person than he was before this vote.
And I also noticed that his tone is very chastened in the sense that he's not taking the view that, hey, listen, I'm going to teach the rebels a lesson.
I mean, obviously, there's probably going to be some private resentment at the fact that they held things up for so long.
They did such effective blocking of his speakership.
But on the other hand, I think he understands that in order to be effective as Speaker, he actually needs the overwhelming number of Republican House members to be along with him.
And so there's been a lot of talk and coming, by the way, not just from McCarthy, but also from others.
Even Crenshaw going on the radio shows and TV shows and basically saying, hey, listen, we are going to heal this divide.
We're going to bridge these differences.
I think I saw Abigail Sparberger saying something to the effect of, hey, these 20 holdouts, they had a lot of good points and it was very important for us.
To hear them and accommodate them and make the concession.
So in other words, I think there is the sense in the House that this has been a win-win situation kind of for everybody.
Now look, in the ideal world, would I want Kevin McCarthy?
No. He's not my ideal candidate.
I still think he's a frat boy.
I still think he's a dud in some respects.
But the point is, we don't live in the ideal world.
This is not the best possible outcome, but I would argue it's the best practical outcome.
If Kevin McCarthy had gone down, and he would have gone down had the 20 just held, anyone but McCarthy.
Never McCarthy. But then you'd get Steve Scalise, who's a lot like McCarthy, and Steve Scalise wouldn't have to make the same concessions that McCarthy ended up making.
Obviously, I'd like to see someone like Jim Jordan as speaker, but Jim Jordan flatly refused.
He would not put his hat in the ring.
And so, again, as a practical matter, it wasn't going to be Jim Jordan.
And so, given the options that were available, that we're choosing from, I think we actually came out of this one all right.
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Now, this itself is a little preposterous and pathetic.
In fact, the Texas Governor Abbott Issued a statement essentially saying that, hey, buddy, you are two years too late and about $20 billion short in dealing with what needs to be done.
And that is also kind of an understatement.
Now, it may seem that in response to pressure coming from a lot of different quarters, in fact, there are a couple of Republican, a couple of Democratic leaders in Texas who have expressed outrage about the border.
There's some outrage coming from Colorado, from Arizona.
Even Senator Mark Kelly has made some unhappy noises about the border.
From Eric Adams in New York, some of the other guys who have been receiving migrants and buses, they're like, something needs to be done about the border.
By the way, they didn't think anything needed to be done until these illegals started being dispatched to their shores and to their quarters.
But now they think it's an emergency.
They think it's a big problem now that they're showing up in New York and Martha's Vineyard.
And so finally, Biden was like, okay, well, I'm going to go.
But I think what is so telling is that even this trip to the border, which they could have made a kind of an honest listening trip.
Biden goes there, he meets with families that live on the border.
He talks to a wide range of people down there.
He, in a sense, is on an information gathering trip so he can make decisions about the border, maybe better decisions than the one he's been making so far.
But it's quite clear that this whole thing was staged.
It's theater.
It's a sham. Now, who's driving policy on the border?
Well, the answer is a group of far left wing attorneys that represent these groups that want essentially an open border.
They're the ones who are making the policy.
They're driving the action.
And the Biden administration, all it's doing is putting out statements and KJP, the press spokeswoman, is a very good example of this.
She makes these ridiculous statements like, Biden's been working on the border since day one.
It's a big priority for Biden.
He never ceases worrying about the border.
And you just get the feeling that you're listening to numbing propaganda from these people.
They know that the border is a kind of an open sore.
They've created it that way.
They have political reasons for doing it.
And this whole trip is a kind of a, well, I don't know if you're familiar with the term Potemkin village.
Potemkin. Potemkin Village is when people would visit the Soviet Union in the 20th century, in the old days, and the Soviets would put on a show.
So you wouldn't actually see life in the Soviet Union.
You wouldn't see how people actually live.
But what you would see is fine receptions, a lot of Russian caviar and cocktails.
And you would talk to people who were basically actors.
And they'd be like, oh, I am very happy with life under communism.
It is excellent. I'm getting a very fine education.
My son is studying the ballet.
So this is what U.S. visitors and Western visitors would be subjected to.
And a few of them, usually the more gullible of the people who wanted to be fooled, were fooled.
Well, I think with the Biden thing, no one is really fooled.
In fact, now with social media, a lot of people have put out photos, including Mayra Flores and others, basically showing, hey, listen, this is the border.
In fact, this is El Paso before Biden got here.
What do you see? Basically, encampments, people sleeping on the street, all kinds of tarps.
And essentially, it's difficult to even walk on the street without stepping over bodies.
That is the real El Paso.
That's what the citizens of El Paso are living with.
And then El Paso, the day before Biden, turns out it's cleaned up.
Suddenly all the tarps are gone.
There are no bodies on the street.
You don't have to step over anyone.
There are no, like, street campfires where people are either warming themselves or cooking.
And so for Biden, this was a completely staged event.
Biden comes in, you see him walking around with some border control guys.
The border control guys are, quote, briefing him.
And then, very interestingly, apparently as soon as Biden left...
A whole bunch of illegals were released back onto the street.
So they were taken off the street.
Apparently, there were some buses that dispatched a bunch of them back to Mexico temporarily.
And then as soon as Biden was gone, it was, you can call it life, went back to normal.
The same chaos that is always at the border returns to the border.
By the way, the Border Patrol Union was having none of this.
They've been putting out a series of statements.
El Paso being cleaned up as if nothing unusual ever happened there just in time for Biden's visit to the border.
We suggest that Biden just land in Des Moines, Iowa and just tell them it's El Paso.
He'll never know the difference.
So you can see here that not only are these Border Patrol guys against what Biden is doing, they're just contemptuous of him because they know the kind of desecration that he has done of U.S. immigration policy.
So, Mayra Flores, El Paso clears downtown of expansive migrant camps ahead of Biden visit.
Why not show him what our border community and law enforcement officials are dealing with on a daily basis?
Well, the reason is Biden doesn't want to know.
They don't want to show him.
And the In that way, Biden can leave.
He can say, I went there.
I saw for myself.
I talked to a bunch of people.
I'm well informed and Biden's horrible policies of the border will then continue unabated.
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The Wharton Business School is the business school at the University of Pennsylvania.
University of Pennsylvania, well, sounds like a state school, but it's not.
It's an Ivy League school. And Wharton is one of the very top business schools in the country.
In fact, it has been for years.
For 30 years.
Small personal note, I almost went to Wharton.
I was admitted and I remember talking to the dean and I told him that I was going to Washington to work in politics and I wanted to defer my admission for two years.
And he was like, oh yes, Dinesh, that's absolutely fine because we actually like our students to have some work experience before they come back.
Well, as it turns out, I never went back.
And the reason was that I got a job at the Reagan White House almost exactly at the time I was supposed to tell Wharton that I was going to show up that fall.
So I changed my mind.
I convinced my family.
Well... I'm telling you all this because I just read an interesting investigation.
It's in realclearinvestigations.com, which sometimes does really good work.
And this is exposing the penetration of woke ideology, and specifically this so-called ESG business.
I've talked about ESG. ESG is basically the climate agenda.
And what I found a little bit startling, well, number one, business schools have tended to be, by and large, a little more conservative than liberal arts universities in general.
And that's because they're anchored in economics.
You've got students who, by and large, are coming there because they want to learn economic skills.
They want to go out and make a bunch of money.
So it's very interesting that we see woke ideology penetrating a place like Wharton to this degree.
Well, to what degree?
We might expect there to be some, you know, left-wing professors there.
We might expect that they have kind of a diversity statement.
But no, they actually have majors in diversity, inclusion, diversity, equity, and inclusion.
That's DEI. And they now have a new major in ESG. So in other words, what is a major in ESG? It is using the climate issue as leverage to, in a sense, bludgeon companies into only investing in carbon-free or carbon-reducing projects.
It's essentially a campaign against the energy industry, against fossil fuels, But it's trying to make fossil fuels toxic in the whole economy.
Very bad agenda here.
And the question is, how does something like that become adopted at Wharton?
Well, the short answer is the new dean.
So there was a dean, Erica James, appointed at Wharton.
And it turns out that ESG is one of her top priorities.
In fact, this is a woman who introduced a discussion series at Wharton on, quote, how systemic racism impacts business and society as a whole.
She also had a conversation with Ibram Kendi, Mr.
CRT, critical race theory himself, and talked about the university's unwavering commitment to diversity and inclusion.
The whole idea here is that business schools are now promoting the ideology that businesses are not just about making money.
They're not just about satisfying investors.
They're not just about profit.
Rather, they're about social priorities that are determined by so-called stakeholders.
Who's the stakeholder? Well, it's anybody connected to the business in any way.
It could be a customer.
It could be someone who does business with the business, kind of a contractor.
It could even be people in society who live near the business and are sort of affected by the decisions of the business.
So the idea is that businesses should now take stakeholder concerns into account.
And really, all of this is turning businesses away from their core mission, which is to make really good products.
I mean, when you think about profit, profit isn't just a measure of, oh, these businesses are really greedy.
Profit is a measure of how well you're doing.
I mean, just like when you're running in an Olympic race, what's a measure of how well you're doing?
Your time. We're good to go.
What we have here is a kind of attack on capitalism, but it's not coming from Occupy Wall Streeters who are showing up from the outside or even professors at the school.
It's coming from the top.
And we see here Wharton being a classic example that although there are a lot of critics of ESG, a lot of critics of the direction of universities, The universities themselves appear to be taken over.
It appears like we've lost this kind of institutional fight to save these colleges and save these universities.
And what this means, I think long-term, is that we're going to have to develop alternatives.
It's really not going to be easy because we've got to create and affect our own Wharton, our own Harvard, our own Berkeley, and so on.
This is a long-term task facing conservatives.
In other words, in addition to fighting the political battle, We need concrete strategies over not just years, but maybe even decades to restore and rebuild the culture, to create an alternative culture, and sometimes call it an America, inside of America, in which we can teach our values.
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And usually when you find an exception, it's coming out of the independent filmmaking sector, not from traditional studios.
By the way, Debbie and I just watched The Menu on HBO Max.
promising thriller.
By the way, it's well done.
It's about this creepy chef who invites all these guests to a private island for a fantastic sort of Michelin starred meal.
And the movie is divided into the first course, the second course, the third course.
Of course, the real motive of the chef is to kill all the people who show up to the dinner.
And again, the movie started out very promising.
And I thought it was a little bit of a borrowed Agatha Christie, where in Agatha Christie's famous novel, 10 Little Indians, you have these people invited to an island by a mysterious host.
and as it turns out, they've all done something horrible.
In fact, they've all in some ways caused the death of another person.
and the idea of bringing them to the island is retributive justice.
So I thought it was going in that direction, which actually would have made a much better movie, but it turns out there was just a deranged chef who, for reasons kind of unexplained, he was just disgusted with his profession, tired of life, decided to essentially kill all the guests, kill himself.
Well, so the movie sort of lost its way, and that is really the norm these days.
So it's with some relief that I see, I haven't actually seen the latest, but the third season of Amazon Prime's Jack Ryan.
Turns out, and I'm only going based on a description in the Washington Examiner, but it says that this is basically a return to...
To the old Hollywood of anti-communist themes.
I think, for example, of one of my favorite films, which I'm trying to get for my local channel, it's White Nights with Mikhail Baryshnikov, a movie that's rooted in the Cold War.
Takes you really right into the old Soviet Union.
Well, apparently the new Jack Ryan third season is about a group of sort of Soviet, well, hardliners in the Soviet Union who want to bring the Soviet Union back.
This season is set in the Czech Republic, and there's a kind of newly elected president who is fighting to sort of stave off the Soviet, the emerging Soviet influence, the controlling influence as Russia, which, by the way, used to control.
Remember, the old Czechoslovakia, the old Yugoslavia.
And so evidently in this plot, there's new Russian leaders who are trying to take back I think?
I mean, we see it even in the Bourne movies, the Bourne supremacy, the Bourne legacy.
Jason Bourne is like cut adrift.
Even his own side doesn't really support him.
He's on his own. He's got to sort of fight his way.
And that's kind of what's happening here with Jack Ryan.
But here's an interesting line from the Washington Examiner.
Quote, Unapologetic, pro-American and pro-NATO perspectives that it may be just enough to drive Senator Bernie Sanders into canceling his Amazon Prime subscription.
So this, I think, is actually at a time when movies are not only bad, hard to watch, but they're hard to watch in part because they've got all this woke propaganda, all this kind of indoctrination involved.
That really doesn't even fit the plot that's being shoved down our throats.
So to just have a movie that cuts the other way has a different set of values, affirms America, affirms patriotism.
That's a rarity these days.
We might as well enjoy it.
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Feel the difference. Guys, I'm really delighted to welcome to the podcast.
Well, this is a guy that Debbie and I met in Israel.
His name is Zev Orenstein.
He's the Director of International Affairs at the City of David Foundation.
And we just found him to be an incredibly illuminating guy to inform us about stuff going on.
By the way, you can follow him at Twitter.
It's Z-E-E-V-O-R-E-N-S-T-E-I-N. Hey Zev, welcome to the podcast.
Thanks for joining me.
You're a guy that was born and raised in New Jersey and then you and your family made your way to Israel.
Talk a little bit about your background and what got you into doing what you're doing.
So 20 years ago today, literally, my wife and I moved from the United States of America to Israel.
We decided that it would be the best place for us both, you know, out of our love for America and all the values that we grew up in being able to celebrate our identity, our faith.
To take that for us to Israel, where we left the greatest country in the world to go to the other greatest country in the world.
Growing up for me, I grew up in what could be called a traditional Jewish home.
A traditional Jewish family went to Jewish day school.
And after graduating high school, I spent a gap year in Israel.
And it was during that year that I started to learn about my people's history, some of the amazing...
Almost miraculous things, the ingathering of the exiles, the return of the Jewish people to the land of Israel after two thousand years, the miraculous military victories being surrounded by many nations that have not only dreamed about but have tried to actively destroy Israel, and yet here we are, and the revival of the Hebrew language and making the desert bloom and so many other incredible things.
And the more I was learning about these things, I just felt as an expression of my faith, I wanted to be a part of that.
And not because I was rejecting America in any way.
God forbid, quite the opposite.
In fact, many of the Founding Fathers themselves viewed themselves in America as a new Israel.
They felt a very strong connection to the heritage that was coming out of the land of Israel, out of Jerusalem.
And so, in many ways, I feel that the decision that I had, together with my wife, to move to Israel, we still are American citizens. All of our children who were born in Jerusalem are also American citizens.
I like to say that we have taxation without representation.
We've still got to file our taxes.
So, it's something that's very special. And one of the things that the previous administration did was recognize the city of David, the place where Jerusalem began, the historic site of biblical Jerusalem, as not just a Jewish or Israeli heritage site, but in fact as an American heritage site.
Because they realized and recognized that the bedrock that the United States of America is built upon, the Judeo-Christian heritage, has it written in Jerusalem, which is the City of David.
And therefore, the work that I get to do in the City of David is very much...
Acting almost as a steward preserving the heritage of America and for the billions of people who feel a connection and part of the story of Jerusalem's biblical heritage.
I mean, Zeb, one of the points that you made to us when we saw you, which I thought was really interesting, is a lot of people make the case for an American-Israeli alliance based upon the fact that America has a need for Israel.
Israel is sort of America's surrogate to an extent in the Middle East.
You're making a more subtle point, which is that America itself is Is built on the very same Judeo-Christian foundation that has its roots right there where you are in Jerusalem.
So that all of that is not just part of Israeli heritage.
It's the very heritage that sustained America for 200 years.
And a corollary of that, that a diminution of moving away from the Judeo-Christian heritage is probably at the root of a lot of the problems that America is facing right now.
Absolutely. There are many things that bind the United States and Israel.
You could say democracy and high tech and some shared values and shared enemies.
But at the core, the foundation, what makes the relationship between the United States and Israel special...
It's the fact that Israel and the United States today are the only two countries in the world today that really have been established and continue to view themselves through the lens of the Judeo-Christian heritage.
And that is also why I think the two most hated countries in the world today are not Iran and North Korea or China, but in fact the United States and Israel because of the What those two countries have represented.
And as there's a drift, as the countries change, as people move away from that heritage, I believe our two nations will also drift apart.
It doesn't mean we won't be allies.
It just won't be special. It will be the same type of relationship that the United States might have with Norway or with Saudi Arabia or with France.
But it won't be based on the Judeo-Christian heritage that our two nations have had for the last 75 years in Israel's case and the last 200 plus years in the case of the United States of America.
And I think that is the decision that really what lies in the future.
When I look at what's happening in the United States today, it's clear that there's a drift going on.
And one of the things that the Jewish people that we've learned over many millennia We're small people.
And if we don't intentionally make every effort to pass on our values to the next generation, it does not happen by itself.
And you look at what's happening in America today, in the public school system and in the culture, if you don't pass on your story...
Someone else will tell their story.
And so if you're not going to pass on a story of America being perhaps one of the greatest forces for good that the history has ever known, with all its flaws and shortcomings, because one nation doesn't have shortcomings and flaws, but the fact that America has been more good for more people than any other nation in history, if you don't teach that, then don't assume that people are going to know it.
If you don't teach the values, like freedom of worship, freedom of liberty, freedom of speech, if you don't teach why these things are exceptional, And the gift that they were to the world, don't expect young people to figure it out by themselves because other people are teaching them other things.
And so one of the things that we learn in Jerusalem, as it says in the book of Isaiah, for Abaziah will go forth the law and the word of God from Jerusalem.
These things have to be taught.
And that's what we try to do in general as people of the book.
But I think that the exciting thing of the City of David is bringing that heritage back to life and showing that it is not just history, but it's both timeless and timely.
When we come back, let's dive into that.
Let's dive into Jerusalem and the City of David and learn more about both.
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I'm back with Zev Ornstein, the Director of International Affairs at the City of David Foundation.
Zev, you were talking about the Judeo-Christian heritage.
People use the phrase American exceptionalism, and I think Debbie and I were struck in Israel.
There is Israeli exceptionalism, Jewish exceptionalism, and we got the impression that Jewish exceptionalism is doing a lot better in I mean, you've got people roaming in America, knocking down statues, knocking down Jefferson, Washington.
To me, it's inconceivable that that would happen, for example, to the monuments and to the irreplaceable heritage of Israel.
Would you agree that Israeli exceptionalism is intact, while American exceptionalism has become seemingly more fragile?
But not long ago, I was privileged to host a group of Navy SEALs in the city of David.
And in that conversation, something similar to what you were saying came up.
And I said to them, you know, there are blessings that are curses, and there are curses that are blessing.
And what I meant by that is Israel, on paper, looks like a cursed country.
We're surrounded by a couple of, you know, billion people who would be very happy to see us not exist this time tomorrow.
We have limited natural resources.
And what that means is that it seems like we're in a rough neighborhood with not a lot going for us.
But what is the silver lining or the blessing that comes out of that?
Israel is a very patriotic country.
Almost everyone serves in the military here.
We understand the value of our existence.
We don't take it for granted.
We understand That we have to be strong and fight for our existence, not just strong physically or militarily, but also in terms of our identity, in terms of our faith, understanding why we're here and why it's worth sacrificing for our ability to be here.
And in terms of the limited natural resources, it's created a society that is incredibly innovative and creative.
Someone once said to me, could you imagine what Israel would accomplish if it didn't have all the challenges that it faces?
And they said we'd probably accomplish half as much.
Now, if you take a look at America today, America is one of the most blessed countries in the history of the world.
But that blessing, honestly, in some ways is a curse.
Your neighbors are Mexico and Canada.
You have pretty much every natural resource that you could want.
For many people, the biggest question that they face is iPhone or Android.
What pronoun to use?
You know, in Israel, we don't have those types of issues because it's a luxury.
Getting to decide those types of things is first world challenges.
And as I said, Israel is not a first world country, but we're a first world country that has to sacrifice every day to be where we are.
And I think a lot of people in America I think many people today just take America for granted.
And when you start to take things for granted and you'll pass on the values, there is a bit of a rot that sits in.
And I think that unless you combat it by good education and promoting good values, you're going to see blessings turn into curses.
Tell us, you relayed to us a very remarkable You have the city of David.
It had a visitor center that the foundation had.
And then you were approached, I believe, by an archaeologist from Israel who essentially told you, you've got to move this visitor center because there's something extremely valuable right underneath your feet.
Talk about what that was and what was the really epic-making discovery that was literally beneath sitting right under you.
But the amazing thing is, up until not too long ago, historically speaking, up until 150 years ago, when virtually anyone would have thought, where's the original biblical city of Jerusalem?
The city of David, the Jerusalem of King David, King Solomon, the prophets like Isaiah and Jeremiah.
There was one answer. The answer was the old city of Jerusalem, surrounded by the iconic old city walls, which are only 500 years old.
And that would change in 1867 when Queen Victoria of England sends a man by the name of Captain Charles Warren to find those treasures of the Bible.
And in the process, he ends up making a discovery, which is that the original biblical city of Jerusalem, the city of David, the place where Jerusalem began, is not to be found inside the walls of the Old City, but to be found just outside the walls of the city, directly south of the Temple Mount, adjacent to the Western Wall.
Now, in 2005, a woman by the name of Dr.
Eilat Mazar, a world-renowned archaeologist, she comes into our visitor center, and she says to us, you need to move your offices.
We asked her why. She says, beneath your feet, you will find the palace of King David.
Now, it's one of those incredible moments.
What do you say to that? We said, Dr.
Mazar, people have been digging here for the last 150 years.
No one's ever said that before.
That makes you so certain.
So she showed us something found about 60 years ago, adjacent to where we were standing, a royal Phoenician capital.
Phoenicia is modern-day Lebanon.
This capital, the stone capital, would have stood atop an ancient column or pillar in an important building.
And she said that this royal Phoenician capital proves that where we're standing was King David's palace.
We said, we do not understand what is the connection between this royal capital and where King David built his palace.
She said to us, if you knew the Bible like I do, you would not ask questions like that.
We said, clearly we don't. Help us out.
And she said, if you look in 2 Samuel 5, verse 11, it talks about how King Helm of Tyrus sent envoys to David with cedar logs, carpenters, and stonemasons, and they built a palace for David.
Dr. Muzot says, why do we find a royal Phoenician capital in the city of David, the place where Jerusalem began?
The Bible tells us the Phoenicians were the ones who built David's palace.
So now Dr. Mazar from the Hebrew University, together with the Israel Antiquities Authority, they'll come, they begin to dig, they find the walls thicker than the walls of the White House, and the only question today is, was it as Dr.
Mazar asserts that it was in fact King David's palace, or did it date to shortly after David?
What is unquestioned is that this was the royal government center of the Davidic dynasty, the original Capitol Hill, and in the same excavation, ancient fields belonging to figures Mentioned in the Bible, government figures, government officials, government ministers, along with, not far from there, the seal belonging to the biblical king Hezekiah, the prophet Isaiah, have been unearthed in these excavations, showing that Jerusalem's biblical heritage is not simply a matter of faith, but a matter of fact.
When we come back, Zeb, I want to ask you about the famous incident of David and Bathsheba, and we'll talk about that in a moment.
I'm back with Zev Wornstein, Director of International Affairs at the City of David Foundation.
These guys are doing unbelievable archaeological work, literally bringing the Bible, both the Hebrew Scriptures and the Christian Scriptures, back to life, so to speak.
Speaking through the parchments and through the stones.
When people think of King David, they think about, of course, David and Goliath, but they also think about David and Bathsheba.
This sort of very interesting story of David.
And David as a sinner, David as an adulterer, David as someone who got the husband of Bathsheba killed.
And yet God looked kindly on David.
God made a pact or a covenant with David.
Talk a little bit about why it was David and not, for example, let's say Saul or some other king who was chosen by God for this sort of divine agreement.
One of the amazing things about the Bible, as opposed to other ancient documents from ancient civilizations, is that the Bible does not make the lead characters in that book, in this case, the Jewish people.
The Bible does not make us out to be like the ancient pharaohs, where we're the smartest and the strongest and the bravest, and we're all-knowing and all-powerful.
The Bible is actually quite the opposite.
The Bible is a book of highlighting shortcomings and failures and disappointments.
And one of the things that we learn from David is not perfection.
One of the things that we learned from David, what was unique about David, was not that he stumbled, because everyone stumbles.
Everyone makes mistakes. But in the instance that you mentioned of the story of David and Bathsheba, when he is confronted by Nathan the prophet, Brevid does not make excuses.
He doesn't eclidicate. He doesn't say, who are you to talk to me like that?
I'm the king. Brevid immediately And my understanding is what was God saying when he said that David is a man after my own heart?
It meant that David stumbles, like we all do.
But what made David unique was his taking accountability, his taking ownership.
And when God was choosing a leader for his people, I believe what God was saying is going to be seen in the Bible, was saying that I want someone who will lead through accountability, through ownership, through trying to make things right, and not through making excuses.
And it's a value that I think is relevant today as it was 3,000 years ago.
So, I think the point you made was that, you know, Saul, his infractions before God were more minor, but nevertheless, when confronted, he tried to find reasons for why he did it to minimize the offense.
David didn't do that.
Let's pivot for a moment and talk about the pilgrimage road.
Excavations are still going on.
This is the ancient pool of Siloam and then the pilgrimage road ascending or leading up to the temple.
Debbie remembers in particular how when showing us this, you kind of smeared your hand with some ash and rubbed it on our palms.
Talk a little bit about the ash, where it comes from, and then talk about the significance of both the pool and the pilgrimage road.
So we're talking about an excavation that goes back 2,000 years to the time of Jesus, let's say.
And throughout the excavation of the pilgrimage road, it is saturated with ash, dating back to the year 70, the time of the Roman destruction of Jerusalem.
And the powerful thing is that this is not just a piece of history.
It's easy to go to the pyramids in Egypt, to the Colosseum in Rome, and you say, wow, look at the grandeur of the pharaohs, look at the might of the great Roman Empire.
But then a person says...
Well, where are the pharaohs today?
Where is the great Roman Empire today?
And the answer is the same. Museums, history books, some monuments left behind.
When a person comes to the city of David in Jerusalem, to the place where Jerusalem began, they come to the Pool of Selam, which was discovered in 2004 as a result of a busted sewage pipe, which was very significant in the Christian scriptures.
Also, the site of the largest ritual bath that would have accommodated on the pilgrimage festivals of Passover Pentecost and Tabernacles, nearly three million people annually Who are ascending up to the temple, atop the Temple Mount.
And the archaeologists understood, well, if we know where the Pool of Ceylon is, the size of two Olympic-sized swimming pools at the southern end of the city of David, how did all those millions of pilgrims get all the way up to the temple, atop the Temple Mount?
And they widen the excavation, and they found the pilgrimage road, what I call the biblical superhighway, the half-mile-long road that led from the Pool of Ceylon to the footsteps of the Temple Mount, the western wall, the southern steps, that took those millions of pilgrims.
And imagine 2,000 years ago, Jesus would have walked from the Pool of Siloam in the City of David all the way up along the pilgrim and drove to the Temple on the Temple Mount.
And so we're talking about a place that's not just a piece of history, but it's a continuation of a story.
That the people who will walk on this road in a few years time, these are people who worship the same God as their ancestors did thousands of years ago, have the same customs, traditions, festivals as their ancestors from thousands of years ago.
This is not just a piece of history.
It is the continuation of a story of Jerusalem's biblical heritage that is as relevant today to millions upon millions of people, billions of people, truly, as it was thousands of years ago.
And when else in the world did you have anything like that?
I mean, it's kind of a stupefying thought, because there are, as you know, some disputed sites in Jerusalem.
Where is the so-called Via Dolorosa?
Where is the location of Calvary?
And scholars disagree, and some people think it's over here, and some people think it's over there.
But I think you made the point that, you know, Jesus was a Jew.
If Jesus came to Jerusalem, as we know he did, in fact, he came when he was 12.
He was lost by his parents and then found in the temple.
He also apparently healed a blind man at the pool of Siloam.
And if Jesus was going with the other pilgrims to the temple...
Then it is not a matter of conjecture or a maybe, but it is a virtual certainty that Jesus walked this exact same pilgrimage road and you still have right now the very same road, the very same stones, the very same pillars, and all of this, which is still now being worked on, is going to be available to the public pretty shortly.
When? The hope is in the next couple of years to open this up to millions upon millions of people a year to literally walk in the footsteps of the Bible.
We spoke earlier of the Judeo-Christian heritage that unites both of our great nations, to literally walk in the footsteps where that heritage was born, where that heritage continues to resonate from and to still...
Be relevant and both timeless and timely to the opinions of people around the world, not simply as a matter of faith, but as a matter of fact.
And despite the efforts of those of the United Nations or Palestinian leadership to deny the heritage of Jerusalem, the heritage of Jerusalem is alive and well, and when those people try to deny that heritage, It's not just an attack on the Jewish people or Israel, it's an attack on the United States of America, because it's your heritage too.
And so we are trying to bring your heritage, our shared heritage from Jerusalem, back to life to make it accessible to billions of people to literally be able to walk in the footsteps of the Bible.
Zev, you're doing amazing work.
Debbie and I are looking forward to meeting you shortly.
We're going to do whatever we can to support your work.
And folks, you need to check this out.
The City of David Foundation will put the website up so you can investigate for yourself.
Zev Ornstein, thank you very much for coming on the podcast.
Thank you. Subscribe to the Dinesh D'Souza podcast on Apple, Google, and Spotify.
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