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March 11, 2024 - Dinesh D'Souza
56:17
A MATTER OF FACT Dinesh D’Souza Podcast Ep787
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Coming up, I'll discuss Biden's insulting comments about Lake and Riley and his kowtowing to the illegal who murdered her.
I'll explore a crucial document that Liz Cheney and her committee hid about January 6th.
And Zeb Ornstein of the City of David Foundation joins me in studio.
We're going to talk about archaeological discoveries that vindicate the Bible, not as a matter of faith, but as a matter of fact.
Hey, if you're watching on Rumble or listening on Apple, Google, or Spotify, please subscribe to my channel.
This is the Dinesh 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.
This is going to be a special episode of the podcast.
We have Zev Ornstein, who is the International Affairs Director of the City of David in Jerusalem.
And we're going to talk about history and archaeology and the vindication of the Hebrew and the Christian scriptures.
Amazing stuff. I'm really looking forward to it.
Before I do, I want to do make a couple of comments about some real troubling deceptions that we're seeing out there.
The first one involves Biden and the poor woman who was killed by an illegal, this is of course, Lakin Riley.
And Biden had no intention of really even uttering her name.
Um...
Biden was sort of intimidated into doing that by Marjorie Taylor Greene.
And so he decides to call her Lincoln Riley.
And you would think that he'd feel a little bad about that and apologize.
And in fact, Biden does apologize, but not to her family.
He apologizes for using the term illegal.
He says, I should have said it undocumented immigrant.
And then he goes on to make the even more astounding statement, these people built the country.
What? Illegals built the country?
Murderers built the country?
You get a sense very clearly here about the priorities of the Biden administration.
Meanwhile, Trump is meeting with Lake and Riley's family.
He's expressing that human sympathy.
And the reason that this is so appropriate is not just because you've got a poor woman who is now dead, but because this was an utterly preventable homicide.
Yeah, we have people in America who commit murder, but it's another thing to say that this guy should not even have been in the country in the first place.
This was a Venezuelan thug.
He was up to no good.
This was something that was both foreseeable as well as preventable.
So that's my first observation.
My second one has to do with a new document that has come out that had been suppressed by the January 6th Committee.
Now, what is the document?
The document is an interview, a transcribed interview, with a guy named Anthony Ornato.
He was Deputy Chief of Staff.
For Trump. Now, this guy is not a political appointee.
He's a career civil servant.
And so you can't say that his testimony is somehow politically motivated or biased.
He's a career guy.
And he describes in this interview, he says that he was present and overheard a phone call in which...
It was a phone call with Mayor Muriel Bowser of D.C. And the phone call involved Trump offering 10,000 National Guard troops for January 6th.
Now, the reason this is important is because Kash Patel and others have said Trump had no intention of all these people streaming into the building.
On the contrary, he knew that there was a large crowd coming to D.C., and so he had recommended to the Defense Department and to the city, the city of Washington, D.C., you can have up to 10,000 National Guard troops to ensure law and order.
Nancy Pelosi said no, and Mayor Muriel Bowser said no.
But a judge in D.C. said, oh no, Kash Patel, his testimony is unsupported.
We don't really know that Trump did this because there's no documentary evidence that he did.
Well, there actually is documentary evidence, but the January 6th committee hid it.
So, this is what's happening now, is that with the Republicans in charge of the House, there are documents being released about January 6th.
And so... And so, we now begin to see that people like Liz Cheney, and of course, Liz Cheney comes back.
Here's Liz Cheney.
She says,"...the judge found that Kash Patel is not a credible witness." Well, yeah, the judge found that because the documentary evidence that would have shown that Kash Patel is actually corroborated by a top-level civil servant who happened to hear the offer of the 10,000 troops, that evidence was suppressed by the January 6th committee.
So, the January 6th committee, its report, and then the supporting documents are carefully selected and In order to support a narrative and to suppress alternative narratives.
Whenever Liz Cheney talks about these documents, she acts like she always says, well, you got to read, quote, the transcripts, the documents, the exhibits, and our meticulously sourced 800-page final report.
But what she doesn't tell you is that even though the January 6th committee did over a thousand interviews, less than half those interviews have been released.
So what kind of confidence can you place in a report where you are actively excluding evidence that cuts against your ideological narrative and only including exhibits that support it?
So this is more proof, if you will, that we're just living at a time where, as ordinary citizens, we have to apply a very, almost an unnatural degree of skepticism to what we get from our government officials, what we hear from these different agencies, because we now see that from the CDC to the FBI
to these governmental committees like the January 6th report, there is no higher allegiance to the truth.
There is no determination that my conclusions need to be based upon a foundation of facts.
In fact, it's the opposite assumption.
I have a conclusion and any facts that don't fit the conclusion will be excluded from the narrative.
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No time to waste. Do it now. Guys, I'm really happy to welcome to the podcast in studio a friend who is Zev Ornstein.
He's been on the podcast before.
He lives in Israel.
He is the International Affairs Director at the City of David Foundation based in Jerusalem.
Zev travels frequently through the United States, and he was in our neck of the woods in Texas.
And we had a small dinner last night with some guests and kind of potential donors to the City of David.
We are enthusiastic supporters of the City of David.
And by the way, the website is cityofdavid.org.il.com.
So cityofdavid.org.il.
Zev, thanks for joining me.
Great to have you in our part of the country.
What did you make of the Texans that you met?
Well, we had mostly Texans, but we had a couple that you had met before.
From Canada. And we met you in Israel for the first time a couple of years ago.
But you did a great job in presenting on behalf of the City of David.
And I hope you had a good time.
Where are you off to from here?
The swamp. Washington, D.C. Yeah, and part of your job is to network on behalf of the City of David, not primarily with donors, that's not your, but with political figures, with media, how would you describe it?
The idea is that for billions of people around the world, Jerusalem is a place of meaning, significance, faith, inspiration. There's probably no city in the world that means more to more people than Jerusalem. Not Washington DC, not New York, not Rome, London, Paris or Moscow. And what I get to do with the City of David is I get to meet with people who are involved in shaping policy and public opinion.
That could be politicians, it could be media personalities, it could be faith leaders.
And the idea is to share with them the significance of why Jerusalem matters.
Not to me, not necessarily to Israel or to the Jewish people, but why does it matter to them?
Why does it matter in this case to America that the bedrock That this nation, the United States of America, was established upon, the foundation of those values is what could be called the Judeo-Christian heritage.
That comes from Jerusalem, which is why one of the last things that the Trump administration did before leaving office was recognize the city of David not as a Jewish heritage site or an Israeli heritage site, but as an American heritage site.
And there's a giant plaque that you saw when you visited with a giant American flag on top of this plaque talking about the significance of the City of David, of the heritage being unearthed in the City of David for America.
And so what I get to do is share that significance.
And I'll tell you an anecdote that one time we had a delegation of members of Congress.
They came on a tour of the City of David.
They were walking along the pilgrimage road like we visited together.
And at one point, one of the members of Congress was very moved and they said, I want you to know Zev, whenever something comes up in Congress that has to do with Israel or Jerusalem, we will always vote to do what's right for Israel.
And I said to the Congressman, I said, you know, I appreciate that.
But if I could nuance that slightly, I said, Jeb, I'm sorry.
just vote to do what's right for America.
Because when it comes to Jerusalem and preserving the heritage of Jerusalem, we're on the same page, right?
Do it because it's good for America.
Do it because it's preserving your heritage and your values and the very foundations of what the nation was built upon.
And I imagine for many of your listeners, what they hope will continue to be based upon, the values that you want to pass on to your children and grandchildren.
You're making a critical point here, Zeb, which I want to elaborate, and that is that a lot of people in America think of themselves as being pro-Israel, and they think of Israel in that sense as a foreign country, which it is, But they think of it in the same way they would think for example about being pro-India, pro-Pakistan, pro-Ukraine You're making a very subtle point which is that if you look
at the roots of America, specifically the founders And then if you look at the roots more broadly of the West, Western civilization Those roots can be traced to, well some people would say cities like London and Rome But at the very beginning it was sort of Athens and Jerusalem.
Athens, of course, being a symbol of classical reason, but Jerusalem being the birthplace of Judaism and of Christianity.
That's right. And so what you're saying is that our interest and affection for Jerusalem is ours.
It's because that's our heritage and so we have in a sense just as big a stake in Jerusalem as the Jews.
And I would even say if you take this Athens and Jerusalem model...
All you have to do today is look at the university campuses in the United States of America, and particularly the Ivy League campuses, and you see what happens when you keep Athens and you lose Jerusalem.
When you keep the intellect, supposedly, but you get rid of the values, you get rid of the ideals that the country is based upon, then you see what happens, because all of a sudden you lose the perspective of morality that there is a good and there is an evil, there is a right and there is a wrong, there is a truth, not your truth or my truth, but a capital T truth.
And all that comes from Jerusalem, the sense of where those values come from, and that's the city of David, the place where Jerusalem began, the place where the kings of the Bible ruled and the prophets of the Bible preached, and that's where the founding fathers where they got all of their inspiration or much of their inspiration for establishing the United States of America and the values that they built the country upon.
Yes, intellect is great, and reason and questioning, all those things are important, but there needs to be a bedrock.
And for the founders, that bedrock was the biblical heritage from Jerusalem, what would be called here the Judeo-Christian heritage.
And when you lose that, all the intellect in the world is not going to save you.
I want to talk about the city of David, the archaeology, the significance of all that.
But before that, I'd like people to get to know you.
You are an American.
You grew up in New Jersey.
That's right. And then you made a very sort of life-changing trip to Israel.
Talk about what What in your life convinced you to make the fateful decision to relocate to Israel and ultimately to find yourself almost as a representative or spokesman for Jerusalem and for the City of David?
I was very blessed to be born in the United States of America.
That certainly up until probably very, very recently, it has been a very blessed home for the Jewish people.
Probably like no other country throughout history.
Despite, you know, today it's turning a bit, sadly, but hopefully it can turn back.
But growing up in the United States of America, I felt very much at home, very proud of being an American.
And at the same time, also proud of my Jewish identity and Jewish heritage.
And in America, the beautiful thing is that you can be both.
You can love America and be proud to be American and also have that hyphen there of also to be American and also have that hyphen there of also that other part of your identity.
And when I went for a gap year after graduating high school, I spent some time in Israel and I began to learn about the history of Israel and the incredible, almost miracles that were involved in the reestablishment of the Jewish state of Israel after 2000 years of exile, the return of the Jewish people, then gathering in the exiles, the revival of the Hebrew language, the miraculous military victories.
And the more I learned about these things, I said, well, how is it that I never knew about these things up until now?
And I wanted to be a part of that story.
I wanted to be a part of a story that was in many ways bigger than myself, a part of my people's story going back thousands of years.
And After I left the gap year and I returned to the United States, I went to university in New York.
And upon finishing university, I decided to...
I got married and then I moved to Israel with my wife.
Now we have three kids all born in Jerusalem.
And the beautiful thing that...
It's possible you can love America, you can love Israel.
So much of the values and the heritage are the same.
And so what I get to do now is very much, you know, I live in Israel, but I spend a couple of months out of the year in the United States talking about why Jerusalem and her heritage are still relevant today in 2024, not just to the Jewish people, and also not just to Christians, but to billions of people around the world and to hundreds of millions of Americans and why they should care about it as Americans.
And that's a big privilege.
You have a 19-year-old daughter and you slightly took me aback last night when you were saying you know she's now enrolled in the military.
So let's take a pause.
When we come back I want to ask you about doing the kind of work you do and also what it's like to live in Israel today under conditions of war.
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I'm back with Zev Ornstein.
director of international affairs at the City of David in Jerusalem the website cityofdavid.org.il slash en by the way you can follow Zev on X on Twitter at Zev Z E E V O R E N S T E I N. Zev I was saying at the end of the last segment you have a 19 year old daughter and you know Debbie and I both have daughters they're a little older than that but we would be a little
unnerved at the idea of dispatching them to the military and yet that's that's normal in Israel Military service is kind of baked into Israeli life, but it's a little different under conditions of actual war.
So, what's it like to...
To be in Israel now and experience all that for you as a father, but then also what's it like for you to do the kind of work that you're doing that I'm assuming is somewhat disrupted by the hostilities?
One of the things that's very special about Israel and which I did not...
I appreciate when I was growing up in the United States is that when I grew up in New Jersey and lived in New York, I honestly did not know a single person who served in the United States military.
I knew some veterans who served in World War II or Vietnam, but I didn't know anyone who was actively serving.
And it led to a feeling that I'm very ashamed of today, that, well, who served in the military?
Well, the rednecks and the people in the South, and, you know, that was for those kinds of people.
But, you know, the other people went to university and would go and have, you know, become lawyers and doctors and whatever.
And then I moved to Israel.
And in Israel, everyone serves.
And I said, wait a second.
All the blessings I had growing up in the United States of America, someone paid for those.
And it wasn't me. And it wasn't my family.
It was all those people I looked down upon.
Like, oh, the people in the South and the rural towns and whatever.
Freedom isn't free. And those people...
Or in fact, the best people. The ones who are choosing to go and serve their nation and to sacrifice so that everyone else can enjoy the blessings of freedom and the blessings of that sacrifice.
And by the time I got to Israel, obviously, I couldn't change that I hadn't served in the United States.
And... I realized that it's a blessing and it's a privilege to serve.
And in Israel, you're either going to serve the military or you have national service, which means that if you're not serving in the military, you'll volunteer in a hospital, in a school, in some place that you're giving something back.
That before you go off to university, before you go to live your own dreams and build your future, you give something to the nation.
And right now, My daughter is joining the IDF, the Israel Defense Forces, and she feels very proud because she says, wow, I can give something.
I can contribute. At a time when our nation needs our young people to go and serve in some way, my daughter feels privileged that she can answer that call.
And as her father, I also feel it's a privilege that My daughter will be able to go and serve her nation.
It's not as if you want to get out of it, where it's like, well, how do you get out of the draft?
It's the opposite. It's like, what a privilege.
And for 2,000 years, when the Jewish people, we didn't have sovereignty, we didn't have a military, we were at the mercy of others, that today we're able to defend ourselves and to fight the evil that there is in the world, to fight that evil.
And so, as any parent, of course, there's a certain measure of concern But I believe as someone who loves America deeply, if there was some type of...
Mandatory service of some kind, whether that's military service, whether that's national service, I think people would take the blessings of America for granted a lot less than they do right now.
That the sense of entitlement that has crept into the country here, I think when you have to give of yourself and not just focus on taking, you create a different society.
And so as challenging as it might be to have my daughter join the IDF right now, I think it's a big privilege and a blessing, and it leads to a much healthier society.
And I think it's one thing that I think the United States could actually learn from Israel.
Very interesting because, I mean, the entitlement mentality is the exact opposite of the mentality of reciprocity, right?
Reciprocity means I'm blessed to be in this country.
It's given me a lot.
There are things I should think about what I can do for the country in return.
And in all walks of life, that sort of reciprocity, I think, cultivates a much more wholesome attitude than...
I exist, and therefore I have a right to this, and I've got a right to that, and I'm entitled to this, and I'm entitled to that.
And even if my entitlement is at somebody else's expense, I can militantly demand it because, after all, I'm the greatest.
I mean, this is just a very narcissistic attitude.
You made a point in our discussion last night that I want to pick up on, and that is...
We were asking you, Debbie and I were struck in our visit to Israel about how a lot of the issues that we hear about in America, including some of the obsessions with, you know, woke particularity, make sure you use my pronouns and you've triggered me over this and so on, were largely, not entirely, but largely absent from ordinary Israeli society.
And you said that is true, but you gave an interesting reason for why it's true.
So talk about why in Israel some of these issues have not caught on.
So I was privileged to lead a tour for a delegation of members of Navy SEALs.
And at some point during their visit to the city of David, I said, you know, there are blessings that are curses and curses that are blessings.
And I said, Israel is, on paper, a very cursed country.
Why? We're surrounded by well over a billion people who, you know, many of them go to bed at night dreaming of a world without Israel.
And as we've seen from October 7th, many of them are not content just to dream, but actually act to bring their dreams to reality.
And We're surrounded, you know, a small country, surrounded by hostile neighbors, and yet what is the blessing that comes out of that curse?
We're a very patriotic country.
We love our homeland.
We don't take our sovereignty and our freedom for granted.
We're willing to fight and defend it and sacrifice for it.
We love our country. You know, we're a country with limited natural resources.
And that curse has created a very innovative society where we're able to develop all sorts of technologies and innovations that allow us to punch above our weight, so to speak.
And someone said to me once, can you imagine if...
You know, Israel didn't have the challenges it faced how much more you would do.
And I said, half as much.
You know, necessity is the mother of all innovation.
And, you know, America is the most blessed country in the world.
But those blessings are actually a curse because your neighbors are Mexico and Canada.
You have all the resources you need.
And so, so many just take America for granted.
You haven't experienced, short of a few minutes of 9-11, any real threats to your existential, to your existence.
You know, in Israel... We don't have the luxury of what pronouns should you use and things like that.
In America, for many people, not all, but for many people, the biggest decisions they have to make is Android or iPhone.
What bathroom am I going to use?
In Israel, it's like, okay, what are we going to do to ensure that our country exists tomorrow?
And it's a different type of existence, but at the same time, it's one that...
Leads you not to take things for granted and not to be entitled and to be grateful for the blessings that you have and doing everything you can not to lose them.
And in many ways, it's a very healthy way of living because you don't assume that you're entitled to anything.
And you have to, every day is a gift, every day is a blessing, and you have to do your work to make sure that you get it tomorrow and that the blessings that you have today, if you want them tomorrow, you got to earn them again.
And that's, I think, a healthy attitude.
I mean, in some ways, that reminds me of, you know, growing up in a poor country, right?
Because the India I grew up in in the 1970s was just one step removed from necessity.
And by that, I mean, even though we were a middle class family, and we never like missed a meal, it was quite conceivable that we would, you know, if something happened to my dad, you know, who knows what would have happened.
So when people are living relatively close to survival, they don't have the luxury to engage in a lot of silliness.
And as a result, they have a singular focus.
And I think that's what you're saying.
As a country, Israel's survival is at stake.
And that clarifies the mind, and it keeps people focused on the big stuff that really matters.
Let's take a pause.
When we come back, let's talk about the work of the City of David Foundation.
It's doing vital work in the area of almost you could call it the stones or speaking back and speaking back in an age of secularism.
So when we come back, I want to ask you why it is so poignant and important that this work is being done now and what it has to say to a secular world.
I'm back with Zev Ornstein, Director of International Affairs at the City of David in Jerusalem, the website cityofdavid.org.il.
Follow Zev on X, at Zev, Z-E-E-V, O-R-E-N-S-T-E-I-N. Let's talk about the work going on at the City of David in Jerusalem.
Now, first of all, some people may not know, what is the City of David and where exactly is it in Jerusalem?
The city of David is the historic site of biblical Jerusalem.
It's the place where the kings of the Bible ruled, the prophets of the Bible preached.
So when you close your eyes and you imagine biblical Jerusalem, for many people, whether you're Christian or Jewish, you might see places like the old city of Jerusalem.
You might see the Western Wall, maybe the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the Via Della Rosa, the Stations of the Cross, the Mount of Olives, all great places, all really significant places.
Yet, When you speak of the Jerusalem of the Hebrew Bible, the original Jerusalem of King David, King Solomon, King Hezekiah, the prophets like Isaiah and Jeremiah, they weren't hanging out in the old city of Jerusalem.
They were in the city of David.
Now where is the city of David?
Up until 150 years ago, everyone thought it was the old city.
Until 1867, Queen Victoria of England wants to discover the treasures of the Bible, like the Ark of the Covenant.
So she sends a man by the name of Captain Charles Warren to the Holy Land to find those treasures.
He goes to Jerusalem, and if you're going to go to one place in Jerusalem to find the treasures of the Bible, you go to the Temple Mount, the biblical Mount Moriah.
And so that's what Charles Warren does, except in 1867, the Ottomans, the Muslims, are controlling the area, and they say, Charles, we're sure you're a great guy, but you're not going to dig up the Temple Mount.
And to this day, there's been virtually no archaeological activity on the Temple Mount due to religious sensitivities, political sensitivities.
And so now Charles Warren, he can't go back to the Queen empty-handed, So he goes down the slopes of the Temple Mount, walking through the Kidron Valley, And he comes across an ancient spring, the Gihon Spring, the life-giving waters of Jerusalem, and he realizes, wait a second, the original biblical city of Jerusalem, the city of David, the place where Jerusalem began, is not inside the walls of the Old City, but outside the walls of the Old City.
The problem was, when he announced this theory to the world, scholar and layman alike said, Charles, that's the most ridiculous thing we've ever heard.
Why? Because at that time, the city of David was a barren 11-acre ridge.
There was nothing there. They said, it can't be that the city of David...
With significance, not to millions, but to billions of people around the world, is a barren 11-acre ridge.
It has to be the old city. Charles Warren says, I'm telling you, this is the spot.
And over the next 150 years, the city of David becomes one of the most archaeologically excavated sites in the world, the most excavated site in all of Israel.
And today everyone knows that Charles Warren was, in fact, correct.
I mean, this is the wonder of archaeology.
It is uncovering things that have been beneath the ground for hundreds and in some respects thousands of years.
And the significance of it to me is that We, you know, we once lived in a time when the basic truths of the Hebrew Bible, and this would be said for Christians of the Christian Bible as well, were unquestionably taken for granted.
Now, there were obviously some debates about interpretation, but that this was the outline of the way things were.
These are the commandments of God, for example, Ten Commandments.
Mm-hmm. I think if you had in America gone to people, let's say in 1960 or certainly by 1930, and said, do you agree the Ten Commandments is the right way to live?
And if all people follow the Ten Commandments, this would be a far better society.
I think almost everybody would go, yeah, absolutely, yes.
But now we're living at a time when the sort of acid of skepticism has crept into not just scholarly culture, but mainstream society.
We're living in secular culture.
And yet this happens to be the time when...
Scholars, archaeologists, are digging things up and finding things that previously had their existence, you may say, only in the holy book.
But now they have their existence in archaeology, in history.
They're being anchored in fact.
I think you used the phrase last night, very poignant.
It is no longer simply a matter of faith, but it is now also a matter of fact.
So let's talk about some matters of fact.
Let's talk about the palace of David and the Davidian dynasty of kings.
Your office was located on a site, and the people in the office were approached by a scholar, Elliot Mazar, at the Hebrew University, if I'm correct.
Talk about what she said and what was the basis of her conclusions.
So 2005, she comes into our offices and says to us, you need to move your visitor center.
We ask her why. She says, beneath your feet, you will find the palace of King David.
That's one of those awkward moments.
What do you even say to that? So we said, Dr.
Mazar, people have been digging here for the last 150 years.
No one's ever said that before. What makes you so certain this is the spot?
So she shows us something found about 60 years prior on the slope of the hill that the palace would have sat atop.
And she says that this royal Phoenician capital, a capital would have stood atop an ancient column or pillar.
Think about like the White House or the Supreme Court.
You have these columns. Uh...
And Phoenicia is modern-day Lebanon.
And she says this royal Phoenician capital proves that where we're standing is the location of King David's palace.
So we said, Dr. Mazar, what on earth does a royal Phoenician capital have to do with David and where he built his palace?
So Dr. Mazar said, well, if you knew the Bible, like I know the Bible...
You would not ask questions like that.
So, well, clearly we don't. Help us out.
And she said, if you look in 2 Samuel 5, verse 11, it says, King Hiram of Tyre sent envoys to David with cedar logs, carpenters, and stonemasons, and they built a palace for David.
So, Dr. Mazar says, why do we find a royal Phoenician capital in the city of David, the place where Jerusalem began?
Because the Phoenicians were the ones who built David's palace.
The archaeologists come in.
They begin to dig. They find massive walls up to 20 feet thick, thicker than the walls of the White House.
Dr. Mazar finds at the base of the walls pottery and other organic material, which she dates to 3,000 years ago, to the time of David.
She announces to the world, I've discovered King David's palace.
Now scholars, archaeologists come to show us the proof.
She does, and some agree with her.
Others say, Dr.
Mazar, what you date to the time of David, we date to a few years, like about 70 years after David.
So the debate is not so much what the area was.
There's near consensus this was the royal government center of the Davidic dynasty, the original Capitol Hill.
The question is, was David living there or his grandson?
Personally, it's not keeping me awake at night.
And subsequently in the excavation, Dr.
Bazar finds seals with names of biblical figures straight out of the pages of the Bible.
She finds the seals of the ministers in ancient Hebrew writing who plotted to kill the prophet Jeremiah.
She finds the seal of the biblical King Hezekiah, the seal of the biblical prophet Isaiah, dating back some 2,700 years.
And it's an amazing thing that you could take the discoveries that are being unearthed with the names of figures dating back nearly 3,000 years, Right out of the pages of the Bible.
That when you're in the place where the Bible happened, the words of the Bible come to life.
It's not simply a matter of faith, but it's a matter of fact.
You could see it. You could touch it.
You could walk on it. All in a place that just a few years ago was still underground.
Let's take stock of what we're saying here.
As you know, there are ancient mythologies, Greek mythology being a classic example.
And there have been some efforts to try to verify whether the Trojan War actually happened.
The Greeks fight the Trojans, you know, in the 10th century BC. But by and large...
We think of the Greek and Trojan gods as mythological.
And for a long time, one could say the same.
If you were approaching things purely for a matter of skeptical reason, you could say, well, you know, we have these prophets.
First of all, they don't even have last names.
Jeremiah, Elijah.
And there they are in the Hebrew Bible, but we don't have any independent corroboration that there was a Jeremiah, that any of these people even existed.
And the challenge here is huge because it's tough enough to go back to the time of Jesus, which is 2,000 years ago, and clearly establish historicity.
But it's a whole different challenge to go back to the Old Testament, as we Christians call it, and look at people who lived 3,500, 4,000 years ago and established their definitive identity.
And what you're saying is that these discoveries, which, by the way, could have occurred any time, they could have occurred 100 years ago, but it is sort of the privilege of our time that they're occurring now, and they are stunningly validating The claims of the Bible and saying, look, you can believe or not believe that the Bible is the Word of God, but guess what?
There was a guy named Hezekiah, and he ruled right about the time the Bible says, and there was a Jeremiah, and there was a Pontius Pilate, because you can go and find the plaque in Caesarea by the sea, and there it says Pontius Pilate.
So this now becomes, well, let's call it Athens vindicating Jerusalem, isn't it?
You touched earlier upon the idea that it's not a coincidence that these discoveries are happening now.
And up until recently, people took for granted the Bible was revered.
Today, it's no longer revered.
In fact, many believers are mocked and scorned, certainly in academia and the And so I don't think it's a coincidence that the discoveries are happening now, because it's as if they were being saved for a time such as this.
As if, on the one hand, you have the denial of Jerusalem's biblical heritage, the Judeo-Christian heritage, and at the same time you have unprecedented discovery that is allowing a person to make a rational decision.
Say, okay, there are the deniers, there's also the discoveries, And now make an informed choice.
And so the ideal in many ways, as you just said, is when you have the intellect of, say, from Athens, but that comes together based upon the values and heritage of Jerusalem.
And when there's the synthesis, it works beautifully.
But when you take out the Jerusalem part, and in many ways, we're in a post-October 7th reality in terms of what's been happening in Israel of late.
And what's interesting about what happened on October 7th is that what did Hamas call their attack?
They didn't call it the Gaza flood attack.
They didn't call it the settlements flood attack.
They called it the Al-Aqsa flood attack.
Al-Aqsa, of course, is the Temple Mount.
Jerusalem. And what they're saying is, this is a battle over Jerusalem.
And not just the physical territory of Jerusalem, but the values, the ideals, the heritage, the ideology of Jerusalem.
And it's a battle of what the future is going to look like.
Is it going to be a future like the one that Hamas and their supporters envision, where Jerusalem will be the center of an Islamic caliphate that will spew hatred and terror and poison into the world?
Or will it be like the vision of the prophet Isaiah, who speaks of Jerusalem being a house of prayer for all nations?
That it will be from Jerusalem that will go forth the law and the word of God from Jerusalem, the values, the heritage that Western civilization has been built upon for these last 2,000 years.
They've come from Jerusalem, and the question that, whether we're in Israel or in the United States of America, we have a decision to make, which is, what do we want our future to look like?
What are the values that that future is going to be built upon?
And believe me, the Hamas and their supporters, they have a vision.
The progressives, they have a vision.
The question is for the rest of us.
What is our vision?
Is the vision that the founding fathers who established this nation, upon that bedrock of the heritage of Jerusalem, do we still believe in that?
Is it still relevant today in 2024?
And if the answer is yes, well then what we're doing in the city of David, unearthing that heritage, unearthing the Pool of Siloam, the pilgrimage road that had deep significance to Jews, to Christians, a site where almost certainly Jesus would have walked 2000 years ago, do those things still matter today?
And if they do, then we need to make sure that just as there are those who are fighting for a different type of future, whether it's Hamas and their supporters, whether it's the progressives and their supporters, we also have to fight for our future and the values that we want our future to be built upon.
And a lot of that heritage, a lot of those values are still coming from Jerusalem.
You mentioned Hamas and it seems to me the central question of the clash with Hamas and a lot of the clashes involving Israel is simply this.
Whose land is it anyway?
And the significance of the work that you're doing and the city of David is doing.
And this is quite apart from, you know, Jewish apologetics or Christian apologetics and reinforcing your faith.
I think one of the things that struck Debbie and me is that it's very obvious that this is the land of the Jews.
And it has been the land of the Jews and it goes back thousands of years.
And the evidence is in seals and stones and monuments and they're all there for you to see and to touch.
So, talk for a moment about the level of denialism that has to go in looking at all of this in the eye, or with the eye, and still going, nah, the Israelis are colonialists who are forcibly taking somebody else's land.
Yeah. There's a saying by one of your colleagues, facts don't care about your feelings.
But there's another saying that is less said, which is, feelings don't care about your facts.
And what we have today is a world where a lot of people have feelings, and they don't want facts to ruin those feelings.
They have their beliefs.
And they don't want anything to ruin those beliefs.
And so I had a delegation probably a year or so ago of senior European Union officials.
They came to the city of David and they said, what are the Palestinian leadership?
What do they think about the city of David?
I said, well, honestly, I said, they hate this place.
So why is that? I said, well, the story that they've been telling for the last near century is that Israel's a colonial project.
We have no heritage in the land of Israel, in Jerusalem, not for the Jews, not for Christians.
It's all made up. It's all fake.
We're a bunch of colonizers.
I said, what's the problem with that?
The problem is the city of David.
Because there's no site anywhere in the world, more so than the city of David, that shows that that biblical heritage is not simply a matter of faith, but a matter of fact.
It's real. You can see it. You can touch it.
And I saw they got a little bit uncomfortable.
And I said, well, I get it. I said, you know, you want to separate the politics from the archaeology and the heritage and history?
I said, that's fine. I said, I have a full proof guaranteed way how to do that.
They said, oh, tell us. We're very interested.
I said, it's really very simple.
All that has to happen.
It's a very small thing. I said, you could still call for your peace plans and diplomatic solutions in one state, two states, three states, whatever.
Just have to do one thing.
Which is what? The heads of the European Union, the heads of the United Nations, the heads of the Arab leadership have to just acknowledge that the Jewish people and by extension Christians have been in Jerusalem for thousands of years.
Not because I say so, but because the science, the archaeology incontrovertibly proves that they've been there.
And they looked at me and they said, well, they'll never agree to that.
I said, well, what do you want from us?
We're just uncovering the history, the heritage.
This should not be controversial.
It shouldn't be political.
This is not right-wing, left-wing, religious, secular.
This is just history. It's just facts.
It's just truth. And yet today we're living in a world, the United Nations in 2016, they passed a resolution saying that Jerusalem is in fact very significant.
Just not to you, not to me, not to probably most of your listeners, because they said it was only significant to one group of people, and that group is Islam.
Not to Christians, not to Jews.
Now, I'm not here to negate the feelings that Muslims have to Jerusalem, but certainly Christians and Jews have ties that go back far further than the Muslim ones, and yet the United Nations is saying, no, that heritage is not real.
It's not true. And so the battle here...
It's not just over history, but it's also over the future because why are they undermining the heritage of Jerusalem?
Nobody cares. No one's talking about the pyramids in Egypt saying, well, you know, it's not really true because the pyramids don't matter.
They're cool to look at, but the pyramids no longer are influencing the future of civilization.
The fact that so many people are seeking daily to rewrite, to undermine, to erase the heritage of Jerusalem that's coming out from the city of David is a testament to the significance of the city of David.
The fact that for billions of people, this is still a place that matters with such intensity for billions of people who are inspired by it, but equally for many people who are terrified by it because what's coming out of the ground in Jerusalem is rooting the stories and beliefs that many people have about the world.
And that's what's at stake here.
What is the future? What are the values of civilization?
Zev, your current project, the stuff that's going on right now that actually Debbie and I are hugely enthusiastic about, want to do whatever we can to support you, we urge our listeners and viewers to do the same, is there is excavation that is underway What is the pilgrimage road?
So the Pool of Siloam, which was discovered as a result of a busted sewage pipe in 2004 at the southern end of the city of David, the Pool of Siloam is for Christians in the Christian scriptures, the site of the story of the healing of the blind man.
And the Bible talks about there are three times during the year when all of Israel, on the pilgrimage festivals of Passover, Pentecost, Tabernacles, you would have to go up to the temple that's set atop the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.
But before you can go up to the temple, you have to cleanse, you have to wash, bathe, go to a ritual bath.
The historian Josephus says that 2000 years ago, in the time of Jesus, you would have had nearly three million people making their way on pilgrimage up to the temple.
The Pool of Siloam was the size of two Olympic-sized swimming pools to accommodate the millions of pilgrims who would cleanse themselves at the southern end of the city of David before ascending up to the temple atop the Temple Mount, the half-mile journey.
And so the archeologists had a question, which is, we know where the pool is, the southern end of the city of David.
We know where the Temple Mount is, a half a mile north of there.
How did the millions of pilgrims get from the Pool of Siloam up to the temple atop the Temple Mount?
And they widen the excavation, and what they discover has been called the most significant archaeological discovery of the last hundred years, namely the pilgrimage road.
The road that our ancestors, yours and mine, the road they would have walked on, When they went on pilgrimage up to the temple in Jerusalem, and we spoke about this last night.
I've been asked by many members of Congress and faith leaders and so on, what are the chances that Jesus would have walked on this road?
I said, look, I don't want to tell you stories, but conservatively speaking, the likelihood that he would have walked on this road is...
100%. So how do you know?
This is really very simple. If you believe that he was a historical figure, he was Jewish.
He was in Jerusalem. He would have gone with all the Jews down to cleanse at the Pool of Siloam.
He would have then walked up the pilgrimage road up to the temple on the Temple Mount.
The Pool of Siloam that we're excavating in the City of David as we speak is the same Pool of Siloam from the time of Jesus.
The pilgrimage road that we're excavating as we speak, it's the same pilgrimage road, it's the same City of David, it's the same Temple Mount, not simply a matter of faith.
But a matter of fact, it's the most hallowed, significant half-mile anywhere on the planet.
Am I right that what's happened historically is that subsequent kingdoms conquered Israel?
But what they did is they didn't wreck what was there.
They built on top of it.
Right. And we were just talking yesterday and it sort of filled me with a sense of wonder.
You know, some pilgrim in like 80 BC is walking down that road and drops a coin having no idea that 2,000 years later an archaeologist would be a rare find and the coin is worth like $10,000 today.
Right. And so what you're saying is that all of this is intact to a large degree and the work you're doing and the archaeologists are doing and the diggers are doing is to bring all this back out.
Now we saw a part of it before it was open to the public but I think you said pretty soon there will be a chance for people all over the world To walk the pilgrimage road the same way as the ancient Jews did and the same way that perhaps Jesus did.
That's right. Our hope is over the next year, year and a half or so, that we'll be able to finish the north-south corridor of the pilgrimage road, connecting the pool of Siloam all the way up to the Temple Mount.
And once we finish the north-south corridor, the road itself is five times wider than what we saw together.
And so then we'll go east-west and we find lining the pilgrimage road the ancient shops and stalls That the pilgrims would have stopped on their way up to the temple maybe to get the temple tax Maybe to get something for a temple offering in it and it's all there And the the incredible thing when you think of the great wonders of the world You might think of the pyramids you might think of the Colosseum And a person goes to see the pyramids today and they say look at the grandeur of the Pharaohs You go to the Colosseum look at the might of the great Roman Empire But then you ask yourself, where are the Pharaohs today?
Where is the great Roman Empire today?
And the answer is the same.
Museums, history books, with some monuments left behind.
A person comes to the city of David, the place where Jerusalem began.
And when we finish the excavation, in the not too distant future, God willing, of the Pool of Siloam, of the pilgrimage road, I believe that will also be among the great wonders of the world, but in a category all its own.
Why? Because if the pyramids and the Colosseum represent a chapter of history, once upon a time...
What we're unearthing in the City of David represents the continuation of a story.
Because the people who walk on the pilgrimage road in just a little bit more time, it was their ancestors who walked there 2,000 years ago, who worshipped the same God, shared the same faith, had the same customs, traditions, festivals, sometimes even the same language as their ancestors did before them.
This is literally the continuation of a story.
And we are just bringing that story back to life and for the benefit really of billions of people and hundreds of millions of Americans who will be able with every step they take, whether they just love history, but also to affirm their faith and affirm the values that their countries have been built upon and that they try to live their lives according to.
It's real. You can see it.
You can touch it. And in an age where So many of those values are being mocked and ridiculed and scorned to say, wait a second, They're actually rooted in something far stronger.
That bedrock that they're built upon doesn't waver.
And even though it may seem that today there are a lot of scoffers and deniers, the heritage that both of our great nations have been built upon, the United States of America and Israel, the bedrock is solid, and the beliefs are solid, and the values are solid, and they've withstood the test of time, and God willing, that will be the case moving forward as well.
It's very intellectually exhilarating, but I think also affirming for many people at a time when they're looking for a firm grounding, a factual grounding of their beliefs, and also a solid moral grounding for their beliefs.
So thank you so much for joining us.
Really a privilege to know you.
Guys, check out The City of David.
It's cityofdavid.org.il slash en.
We've been talking to Zev Ornstein.
Follow him on X at Zev, Z-E-E-V-O-R-E-N-S-T-E-I-N. Zev, thank you very much.
Thank you. Subscribe to the Dinesh D'Souza podcast on Apple, Google, and Spotify.
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