April 9, 2024 - The Tucker Carlson Show
42:56
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| A consistent but almost never noted theme of American foreign policy is that it is always the Christians who suffer. | ||
| When there's a war abroad that the United States is funding, it is Christians who tend to die disproportionately. | ||
| And this goes back a long way, 60 years really, to Vietnam, where Catholics in that country were massacred. | ||
| But it's accelerated. | ||
| So, for example, during the more than a decade the U.S. government spent occupying Iraq, the ancient Christian community of Iraq was completely devastated. | ||
| Nine out of ten of them are no longer there. | ||
| They're gone. | ||
| That was an effect of our foreign policy, but it was almost never noted in the United States and almost never, ever even mentioned by Christian clergy in this country, many of whom supported that war and that occupation. | ||
| Why is that? | ||
| Maybe because it wasn't. | ||
| Virtually no one in any American church said anything when Christians were killed in Syria, very often by Islamic extremists paid for by the United States. | ||
| But nobody said anything, and anyone who did was denounced as a kook or a bigot somehow. | ||
| Standing up for Christians was not allowed in the U.S. media. | ||
| We saw that firsthand. | ||
| And so, once again, it continued. | ||
| In Ukraine, where the U.S. government has sent far more than $100 billion to the Ukrainian government, And what happened? | ||
| What did that government do? | ||
| Well, it banned an entire Christian denomination. | ||
| The Zelensky government is busy throwing Orthodox priests and nuns in jail and having the army raid churches. | ||
| But again, not a word. | ||
| But what about Gaza? | ||
| What about the entire region in the Middle East, where, of course, there's very intense fighting going on? | ||
| Many Christian churches in the United States, particularly evangelical churches, support that. | ||
| But there is... | ||
| Virtually never a word about the Christians who live there, the ancient Christian community in Gaza, the West Bank, and Israel proper. | ||
| So, because no one has said a word, there has been great suffering among the Christian population in that region. | ||
| In October, a Greek Orthodox Church in the Gaza Strip was hit by an airstrike. | ||
| We're showing you a video now. | ||
| The church is in ruins. | ||
| At least 17 people were killed that day. | ||
| Again, that was hardly the first time that fighting in that region killed Christians. | ||
| You'll remember the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem almost 20 years ago, where a clergyman was killed in the church with American weapons, and Christian clergy in our country said nothing. | ||
| And you may be asking yourself, well, wait a second, if Christian leaders won't stand up for the lives of Christians, why have them in the first place? | ||
| And that's probably a good question. | ||
| So you would think that in Congress, Where there are many self-professed Christians, somebody might be piping up on behalf of their brethren in the Holy Land. | ||
| But no, just the opposite, in fact. | ||
| For example, at a town hall event last month, Michigan Congressman Tim Wahlberg, a former evangelical pastor, said he would like to see the region treated like Hiroshima was treated. | ||
| Watch this. | ||
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We shouldn't be spending a dime on the Mediterranean. | |
| It should be like Nagasaki and Hiroshima. | ||
| It overquake. | ||
| The same, the same should be in Ukraine. | ||
| If Putin quake. | ||
| Instead of 80% of our funding for Ukraine being used for humanitarian purposes, it should be 80% and 100% for light bulb Russian forces. | ||
| You have to ask what we want to do. | ||
| So to be clear, as a theological matter, Christianity is not the religion of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. | ||
| It's the religion among all world religions that uniquely abhors mass killing. | ||
| It is the religion that abhors mass killing. | ||
| There's no excuse for that from a Christian perspective. | ||
| And here we have a former pastor calling for it. | ||
| But again, how are the Christians doing in that region, in Gaza, the West Bank, and in Israel proper? | ||
| We almost never hear from them, and so we thought it would be interesting and maybe edifying to hear from one right now. | ||
| Reverend Munther Ishak is the pastor at the Evangelical Lutheran Christian Church in Bethlehem, and we're honored to have him join us. | ||
| Father Ishak, thank you very much for coming on. | ||
| So let me just ask you a broad question to start. | ||
| How are Christians in the Holy Land, in the three places I mentioned, West Bank, Israel proper, and Gaza, how are they doing right now? | ||
| Yeah, first, thank you for having me. | ||
| These are very, very difficult times, and it's been difficult for quite some time now. | ||
| When I say difficult times, I'm not just only referring to October 7th. | ||
| And the fact that right now we are fragmented into, as you explained, three territories, the West Bank, Gaza, and Israel proper. | ||
| We can add to East Jerusalem, which is a category in its own, explain one element of our situation, which is we're fragmented. | ||
| So in my church, I have family members with relatives in Gaza, and they cannot even... | ||
| Before the war, they could not visit and be with them. | ||
| And this fragmentation is, as I said, one element of the situation. | ||
| One of the biggest problems we're facing right now is the deterioration in our number. | ||
| People keep breathing because of the political reality. | ||
| Life under a very harsh Israeli military occupation is difficult to bear, and as a result... | ||
| Many young Palestinian Christians continue to leave, for example, Bethlehem, choosing to find a better and easier life elsewhere. | ||
| We are a small community, but we are part of the Palestinian people. | ||
| And as such, anything that happens to Palestinians happens to us. | ||
| And we are probably disproportionately affected by all of this because of our small numbers as a religious community. | ||
| Anything that happens impacts us severely. | ||
| Case in point, what's happening in Gaza right now where there are anything between 800 to 900 Palestinian Christians and any impact on that community, any death in that community will have a long-lasting effect. | ||
| So what sort of support have you had from the Christians in the U.S. Congress? | ||
| And just to frame this, and of course people know this already, but the United States government is paying for a lot of these military operations, and this is a majority Christian country. | ||
| So have any members of Congress sent you aid of any kind, words of support of fellow Christian? | ||
| We've always had a problem with American foreign policy when it comes to Palestine, Israel, and the Middle East in general. | ||
| I've traveled to D.C. in December to advocate for a ceasefire. | ||
| I don't think war solves anything. | ||
| And no, I mean, on the opposite, we continue to be horrified by what we hear from Congress, with, of course, some exceptions. | ||
| There are some on the democratic side. | ||
| Of course, Rashida Tlaib comes from a Palestinian heritage. | ||
| But when you look at the so-called religious right, we receive no sympathy whatsoever. | ||
| Sometimes we just plead to be heard and to have our perspective taken seriously. | ||
| And one of the things I'm often struck with, whether when I speak to diplomats, politicians, Congress staff, or even pastors and influential pastors, is how little they know about the reality on the ground. | ||
| And their knowledge of the situation here seems to be very, very shallow. | ||
| Yet they hold very strong opinions, and oftentimes these opinions are shaped by a political party's position, the United States position, and not really based on, you know, an earned opinion that's based on facts, on being here, visiting, talking, investigating, and knowing the facts. | ||
| And to me, the problem with all of that is... | ||
| It comes across with very strong opinions and decisions that impact our lives. | ||
| Many times I wish to tell not just the congressman but the pastors themselves who support them. | ||
| Do you know that your lobbying, your positions, even your sermons have direct consequences on our lives? | ||
| Tucker, in this world there was pastors who openly called, for example, to turn Gaza into a parking lot. | ||
| Now, let's remember, there are not just, you know, many, many innocent people, the majority of, you know, Gaza people, civilians, innocent children, but also there are our siblings in Christ. | ||
| We have relatives and friends in Gaza, and here you have a pastor with influence calling for the total destruction of Gaza. | ||
| And you definitely, you know, you heard in the beginning the segment from Congressman Warburg, who... | ||
| As previously a pastor went to prestigious evangelical institutes, and it makes us wonder, you know, this obsession with love and with war, I mean, this obsession with war and violence, it's the antithesis of everything that Jesus taught. | ||
| And at the same time, it again makes us wonder, do you realize how damaging that is for us Christians living, not just in Palestine, but in the Middle East? | ||
| damaging in the sense of real impact on our lives, but also damaging in terms of our credibility in front of our peers here in the Middle East. | ||
| So we've always had a very serious problem when it comes to American foreign policy and the religious right to support to that foreign policy when it comes to Palestine and Israel. | ||
| So you have people in the United States, self-professed Christians here, who are sending money. | ||
| That's the sad irony of all of this, is that a lot of the money that comes from churches, even before the war, goes not just to the Israeli military, but to the building of settlements. | ||
| Many of these settlements are built on land confiscated from Palestinians, and in many cases from Palestinian Christian families. | ||
| So I hope you understand again how difficult this is for us, because this is... | ||
| Political and financial support from our siblings in Christ rather than that support helping us or even helping humanitarian causes or peace causes or, you know, initiatives to bring Palestinians and Israelis together. | ||
| It's supporting initiatives that are causing our lives as a Christian community more and more difficult and causing many of us to leave because it seems that there is no future for us in this land. | ||
| We're very troubled. | ||
| We're very sad by all of this. | ||
| And again, we continue to plead for the opportunity to be heard. | ||
| We continue to plead with these evangelical leaders. | ||
| Come and listen and talk and see things with your own eyes. | ||
| Take our perspective seriously. | ||
| Thakir, you mentioned something important about the war in Iraq. | ||
| And that war literally emptied half of the Christian population there. | ||
| You know that Christian leaders pleaded with the American administration not to do that war and not to engage in it. | ||
| And because we realized, they realized that it's going to have some serious consequences, not just on the Christian presence, but on the region as a whole. | ||
| And never, I think, did they anticipate that it will have this severe impact on the Christian presence in the Middle East. | ||
| So again, I wish these leaders realized how damaging their position, their lobbying, their money is, even to our existence as Palestinian Christians and as Middle Eastern Christians in general. | ||
| It's very obvious to me that many evangelical leaders in the United States care much more about the highly secular government of Israel than they care about Christian communities in the Middle East. | ||
| Do you have a guess as to why that would be? | ||
| Some of it is theology. | ||
| Some of it is the theology of Christian Zionism. | ||
| That teaches, for example, that Christians must support Israel because the Bible teaches that. | ||
| And oftentimes that is part of a larger theology of the end times in which they view the presence of Jews in the land as preparing for the second coming of Christ. | ||
| They see it as a fulfillment of prophecy, not realizing again. | ||
| What that means on the ground? | ||
| I always say it's as if the land was empty to them. | ||
| They are excited about certain events without understanding the consequences of these events on real lives. | ||
| The irony is that many of these positions actually believe and many evangelical leaders believe that at the end times and after Jews are gathered in Palestine two-thirds of them will be massacred. | ||
| And only for the other third to convert to Christianity, and somehow they consider that a Jewish-friendly theology. | ||
| Don't get me wrong, I am for Christians and Jews, just like I am for all religions coming together, understanding one another. | ||
| But there is something very problematic when we make a certain religious group as an object in our theology and even eschatology and relate to them accordingly. | ||
| Again, without really understanding what is happening on the ground, without understanding even the complexity of Israel as a state, how secular it is, but even how much it is oppressing Palestinians, breaking the international law, committing sometimes human rights abusing documented against Palestinians, including Palestinian Christians. | ||
| To me, Christians should be for peace. | ||
| And again, I wish you were investing all of this energy and money in initiatives that bring peace, not continuing to support Israel unconditionally without holding them accountable, which is, in my opinion, what drove us to this mess right now with the catastrophe of thousands of Palestinians killed on October 7 and all of that. | ||
| It's all of these policies, and we continue to say that the church has been part of the problem. | ||
| And it's one of my desires to see the church part of the solution when it comes to Palestine and Israel. | ||
| Whether in this war or before, it was confirmed to me that the church is part of the problem. | ||
| It would be pretty easy for Republicans in the U.S. Congress to say, we support the government of Israel. | ||
| But if you touch a single Christian, harm a single church, I have to ask specifically about the church in Gaza that was damaged in an airstrike. | ||
| Who did that? | ||
| What do we know about that? | ||
| So there were several incidents when it comes to the Christian community in Gaza. | ||
| And first, let's just explain that the majority of them live at the heart of Gaza and in Gaza City itself. | ||
| And since the war broke, they all chose to hide and take refuge in the two major churches, the Orthodox and the Catholic. | ||
| There's also a small Baptist church, which was also damaged by the bombing, by the way, but nobody was hiding there. | ||
| And they chose to be there, thinking that we don't want to become refugees in the South with the unknown facing us. | ||
| We don't want to leave. | ||
| Many of them are descendants of 1948 crisis, the Nechbel. | ||
| So many of them are descendants of refugees. | ||
| So they thought, we don't want to go through the same again. | ||
| One of them told me, if I'm going to die, I'd rather die in the church. | ||
| They thought the church was safe, but the church was not. | ||
| So I think 10 days after the war or so, the Orthodox Church was hit or was impacted by an Israeli missile. | ||
| And 18 people were killed, including nine children, Palestinian Christians, nine Palestinian Christian children, 18 altogether, as I said, including relatives of church members who were devastated by the impact. | ||
| We were all devastated by that because, honestly, we felt the church was safe. | ||
| And to be clear, it's a building in the church compound that they were taking refuge in. | ||
| It's a small... | ||
| The building that was his is directly close to a historical church building. | ||
| The church itself dates back to the fourth and fifth century and it fell on the church itself. | ||
| Things could have been worse if the building that was struck did not fall on the historic church. | ||
| So this was a major incident. | ||
| And actually, Tucker, I followed, even the Christian media did not cover it. | ||
| Many Christian media outlets did not give it, you know. | ||
| And this shows that American Christian support to Christians is actually conditioned by where you stand on the political spectrum. | ||
| It's not as if. | ||
| So if Christians were hit or targeted or persecuted by someone who's not an ally, Then you will see an outrage. | ||
| But because Israel is an ally to America, no one cares about Christians being targeted. | ||
| In fact, in the Catholic Church, two elderly women were killed by snipers, by Israeli snipers. | ||
| And the Catholic Church talked about it. | ||
| There were statements, official statements from the Patriot, saying that it was Israeli snipers who killed the two women in the vicinity of the church, in front of the church. | ||
| They were leaving the church to go. | ||
| From one building to the other, they were killed, shot. | ||
| And when people tried to rescue them, they were also shot at, and seven were wounded. | ||
| This happened again. | ||
| How can this be a mistake, Tucker? | ||
| That's our question, because they were in the middle of the church. | ||
| And to add to all of this already tragic situation, those people in Gaza we talked to, almost all of them told us that their homes have already been destroyed. | ||
| By the bombing, by the Israeli bombings. | ||
| So now, if they survive this war, and it's a big if, we hope they do, there's nowhere left for them to go. | ||
| Where will they end? | ||
| I mean, they're begging us, can you get us out? | ||
| Of course, we're helpless here. | ||
| What can we do other than pray and try to send some financial support to them so that they can buy food? | ||
| And right now... | ||
| They're telling us their biggest problem is starvation. | ||
| They're literally starving. | ||
| And many of them died for lack of medical care. | ||
| So in Gaza right now, if you get sick, chances are very high you can survive it because there is no medicine, no medical care, especially among the elderly. | ||
| And so... | ||
| Around four or five of our Palestinian Christian community inside the church died because of sickness, most likely because there is no medical attention or medicine whatsoever. | ||
| You can't go to a hospital. | ||
| It's literally hell on earth for them right now, even for those hiding inside the churches. | ||
| I'm confused. | ||
| confused why wouldn't christians in gaza cowering in their church and dying of curable illnesses be allowed to travel into israel why wouldn't they be allowed to leave why would they be held there i mean they're christians they're not a threat to anyone no no but this is the nature of The siege has been there since 2007. It's collective punishment against all Palestinians. | ||
| I think this is one of the misconceptions that Israel favors Christians against Muslims. | ||
| No, Israel looks at us as Palestinians. | ||
| And I want to draw attention to, you know, even two years ago in the West Bank when Palestinian Christian journalist Shirin Abu Akleh, who's also an American citizen, was shot dead by Israeli forces and no one was held accountable. | ||
| So Palestinian Christians suffer from everything under this brutal occupation, whether in Gaza, which is more difficult than here in the West Bank, but even here at the West Bank. | ||
| We go through everything from land confiscation to the restrictions. | ||
| And so that Christian community in Gaza right now is stuck inside. | ||
| You know, they can't leave. | ||
| No one can leave Gaza right now unless, you know, you have some sort of arrangement with the Egyptian government in Rafah. | ||
| But as I said, the majority of Christians have decided to stay in the city of Gaza. | ||
| So this goes back to the fragmentation I mentioned. | ||
| Remember, I said we have relatives of our church members in Gaza. | ||
| Well, that, you know, they haven't seen each other for a while now because you need a permit from the Israeli military, even as a Christian, to travel from one place to the other. | ||
| Dr., we're talking to you from Bethlehem, and Jerusalem is literally 15 minutes away from here. | ||
| I can walk to Jerusalem in 30 minutes. | ||
| I can be at the old city of Jerusalem in probably 40 minutes walk. | ||
| I can get there even as a clergy. | ||
| I don't have a permit and I need a permit that we get from the Israeli military as Palestinians to go from one place to the other. | ||
| So for me as a clergy from Bethlehem, I cannot even go to Jerusalem. | ||
| This is our reality today. | ||
| As a minister, it's just hard to believe we would send any money to a government that would do something like that to Christians. | ||
| So let me just ask, having been to Bethlehem, I was surprised by how hard it was to get there and surprised, honestly, by how shabby it was. | ||
| And I was surprised because I think millions of Christian pilgrims from the West go there every year because, of course, that's the birthplace of Christ and the Church of the Nativity is there. | ||
| So why isn't Bethlehem the recipient of aid from Christian groups in the West? | ||
| Or more aid? | ||
| Enough aid? | ||
| We do receive some aid, but it's not enough. | ||
| And by the way, it's nothing in comparison to the aid Israel receives. | ||
| That's the interesting part in all of this. | ||
| And I would love to reach a point in which we don't actually need any aid. | ||
| If Bethlehem was open to the world, we can flourish as a community, not just from tourism and obviously the The Palestinian people are very creative, very, you know, talented. | ||
| We can do much if we have the opportunity to flourish as a community. | ||
| But here it is something important because we as Palestinian Christians, I think, rely too much on tourism and on welcoming pilgrimage. | ||
| Before COVID, we had record numbers of pilgrims staying in Bethlehem. | ||
| The economy was You know, especially in Bethlehem was really going up, but then COVID hit us and now this war hit us and I'm not sure we're, you know, it's going to be very easy for us to survive. | ||
| And when it comes to support, not just I wish to reach the point where we don't need support because Bethlehem is open to the world. | ||
| I want to emphasize that the biggest support right now that we're asking for is not financial, but on political advocacy for peace and for a solution, whether it be a two-state solution or any other solution. | ||
| We will not survive as a Christian community if the situation of Palestinians in general is not solved. | ||
| And since the creation of Israel, we've been under the occupation, under different You know, phases of that occupation. | ||
| And the current status quo, as this Gaza war has proven, is not sustainable at all. | ||
| And we've warned about this, by the way. | ||
| I meet with church leaders all the time, and I've always said the current status quo that Israel has created is status quo, by the way, that many human rights organizations have described using the word apartheid. | ||
| It's not sustainable. | ||
| It's going to lead to violence ultimately. | ||
| It's going to explode. | ||
| I've never in my wildest dream thought it's going to be as deadly and violent as we're witnessing right now. | ||
| And my fear is that if we don't do anything about the West Bank, my biggest nightmare is that something similar will happen in the West Bank. | ||
| So what we're calling for is reasonable, fair-minded Christian leaders. | ||
| Who understand the reality on the ground and are able to lobby for a just peace in this land where Palestinians and Israelis live together. | ||
| Right now, as I said, I look at the church and I see it only as part of the problem, advocating for one side on account of the other. | ||
| Of course, there are many who understand and who visit, but by and large, look at the bigger picture in terms of political lobbying, in terms of financial support. | ||
| I don't think it's helping us as Palestinian Christians. | ||
| And this, by the way, it's not about one political party or the other. | ||
| I remember even during the Trump administration, we pleaded as a Christian community, we pleaded that moving the embassy doesn't help. | ||
| We pleaded that a peace treaty with other Arab countries, as much as I want to see peace, if you don't start with the Palestinians, it's not going to help. | ||
| But again, it seems our perspective is never taken seriously. | ||
| And look, now we're paying the results of years and years and years of American foreign policy to support Israel without really putting pressure to end occupation and establish. | ||
| The official position of America, a two-state solution. | ||
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So this is the biggest thing we're asking for. | |
| If you want us to start, to stay here, if you want to see the Palestinian Christian community remain in the land, continue the Christian witness in the place where it all started. | ||
| This is the land of Jesus. | ||
| This is where Jesus walked. | ||
| This is where Jesus was born. | ||
| I would hate for the Holy Land to become museums only. | ||
| The only way to rescue the Christian presence here... | ||
| It's to end occupation and bring a peaceful solution to the situation. | ||
| This is what we're asking for. | ||
| Israel is very often described in American media as the only democracy in the region. | ||
| Democracy, of course, suggests religious freedom, pluralism. | ||
| How free are Christians to practice Christianity in Israel? | ||
| We cannot deny that there are many freedoms in the state of Israel. | ||
| But it's not as free as people think. | ||
| And let me give you an example, and I know that this might come across as shocking to many. | ||
| Do you know that evangelicals as churches are not officially recognized in Israel? | ||
| Not recognized by the government of Israel? | ||
| By the government of Israel. | ||
| Evangelism is illegal in Israel. | ||
| Wait, I'm sorry, may I ask you to stop there? | ||
| What does that mean, evangelism is illegal in Israel? | ||
| It's against the law to evangelize in Israel and to proselytize, as they call it. | ||
| Christian evangelizing is illegal in Israel? | ||
| The conversion. | ||
| And so if you are a Jewish person and you convert to Christianity, you will go through many legal challenges to recognize your marriage certificate, to recognize a lot of your rights. | ||
| Because again, Evangelical Christianity is not officially recognized as a denomination in the state of Israel. | ||
| Many Israeli politicians try to pass laws that prevent Christians from sharing their faith. | ||
| And so there is always this struggle and this tension about how much can Christians express their faith. | ||
| Now, the biggest problem Christians are facing is in East Jerusalem. | ||
| Where they are constantly targeted by radical groups, radical Jewish groups, let's be clear. | ||
| Sometimes some churches, they tried, there was an attempt to burn them. | ||
| Oftentimes, and this is, you can look at it on social media, all over the place, Christian clergy being spit at by these groups. | ||
| They write very offensive slogans on the water, strong incitements against Christians, especially in the old city of Jerusalem. | ||
| What kind of slogans? | ||
| I'm sorry to ask you to pause. | ||
| What kind of slogans, what kind of graffiti is written against Christians in Jerusalem? | ||
| We don't want Christians to get out of here. | ||
| Some of it is very, very offensive, actually, that I can say. | ||
| A lot of it is calling for Christians, whether Christians or Armenian Christians. | ||
| It's a small Christian community, part of the Christian community in East Jerusalem. | ||
| We don't want you here. | ||
| You should leave. | ||
| So there are all these incitements against Christians, especially in Jerusalem. | ||
| And one might say that, well, we expect to see radical groups in every... | ||
| Faith tradition. | ||
| And I say, of course, yes, that exists. | ||
| The problem is when they go unchecked and they're never held accountable, even when there are arsons, I mean, attacks on churches. | ||
| Oftentimes, the complaint of the heads of churches in Jerusalem, the Catholics, the Orthodox, the Protestants, is that it seems that those who do these attacks are never held accountable. | ||
| In fact, I think it was around two years ago when the heads of churches said in a statement, That they feel there is a systematic attempt to empty Jerusalem of Christians. | ||
| I mean, these are strong words. | ||
| Look at that statement from the heads of churches. | ||
| So the impression that it's flowery here for Christians is definitely not true. | ||
| But beyond that, we have to look at the wider political spectrum, because at the end of the day, Israel wants to be both democratic and Jewish. | ||
| And many question whether that is possible. | ||
| And that's why, as I said, even Israeli human rights organizations have called out the policies and discrimination policies of Israel. | ||
| The nation-state law, for example, states, this is a law that was passed by the Knesset, it states that the right for self-determination in the state of Israel is exclusive to the Jewish people only. | ||
| So this is a law that was passed by the Kinesis that makes Jews superior in the state of Israel because they are the only one they are. | ||
| They have exclusively the right for self-determination. | ||
| So whether it's on incitement against Christians in Jerusalem, whether it's in the fact that not all Christian churches are recognized, or whether it's the structure of the state of Israel as a whole, pointed that it's not really fully as flowery as people think, where there is just full freedom, especially freedom of religion. | ||
| And even in this war, we've seen academics targeted, we've seen social media being monitored by the Israeli government against Israeli citizenship, what you can say and what you cannot say. | ||
| And if you say anything, you must just For example, what happened on October 7th, you could be put in jail. | ||
| I mean, I'm not saying I support what happened on October 7th. | ||
| I'm saying that even Israel now is targeting and monitoring the social media. | ||
| And many of the Palestinian citizens of Israel, because many people forget that 20% of the citizens of Israel are actually Palestinians. | ||
| 20% or so. | ||
| So they're afraid to even speak out. | ||
| And say anything even that sounds, that has sympathy with the people of Gaza because they feel they will be targeted or they might lose their jobs. | ||
| Again, I invite people to come and listen to stories and understand what's happening. | ||
| Talk to church leaders, talk to church leaders in Jerusalem about the challenges and difficulties they are facing right now before the war or during the war in Jerusalem. | ||
| So the Speaker of the House in the United States, third in line to the President, third most powerful person in our political structure, is a self-described evangelical Christian and a supporter of the government of Israel. | ||
| And I would be interested in asking him what he thinks of the fact that Israelis who convert to Christianity have fewer rights. | ||
| I don't know if he knows that. | ||
| But he has said that he supports Israel for theological reasons. | ||
| The ones that you described, that Christians have a moral duty to support the government of Israel because Scripture tells them so. | ||
| Is there any place in the Old or New Testaments that suggests or commands Christians to support the modern government, the secular government of Israel? | ||
| Where does that come from? | ||
| I haven't read that. | ||
| But the problem is when you equate... | ||
| The modern secular state of Israel with the Israel of the Bible. | ||
| The Israel of the Bible was a faith community in a covenant relationship with God that was given the laws and asked to be a light to the nations and through that nation we as Christians believe Jesus came as a savior to the world. | ||
| The problem begins when you compare or when you equate The modern secular state of Israel, a political entity birthed in the 20th century with the people of Israel in the Bible. | ||
| And this takes the question, which is a theological question of the chosen people, into something that I call the chosen state. | ||
| The Bible doesn't talk about a chosen state. | ||
| And to me the biggest problem again is when we give special treatment to any people group, give privileges to any people group, Tagar I'm a theologian and to me the idea of chosenness is never about entitlement. | ||
| Chosenness is about responsibility. | ||
| It's about our calling to be a light, to be a blessing to others. | ||
| We cannot change that into a theology of entitlement. | ||
| And definitely a state cannot take that and make it the blueprint for being entitled and asking for everyone as if to support them. | ||
| And the problem here is that it's not like, you know, it's the Christians who are saying this. | ||
| It's the Christian pastors who are saying we are called to bless Israel. | ||
| Because when you mentioned Mike Johnson, he said, When he became house speaker, that as Christians the Bible tells us we should support Israel. | ||
| And I ask, what about the context? | ||
| What if, hypothetically speaking, let's not get into our argument, what if Israel is committing war crimes? | ||
| Or what if Israel is breaking the international law? | ||
| Does that mean, as Christians, we should support them regardless? | ||
| And I fully understand And I'm fully aware of the shameful history of Christianity, in particular, when it comes to anti-Semitism. | ||
| But the solution to anti-Semitism cannot be a blank support to Zionism, especially since that support to Zionism has come on the expense of Palestinians. | ||
| I always say it seems to me that many Christians in the West are repenting over the sin of anti-Semitism. | ||
| A sin that happened on their ground. | ||
| They are repenting on our ground. | ||
| So to answer your question, no, I don't think the Bible justifies or calls for an unconditional support to a political entity. | ||
| I think the Bible calls us to be good neighbors to all people, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, atheists. | ||
| I think the Bible calls us to love all people and to show no favoritism because God shows no favoritism. | ||
| It's in the Bible. | ||
| And the way many of these Christians talk about Israel actually puts us immediately as Middle Eastern Christians in the defense position. | ||
| You know, I pastor the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem. | ||
| I have the word evangelical at the title of my church. | ||
| And every time an evangelical church leader says something that implies unconditional support to Israel, people ask us, is this what you stand for? | ||
| And we always say, no, they don't represent us. | ||
| And when this support translates into support of war, this is where I'm troubled the most. | ||
| It's not just because I'm a Palestinian, by the way. | ||
| As a Christian, I'm troubled because it's the credibility of the Christian witness that is at stake when it seems that Christians, as in the example of Warburg, Seems to call for the genocide of two million Palestinians in Gaza. | ||
| Throw a nuclear bomb and get rid of them. | ||
| I mean, is that really the way of Christ? | ||
| Is this how we walk in Jesus' footsteps as Jesus' followers? | ||
| So we're pleading for a different, not just position, but for a dialogue. | ||
| We're pleading even, please reconsider. | ||
| And I'm not exaggerating when we use strong words like they need to repent of these ways. | ||
| If you wake up in the morning and decide that your Christian faith requires you to support a foreign government blowing up churches and killing Christians, I think you've lost the thread. | ||
| Had a message for Christian leaders in the United States, whether in government or in churches or just citizens who care about the religion and their fellow Christians, what would it be? | ||
| It would be to remind them that when the state of Israel was created, it was not created on an empty land. | ||
| It was created on a land that had millions of indigenous Palestinians there, including Palestinian Christians. | ||
| And that that state they support. | ||
| That state they celebrated as a fulfillment of prophecy and a sign of God's faith to the Jewish people for it to become a state. | ||
| Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, including Palestinian Christians, were forced to leave and have never returned. | ||
| Churches were closed. | ||
| A friend of mine did a research and counted more than 30 churches that were closed when Israel was created because Palestinians were expelled from Israel. | ||
| Our numbers continue to be in decline. | ||
| So we're pleading that come and listen, come and talk to us. | ||
| And my message to Christian leaders right now is there is a very, very brutal war taking place in Gaza. | ||
| A war that I've described using the word genocide because it's a war that has used even starvation as a meme. | ||
| And fellow Christians are suffering because of that war. | ||
| It's time that Christian leaders recognize that wars is not the way, whether in Iraq and Afghanistan and Libya. | ||
| When will we learn that war does not help? | ||
| When will we take Jesus' words seriously about being peacemakers, about being merciful? | ||
| There must be other ways. | ||
| And so it would be an invitation to listen. | ||
| To learn more and to avoid very shallow and simplistic perspectives that are not based on scripture itself but more based on political equations. | ||
| And I would plea right now and I will continue to plea that we need to stop this war in Ghansa. | ||
| It's killing many, many children, women, innocent lives. | ||
| It has to stop. | ||
| There must be other ways. | ||
| And as a follower of Christ, we have to pursue the path of peace and justice, and we have to avoid simplistic polarizations, good and evil. | ||
| Come and listen. | ||
| Come and understand what's happening. | ||
| And I plead, as a Christian pastor from Bethlehem, I plead that you come and listen. | ||
| Father, thank you for your thoroughly decent and sensible analysis, and I hope it's heard by Christians throughout the West. | ||
| I appreciate it. |
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