Israel’s Purging of Christians From the Holy Land and the Plot to Keep Americans From Noticing
Faraz Abraham, a Palestinian Christian minister from Betsohur, exposes Israel’s systemic purging of indigenous Christians—111 attacks in 2024 alone—through land theft, settler violence, and military impunity, including unpunished killings like Selam Musla (shot in 1991) and Ilham Farah (left to die). U.S. taxpayer-funded settlements ($3.5B raised for West Bank expansion) violate international law, yet Christian Zionists prioritize territorial claims over biblical justice, misinterpreting promises as divine land rights. Abraham rejects hatred, advocating for gospel-centered reconciliation, while warning that chaos—like post-Saddam Iraq—fuels extremism, erasing hope. The crisis risks extinguishing Christianity’s 2,000-year presence in the Holy Land unless evangelicals shift focus from political support to compassionate action. [Automatically generated summary]
There's something about true things that just sound different.
When you hear something that's true, there's a different pitch or tone or vibration.
It's kind of hard to describe.
But when someone says something true, even if you don't exactly understand what it means, it sticks with you.
The truth rings differently from lies.
And recently, for a lot of different reasons, mostly because of the pressure being exerted on our society, you're hearing a lot of lies, but you're also hearing a lot of true things.
And some of them are about the nation of Israel.
And they're obvious things like: does the United States have an actual interest in supporting Israel unequivocally?
Is Israel really our closest ally?
Is there a good reason for this?
Why are so many members of Congress taking money from a foreign government lobby, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera?
These are all true things.
They point to the truth.
They are questions that evoke true answers.
And the response to this has been very, very telling.
The response has been shouting and screaming, accusations.
It has not been engagement.
Almost nobody on the other side of the debate has said, for sure, let me calmly explain why Israel is our greatest ally and we should say, fund the killing in Gaza.
Here's why it's good for the United States to spend this much money on Israel's, well, at this point, seven simultaneous wars, a seven-front war.
We're paying for it.
Why is that a good idea for the United States?
How is it morally justifiable?
And what's the purpose of this exactly?
Is it really to defend the country or is it to expand its territory?
No one will answer those questions.
And that is why simply you're hearing this very loud conversation about anti-Semitism, which all of a sudden is everywhere.
It's America's biggest problem.
Well, there is, of course, anti-Semitism and it's wrong.
It's always wrong to hate people for their blood.
There's no question about that.
But is anti-Semitism really America's biggest problem?
Well, no, it's not.
It's not even in the top 100 biggest problems, bad as it is.
You're hearing about it as a way to shut down truthful, honest questions.
And that's, of course, the dynamic.
And it's very clear to anybody who's paying attention.
The problem with this dynamic is that it can inspire a lot of anger and, in fact, a lot of hate.
People are getting matter and matter and matter on this topic on both sides.
And you have to wonder why that is.
Why doesn't someone just stand up and say, let's have a reasonable discussion about this?
Let's just lay it out there in non-emotional terms, non-hateful terms, without attacking an entire group of people, any group of people, whether it's the Jews or the Muslims or the Christians, let's just slow down and be rational about this.
Why is no one doing that?
Well, it's possible that there are some people in this conversation, maybe on both sides, who want to inspire hate.
And that's not a good idea for anyone.
For this country, for Christians, it's forbidden.
Christians are not allowed to hate people.
They understand that it's against God's law.
It's also the fastest way to corrode your soul and turn you into a monster.
And of course, you don't want that.
So how do you have a rational conversation about what's best for your country without becoming hateful yourself or inspiring hate in other people?
We've really thought a lot about this.
Don't become what they call you.
That's our number one imperative, at least on this show.
They call you a hater.
Don't become one.
So we're trying.
So we're doing a couple of things.
The first is we're flying to Jerusalem to interview Mike Huckabee.
Mike Huckabee is, of course, the American ambassador to Israel, someone I've known for over 30 years and always liked, and also a Baptist preacher of some kind, but certainly a prominent Baptist religious figure, also U.S. ambassador, and someone who has views that I just don't agree with at all on questions of American foreign policy and also on questions of theology.
He's a Christian, famous Christian Zionist and a famous proponent of neocon foreign policy.
I disagree with both.
However, It seems like of all the people you could talk to, maybe Mike Huckabee is a guy you could talk to in a reasonable way, in a calm way, without shouting or hatred.
By the way, if you want a picture of what hell itself is like, it's shouting and hatred.
It's a large group of people screaming, you know, calling for violence.
That is literally a picture of hell.
And don't live in it if you can help it.
We don't want to.
So maybe Huckabee is the guy to begin a reasonable conversation about what's best for the United States and what's true about Christian theology.
So we're going to try.
We're flying to Jerusalem.
Difficult to do, not without risk, but we're doing it because we really believe that the direction that this conversation is moving is bad.
It's bad for everybody.
It's bad for the country and it's bad for our souls.
So maybe that's a start toward making it better.
And the second thing we're really trying to do is to speak to Christians in the Middle East about the situation in the Middle East.
And maybe not accidentally, that is the one group you almost never hear from in the United States.
There are an awful lot of particularly Protestant evangelical ministers, leaders talking about Israel, Israel, as they often call it, and what Christians are supposed to think about it, what they're required to think about, what the U.S. government and the U.S. military should do to aid Israel, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
And those are almost always framed in terms of the West versus Islam, you know, Israel, United States versus the Muslims.
Okay.
But there's almost never any mention of the fact that the world's oldest Christian community is in that area, in the Levant, in Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, and Syria, that part of the Middle East that is not so far away.
It's on the Mediterranean and is, of course, the birthplace of Christianity, of Jesus himself.
And there have been Christians there for 2,000 years, uninterrupted.
And we know that both from the historical record and from DNA tests.
So if you're interested in Christianity, if you are a Christian, one of the first questions you ought to ask is, how are Christians in the Middle East doing?
And the political lines have changed, of course.
And after the fall of the Ottoman Empire at the end of the First World War, that whole area was carved up into different countries, nation states run by colonial powers, France and England.
And they became Syria, Lebanon, Palestine.
Then after 1948, with the creation of Israel, Israel, and then after 67, the West Bank.
I mean, it's been carved up over thousands of years by many different empires.
But that region has remained the same and its population has remained remarkably stable.
And the Christian population has never left.
These are not converts.
These are the original Christians.
Doesn't mean they're right about everything, but it means if you want to know what's actually happening, maybe you should talk to them.
And two, it's great shame.
It's great shame.
The American evangelical community, such as it is, or its leaders, have been very resistant to talking to Middle Eastern Christians or even to thinking about Middle Eastern Christians and the effect of American policy on those people.
But we think it's really important for two reasons.
One, it's just inherent.
Like, what about the Christians is a fair question for Christians to ask.
In fact, they should be required to ask that question.
And second, because sincere Christians are not allowed to hate or be anti-Semitic or hate all Muslims or hate all anybody or hate at all, it's forbidden by their religion, talking to them directly is a great way to de-escalate what is by design becoming a tribal war.
There is no reason for any conversation about American foreign policy to devolve into Jews versus everyone else or everyone versus Jews or any of this stuff.
And then censorship and all the things that you don't want in your country.
So like, don't go there.
And we've really tried not to go there.
And of course, they've called this show anti-Semitic and Nazi and all this stuff.
And all of their paid shills have joined in on this.
But we still have to resist becoming what they call us.
That is our job, period, as Americans and as Christians, to keep the hate out of our hearts and to stay reasonable.
And talking to Middle Eastern Christians, sincere Christians, is a really important way to keep the conversation exactly where it should be.
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So with that introduction, I want to introduce you to Faraz Abraham, who is a Christian minister.
He leads a ministry here in the United States, who is originally from a town called Betsohur, which is right outside Bethlehem, birthplace of Jesus.
Betsohur, as you're going to hear him explain in a minute, is the place where the shepherds saw and the wise men saw the angels announce Jesus' birth in the gospels.
It is a Palestinian village in what we call the West Bank, the West Bank of the Jordan River, that was part of Jordan until 1967, but has always been there.
And it is a majority, about 80% Christian village.
And it's disappearing.
The Christians are leaving.
And there's not a lot of debate about why they're leaving.
They're not leaving because, primarily because of the Muslims.
They're leaving because of Jewish settlers moved into the town by the Israeli government with funding from the United States, from a lot of Christians, by the way, in the United States, not just Jews, Christians in the United States, paying for these settlers to come and are driving out the Christian population.
There is no rational justification for this.
There's no moral justification for it.
It's an atrocity.
And it is almost never spoken about in non-polemical, honest ways.
And this man came to our attention some months ago.
We've talked to him extensively.
We think he is a truly decent man who has no hate in his heart.
You can judge for yourself.
But no matter what side of this conversation you're on, and particularly if you're a Christian Zionist, and by the way, go ahead and remain one if you like, but you should know that your views and in some cases your money is funding the displacement and the murder of the oldest Christian community in the world.
So with that, here's Farz Abraham, originally from Bet Sahur in the West Bank.
Thanks for doing this.
So you are from a Christian village outside Bethlehem, birthplace of Jesus, correct?
And I wish I never had to do this interview, to be honest with you.
But I feel compelled.
I feel a sense of urgency because the little town that I come from is under existential threat.
And let me say, I come here as a Christian, first and foremost, very proud Christian, and I'm Palestinian American Christian.
And I'm very proud of this country and for what this country stands for and for the great opportunity that I was given as a Palestinian.
This is my new homeland.
America gave me education, work.
And then later I got married.
I met the woman of my dreams here who, you know, my wife comes from Gaza and we met here in the States.
We started a family.
We pursued the American dream.
And I'm so grateful and so thankful.
But I'm here because I feel that the little town of Bet Sahur is really under imminent danger that if nothing happens, if we don't do anything about it, there will be no more Christians living in Bet Sahur today.
So it's a Christian majority town and it's known for the shepherd's fields.
In Luke chapter 2, when the angel of the Lord appeared to the shepherds who were tending to their flocks, the angel appeared to them and pronounced the greatest event that ever happened in history, which is the birth of the Messiah in next door town in a little town.
And if you go to Bet Sahur today, the shepherd field is there.
The people are there.
And the angel appeared also with a chorus of angelic hosts singing glory to God in the highest, peace on earth and great joy to great man.
Now, the significance of Bet Sahur is that God chose this little town, the town of the shepherds, to announce the birth of Jesus.
God didn't choose the spiritual elites and the religious institutions in Jerusalem.
And he did not choose the powerful politicians, military in Rome, but he chose to announce the birth of a savior in a town called Bet Sahur.
And when the shepherds went to Bethlehem, they saw baby Jesus, they came back rejoicing.
And they were the first evangelists that told the world about the birth of Jesus.
God with us.
It was in those fields where they were tending their flocks.
They were poor.
They were marginalized.
They were ordinary men and women who just happened to be there.
And God chose them to be there.
So Bet Sahur takes pride.
And it's not that we are privileged and better than anybody else, but that's the essence of the Christmas story that God gives hope to the people in the margins first.
God's grace reaches those people first.
And the town of Bet Sahur takes very pride of this heritage and this legacy.
The town of Bizaur is the early descendants of the first Christmas story, and they have maintained uninterrupted continuous presence since the day of the announcement of the birth of Jesus.
Israel has pursued one strategy, Ducker, over decades, which is take as much Palestinian land as possible and keep as few Palestinians on the land as possible.
This has been their strategy.
It has worked for them because they're constantly taking Palestinian land within.
We're talking about not proper Israel, but we're talking about 1967 when they captured West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza.
They have been taking land.
They have been building settlements there.
And this is threatening the local population, especially it comes at a heavy price.
So that has been the policy for decades.
And it has worked for them because it's almost near completion now.
If you look at Bethlehem, the governor to Bethlehem, the district of Bethlehem, it is surrounded by Israeli settlements.
And it's actually, if you look it up, the Bethlehem Ring, it's actually a thing.
It's a ring of settlements all encircling every town, every Palestinian village.
And they choose these specific lands strategically on hilltops, taking water resources, building walls around these settlements, building new roadblocks, building new checkpoints, building new security measures, they call it, motion sensors, electric barbed wires.
And it comes at a really deep expense at the expense of the local population.
It means whenever they build settlements, they build those roads that are only accessible to settlers, which these roads connect the entire settlements together, and they are directly connected to proper Israel.
So they can easy of movement for the settlers to go to the middle.
Some roads in area B of the West Bank, Palestinians are allowed on them, like between the roads of between Bethlehem and Hebron or Bethlehem and Jericho.
There are some few, very limited roads that you can't.
I mean, what are you going to do?
We have to share the roads.
But in many of these roads, Palestinians are not allowed to.
So for the sake of this, for the sake of this analogy, imagine they come and they build fence around this property.
And now it cuts your property in half and sometimes it slice it up.
So you become, San Diego becomes fragmented.
And they set up this fence around it.
They take the water resources.
They build walls, sniper towers.
And all of a sudden, you see the Mexican army coming to protect those new settlers.
And those settlers are not friendly neighbors.
They're not coming to San Diego to be neighbors.
They're coming to take the land from San Diego.
And now, if you are a mother, a Christian mother who puts her children in Christian school, and you want, and your school now is behind those new roads that these Mexican settlers built.
They built a new road that connects San Diego to Tijuana across the border.
And you are a mother who wants to go, who wants to drop off her kids to a school that is beyond those bypass roads only.
And this is not theoretical for us.
This is reality.
When you go to Bet Sahur, you will see the settlements encircling the little town, choking it.
It's like slow suffocation.
It prevents it from its natural growth.
That story that I told you about the mother is actually my cousin who takes her children.
She has twins and she has a six-year-old to the American evangelical school built in Beit Sahor.
And with this new settlement they have built, they have set up a roadblock, a checkpoint where Israeli come and man those checkpoints to protect the settlers.
Now, one day she was taking her children to school and the Israeli army pointed guns at them, instructing them to let the kids walk across the checkpoint to make it to the school to the other side.
Now, this is not an isolated incidence.
This is not something that happens every once in a while.
The army is always present to protect the settlers.
So my cousin told her six-year-old, you're strong.
You can do this.
And we can walk through it.
The teacher on the other side is going to receive you.
As soon as she walked, she held her head up high.
She passed through the soldier and she fainted at the feet of the school staff.
Now, this brings a lot of psychological trauma.
It brings a lot of nightmares.
That's what Christian families in Beit Sahur are experiencing.
Now, I remember I told you about this, our home back in Beit Sahur.
It's not too far from the school.
It's not too far from the new settlement they are building in Beit Sahur.
And down the road is the Israeli bypass road, which is only for settlers and Israeli armed vehicles.
In 1990, we watch settlers come and go.
There was an Israeli army vehicle that stopped.
And we saw, I was 10 at the time.
I saw an Israeli soldier stepping out of the vehicle, pointing a rifle at us, and he started shooting at us.
When Jesus comes and he elevates our thinking, when he elevates our outlook on life, when he takes morality to a whole new standard, when he said, you have heard, do not kill.
But I tell you, if you look at your brother and you call him Raka, Aramaic word for fool or stupid, you just have committed the murder.
did you do being born in the i don't understand the hate and i i certainly have been the target of it but i don't understand I mean, I understand why people don't like me.
I'm doing interviews like this, but I don't understand why would someone shoot a mother in front of her children?
That a violent settler came to her property, grazing in the land with his cattle, and then he hits her with a stone on her head, fractures her skull, takes her to, you know, she almost lost her life.
And when her son tried to defend her, the son gets arrested by the Israeli military.
And then when the settlers, bunch of settlers, they showed up at the house in the presence and the full support and the complicity of the Israeli army.
They knocked down the door.
Her daughter was inside, Nati Mann.
And I talked to her.
She drew the sign of her cross.
And when they found out that she was Christian, you know what that settler told her?
He told her, what are you doing here?
This is not your land.
You don't belong here.
He said, go to France or go somewhere else.
You don't belong here.
God gave us this land.
Now, this settler violence that has been on the rise, the town of Taipei, where they burned centuries-old church, they burned the crops, vandalized properties, write graffitis, spitting on clergy and pastors and leaders.
All of these atrocities are done in broad daylight.
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I see.
I was talking to my wife when I was on the road for a few weeks and I was talking to her at breakfast this morning about that interview with the Anglican Archbishop that we did on the banks of the Jordan River.
And we're Anglicans.
We grew up in it.
And the Anglican church in the United States is, you know, it's not very Christian anymore.
And I was telling her, that man, off camera, I said to him, people spit on you.
And my first thought was, why don't you shoot them?
Like, don't allow someone to spit on.
I didn't say that because I, you know, but that was my thought.
It shows what a bad person I am.
And he said, every time someone spits at me, I feel blessed.
They spit at Jesus.
And I was telling my wife, I think Christians who live in that kind of environment understand Christianity in a much deeper way than we do here.
I think that to hear you say that you don't feel bitterness.
Your mother didn't feel bitterness after being shot in front of her children for no reason.
We want to keep the message of Christ alive in the lands of its birth.
We want to share the good news of the gospel with every person who is traumatized, with every person who is suffering, with every child in Gaza who has lost everything.
The only hope is to tell them that God loves them.
Selam was the only child to his family who lived right down the street from me, closer to this Israeli bypass road.
And on February 18, 1991, a hateful Israeli settler parked his vehicle next to Selam's house and he shot him in the head inside his house through a window while having dinner with his family.
A new settlement coming to town is going to pose real existential threat to everyone living there and the Christian witness will be diminished.
So nobody from the occupation authority, from the supposedly humane Western Israeli government, ever went to your house and said, you know, we've questioned this guy or even followed up at all?
you see this is the you just shot your mother like an animal and then never the core issue here is that there is a culture of impunity A lot of these acts, they go unchecked.
They documented 111 attacks on Christians in 2024 alone.
111.
You go to any Israeli human rights organization such as Beth Salem, Peace Now, documenting every single incidence, and you will find a pattern that these attacks are not random.
They're not, they don't happen out of the blue.
They're systematic.
Israel has created a pervasive system, and we call it a structural pressure that they keep applying on the Christian population to push them out of their land.
When I speak to Palestinian Christians in Bet Sahur, what they fear the most, they saw what's happening in Gaza.
They have relatives in Gaza, and they fear that they are next.
It's a real danger that is pointed at Bit Zahur community right now.
And this new settlement, and it's not the only settlement.
I mean, Bitsaur is surrounded by settlements.
And we have long history of these settlers coming and taking Palestinian lands and building those lavish settlements.
Can I ask, just because I don't want anything to fall through the cracks here, your friend who was murdered while having dinner by a settler, what happened to that settler?
So thank God for organization like Breaking the Silence, which is a group of former IDF soldiers, and they're there sharing their stories and their experiences in the West Bank.
So home mapping is when an Israeli army decides to go into a Palestinian home for the purpose, quote unquote, of collecting intelligence.
And what they usually do is they lock up the whole family in a room for a day or two and sometimes for weeks, and they take over the house.
And this usually is done to give the new soldiers some practice and training.
It's called home mapping.
So when I grew up, and these are stories from my childhood, Edmon was walking down the street when an Israeli soldier was on top of a Palestinian house roof, dropped a stone on Edmon and killed him instantly.
A Christian young man for no reason.
Antoni Shomeri, he was caught by an Israeli, you know, he ran away from the Israeli army for some reason.
He got scared.
They caught him and they shot him in a close proximity in cold blood.
And I can give you stories of stories.
Those are not terrorists.
Those are not people who seek violence.
Those are people who want to simply stay in their land, work, live, have a future, live in peace.
And let me tell you, you know, highlighting the violence of the settlers does not mean we ignore the violence committed by some Palestinians.
I mean, as Christians, we recognize there are some Palestinians who carry out attacks and inflict terror on innocent Israelis as well.
And we're not going to bury our heads in the sand and say, oh, it doesn't happen.
You know, stabbing, ramming into some Israeli citizens.
And as Christian Palestinian American, we condemn any attacks on any civilians.
We condemn any form of violence to achieve justice.
This is the very core of the Christian message.
We reject violence altogether.
Palestinian Christians have always extended their hands of making peace with our Jewish neighbors, with our Muslim neighbors, with everyone.
We just want to live in peace.
So we condemn violence at all levels.
But there is a difference between when a Palestinian commits a violence versus when a settler commits a violence.
When a Palestinian commits a violence, wrong to be condemned, not to be condoned, to kill innocent civilians, usually he or she are shot on the spot.
And if they make it out alive, they get detained and they're thrown in prison.
And right now, the Israeli government is really pushing hard to pass a law to legalize the death penalty in Israel for Palestinians.
But anyway, he gets thrown in prison.
His house, his family, his family's house gets demolished.
And his family gets a security block not to travel anywhere outside town, collectively punishing the parents for the crime that their son or their daughter committed.
Now, this is what happened.
So when a Palestinian commits a crime, this happens.
But when a settler commits a crime, there is an Israeli army that backs it up.
There is a system that gives it impunity.
And this is the grave injustice.
As a Christian minister, this is why I come to your show and say, this should not be done, especially when Christians are supporting this without knowing the facts and the reality on the ground.
So, and I want to get, I have way too many questions for you, but thankfully we have time.
But this seems like a good time to try to understand what's going on there.
And I've already admitted that's where my anger lies is toward, you know, the people like me, Christians in America who are making excuses for this or abetting it, making it possible.
And Palestinian Christians have been consistent in condemning violence to achieve justice, as I said.
But the overwhelming suffering lies on Gaza right now.
The disproportionate response.
I was in South Africa on October 7th.
I was getting ready to speak at a Christian conference before 5,000 people in the room in Cape Town.
And before I got up there, my phone started all kinds of notifications going on.
And I learned about October 7th.
Immediately that night, I went on my hotel room and I recorded a video.
I said, I condemn this horror.
This is not the way we need to condone.
We condemn this act of violence.
But in the meantime, I said, I leaned over to my friend, my pastor friend, and I said, I am shaking because of the level of retaliation that the Israeli military is going to respond.
Nahida and Samar Anton, another two lady, a lady in her 80s and her daughter, they were gunned by an Israeli sniper on church ground, holy family church that was also later on bombed and three people were killed.
Those are real stories.
Those are real people who have suffered because of this military power that is directed on them day and day and night.
And the whole idea is really honestly getting rid of Palestinians, is pushing them out.
Doesn't matter whether they're Christians or Muslims.
That has been the strategy.
And now they're taking a different approach in the West Bank by suffocating the communities, by creating as many Israeli settlements as possible so they can squeeze the communities out.
They get subsidized and they get government subsidies to move into the West Bank and they call it Judea and Samaria.
And unfortunately, going back to your questions, there is an organization, not just one, but there's one that I know of and they boast about it on their website that they have raised and spent $3.5 billion To support these settlements and to bring people from all over the world to return to return to their ancestral homeland of Judea and Samaria.
And they raised those $3.5 billion from evangelical Christians, from Christians in the United States.
Now, if you're American here and you go to church, you love Jesus, you love scriptures just like we do, worship every Sunday, you're involved in ministry, you're volunteering at your local church.
And if you hear the vision from your pastors that, hey, we're, you know, the Jewish people, they have gone under severe, horrific Holocaust during World War II.
And now we have the opportunity to bring some of these survivors back to Israel to their homeland.
If you're an American watching this and hearing this, wow, this sounds really great.
This sounds very noble.
And I agree.
I mean, as a Palestinian, I want the Jewish people to live in safety and dignity.
But it doesn't have to come at the expense of the local Christian Palestinians and the local Palestinian indigenous people who have lived in that land for the past 2,000 years.
You see, what they tell you is that this is a great vision.
It's, you know, Christian, when they hear about Zionism, it's a compelling vision.
It's bringing people who don't have any land and haven't, and create a homeland.
And now we're required to call it Judea and Samaria.
And I mean, I guess I don't really care.
I wonder why some American politicians telling me what I have to call a place across the ocean, but because he's taking a lot of money from proponents of this, of course.
But like, why are they so intent on forcing me to call it Judea and Samaria?
They want to make the connection that this land divinely and theologically belongs to one group of people.
Now, if you look at the West Bank, let's break it down.
There is a legal implication, but there's also a moral and theological implication.
The legal implication, the U.S. politicians hate it.
They don't like to get into the legal complexity of the West Bank because it's a losing case.
The whole world agrees that the Israeli settlements are illegally built by an occupying force on Palestinian land.
The land is occupied according to United Nations Fourth Geneva Convention, United Nations Resolution, Security Council, even this has been the long-standing U.S. policy for the past 50 years.
I don't know if you remember the Hansel memo, which stipulates that this land is occupied and the settlements are illegal.
Now, from different administration, the language is different.
Some administration, like Obama, they call it obstacle to peace.
Some administration call it illegitimate settlements that are preventing and hindering the two-state solution.
But interestingly, in Trump's first administration, when Mike Pompeo was the Secretary of State, he rescinded the Hansel memo.
And he said, those Israeli settlements are not per se inconsistent with international law, whatever that means.
But basically, these are not illegal.
They have a legal right to Judea and Samaria.
For me, okay, I'm not a politician.
I'm not a legal expert.
I'm a Christian minister.
I look at the issue from a biblical perspective, from a moral perspective.
What are the biblical implications of this?
Does God really approve displacement of land theft?
And there's a biblical story actually about this, Tucker.
You know, when the evil king of Israel, Ahab, he had an evil woman, wife, named Jezabel.
They looked over and they saw a vineyard owned by Naboth.
And they loved that vineyard.
They said, man, we want to take it.
And being the king of Israel, they could have invoked divine rights.
He's the king appointed, ordained by God.
But unfortunately, he was a dishonorable king.
He did not obey the ways of the Lord.
So I don't know how much divine rights he can claim.
But let's say for the sake of argument, they claim divine rights.
They went and they tried to acquire the vineyard legally.
They offered Naboth money.
Naboth refused to sell.
So what do they do?
They conspire and they kill Naboth and they steal the land and they take it.
It's the state backed by divine rights stealing innocent men's land.
I got a lecture this morning from an Israeli this morning.
You know, I'm not an anti-Semite.
I abhor anti-Semitism.
It's against my religion.
I've said that a thousand times, and I mean it.
If I was anti-Semite, I'd just say I'm an anti-Semite.
I am not an anti-Semite, and I'm never going to become one, no matter what they say.
So I'm talking, you know, like, what do you want me to do to prove I'm not an anti-Semite?
100%.
Recant your attacks on Christian Zionism.
It wasn't stop saying mean things about the Jews.
I've never said any mean things about the Jews.
I don't feel bad things about the Jews.
I'm not mad at the Jews, period.
I'm mad, as I've said a million times, about my people, Christians, distorting the gospel in a way that allows theft and murder and the degradation of human beings.
I just, I'm never going to be okay with that.
And that's what they're mad at me about is because I've called out Christian Zionism because they see that.
I just had this conversation an hour ago, so it's fresh in mind.
They see that as critical.
You have to have American evangelical pastors telling their congregations who are sweet people who don't know any better that God wants you to support the state of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu.
But the process, the implication of what that means, to them, Christian Zionism means creating a safe place for the Jews where they can feel safe and secure, and which is honorable, great.
But for Palestinians, Christian Zionism means taking our land, taking our resources, while declaring that you have a divine right and the descendants of the shepherds in the little town of Bet Sahur, who have maintained their Christian presence for the past 2,000 years, do not somehow have that same divine right.
Our ancestors were Jewish.
Palestinian Christians, they first accepted the message of Christ, and that church is still intact today.
As I said, some people even converted when Islam came to Palestine.
Some people converted, but they did not convert from atheism.
Muslims converted from Christianity, and probably some Jews even converted to Islam.
So you might have some Muslims that can claim that they have a Jewish DNA.
Yeah, so thankful for the great education I got there.
I had to meet a lot of great friends, great professors.
My life was changed there.
I actually rededicated my life and I committed my life to service at Liberty University.
And I received the vision to start Levant Ministries at Liberty, which is the organization I now lead.
But here is where, you know, Christian Zionism have a different understanding.
It's a theopolitical movement that says that God has two distinct people with two distinct plans and two distinct covenants.
When Mike Huckabee was asked on, he was on an interview at TBN, Trinity Broadcasting Network, and he was asked, what is the verse that guides your day-to-day job as a U.S. ambassador in Israel?
You know what he said?
He said, Genesis 12, 3.
I want to be able to bless Israel so I can be blessed.
I want to secure all the blessings for Israel so the United States can receive the blessings in return.
That's a great question because as Christians, we have to look at the scripture through the lens of Christ.
Christ is the point.
Christ is the fulfillment.
And the way I look at scriptures, I look at the Old Testament, the faithful and the righteous people of the Old Testament and the righteous and the faithful people of the New Testament as one faith community.
They're beautifully connected through the cross.
The moment that you start separating this, this is when you start getting into different interpretations of what Israel means today.
Is it the government of Israel are God's people or not?
But when we look at the gospel, we see Jesus as the very center.
We look at the Old Testament with the lens of the gospel.
We see Jesus in the Old Testament.
And what Jesus did is very critical.
And it really is important for us to understand what Jesus did and the new covenant he brought and how it changed and it transformed the old covenant that God had with Abraham.
It didn't abolish it.
It didn't replace it, which is, you know, we're not replacement theology.
I do not agree with replacement theology.
God is not done with the Jews.
God is not done with anybody.
God wants everybody to come to the saving knowledge and to enjoy his grace and to enjoy his blessings.
God desires this for God so loved the world, right?
But what Jesus did, he did not replace the Jews, but it was a journey that God started with Abraham.
And when they quote Genesis 12, 3, that was a private conversation between God and Abraham.
And God came to Abraham and told him, you no longer are called Abrahams, but you're going to be called Abraham, the father with all nations.
So God's original plan is to redeem all nations, is to bless the whole world through the seed of Abraham.
And when you look at the New Testament, you read a verse like Galatians 3, 16, where it says, Abraham has one seed.
He didn't say seeds.
And through that seed, you get to enjoy all the Abrahamic blessings.
So what Jesus came to do, and it's that seed, of course, it's Christ.
And that journey that Abraham started with God, it's still in motion today.
So for God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whosoever, right?
So not only expanded the geographical location of the land, he also expanded the ethnic line of the people to include every tribe, every nation, every town.
And the Old Testament gives graphic language when it describes the, you know, not for Israel not obeying the laws of the Lord.
It says the land will vomit you out.
Excuse my language.
So it was conditional when it was given to Abraham.
But in Jesus, it's secure.
It's eternal.
It's no longer.
And, you know, what really makes me fall in love with Jesus and the patriarchs and the fathers, the church fathers, and the church throughout history.
And the Palestinian church really understand this because they truly understand the meaning of the covenant.
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, it spells it out in Hebrews that they were not, they were eagerly looking for the new Jerusalem whose architect and builder is God.
They were not fixated on a mere strip of land.
That's temporary.
That's going to be gone.
We should be focused on what's eternal.
And obviously, when Jesus came and he was in John 18, when he was being tried before Pilate, the charge was, are you a king?
Are you threatening me?
Am I, are you a threat to my kingdom and my dominion?
Jesus said, yes, I am a king, but my kingdom is not from this world.
My kingdom is not from here.
Why are we bringing back a pre-Christian territorial mindset to the church today?
I haven't even gotten involved in it because I'm just too ignorant.
Okay.
When you said replacement theology, I don't know what that is and I'm not going to learn.
All I know is that Christianity, my read of it is just focus on Jesus and you will be transformed.
And so I'm just going to stick with that.
But as a political matter, and that's what I do cover and have my whole life, I don't understand what Ambassador Huckabee, for example, is saying when he says, bless Israel.
I think people, I'm happy to let people practice their own religions.
I don't want to get involved.
I don't want to know everything about Mormonism or Islam or whatever.
It's fine.
But as long as you're saying you have a right to my money and your parents' land on the basis of this promise in Genesis, I have a right to ask you what the heck you're talking about.
I don't know if you even know the answer, but do you, if we were to say, okay, who lived in first century Palestine, current day Israel, are you more closely related to those people or is Benjamin and Yahoo more closely related to those people?
You know, when Jesus went into Nazareth, his hometown, synagogue, on a Saturday, he was baptized, went in the wilderness, got tried with the devil, overcame with scripture, and then he went to his hometown.
The scroll from Isaiah was handed to them.
And he said, this is the Nazareth manifesto.
This is the first sermon he's ever preached, Jesus.
Okay.
Started, launched his ministry in Nazareth, and it's so beautiful.
He said, the spirit of the Lord is upon me.
He has sent me to set the captive free, to bring sight to the blind, is to proclaim the good news to the poor.
Everybody in the synagogue was so happy.
And remember the context.
It was very a lot of tension between the Jews and the Romans.
So the Jews were waiting for the Messiah, but they were waiting for a military liberator.
They were waiting for a politician to come and lead them against the Romans.
But then Jesus gave two sermon illustrations.
One about a widow from Sidon, which is current modern day of Lebanon.
He said, not because there weren't so many widows in Israel, that Elijah was sent to the Sidonian widow.
And not because there weren't so many people with leprosy, which is a skin disease, that God's grace through Elisha, Elijah's servant, reached a Syrian army commander whose name is Naaman.
So Jesus is saying the foreigner gets to enjoy God's blessings and God's favor.
And the enemy from Oram gets to enjoy God's blessings and God's favor.
When they heard this, they were furious.
They took him to the edge of the town that was built on and they wanted to throw him over.
So Jesus' message, if we keep it central and focus, it disrupts all this exclusive mindset.
Why can't we share the land?
Why can't we live in peace?
We are extending an olive branch and saying, let's find, obviously, there is 7 million Jews and 7 million Palestinians living currently between the river and the sea.
Obviously, they're not going to kick the Palestinians out, although they've been trying very, very hard to do that.
And had Egypt opened the borders in Gaza, I think the whole population would have been pushed out.
And they are trying to do it very, very closely to the Christians in Bet Saho right now by bringing many different settlements and making life extremely miserable, restricted movement, all of that.
So obviously, the people are still there.
They're not going to kick us out.
The other option is that the Palestinians are going to kick the Israelis out.
And for me, as a Christian Palestinians, I don't want to see that happen.
I don't want to see another tragedy inflicted upon the Jewish people.
So the bottom line, and this is the posture, and this is the attitude, and this is the position that every single follower of Jesus must adopt and follow.
Let's find a way to share the land.
Let's find a way to make peace instead of getting caught in end time scenarios, something speculative sometime in the future.
Or, you know, preferring another group of people over another.
It's superiority.
It's becoming an ethnostate.
Are we going to keep it as an ethnostate or can we find a diplomatic solution?
The danger is when Christian politicians start to mix the politics with theology and they come up with this formula that is indigestible, hard to solve, sows confusion, and it keeps people on the sideline instead of actively engaging and becoming peacemakers.
Well, it, boy, you like every, you know, the Levantine peoples are so diplomatic.
It's like unbelievable.
Yeah, it's way worse than that.
I mean, you wind up, I mean, as you, as I know you know, you wind up with Christian politicians who are constantly invoking the name of Jesus, supporting the murder of their fellow Christians in the Levant.
So like that is very, I think that's very serious.
I don't think you should do that.
I think you're going to suffer for that.
Like, don't do that.
How can you excuse or aid in the murder of innocents in the name of Jesus?
But what really caught my attention, Takar, when I was reading over the website of that summit, I was reading some notes and some guidelines, do's and don'ts.
One of the guidelines, it's a Christian ministry also who's doing who's organizing this with the foreign ministry affairs.
One of the guidelines stated that do not speak of the name of Jesus.
Preaching is not allowed in Jerusalem.
Express your faith through acts of kindness and all that, but do not mention Jesus.
We still, our ministry still serves in the Palestinian territories.
And we serve in Jordan and we serve in Egypt.
And our ministry is focused on reaching young people, equipping them and empowering them so they can be agents of change in their communities, so they can become peacemakers.
This is why I left my secular job in DC, a very successful job, and committed my life to this mission because the Christian presence in the Middle East is at the brink of extinction.
If we can't do it, if we don't do anything about it, especially in Bitsaul right now, there'll be no Christians left.
This is exactly why I am not going to be silent anymore.
Not because I'm not an activist.
I don't go on podcasts and just start talking.
But when I see something against the values that we believe in, the biblical values, against the character of God, I have to be that prophetic voice and say, not in our name.
Jesus showed us a better way.
Jesus taught his followers to be the salt, to be the light, to be the peacemaker.
He entrusted us with the ministry of reconciliation.
How much reconciliation efforts are we doing?
We're giving money and billions of dollars to build these settlements and taking the land from Christians, but we're spending little to no money in peace initiatives, in reconciliation efforts, in understanding and mutual understanding.
There are so many Christian-led organizations on the ground that are doing amazing work in raising up the next generation.
That's the whole reason I'm putting my life on the line not to see Palestinian Christians and the next generation of Palestinians go hopeless and in despair.
I mean, the people we serve in Bethlehem, when we tell the parents that we're taking your kids to Jerusalem, whenever Israelis allow us to get permits, It's becoming really very rare now that Israelis would allow Christians from Bethlehem, which is five kilometers away, to go and spend a day in Jerusalem.
But when we do get their permits and we tell them...
The whole thing is the system is set up to restrict the movement.
You have to apply through the Israeli militaries to get permission to go from one Palestinian city to an Israeli city, so Israeli control cities.
Think about it.
I mean, look, at the West Bank, it's like a Swiss cheese.
There are holes in the Swiss cheese.
Those are the Palestinian cities.
They live in 165 enclaves throughout the West Bank.
But Israel controls the whole cheese militarily.
And they apply pressure on these Palestinian cities.
Some people even call it the holy Swiss cheese.
So when Palestinians want to go from one Palestinian city to another, they have to drive on specific roads going through specific checkpoints, roadblocks.
And around every city, there are iron gates that Israel seals off every time they feel like it.
Our ministry director was coming back from a trip from Jericho to Bethlehem.
A drive should take him about 35, 40 minutes.
He got stuck at one of the checkpoints for eight hours.
He got hungry.
He ordered food on DoorDash, came through a motorcycle, delivered pizza for him, but he got stuck there for eight hours.
And he had a team of ministers from the Netherlands, and they were all stuck together.
They saw it firsthand: lines and lines of trucks and Palestinian cars.
Why?
Because the Israeli soldier on that checkpoint felt like taking a nap.
Eight hours.
This is the daily reality.
This is not random.
A trip that will, you know, if you had a medical emergency, you miss it.
If you have a job interview, if you want to go from Bethlehem to Ramallah, from Jericho to any other Palestinian town, Hebron, you will have to go through these, you will have to navigate through the Swiss cheese.
And sometimes you get shot at randomly at gunpoint.
So you're an American and you have the blue passport, you're a taxpayer, you get mistreated by the Israeli government, the IDF, which you also pay for, holding a weapon made in your country that you paid for.
And You have an ambassador who serves supposedly your country at the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem.
But when I see, you know, a regime in the Middle East that is claiming to be the only democracy in the Middle East, and it's the extension of the West, and they're not holding, they're not living up to these biblical values, then they need to be held accountable.
My whole life has been sidetracked by this question in the past few months because I feel it so strongly.
And I never wanted to have this debate, but whatever.
But just to the question of Huckabee, his job is to represent you and your government.
So if you called him, and don't want to, you know, Huckabee is not the most guilty person.
I know him.
But I just have to ask, like, could you call Huckabee's?
Could you call the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem and say, hey, I'm an American citizen and I'm being, some guy with a gun is like pulling me out of the car.
So many Christians, they decide, say, well, I just want to focus on the gospel and end time theology.
And they spend hours and resources and millions of dollars preparing for an event that's going to happen or may not happen in the future while people are living on living hell on earth.
So Anti-Wright, great theologian, he said, you know, heaven is not a place that you get to go to after you die, but heaven is bringing God's love to people on earth.
So let me ask you about a very controversial topic, and that's Islam and the Muslims.
And I noticed it in the United States that anyone who says, wait a second, what is going on in Gaza or the West Bank?
Why are we paying for this?
Why are our ministers, our ministers, making excuses for this?
Anyone who says those things is accused of working for the Muslims or being a secret jihadi or taking money from some Muslim group or country or whatever.
This has happened to me, so it's a look.
For the record, I've never taken money from anybody, Christian, Jew, or Muslim, and won't.
But whatever.
The point is, the response is, I don't want to talk about what your tax dollars are doing because Islam is so scary that we just have to go along with this or else we're all going to be living in a caliphate.
And we are told by Christians and because I minister among Christian circles that this is a cosmic battle between God of the Bible against his enemies.
Do we have our differences theologically with Islam?
Yes.
Nobody ignores that.
Do we have our understanding of God?
Yes.
But that doesn't mean we have to discriminate and demonize an entire group of people, almost 2 billion people, for the sins that are committed by bad actors who are using religious texts or whatever to justify violence.
That is to be called out.
And I believe many governments in the Arab world have rejected political Islam.
And had we listened to the church leaders in Iraq, had we listened to the pastors and leaders who pledged with the administration not to invade, we wouldn't have this catastrophe.
Iraqi community is very small, but they're faithful, they're staying, but they have been devastated by the terrorists.
And what's going to fill this hope is radicalism, extremism.
You know, I tell you a story about Ali Faraj from Gaza.
Little boy.
I think he's six or seven or eight.
Can't remember his age.
He was blown off his apartment into the next door roof.
And there's a famous picture.
He's pointing hands and blooded.
He lost five of his sisters, 15 members of his family.
That creates a deep vacuum in his life.
If it's not filled with the hope, if it's not filled with God's love, this is the easiest.
You know, someone who's going, when you lose your agency, when you live in despair, I'm not giving excuses, but this is the vacuum that we need to fill.
Obviously.
And I'm deeply concerned.
I leave the politicians to figure it out politically, but as Christians, as ministers, our posture has to change.
Our attitudes toward everybody, even our enemies, has to change.
So in the world that you've lived in, I didn't fully realize just how in evangelical world you've been since you, how old were you when you came to the U.S.?
So you come literally from the West Bank to the United States and you go to Liberty and a lot of great people, but they have a totally different understanding of what's happening in the place that you grew up than you do and a totally different theology maybe than you do.
It's America.
It's different.
But one of the ideas that's common among Christian Zionists is that they need, Christians need to help rebuild this thing called the Third Temple in Jerusalem.
Unfortunately, there's a mosque on the site, one of the holiest places in Islam, Aksa Mosque.
But is that something that Christians should want to rebuild the third temple?
They're putting their hopes on earthly matters where I direct him to the faith that Abraham had, where he fixed his eyes on what eternal, the new Jerusalem.
In Galatians chapter 4, it spells it out really clearly.
If you are in Christ, you belong to the free woman, Sarah.
And if you don't belong to Christ, you're still fixated and enslaved by the idea of an earthly Jerusalem.
The land matters.
Yes, we honor Jerusalem.
We remember what Christ had done there.
It carries deep memories.
But the question is, does it have any spiritual significance?
Does the temple have any spiritual significance?
When Jesus came, he transformed the whole meaning.
Again, you know, John chapter 1, it says, Jesus, he pitched his tent among us.
The word became flesh.
The word became flesh.
He tabernacled among us.
That's the exact word that the Greek language uses to describe Christ's incarnation.
He tabernacled among us because he is the locus of the land.
If there is anything holy in the Holy Land, it's Jerusalem.
If there is anything holy in Jerusalem, it is the temple.
If there is anything holy in the temple, it is the holy of holies.
But guess what happened when Jesus was crucified?
That thing got destroyed, split in half, because he is the final destination.
Everything in scripture points to Jesus, not to a third temple.
You know, when Jesus ascended and he sent his Holy Spirit, he empowered his disciples to be the temple of the Holy Spirit because God does not reside.
It specifically said it does not reside in a house built with hands and stones.
God resides in us human beings through the Holy Spirit.
So why are we so fixated on erecting a temple that does not have any spiritual significance whatsoever?
We are the temple of God.
Jesus himself is the high priest according to the New Testament.
Jesus himself is the Lamb of God, the sacrifice.
And Jesus himself offered himself as a sacrifice.
So he is the Alpha and He's the Omega.
He's the author and the finisher of our faith, according to our Holy Scripture.