Former IDF Soldier and Settler Now Follows Jesus — Daniel Klein
Fares Abraham
3,563 views May 6, 2026 The Fares Abraham Podcast
Daniel Klein grew up in Efrat — an Israeli settlement a few miles from Bethlehem — inside a religious Zionist world that told him Palestinians didn't exist. This episode traces how that worldview collapsed: the structural violence of Israel's settlement enterprise, the erasure of the Nakba from Jewish consciousness, how Christian Zionism has functioned as financial and theological cover for the occupation, and what it cost Klein personally to leave it all behind — including his journey from rabbinic Judaism and the IDF to faith in Jesus Christ.
Daniel Klein is an Israeli-American, former IDF veteran, and West Bank settler-turned-Christian who now speaks publicly on the lived realities of Israeli settlement policy and the theological distortions of Christian Zionism.
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00:00 Start
02:45 Life Inside an Israeli Settlement
08:47 How Settlements Devastate Palestinian Life
14:48 Settler Violence and Structural Violence
19:09 Anti-Semitism vs. Political Critique
26:11 Myths: Land Without a People and the Erasure of the Nakba
28:07 When the Narrative Starts to Crack
37:57 Coming to Faith in Christ and the Personal Cost
50:28 Deconstructing Zionism
56:43 Christian Zionism and the Settlement Enterprise
59:32 The Gospel, Power, and Where Jesus Would Be Today
1:06:18 Parting Thoughts
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Search transcript
Chapter 1: Start
0:00Daniel Klein, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for being here and for having this conversation with me.
0:066 secondsThank you. Thank you so much for having me.
0:099 secondsYou're an Israeli Jew who grew up in Ephraat, which is an Israeli settlement in the West Bank, uh, not too far from
0:1717 secondswhere I grew up near Bethlehem. I grew up in a little town called Bet Sahur, known for the shepherd's fields. It's uh
0:2424 secondsclose to Bethlehem, but Ephraat is also in that neighborhood which is um very very close but you no longer live there
0:3333 secondsand your life has taken a very different path. What strikes me is that uh back in the Middle East uh even though we grew
0:4242 secondsup on the same land you and I only few minutes apart the system the occupation
0:4949 secondsthe Israeli occupation in place would have made it nearly impossible for our paths to cross in a very in a meaningful way.
0:5858 secondsSo there are giant walls as you know surrounding Bethlehem. three giant walls, um, checkpoints, iron gates that
1:081 minute, 8 secondsthey shut down and they they open anytime they feel like it. Uh, the roads are largely reserved for Jewish
1:161 minute, 16 secondssettlers, although we share some roads in in area I think C or B. U, but there
1:231 minute, 23 secondsare, you know, they are not abstract political realities. These are real u realities that impact everyday life.
1:331 minute, 33 secondsThey shape every uh aspect of the Palestinian and the Israeli lives and they keep people separated. They keep
1:421 minute, 42 secondsIsraelis and Palestinians separated. And yet here we are today in the United States talking through a web camera uh sitting together as brothers in Christ.
1:541 minute, 54 secondsAnd that means something you know to me it is it is a reminder that u peace and reconciliation is always possible. It is
2:042 minutes, 4 secondsa sign that um you know the cycle of violence can be broken among our people and that truth, justice and
2:122 minutes, 12 secondsreconciliation are still worth pursuing uh for both the Palestinians and the Israelis. Um later I want to ask you about your journey of faith in in Jesus.
2:252 minutes, 25 secondsBut let me begin here. I've I've watched the settlement that you grew up in in Afrat expand over the years near near
2:332 minutes, 33 secondsBethlehem. When you think back to your time there, uh what was it like growing up in Ephraat knowing that you were
2:412 minutes, 41 secondssurrounded by Palestinian towns and villages? H well you'd mentioned all of the walls that separated us and all of
Chapter 2: Life Inside an Israeli Settlement
2:502 minutes, 50 secondsthe physical barriers but I think that even more so than the physical barriers were the spiritual mental and
2:582 minutes, 58 secondspsychological barriers that from my perspective there was the aspect of it where you didn't even exist right you
3:053 minutes, 5 secondsdidn't exist truly in my consciousness and so I grew up in a very idyllic
3:133 minutes, 13 secondssettlement you You know, if I were to describe it, it almost feels biblical with the Jerusalem stones and red roofs,
3:223 minutes, 22 secondsall the infrastructure, parks. I grew up playing baseball on the hilltops with my
3:283 minutes, 28 secondsfriends, if if the irony doesn't fly too high above us there. And so I really
3:363 minutes, 36 secondsgrew up in a very very insulated bubble. And as for me, it almost felt as
3:443 minutes, 44 secondsif I just lived in a suburb of Jerusalem. And my only real encounter with Palestinians, and back then I
3:523 minutes, 52 secondsdidn't even know them as Palestinians because there was a systematic attempt to delegitimize the concept of a
4:004 minutesPalestinian. So I I grew up learning that Palestinians didn't exist. So from my perspective, even though there are even though there
4:094 minutes, 9 secondsis about 7 million Palestinians living in Israel and Palestine, I mean
4:164 minutes, 16 secondsthe demographics are 7 million Jews and 7 millions Palestinian uh living in in the Holy Land.
4:244 minutes, 24 secondsYes. And the way we were the way we were taught and you can still hear it to this day. This isn't some sort of fringe idea
4:314 minutes, 31 secondsthat the Palestinians do not exist. And so we might call them Arabs as a way to kind of erase what a
4:394 minutes, 39 secondsPalestinian even means. And even then it gets very discombobulated. Are you in Israel? Are you in the West Bank? And
4:464 minutes, 46 secondsall of these attempts to obfuscate the reality of this people of the person who is sitting right in front of me right now.
4:564 minutes, 56 secondsAnd so my only interaction with Palestinians back then growing up was seeing them on the roads as I drove through from my settlement to Jerusalem.
5:075 minutes, 7 secondsAnd in the settlement we would see them they would come and they would they would work. So builders and gardeners
5:165 minutes, 16 secondsand beyond beyond those groups which later in life they couldn't even they can't come into the settlement on their own. and they had to come in with an
5:255 minutes, 25 secondsarmed guard and they had to wear yellow vests. All of these different layers of dehumanization.
5:315 minutes, 31 secondsThat was really my only interaction with Palestinians growing up.
5:355 minutes, 35 secondsSo, you never had a conversation with any of them? No.
5:415 minutes, 41 secondsOr Wow. You know, a couple of months ago, I went on the Tucker Carlson show and I tried to help people outside this
5:505 minutes, 50 secondsregion understand the everyday reality on the ground. Uh, one of the main reasons I went on that platform was to
5:585 minutes, 58 secondsdraw attention to the new Israeli settlement being built on Christian land near Bet Sahur where I grew up and to
6:076 minutes, 7 secondshighlight the existential threat and I mean it. is an existential threat that these settlements pose to Palestinians
6:156 minutes, 15 secondsuh especially to the pal to the Christian population of Palestine which is already under immense pressure to
6:226 minutes, 22 secondsleave the holy land. And we all know that every new settlement does not just add homes. I mean, when you have new
6:306 minutes, 30 secondssettlers coming from uh Brooklyn or Miami or different parts of the world, uh it's great that, you know, they're
6:386 minutes, 38 secondsthey're coming to to to Israel and they they find new citizenship, but that means displacement, that means uh land
6:466 minutes, 46 secondsconfiscation, that means uh that these new settlements, they fragment the already fragmented community,
6:546 minutes, 54 secondsPalestinian community. That means restricted movement. And over time it makes normal life unsustainable and quietly pushes people off the land.
7:067 minutes, 6 secondsUh many of us genuinely fear that within our generation Daniel there there may be no Christian presence left in Palestine.
7:167 minutes, 16 secondsAnd I know now you know the Christian presence have been dwindling and some political agendas they want to attribute that to you know local pressures.
7:267 minutes, 26 secondsMuslims are pushing the Christians out, but you and I know uh from talking, you know, off off this interview and that
7:357 minutes, 35 secondsthere are systems in place designed to push the local Christian population out.
7:407 minutes, 40 secondsI mean, right now in the West Bank, there's about 50,000 Palestinian Christians. In Israel, I think it's
7:467 minutes, 46 secondsabout 150 160, but the the population is is is
7:547 minutes, 54 secondsshrinking uh because of internal displacement in 1948 and 1967, which
8:018 minutes, 1 seconddramatically changed the demographics of an area like Bethlehem. It used to be 80% Christian. Now it's about 20%.
8:098 minutes, 9 secondsuh and it's because of these refugees coming to Bethlehem and uh the low birth rates among Christians. It's it's a very
8:178 minutes, 17 secondswell-known fact. And also, you know, the the the major part is that Christians, they don't like conflict. They tend to
8:258 minutes, 25 secondsflee. My family came to the United States because of of the violence and because of the the conflict that has been taking place. So from your
8:338 minutes, 33 secondsperspective, Daniel, how do Israeli settlements in the West Bank pose
8:408 minutes, 40 secondsa threat to the Palestinian communities that lived there for centuries and generations?
Chapter 3: How Settlements Devastate Palestinian Life
8:478 minutes, 47 secondsI think that there are two parts to this. One is also the treatment or the perception of Christians and Christianity. And then what you're asking is also about the lived reality.
8:588 minutes, 58 secondsAnd you know over time I start I started to see how the settlements were creating
9:079 minutes, 7 secondsat a very basic level a Swiss cheese in the West Bank and every time another settlement pops up it's cutting off another access point
9:169 minutes, 16 secondsanother road and now you throw in another checkpoint and for my lived reality I wasn't even aware of this until I started realizing
9:259 minutes, 25 secondsthat what could be a 15minute drive for me could turn could be a a two to sevenh
9:319 minutes, 31 secondshour drive for a Palestinian just based on the whims of what roads are we going to close today and how much are we going
9:399 minutes, 39 secondsto harass the Palestinians by checking IDs one at a time and you know I had these very formative experiences driving
9:479 minutes, 47 secondsthrough the checkpoint as they started to become these monstrous border crossings and I would see how the Palestinians would have to arrive at the
9:559 minutes, 55 secondscheckpoint at 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning to be herded through these these cages like animals just so that they can
10:0410 minutes, 4 secondsget IDed just so that they can find work on the other side of the fence serving the very institution
10:1310 minutes, 13 secondsthat is deciding whether or not they can even live, work or exist in the first place. And so I started to see you I
10:2210 minutes, 22 secondswent to law school and I started to learn that settlements were at the highest levels at a systems level were
10:2810 minutes, 28 secondsreferred to as strategic right how can we create a strategic stronghold in order to quash dissent among the
10:3810 minutes, 38 secondsPalestinians right where are we going to put them so that they cause so that they are most beneficial to Israel and most detrimental to the Palestinians this is
10:4610 minutes, 46 secondsthe kind of thing that was a part of the discourse without even thinking about what this meant. Growing up, I didn't even realize that Palestinians had all of these
10:5510 minutes, 55 secondsdifferent forms of IDs. And each ID told you where you can go and where you can't go. You can go to Gaza, but you can't
11:0211 minutes, 2 secondscome out. You can go to and all of these different tiers of IDs and permits and administrative hell designed to make
11:1211 minutes, 12 secondsdoing living, working, doing business a complete complete nightmare. And it was by design.
11:1811 minutes, 18 secondsVisiting families, visiting families, you know, I have my wife visiting wives on the other side.
11:2511 minutes, 25 secondsMy wife my wife was was born in Gaza and we're both American citizens, but today if she you know, she cannot under the
11:3411 minutes, 34 secondsIsraeli system go to the West Bank legally and reside there. I mean, this was when we when we stepped out of our
11:4211 minutes, 42 secondsum when I stepped out of my career in Washington DC and I wanted to launch the ministry, this nonprofit so we can go back and serve the Christian community
11:5011 minutes, 50 secondsin Palestine. We decided that we wanted to move there uh from the United States back to Bethlehem and the Israeli system
11:5811 minutes, 58 secondsprevented us from making that step because they would not allow my wife who has a Gaza ID, a Gaza issue ID to live
12:0712 minutes, 7 secondslegally with me in Bethlehem in a Palestinian territory. So you're talking about not just and it's not just Gaza ID
12:1612 minutes, 16 secondsand West Bank ID. You have the Jerusalem ID, you have uh Palestinian citizen of Israel's.
12:2312 minutes, 23 secondsMhm. And I think that most Israelis are not even aware that this is what life is like as a Palestinian or that people on
12:3212 minutes, 32 secondsother sides of all of these imaginary lines are actually a family. And so people don't have a concept that you
12:4012 minutes, 40 secondscould live in East Jerusalem, right? We might call somebody who lives in East Jerusalem and Israeli and somebody else that is on the other side in the West
12:4912 minutes, 49 secondsBank a Palestinian and people don't make the connection that these people just across the street it's not it's not even you know on the other side just across the street
12:5712 minutes, 57 secondsand that all of these people are one people that have been fragmented literally brothers cousins aunts uncles and grandparents that are on different sides of all of these imaginary lines.
13:0813 minutes, 8 secondsThis is not the kind of thing that most people I don't know if they think about it. They certainly haven't internalized it. And I only discovered these things
13:1813 minutes, 18 secondsvery very late in my journey of deconstructing Zionism was I even aware of what the lived reality of a Palestinian might be like anywhere under Israeli territory.
13:2913 minutes, 29 secondsWow. So going back to the settlement movement and recently with the current Israeli government they have accelerated
13:3613 minutes, 36 secondsthe approval of illegal settlements and and and just for our viewers to know these settlements in the West Bank, in
13:4313 minutes, 43 secondsEast Jerusalem, in Gaza or anywhere in Palestinia, they are deemed illegal under international law. But of course
13:5213 minutes, 52 secondsyou would have people on the far right or in the you know they they have a specific reading of scripture in the
13:5913 minutes, 59 secondsBible. They believe that all of the land belong exclusively to the Jewish people. So it doesn't matter what the international law says.
14:0914 minutes, 9 secondsUh any Jew from all around the world can move into the West Bank and claim biblical right because that's how they
14:1614 minutes, 16 secondsinterpret scripture. And uh going back to the settlement issue u you know with
14:2414 minutes, 24 secondsthese road road closures with these land confiscations with all the threats that and the the price that comes along with
14:3414 minutes, 34 secondswith these new settlements um settler violence has been on the rise and this is the most deadly. Can you shed some
14:4214 minutes, 42 secondslight on the settler violence that is taking place uh in the West Bank?
Chapter 4: Settler Violence and Structural Violence
14:4814 minutes, 48 secondsIt's a very interesting question because there there are almost two forms of violence in the West Bank and settler
14:5514 minutes, 55 secondsviolence in my opinion might even be the lesser form of violence. The deeper violence is the continuous expansion
15:0315 minutes, 3 secondsthat people in their minds think is legitimate. Right? As if I live in a big established settlement that you're not
15:1015 minutes, 10 secondscontributing to the systemic violence against the Palestinians. And then the media can show you the the what in many
15:1815 minutes, 18 secondsways is more fringe physical violence which isn't really in the consciousness of most settlers
15:2615 minutes, 26 secondsbecause I think that today there are about 600,000 settlers in the West Bank and the vast majority of them are
15:3515 minutes, 35 secondsI would you know middle class working Israelis that aren't you know if you were to speak to them they wouldn't they
15:4315 minutes, 43 secondswouldn't come they wouldn't come off as I mean they would probably come off as extreme but they would be what is considered moderate in Israel. So most
15:5215 minutes, 52 secondssettlers are moderate and in that sense they're even more dangerous.
15:5815 minutes, 58 secondsAnd so I was never particularly privy to to settler violence because in the blocks of settlement that I grew up in,
16:0716 minutes, 7 secondsyou know, that that wasn't really something that we that we saw because the settlement was so built up and so institutionalized.
16:1616 minutes, 16 secondsThere was no friction with Palestinians.
16:1816 minutes, 18 secondsand then the settlement next to ours and then the settlement across the street.
16:2116 minutes, 21 secondsThey already formed a block that was so big that and protected and so big and so protected that there
16:2916 minutes, 29 secondswasn't even friction anymore. And so the real ultimate goal is that most of the settlers that move in these days into the settlements, they're moving in
16:3716 minutes, 37 secondsbecause they want a higher quality of life and a lower cost of living, right? These are not people that want to go in and be violent. They would oppose
16:4616 minutes, 46 secondsphysical violence while not understanding that the physical violence is the spearhead and the undercurrent
16:5416 minutes, 54 secondsthat's that's moving the whole thing forward. And and the same people might serve in the military and serve in the
17:0117 minutes, 1 secondcheckpoints, participate in raids in Palestinian homes, enforce this bi these biometric concentration camps and still
17:1017 minutes, 10 secondssay that settler violence is bad while taking place in a systematically
17:1817 minutes, 18 secondsmore violent system. So, so there is a system that exists that is projecting violence, but you call it the structural
17:2517 minutes, 25 secondsviolence um institutionalized by the state backed by the Israeli military. And by the way,
17:3217 minutes, 32 secondsyou you served at the IDF. You were you were part of that system at one point.
17:3817 minutes, 38 secondsYep. Absolutely. And which is why I think you know I recently spoke to to somebody who's who's awakening from the
17:4617 minutes, 46 secondsnightmare. And he he was telling me that one of his major moments of awakening was when he realized when he was
17:5517 minutes, 55 secondsparticipating in these raids in Palestine villages. He first went on the journey of recognizing that I am the monster which is a really important part
18:0318 minutes, 3 secondsof the deconstruction process that the monster is within you. And for him he realized, wait a second.
18:1218 minutes, 12 secondsOh, actually a background. He was part of an extremist organization before a an extremist viol uh an extremist settler
18:2018 minutes, 20 secondsorganization before joining the military. And then in the military he realized the this institutional violence
18:2718 minutes, 27 secondsthat I am using on the Palestinians now is far far greater than any of the
18:3518 minutes, 35 secondsextremist fringe movement that I movements that I had participated in before. And so this is a person who was a part of these
18:4418 minutes, 44 secondsfringe movements that you're talking about and had an awakening when he realized that the IDF was far more violent. But we like to but we can
18:5218 minutes, 52 secondssugarcoat the IDF when we can whitewash it and we can have all of these psychological mechanisms that make us think that
18:5918 minutes, 59 secondsbecause you're dawning a uniform and because you have the national myth and because of all of the all of these things of indoctrination that that somehow makes the pig kosher.
Chapter 5: Anti-Semitism vs. Political Critique
19:0919 minutes, 9 secondsSo is it is it anti- I mean this is what we get accused all the time of when
19:1619 minutes, 16 secondssomeone points out to these atrocities these systems that are inflicting pains on ordinary people and for my community
19:2519 minutes, 25 secondsit's a Christian community who is extremely suffering from these uh systems the settlement expansions the
19:3219 minutes, 32 secondsthe lack of getting permits to even go visit relatives in Jerusalem and Nazareth uh the the inequality and the
19:3919 minutes, 39 secondsdehumanization that we are subjected to in the West Bank. Uh when someone points the finger and criticizes those policy,
19:4719 minutes, 47 secondsis it anti-Jewish? Is it anti-Jewish? I mean, you're a Jewish person and you lived in the system and you supported and you were part of it, but is it
19:5519 minutes, 55 secondsanti-Jewish to criticize this and to to point the finger at the system that is really creating chaos and and causing harm and damage to other people?
20:0720 minutes, 7 secondsI mean, absolutely not. And even though as we deconstruct this process, it's really really important especially for
20:1420 minutes, 14 secondsfollowers of Christ to separate the person from the belief. This is a really really vital part of this process
20:2120 minutes, 21 secondsbecause the the system as it is today feeds off of the accusation of
20:3020 minutes, 30 secondsanti-semitism. It's it's the fuel that allows this system to perpetuate itself.
20:3520 minutes, 35 secondsAnd it's a shield that it uses in order to hide behind. It's with a shield and a sword.
20:4120 minutes, 41 secondsAnd so it's really important to parse out the person and the idea and understand that these are people that
20:4920 minutes, 49 secondshold these ideas, right? That's also that's important to say, but that doesn't mean that it's an attack on the person or on the person's being.
20:5820 minutes, 58 secondsAnd so we have we have to separate between have to separate be between Jew and Jewish which is you know
21:0521 minutes, 5 secondsGod calls us to love all people uh regardless of their ethnicity regardless of their religious uh background regardless of their color regardless of
21:1321 minutes, 13 secondseven their geographical location. You know as a settler you know I believe that you're illegally living in in a land that belongs to me but I'm called
21:2121 minutes, 21 secondsto love you but I'm going to hate that system that allowed and enabled this to happen. So we have to separate between criticizing these policies that are
21:3021 minutes, 30 secondsinflicting pain and suffering on on ordinary innocent people and between you know anti-semitism which is in my view
21:3821 minutes, 38 secondsit's evil. It has to be called out. We cannot hate anyone on the basis of race or ethnicity. It doesn't matter you know
21:4721 minutes, 47 secondswhat people believe or where they come from and who they are. We have to love them and cherish them because they all are created equal in the image of God.
21:5821 minutes, 58 secondsAnd once you dehumanize the dehumanizers, you become a dehumanizer, right? So fall and it it's really really
22:0522 minutes, 5 secondschallenging work, right? The ability to to keep the heart open despite the fact that these people hold these beliefs and are perpetuating the cycle and to never
22:1422 minutes, 14 secondsallow it to get to you to the point where you start participating in the same cycle. And this is really, really
22:2122 minutes, 21 secondschallenging work, but it's really the only way to be able to break this cycle, to break the cycle of violence within.
22:2722 minutes, 27 secondsH so as a Palestinian American, you know, I carry deep love and you're an
22:3422 minutes, 34 secondsAmerican citizen as well and I know that we we both carry deep love for the Holy
22:4022 minutes, 40 secondsLand, for our people and we have a deep gratitude for this great country which you know gave me and gave you an
22:4922 minutes, 49 secondsopportunity and allowed me to become a proud contributing citizen of the United States. And because of that, you know, as a Palestinian, I take Jewish history
22:5822 minutes, 58 secondsand trauma uh seriously. A big part of the problem in Palestine and in Israel
23:0423 minutes, 4 secondsis that the two peoples do not truly talk to each other. And and you mentioned that growing up in the
23:1223 minutes, 12 secondssettlement. And I grew up in in in a Palestinian town and I never had the really meaningful conversation and
23:1923 minutes, 19 secondscommunication with with settlers or with Israelis in general. and we do not fully understand or we did not fully understand one another's trauma. Right?
23:3023 minutes, 30 secondsSo very rarely will you find Palestinians who fully grasp what happened to the Jewish people for
23:3823 minutes, 38 secondsexample in Europe especially in the 1940s and I always say you know anti-semitism is the crime of the west
23:4523 minutes, 45 secondsis not the crime of the Palestinians and very rarely also you will find Israelis who fully understand the events
23:5323 minutes, 53 secondsof 1948 the nekba right and the way Israel's establishment came at the cost of displacing hundreds of thousands of
24:0224 minutes, 2 secondsPalestinians and emptying so many towns and villages and kicking people out of their homes and they were never allowed
24:0924 minutes, 9 secondsto come back. Many people don't even realize that a large portion of Gaza's population. Some people say it's 70%
24:1724 minutes, 17 secondsconsists of displaced refugees from 1948 and 1967.
24:2324 minutes, 23 secondsAnd at the same time, I fully recognize that, you know, anti-semitism is real.
24:2824 minutes, 28 secondsAs I said, it's painful and it's deeply rooted in history from centuries of persecution
24:3424 minutes, 34 secondsuh to the horrors of the Holocaust. But Palestinians are not anti-semitic. The Palestinian cause is not anti-semitic.
24:4324 minutes, 43 secondsUh this is about struggle for uh finding home. Um it's it's a human issue. It's a
24:5124 minutes, 51 secondsmoral issue. This is not something to minimize or dismiss. I have many Jewish friends. I have you as a brother in
24:5824 minutes, 58 secondsChrist and I have the privilege uh of serving alongside Messianic believers who deeply love Jesus and sincerely
25:0525 minutes, 5 secondsfollow him. Uh I sat at tables with with them, prayed with them and build real relationships. So for me this is not
25:1425 minutes, 14 secondsabstract. I understand that for many Jewish people uh questions of land
25:2025 minutes, 20 secondsidentity and security are shaped by you have a long history of survival and
25:2825 minutes, 28 secondshonest conversation must acknowledge that reality uh with humility and respect just as it must also acknowledge
25:3625 minutes, 36 secondsthe deep suffering of the Palestinians and the dispossessions of the Palestinians that remain unsolved today.
25:4325 minutes, 43 secondsSo it just seems to me that Palestinians are being dehumanized in a new and ugly
25:5025 minutes, 50 secondsway and an unjust way that we haven't seen before. But before anything shifted for you personally, Daniel, uh what
25:5925 minutes, 59 secondsnarrative did you inherit about the land specifically um about the Palestinians and about your role in that story?
Chapter 6: Myths: Land Without a People and the Erasure of the Nakba
26:1126 minutes, 11 secondsSo some of the the myths that we grew up with is that the land of Palestine was a land
26:2026 minutes, 20 secondswithout a people for people without a land. So when we arrived there was no one here
26:2826 minutes, 28 secondsand the actually the propaganda works on many levels. So you could on the one hand learn that there was no one there
26:3626 minutes, 36 secondsand then you might learn that the people that were there weren't really from there. They came from other places to
26:4326 minutes, 43 secondswork there because the Jews were creating job opportunities.
26:4826 minutes, 48 secondsSo the Arabs that were there weren't weren't even from here.
26:5326 minutes, 53 secondsWe didn't learn about the Nakba. So we only studied we studied the story of Israel, the Israeli war of independence
27:0227 minutes, 2 secondssolely through the lens of they offered a partition, they wanted to attack us and we we fought back. And so
27:1227 minutes, 12 secondsin school the Nagba was not even a was not even a concept that that I had heard. And later in life, there's a
27:1927 minutes, 19 secondsphrase in in Israel called uh Nakba, right? The Nakba is just um
27:2927 minutes, 29 secondsjust garbage. It's not it's not even an idea. So just dismissing the idea that there even was a Nakba.
27:3627 minutes, 36 secondsAnd so all of these different stories are layered into your identity and in your ability to take in new information
27:4527 minutes, 45 secondsbecause you're hardwired with these stories into your system before you can even before you can even think.
27:5327 minutes, 53 secondsWas there ever a moment uh where you encountered, you know, a moment or a person or an
28:0228 minutes, 2 secondsidea that disrupted that narrative?
Chapter 7: When the Narrative Starts to Crack
28:0728 minutes, 7 secondsH you know or or was it a process for you?
28:1228 minutes, 12 secondsIt was a long process. Crack after crack after crack in the foundation until the
28:1928 minutes, 19 secondsbuilding collapses. The the real moment for me was in 2020 when I witnessed
28:2828 minutes, 28 secondsthe state of Israel's response uh during COVID where I wrote in my diary at the time I said I recognized
28:3728 minutes, 37 secondsthat Israel is a police state and we are the victims. That was the first stage because when I first recognized that
28:4628 minutes, 46 secondsIsrael was a police state for its own citizens, that's when I started having these moments where I realized, whoa, what has
28:5528 minutes, 55 secondsit been for the Palestinians all this time?
29:0029 minutesBecause when you're in it, the brainwashing is so sophisticated, the indoctrination is so deep that it's very, very difficult to realize how the
29:0829 minutes, 8 secondsstate wields its power and its systems against its own citizens. You know, when you're in the receiving end of it as the
29:1529 minutes, 15 secondsoutsider, it's almost easy to see the machine. When you're in it, the cog doesn't see the machine. So, I had this moment for the first time where I was
29:2329 minutes, 23 secondsable to perceive how these systems of power were being used against me. And then I started to see that it's not only been this case with the Palestinians for generations, but it's been a lot worse.
29:3429 minutes, 34 secondsAnd that's when when let's call it, you know, Holy Spirit lifts the veil, right?
29:4029 minutes, 40 secondsAnd then there's a moment where all of the sudden all of the information can start coming in and can be processed so that you can see reality for what it is.
29:5029 minutes, 50 secondsAnd so I would say it was decades of cracks that that were forming and then a moment where it was lifted and only then
29:5929 minutes, 59 secondscould the information come in. And and that's why I share with people that the system is so sophisticated that any
30:0730 minutes, 7 secondsinformation that doesn't confirm what you already believe is rejected by your mind. This is a subconscious process.
30:1530 minutes, 15 secondsYou can't see reality for what it is.
30:1830 minutes, 18 secondsand the information doesn't come in. And it's only when something fundamentally shifts that you can even take in all of these things that we're talking about.
30:2930 minutes, 29 secondsHow how do you think this system is sustained? I mean, currently it's been occupation of Palestine has been going
30:3730 minutes, 37 secondson for decades. Displacement, uh, dehumanization, not allowing Palestinians to have their own, uh, state or self-determination.
30:4830 minutes, 48 secondsuh what do you think contributes to this? Is it just the system within Israel or are there external
30:5630 minutes, 56 secondsuh forces and factors that contribute to this oppression?
31:0131 minutes, 1 secondI think that part of what it is that the the Palestinians taught me or the Palestinians showed me is that Israel is
31:0931 minutes, 9 secondsexposing something that is much much bigger that we haven't been able to see.
31:1431 minutes, 14 secondsAnd the entire imperial colonial system is all interconnected.
31:2031 minutes, 20 secondsAnd all of these different players contribute in different ways. So the Israelis are shooting guns that were manufactured somewhere else and paid for
31:2831 minutes, 28 secondsby somebody else in a in a much bigger system that controls everyone everywhere. And Israel is doing us, you
31:3731 minutes, 37 secondsknow, I'm sad to say, the favor of exposing this darkness for everybody to see. And it's kind of the macro the microcosm and the macrocosm.
31:4731 minutes, 47 secondsAnd I think that taking accountability is the root of, you know, of all healing processes. And essentially, we're all
31:5631 minutes, 56 secondscontributing to this system, right?
31:5931 minutes, 59 secondsWhat What do you Yes, I I I totally agree. And and I think for me personally the past couple years especially
32:0832 minutes, 8 secondsuh you know with Gaza and what what took place there I felt betrayed in in within
32:1632 minutes, 16 secondsmy own community you know Christian community in the west where some not all some which is an extreme stream of
32:2632 minutes, 26 secondsChristianity of evangelical extre Christianity gives a theological cover. Mhm.
32:3332 minutes, 33 secondsgives a justification uh for whatever reason is end time prophecy or uh the security and safety
32:4332 minutes, 43 secondsof the Jewish people which I also care about. But some Christians, not all
32:5032 minutes, 50 secondsbecause America is diverse and the the Christianity is very diverse with so many different denominations and so many schools of of interpretation. But some
32:5932 minutes, 59 secondsloud and influential uh outsized influence they have on US policy. They have given cover to these
33:0833 minutes, 8 secondssystems that you and I lived through and we experienced on daily basis. And those
33:1633 minutes, 16 secondssystems impacted our families, impacted our people. and they continue to inflict
33:2333 minutes, 23 secondspain not only on Palestinians but the security of the Palestinians is also uh
33:3033 minutes, 30 secondsit's it's a main factor to provide security and safety for the Jewish people. They're interconnected. Do do you feel that way as well?
33:4033 minutes, 40 secondsYes. And I think that's one of the most important profound realizations that the safety of the Palestinians is
33:4733 minutes, 47 secondseverybody's safety and their liberation is everyone's liberation because Israelis don't understand that they are
33:5533 minutes, 55 secondshostages of the very same system that they're contributing to and perpetuating.
34:0134 minutes, 1 secondAnd the Palestinian liberation is what is I believe going to expose to everyone
34:0734 minutes, 7 secondswhere they aren't free. And ultimately what the Israelis are embodying in their
34:1534 minutes, 15 secondsoccupation and subjugation of the Palestinians is of course creating an equal and opposite reaction. And then
34:2434 minutes, 24 secondsthe Israelis look at that reaction and say, "Oh, this is actually fuel for us to do more things. We need to escalate.
34:3334 minutes, 33 secondsLook, everybody is against us. We need to escalate more." And it creates this cycle. It's a it's a form of death spiral. And so understanding that what
34:4234 minutes, 42 secondswe are inflicting on the Palestinians is always it's it's coming home and it's going to come home and it's causing more
34:4934 minutes, 49 secondsdanger to Israelis and more danger to Jews and more danger to to everyone everywhere.
34:5434 minutes, 54 secondsExpanded wars all across the Middle East because of this unresolved issue. I mean for how long can the status quo
35:0335 minutes, 3 secondscontinue? For how long can we keep on going like this without real resolution to this uh 80year-old conflict?
35:1435 minutes, 14 secondsYeah. And it takes a deep inner reckoning.
35:1735 minutes, 17 secondsDo do you believe uh of what I mentioned earlier that Christians have played a role some Christians I again I don't want to generalize because there are so
35:2635 minutes, 26 secondsmany great Christians and pastors and leaders and churches that have done amazing uh in providing platforms for
35:3535 minutes, 35 secondsJews and for Palestinians in supporting uh ministry causes and relief work. But
35:4235 minutes, 42 secondsthere are also those groups that have contributed to the ongoing conflict. How do you see that from your perspective as
35:5035 minutes, 50 secondsan Israeli Jew living who lived in the West Bank? Hm. Well, I can share that that growing up, I was I was witness in
36:0036 minutesour own town to the efforts to create relationships with groups like evangelical Christians in order to receive their financial backing.
36:1136 minutes, 11 secondsAnd I can testify and witness that behind the scenes, right, the attitude of of the Jews was we will take your
36:2136 minutes, 21 secondsmoney, right, and and treat you as a useful idiot. Take your money even though we don't believe in what you're
36:2936 minutes, 29 secondsperpetuating. What we believe they were perpetuating was the in gathering of of Jews to Israel, right? In order to
36:3836 minutes, 38 secondsfulfill prophecy. And so there was always this relationship where on the one hand we were happy to receive money,
36:4736 minutes, 47 secondsfunds, often often these are Christians that would be supporting the purchasing of of things like military equipment,
36:5536 minutes, 55 secondsright? and just so we were very happy to receive this kind of support but it was
37:0237 minutes, 2 secondsnever from a place of of mutual love and respect I would say but rather how do we take these month take the money and take
37:1037 minutes, 10 secondsthe resources in order to perpetuate our political ideology
37:1737 minutes, 17 secondsand use it for settlement expansion uh projecting power and keeping and
37:2437 minutes, 24 secondsgrowing that that system that beast and growing in the in the Yeah. Um I want to talk to you about
37:3137 minutes, 31 secondsyour faith journey because it's it's really remarkable how you didn't just distangle yourself from uh living in the
37:4137 minutes, 41 secondsWest Bank and leaving uh your old life. But when you first began to seriously consider Jesus, what
37:5137 minutes, 51 secondswas the hardest part to reconcile with everything you have been taught?
Chapter 8: Coming to Faith in Christ and the Personal Cost
37:5737 minutes, 57 secondsH [snorts] So growing up, we had a very very vast library in our home and there were two
38:0738 minutes, 7 secondsmain topics of books. The first one was Zionism and the second topic was Jesus and the Jews.
38:1738 minutes, 17 secondsAnd there was a lot of resistance to Jesus because these were all books on s
38:2438 minutes, 24 secondscertainly on discrediting Jesus and the relationship to the Jews. And there's a deep form of trauma of Christ's trauma
38:3238 minutes, 32 secondsthat's ingrained into Jewish people. And I call it the inquisition trauma. And so from a very young age there is an
38:4038 minutes, 40 secondsimmediate aversion to a physical somatic resistance to the idea of Christ.
38:4838 minutes, 48 secondsAnd this is this is what I grew up with.
38:5138 minutes, 51 secondsAnd I grew up in in environments where where Jesus would be equated to Hitler in the same breath.
38:5938 minutes, 59 secondsWow. And you know, the same acronyms for erasing Hitler's memory were used to
39:0539 minutes, 5 secondserase Jesus's memory. And I started to encounter the, you know, the anti- the
39:1239 minutes, 12 secondsanti-Jesus rhetoric everywhere in my upbringing.
39:1839 minutes, 18 secondsAnd so there was a lot to deconstruct on this on this journey, right? Because I really
39:2539 minutes, 25 secondsfeel that the process of rebirth means a complete dying of the old self. If you
39:3239 minutes, 32 secondsare not able to let go of everything, whether it's material or any idea that you have, you're not going to be able to
39:4039 minutes, 40 secondsreally go through this process. And so I was really blessed to to pull this 180 because it's it the it's the you know a
39:4839 minutes, 48 secondsreally beautiful journey. And so how did that decision came about?
39:5439 minutes, 54 secondsWell, the I I grew up in a home that practices rabbitic Judaism. It was a religious
40:0340 minutes, 3 secondsZionist settlement and we practice rabbitic Judaism. We're deeply deeply interwoven. This this is this is what I
40:1240 minutes, 12 secondsgrew up with. It's the system that I grew up in. And from a very young age, long before Zionism,
40:1940 minutes, 19 secondsand I I actually realized at a young age that the religion that we held in our household and in our communities was Zionism and Judaism was just a branch of
40:2940 minutes, 29 secondsthe Zionist religion, right? But from a very young age, from the age of around
40:3540 minutes, 35 secondsfive years old, I started kind of seeing through rabbitic Judaism
40:4240 minutes, 42 secondsand I had my doubts. I started turning lights on on Shabbat when nobody was looking, which was against the rules.
40:5040 minutes, 50 secondsAnd I started living a double life essentially because I was always disconnected from the teachings of rabbitic Judaism because something
40:5840 minutes, 58 secondsalways seemed off. My questions were never fully answered. My criticisms were not welcome. And I would ask, you know,
41:0641 minutes, 6 secondsdeep piercing questions about why we do certain things. We're missing the letter of the law. we're finding workarounds or
41:1441 minutes, 14 secondsas Jesus would say the corban how we create loopholes in order to avoid the essence of the thing. But growing up I I
41:2341 minutes, 23 secondsdidn't have any sort of framework whatsoever that that supported what it is that I was looking at. And so I had to create this disconnection. I had this
41:3241 minutes, 32 secondsself that I was showing to the outside world where I was pretending to be the nice Jewish religious boy. But then there was the side of the part of me
41:4041 minutes, 40 secondsthat I was that I was hiding. And so my entire identity from a very young age
41:4641 minutes, 46 secondswas built on hiding. I was hiding my true self. And my entire life was built
41:5341 minutes, 53 secondson this succession of lies. Because once you start hiding, everything that you do starts falling
42:0142 minutes, 1 secondinto this this category. And you can start pushing things into your own into your own darkness. And eventually I
42:0942 minutes, 9 secondsreached this point where, you know, I was committing the worst transgressions in my own life and in my personal life.
42:1642 minutes, 16 secondsAnd I had a moment of reckoning where I sat with myself and I I said, "How how
42:2242 minutes, 22 secondscould I have done all of these things?" And the things that I did not only to hurt other people but obvious.
42:3142 minutes, 31 secondsI kept them a secret for many many years. I was holding on to these secrets until
42:4042 minutes, 40 secondsI started having kind of encounters with Jesus. And these weren't direct encounters at this point. I started to
42:4842 minutes, 48 secondsrealize maybe Jesus wasn't who I thought he was.
42:5342 minutes, 53 secondsAnd he kind of started coming to me in in more subtle ways.
42:5842 minutes, 58 secondsAnd eventually I realized that the only way out of my predicament was to confess all of the transgressions that I did to
43:0643 minutes, 6 secondsall of the people that I hurt and to confess to come clean to take ownership
43:1443 minutes, 14 secondsover what I had done and to suffer all of the consequences because we can do grace is eternally present but that doesn't mean there aren't consequences.
43:2543 minutes, 25 secondsWere you reading the Bible during those times? So or the new the new testament not yet. This is the the beauty of it. I
43:3343 minutes, 33 secondsrealized that I had to I had to go through this journey. And at the time I would have said, "Oh my god, I am
43:3943 minutes, 39 secondscrucifying myself right now. I am airing out everything that I've ever done." And as I did that, my relationship
43:4843 minutes, 48 secondscollapsed. My family broke. I I I wound up surrendering all of my material assets. I'm giving everything up. And
43:5643 minutes, 56 secondsduring this entire time, I realized that my the most important thing I can do is to keep my heart open.
44:0344 minutes, 3 secondsI need to keep my heart open when everything is collapsing. When everyone thinks that I am the worst person that's
44:1144 minutes, 11 secondsever existed and I realize that I have to keep my heart open and I have to keep just ferociously loving others and myself through this journey.
44:2344 minutes, 23 secondsAnd that's when I came across the gospel. And I decided to buy a New Testament.
44:3044 minutes, 30 secondsAnd as I was reading it, I realized, wait a second, I'm not reading a book. I
44:3744 minutes, 37 secondsam living this book. And not only am I living not only am I living it right now, I realized that this was explaining
44:4544 minutes, 45 secondseverything that brought me to where I am. from my questions of rabbitic Judaism and Zionism and all of these
44:5544 minutes, 55 secondsdifferent things were were alive in in this in this text and that's when I
45:0445 minutes, 4 secondsstarted realizing you know deeper questions about the Messiah right the Messiah has always been here and he always will be here
45:1345 minutes, 13 secondsbecause growing up I had this concept that the Messiah was some political figure that was going to come in the
45:2145 minutes, 21 secondsfuture. And until then, we're going to keep doing what we're doing because we're bringing him forward. But I
45:2845 minutes, 28 secondsrealized that by believing that the messiah was an external material political figure, I was actually
45:3545 minutes, 35 secondsperpetuating the infinite disconnection from the truth, which is he's always been here and he's always been
45:4445 minutes, 44 secondsaccessible. Right? the journey is to go inward and discover that that Christ has always been here and always will be
45:5145 minutes, 51 secondshere. And so, you know, as I was trying to make sense of all of these, you know, sins and transgressions and my entire
46:0046 minuteslife falling apart and trying to find forgiveness for myself, I started coming into deeper understandings of grace
46:0746 minutes, 7 secondsbecause one, I realized that we're all children. In the eyes of God, we're all children. And I know how I love my own children.
46:1546 minutes, 15 secondsAnd I know that there's nothing that they can ever do that will ever make me stop loving them. And I came into new understandings of what of what real
46:2246 minutes, 22 secondsdivine love is and what my relationship to the divine is.
46:2746 minutes, 27 secondsAnd when I couldn't forgive myself, I had the realization that the grace is in the present moment
46:3546 minutes, 35 secondsbecause I knew that the version of me that had committed all of these transgressions isn't the version that
46:4446 minutes, 44 secondscame forward, came clean, and took responsibility.
46:4846 minutes, 48 secondsAnd I realized that as long as I didn't understand that or internalize that I did terrible things, but that's not who
46:5646 minutes, 56 secondsI am, I would keep collapsing into guilt, into shame forever. You could never ever come out of that.
47:0647 minutes, 6 secondsAnd so what Christ offered was the understanding that the only way that I could evolve, the only way that anybody
47:1447 minutes, 14 secondscould evolve is with grace. because otherwise we are eternally damned to be the versions of ourselves that didn't
47:2247 minutes, 22 secondslive up to to what we should have at the time. But we did the best we can with what we knew back then. Yeah.
47:3047 minutes, 30 secondsAnd it all came together.
47:3247 minutes, 32 secondsThat's so beautiful. And whom the son sets free shall be free indeed. And I believe that God's God's grace is on
47:4047 minutes, 40 secondsyour life and on your new journey. and he's going to use you in a magnificent way to expand his kingdom. I know that
47:4847 minutes, 48 secondsyou have a deep heart for him and deep heart for your people and I pray that uh God will bring uh healing and
47:5547 minutes, 55 secondsrestoration uh to you to your family and uh because I know that you paid the price u has how was this received by your family?
48:0648 minutes, 6 secondsSo when when you came publicly and say you know I believe in Jesus the Messiah, he came already in flesh. He fulfilled the
48:1548 minutes, 15 secondsprophecy. He was Jewish. He lived in Judea and Samaria and he ministered in Galilee and in Jerusalem. He died. He
48:2348 minutes, 23 secondswas buried. He rose again from the grave. I declare him as Messiah. When you said that, what was the reaction?
48:3048 minutes, 30 secondsOh, I was excommunicated long before [laughter] I could even say that. I was excommunicated be, you know, as people
48:3848 minutes, 38 secondswere starting to get a whiff of of all of these things because there were growing up there were three red lines
48:4648 minutes, 46 secondsthat crossing any one of these red lines meant excommunication um from my parents and the first one was
48:5548 minutes, 55 secondsmarrying a non-Jewish woman. The second one was belief in Christ or I should say
49:0249 minutes, 2 secondsa knowing of Christ because it's a you can know him. Um and three speaking out against Zionism.
49:1049 minutes, 10 secondsSo these were those those are the three red lines you can never come close to.
49:1649 minutes, 16 secondsYes. And so I wound up breaking all three.
49:2049 minutes, 20 secondsAnd so the the reaction for my family, you know, I had some sisters that I started to be able to talk to about
49:2749 minutes, 27 secondsChrist. And uh that that was that went over. Okay. I would say you have four sisters and you're you're
49:3549 minutes, 35 secondsthe only uh boy in the family. You're the only male in the family. The youngest, too. The youngest? Yeah.
49:4349 minutes, 43 secondsThe wildest.
49:4449 minutes, 44 secondsTurns out Turns out I'm the rebel. Um but it was really Zionism that led to a total breakdown in connection with with the entire family.
49:5649 minutes, 56 secondsSo let's let's you know you came across you you you used strong language to describe Zionism in the past and how did
50:0550 minutes, 5 secondsyou understand it growing up and how do you understand it now? I mean we don't want to go into details of what Zionism
50:1450 minutes, 14 secondsis but what if you can summarize to us uh what was it how did you understand it when you grew up in Ephrat in the
50:2350 minutes, 23 secondssettlement and now how do you see Zionism?
Chapter 9: Deconstructing Zionism
50:2850 minutes, 28 secondsSo growing up Zionism was two things. it was the right of the
50:3650 minutes, 36 secondsJewish people to return to their native homeland and two it was a major component of the
50:4650 minutes, 46 secondssalvation of the Jewish people to bring upon the salvation but not all not all Jewish people
50:5450 minutes, 54 secondsbelieve that because some orthodox or some streams in or in in Judaism believe that the Messiah is the one who's going to restore Israel.
51:0351 minutes, 3 secondsnot a political secular government in television.
51:0651 minutes, 6 secondsYes. Yes. There are some that that believe that and yet those same groups still perpetuate the system, right? They still contribute to the system in their
51:1551 minutes, 15 secondsown way because the system is so sophisticated that there there are different there are different layers for
51:2251 minutes, 22 secondsdifferent people based on where you are on the spectrum, right? So you can think that it has nothing to do with salvation, but without it the Jewish
51:3151 minutes, 31 secondspeople will never be safe. And so it it it learns, it adapts, and it speaks to different people based on where they
51:3851 minutes, 38 secondsare. So the where I grew up, it was uh deeply deeply connected to salvation.
51:4451 minutes, 44 secondsAnd it's important to note that this is not a fringe opinion. This is a a significant percentage of the Jewish
51:5151 minutes, 51 secondspopulation in Israel are religious Zionists. And many of the politicians that are deeply perpetuating
52:0052 minutesuh the system and the genocide are from these groups in these organiz from these parts of society. So you can't dismiss
52:0852 minutes, 8 secondsthis idea as as fringe and in synagogues the the Zionism has infiltrated the the
52:1852 minutes, 18 secondsholy books. It's infiltrated the prayer books. It's infiltrated the synagogues.
52:2252 minutes, 22 secondsthat's infiltrated the rabbitic institutions. And so even if you are not a believer, right, in in Israel, even
52:3052 minutes, 30 secondsthe secular Jews are still connected to Judaism in a way that secular people in America are not connected to their religion because Israel by its nature
52:3952 minutes, 39 secondsis is very religious. It's the Shabbat dinners. It's the holidays. It's the Hebrew calendar. So there's it's the the
52:4652 minutes, 46 secondsrelatives, it's the closeness to religious people. So even the secular Jews in Israel have these connections
52:5452 minutes, 54 secondsand and they're ruled by a rabinate, right? And Israel, the rabbinate decides who can get married and who doesn't get married. So
53:0253 minutes, 2 secondsthese these beliefs of Zionism have infiltrated every aspect of of Jewish
53:1053 minutes, 10 secondslife in Israel. So it's really inseparable in many ways. So it's return to the Jewish homeland or to to Israel and a future salvation.
53:2253 minutes, 22 secondsSo what what is it what how do you understand it now when you came to faith in Christ and you made those significant decisions?
53:3053 minutes, 30 secondsWell, the way I understand it now is that Zionism is a political ideology.
53:3653 minutes, 36 secondsIt is a settler colonial project that has the mission to colonize the land of
53:4553 minutes, 45 secondsPalestine and retain a Jewish ethno majority state.
53:5353 minutes, 53 secondsWow. Those are very very it's strong as strong as it gets.
54:0254 minutes, 2 secondsCan you unpack this a little bit for us?
54:0554 minutes, 5 secondsYes. When when we learned about the foundations of Zionism, there were many many questions
54:1254 minutes, 12 secondsthat we all had in school that had a lot of apologetics ready, right? So, why is
54:1954 minutes, 19 secondsit that the founder of Zionism was an atheist secular Jew? What did he believe? Oh, Theodore Herzel, right?
54:3054 minutes, 30 secondsTheodore Herzil. Yes. And we would kind of start to learn about the different beliefs of the founding fathers of Zionisms. And there were always many
54:3854 minutes, 38 secondsquestions there. For example, they were considering move put creating a Jewish state in many different places. They
54:4754 minutes, 47 secondsultimately decided on Palestine because it most closely fit the myth. But this wasn't necessarily the original
54:5654 minutes, 56 secondsintention. The plan was to create a colony. The question was where, right? And so we started you know I started having these different
55:0555 minutes, 5 secondsunderstandings of it and then I would encounter the works of Jebatinsky for example one of the main Zionist thinkers
55:1355 minutes, 13 secondswho is the ideological father of the modern-day likud so uh Benjamin Netanyahu is you could
55:2255 minutes, 22 secondscall him a student of Jabatinsky and I would read Jabotinsky's work and Jabetinsky would write explicitly that
55:3155 minutes, 31 secondswe're here to colonize Palestine. Every settler colonial project encounters resistance and hostility from the
55:4055 minutes, 40 secondsindigenous population and the nionist plan is moving forward. So you can expect hostility from the indigenous
55:4755 minutes, 47 secondspopulation which we need to quash with force. And so for me it became less about you know creating some sort of
55:5655 minutes, 56 secondsit's not about leaving one story and and finding another story. I would go back to the horse's mouth and it was described as a settler colonial project
56:0556 minutes, 5 secondsin the land of Palestine. Right? This is not even this is just the historical way that we were taught it even while
56:1256 minutes, 12 secondsbelieving that this isn't the case. Right? So we could you could learn that it's called a settler colony but then be brainwashed
56:2156 minutes, 21 secondsinto thinking that it's not that it's just the Jewish the Jews wanting to return.
56:2756 minutes, 27 secondsAnd you keep going deeper and you see how Benon was, you know, it would explicitly talk about how we
56:3556 minutes, 35 secondsmaintain a Jewish majority and the Nagba was the first major expression expression of that
Chapter 10: Christian Zionism and the Settlement Enterprise
56:4356 minutes, 43 secondsand how do you see Oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead.
56:4556 minutes, 45 secondsYeah. How do you see uh Christian Zionist uh contributing to the fulfillment of this vision?
56:5756 minutes, 57 secondsWell, where do you see them fit in this picture?
57:0157 minutes, 1 secondYou might even know more than I do, but I was taught growing up that Christian Zionism, the concept of Zionism predates
57:0957 minutes, 9 secondsJewish Zionism. And so, yes, there was by 50 years at least. So there's a there's a bigger plan at play that was
57:1957 minutes, 19 secondsalready conscripting Christians into its fold before it was able to uh to to
57:2757 minutes, 27 secondsconscript the Jewish people into the fold. And so the two things are so deeply intertwined because you know
57:3557 minutes, 35 secondsthere are those that are trying to literally enact the end days prophecies, right? And in doing so are actually contributing to them happening, right?
57:4657 minutes, 46 secondsAnd so I think that you can't separate these two things because they're so ideologically intertwined and then and
57:5557 minutes, 55 secondsthen you know fuse with the idea of Judeo-Christian, right? This is just the Judeo-Christian plan. We're we're already connected.
58:0458 minutes, 4 secondsLet's do this together.
58:0758 minutes, 7 secondsAnd I think that each side is making a deal with the a deal with the devil with the other side.
58:1358 minutes, 13 secondsDo do you think people inside that system that you describe recognize
58:2058 minutes, 20 secondsthe moral tension or the ethical dimension of of what's happening or has it become normalized? Because I mean for
58:2858 minutes, 28 secondsme this is an ethical issue. It's a it's a moral issue and at the spiritual it is
58:3558 minutes, 35 secondsalso deeply spiritual issue. It goes against God's character. It goes against God's principles of justice, of peace,
58:4458 minutes, 44 secondsof loving your neighbor as yourself. It goes against even Jewish values and beliefs. I know so many Jewish people
58:5258 minutes, 52 secondswho are like yourself are morally outraged about what's happening.
59:0159 minutes, 1 secondI think that most people that are in it are are not seeing it yet.
59:0959 minutes, 9 secondsSome are some are awakening.
59:1159 minutes, 11 secondsBut I think that people don't understand that even though they might start to sense that something here is fundamentally
59:2059 minutes, 20 secondswrong, but I don't think that there's a framework yet that that is allowing people to to start to to grasp it and
59:2859 minutes, 28 secondsput it into a framework and to see the p the bigger picture.
Chapter 11: The Gospel, Power, and Where Jesus Would Be Today
59:3259 minutes, 32 secondsYeah. One of the things that I've been trying to challenge especially and help the Christian church especially uh
59:4059 minutes, 40 secondswestern Christians is how easily we adopt political frameworks that end up distorting the message of
59:4959 minutes, 49 secondsJesus, the core message of Jesus. And this is what I'm really most concerned about. My biggest concern is is not
59:5659 minutes, 56 secondspolitical, right? It is spiritual. When we attach the gospel to power, when we
1:00:031 hour, 3 secondsattach the gospel to displacing people, to doing injustice to people, we risk
1:00:111 hour, 11 secondsmisrepresenting the gospel. We've seen politicians do this across the board.
1:00:161 hour, 16 secondseven, you know, someone like Donald Trump. We've watched how Christian, you know, uh, language can be used in ways
1:00:241 hour, 24 secondsthat don't reflect the character or teachings of Jesus. And at the same
1:00:311 hour, 31 secondstime, we've seen how some people remain silent because they want to stay close to power and have access. But for me,
1:00:401 hour, 40 secondsthis is deeply personal. Uh we serve communities across the Middle East, Christian communities, and and I see how
1:00:461 hour, 46 secondsthis shapes the way people, even Muslims uh perceive the gospel. Uh when faith
1:00:541 hour, 54 secondsgets tied to politics like this, it doesn't just stay in in the United States uh or in in in in Israel. It
1:01:041 hour, 1 minute, 4 secondsaffects how Jesus is understood globally often uh in ways that are deeply deeply
1:01:111 hour, 1 minute, 11 secondsdamaging. So let me ask you this Daniel from your journey. What would you say to Christians
1:01:191 hour, 1 minute, 19 secondsuh to your brothers and sisters in Christ now to your extended family, spiritual family who genuinely believe
1:01:261 hour, 1 minute, 26 secondsthey are standing for God especially when it comes to uh Israel prophecy or end times?
1:01:391 hour, 1 minute, 39 secondsWhat would you say to them?
1:01:411 hour, 1 minute, 41 secondsMy experience has been that the gospel is speaking to each one of us individually
1:01:481 hour, 1 minute, 48 secondsand the Pharisee in the gospel exists in me. I and I grew up on the other side of
1:01:541 hour, 1 minute, 54 secondsit and I recognized that within me. And all of these things that we read about about the use of power is something that
1:02:031 hour, 2 minutes, 3 secondsunwillingly we can be a part of and that we need to recognize within ourselves.
1:02:111 hour, 2 minutes, 11 secondsAnd so what I had learned from my journey is that the only faith that we can have is faith in Christ. And as soon
1:02:211 hour, 2 minutes, 21 secondsas we hand over any of the power to any man-made institution, to any ism in the
1:02:281 hour, 2 minutes, 28 secondsname of anything that isn't truth, and truth is Christ, and we connect to it
1:02:341 hour, 2 minutes, 34 secondsdirectly, as soon as we start taking any of that and giving it away to something
1:02:411 hour, 2 minutes, 41 secondsman-made or something material, that's that's where everything starts
1:02:481 hour, 2 minutes, 48 secondseventually. ly collapsing and that's where the reckoning always is. And so it's always coming back to the direct connection with Christ and truth and
1:02:571 hour, 2 minutes, 57 secondswhen you're doing that you can't perpetuate you can't knowingly or willingly perpetuate these kinds of machines.
1:03:051 hour, 3 minutes, 5 secondsYes. Even when Jesus went to Samaria which is enemies territories right and he met with a Samaritan woman and she asked him oh you guys say you we should worship in Jerusalem we worship here.
1:03:171 hour, 3 minutes, 17 secondsBut he said those who worship God will worship him in truth and in the spirit.
1:03:241 hour, 3 minutes, 24 secondsIt's neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem uh shall we worship God. And I I this is what I love about Jesus that
1:03:311 hour, 3 minutes, 31 secondshe always uh crossed every boundary uh every divide and he always reached to
1:03:411 hour, 3 minutes, 41 secondspeople on the other side. So in closing, Daniel, if I ask you this question, if Jesus walked through the West Bank
1:03:481 hour, 3 minutes, 48 secondstoday, let's imagine that he's in Israel, in Palestine today. U what do you think he would confront first?
1:04:021 hour, 4 minutes, 2 secondsWe could go line by line. [laughter] We could go line by line.
1:04:081 hour, 4 minutes, 8 secondsMaybe we should save that for another episode, right? I I cuz it's it's h every single thing is happening. So I don't even know where we would start.
1:04:211 hour, 4 minutes, 21 secondsIt's that it's that big. Okay. Let let me ask you this question. What do you think his heart would be?
1:04:281 hour, 4 minutes, 28 secondsWhere would he spend most of his time doing and ministering?
1:04:361 hour, 4 minutes, 36 secondsWell, he'd be he'd be working in the West Bank, that's for sure. He'd be speaking to,
1:04:441 hour, 4 minutes, 44 secondsyou know, one of the things that I learned from the Palestinians more than maybe even more than anything is
1:04:541 hour, 4 minutes, 54 secondsthe true belief in in God in the truest sense in putting in understanding that
1:05:021 hour, 5 minutes, 2 secondsno amount of power, no amount of material control, no amount of occupation can ever touch a heart that that knows God.
1:05:141 hour, 5 minutes, 14 secondsAnd I encountered a people that are truly putting their treasures in their hearts and understanding the
1:05:221 hour, 5 minutes, 22 secondsdepth of the kingdom of heaven that they can take this world. They can take this world, but they can never ever take our souls.
1:05:301 hour, 5 minutes, 30 secondsSo, I'm not actually there's a part of me that wants to say that Jesus would be working in the West Bank because
1:05:381 hour, 5 minutes, 38 secondsbecause of everything that we know. But then there's actually the part of me that says, "Wait a second. There's something about the Palestinians that
1:05:451 hour, 5 minutes, 45 secondsalready understand his message." And [snorts] so he might actually be working in in Israel and speaking to the
1:05:541 hour, 5 minutes, 54 secondspeople that are so trapped, so deluded and so disconnected from God and
1:06:031 hour, 6 minutes, 3 secondsworshiping the golden calf, the golden calf of Zionism, the golden calf of the state of Israel. And he might be there
1:06:111 hour, 6 minutes, 11 secondsto pose the ultimate ultimate reflection.
Chapter 12: Parting Thoughts
1:06:181 hour, 6 minutes, 18 secondsBeautifully said, Daniel. It's been a joy chatting with you. I I'm sure that we need to do more of these episodes to
1:06:271 hour, 6 minutes, 27 secondshelp our brothers and sisters uh with the with the little that we have been entrusted. I know that you don't claim
1:06:341 hour, 6 minutes, 34 secondsto know it all. I don't definitely claim to know uh as much as I would love to on on matters of faith and and uh what's
1:06:431 hour, 6 minutes, 43 secondshappening around us. But the reason that we're having this conversation is that both of us are so passionate about the gospel. And we want uh to see the work
1:06:521 hour, 6 minutes, 52 secondsof of Jesus, the work of peace, reconciliation, justice, and to demonstrate the love of God to all of
1:06:591 hour, 6 minutes, 59 secondsour neighbors, to our Jewish neighbors, to our Muslim neighbors, to our Christian brothers and sisters who are suffering a great deal in Palestine and
1:07:071 hour, 7 minutes, 7 secondsacross the Middle East. And we want to see a healed world uh by the love and hope of of Christ that we have. So
1:07:151 hour, 7 minutes, 15 secondsDaniel, thank you so much for your testimony, for your faith, for your boldness, and all the best to you.
1:07:221 hour, 7 minutes, 22 secondsThank you. Thank you so much.
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