The John-Henry Westen Show - March 27, 2026


They want us to HATE Iran - Jason Jones EXPOSES their lies


Episode Stats

Length

39 minutes

Words per Minute

170.037

Word Count

6,724

Sentence Count

336

Misogynist Sentences

12

Hate Speech Sentences

33


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Jason Jones is a hero in the fight against anti-Semitism in Iran. He's been there, done that, and runs the Vulnerable People Project, a group that rescues the poor and the vulnerable in times of war.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 I used to say anti-Semitism used to mean you hate Jews,
00:00:05.000 but now it means you refuse to hate Arabs.
00:00:09.500 Hello, my friends.
00:00:10.400 I've been waiting to do this interview for a long time,
00:00:12.840 but this fellow is really hard to get a hold of.
00:00:15.080 Jason Jones has been all over the place.
00:00:18.580 He keeps running back and forth to the Holy Land
00:00:21.240 to help out there because you know
00:00:22.900 he runs Vulnerable People Project
00:00:24.700 and they do all sorts of amazing work
00:00:26.400 helping the poor and the vulnerable,
00:00:28.620 especially in times of war.
00:00:29.920 he's rescued people out of there. We've helped him do that thanks to your generous donations.
00:00:35.040 Now look, the war in Iran has obviously a lot going on with it. And there's no better person
00:00:42.000 to speak to about it than Jason Jones, because not only has he been there, done that, but people
00:00:50.440 right now are talking about, oh, you know, Iran's the worst place on earth. There's nothing worse,
00:00:56.000 the persecution against women, against Jews, against Catholics and Christians. It's the most
00:01:01.980 devastating thing. That's the number one country on earth we have to go after. And Jason's the one
00:01:08.100 who did the movie. Do you remember the stoning of Soraya M? It was a movie about persecution of
00:01:14.820 women in Iran. So you're going to want to stay tuned for this conversation. Jason, God bless
00:01:20.460 you, my friend. Good to see you, brother. For now on, I'm going to demand whoever interviews me is
00:01:25.060 in a black tie or I am not going but I get to come like this but but the host has to be in a black
00:01:30.360 tie let's begin as we always do son of the cross name of the father and of the son and of the holy
00:01:36.720 ghost amen Jason uh the U.S. is in a strange place right now because there are fights among
00:01:44.720 the best people uh we just saw Kerry Prejean Bowler great catholic a new catholic even
00:01:52.440 kicked off Trump's Religious Freedom Commission and so Catholic against Catholic over what's
00:01:59.540 going on in Iran. Unpack a little bit of this for us. Where are you coming from?
00:02:04.520 First of all, I want to thank you and I want to thank LifeSite News because
00:02:08.320 you have been like the Calvary for me time and time and time again. And you are a non-profit
00:02:14.280 organization so that you would share your donors with our organization. And you were responsible
00:02:21.340 for helping us evacuate thousands of young girls from Ukraine when that war started.
00:02:26.660 You were foundational to our Coal for Christmas campaign to provide coal for heat and food
00:02:32.320 in Afghanistan in the wake of the U.S. withdrawal to the widows and orphans of our allies who
00:02:36.120 were killed in action in the small Christian community there.
00:02:38.940 Everywhere we work in the world, you show, you actually, your team reaches out to us
00:02:44.360 and says, we'd like to help you.
00:02:46.640 And so I couldn't thank you more.
00:02:48.640 You know, when you look at Carrie Prejean-Bowler, when I started, you know, on October 7th, the very first thing I did, I was furious.
00:02:58.680 You know, when you see this horrible attack of these peace activists, it was just, I was enraged.
00:03:04.980 And the first thing I did is I knew of a small Jewish community in Africa that was really vulnerable.
00:03:11.580 We'd been trying to get other Jewish organizations that actually had more funding than us to provide security for them
00:03:16.160 because we're already providing security for Catholic churches in this area.
00:03:20.060 But on October 7th, without a budget for it,
00:03:22.240 we went ahead and not only provided security,
00:03:24.800 put in solar so we could put in cameras,
00:03:26.960 and then we even drilled wells so the women didn't have to walk
00:03:30.280 to the river for water, which was exposing them to danger.
00:03:34.040 And that's where it began.
00:03:36.100 And I was really hopeful that the IDF would go in there and root out Hamas.
00:03:41.640 But by October 18th, after the war started,
00:03:44.960 It was already obvious that that's not what was going to happen.
00:03:49.140 It was within two weeks of October 7th that the oldest continuous use church in the world,
00:03:55.080 St. Porforius, was attacked.
00:03:58.900 And then within weeks after that, two Catholic women were shot by snipers, IDF snipers.
00:04:05.440 Water towers at the churches were shot by snipers so that the water was empty.
00:04:09.720 So we saw really a relentless campaign event, the cleansing.
00:04:12.900 I'm always celebrated for my work.
00:04:14.960 You know, it's not, I've been in the pro-life movement since the late 80s.
00:04:18.960 I'm used to being hated for defending the vulnerable, and I'm not uncomfortable with that.
00:04:24.960 But I was, for many years, celebrated for what we were doing in Afghanistan and Sudan and Ukraine.
00:04:30.960 So I was really naive to how quickly and violently that my organization was attacked.
00:04:36.960 For feeding Christians, for evacuating wounded pregnant women, I was being criticized.
00:04:41.960 It was a very lonely place. And for a while, I felt like my only ally was you, was LifeSite.
00:04:48.660 When you see someone like Carrie Prejean Bowler in such a prestigious position,
00:04:54.220 basically throw away her career and leverage her position of influence for the vulnerable,
00:05:02.480 I couldn't be more grateful. Because at the Vulnerable People Project, when I founded it
00:05:06.660 23 years ago, it was really not to do relief efforts, but to run influence campaigns to
00:05:14.460 defend the vulnerable from violence by promoting human dignity and inspiring solidarity.
00:05:18.800 That's what we do.
00:05:20.500 And Carrie Prejean Bowler has been key to waking up so many people.
00:05:25.760 She's joyful.
00:05:26.940 She's brave.
00:05:28.540 She's kind.
00:05:29.760 She's unflinching.
00:05:30.820 and really the hard part for me is to see our bishops silent to seeing this young Catholic
00:05:39.960 woman being attacked and her husband, who is an NFL football player, is actually in our CIA right
00:05:45.920 now. I can't imagine if my wife was being attacked like this and I saw bishops stabbing her in the
00:05:52.860 back, let alone not defending her, but stabbing her in the back, I'd become Greek Orthodox. I
00:05:58.460 I would hit the brakes, it's quite a scandal.
00:06:01.580 And it's a scandal to everyone under 25
00:06:04.360 because if you look at the polling,
00:06:06.240 everyone under 25, they're saying,
00:06:07.700 oh, these kids are brainwashed.
00:06:08.960 No, you're brainwashed.
00:06:10.380 You're watching Fox, CNN, or MSNBC.
00:06:13.140 These kids are seeing a live stream genocide
00:06:16.860 for two years on their phone.
00:06:18.740 So Kerry is so brave, but it is so sorrowful.
00:06:22.900 And I call this the Palestinian abuse crisis.
00:06:26.820 And I think there is gonna come a day in this country
00:06:29.100 and in the church where those bishops and those cardinals
00:06:32.800 that were silent as the genocide was taking place,
00:06:36.100 as the descendants of the apostles' families were being,
00:06:39.540 it's called ecclesiacide, as our church is being cleansed.
00:06:44.040 And there is a settlement called Shtema
00:06:46.880 that was just approved in the West Bank
00:06:50.100 that would end the Christian communities
00:06:53.440 in Bethlehem in the shepherd's field.
00:06:57.420 This is a total ecclesiocide, silence from our bishops.
00:07:00.760 Bishop Barron has never said one thing
00:07:02.840 in defense of the Christians and gods in the West Bank.
00:07:05.000 Same with Dolan, but the USCCB has time
00:07:08.280 to attack Kerry Prejean,
00:07:10.580 but they have never found the time to open their mouth.
00:07:14.000 Yet Pope Leo has been brave.
00:07:16.960 Look and also look to Cardinal Pizzaballa,
00:07:20.560 who's living in the midst of it all,
00:07:23.360 but has been a courageous witness for these communities.
00:07:25.580 So I'm sorry I'm talking so much,
00:07:26.800 but I couldn't be more grateful.
00:07:29.320 I feel like the Calvary has arrived.
00:07:32.060 You know, we're gonna be a Catholics for Catholics event.
00:07:35.080 Catholics for Catholics has been great.
00:07:36.900 Catholic Vote, through their news reporting,
00:07:39.380 has been wonderful.
00:07:40.180 LifeSite News was the first ones there with us.
00:07:43.160 But now, I don't know how you feel,
00:07:45.000 but I used to get ratioed and attacked by everyone.
00:07:47.900 And now when people attack me,
00:07:49.660 I watch as everyone attacks them, like it's flipped.
00:07:53.160 So, and it's flipped because it doesn't take courage for me.
00:07:58.160 I run the Vulnerable People Project.
00:08:00.640 It's my job.
00:08:02.260 If I'm not gonna do it my job,
00:08:04.420 I should find something else to do.
00:08:06.260 Carrie Prejean didn't have to do that.
00:08:08.780 And so I'm really grateful.
00:08:10.660 A world at war, a church in crisis.
00:08:13.680 At times like these,
00:08:14.680 it can be difficult to know who to trust.
00:08:16.700 That's why the mission of LifeSide News
00:08:18.560 is to bring you the news
00:08:19.780 from the perspective of eternal truths.
00:08:21.960 We aren't swayed by passing trends, and we don't follow narratives pushed by those with power.
00:08:26.680 But now, we need your help.
00:08:28.680 Our mission is entirely funded by individual donors like you.
00:08:32.340 We need to raise enough each quarter to keep LifeSite News online.
00:08:35.920 If you value LifeSite News' mission, please donate at the link below this video.
00:08:40.020 U.S. residents can also donate by texting LifeSiteNews to 50155.
00:08:46.440 May God bless you.
00:08:47.540 So Carrie told me the other day, she feels like she is a sheep being attacked by wolves and the shepherds are running away.
00:09:00.120 She was so grateful to see Bishop Strickland as one of the only voices in the bishopric throughout the world stick up for her.
00:09:08.680 she was stunned at the silence of the bishops more so i would say even than she was stunned
00:09:15.560 that vance uh would and rubio wouldn't say anything in her defense the other way perhaps
00:09:22.140 but you know that was so stunning to her and your point about her husband i think she sees
00:09:28.620 and he sees they're not converting to a kind of a church that is about that they're converting to
00:09:37.760 a church with a traditional belief and that follows. The bishops of the Holy Land have been
00:09:43.320 singing this song for decades, begging their brother bishops in the West to please speak out
00:09:50.980 against the persecution coming from Israel. And it's, why is this so unbluyel? That tweet that
00:09:57.980 you're, excuse me, the document you were referring to from Cardinal Pitzabala, I'll pull it up because
00:10:03.500 the wording is so strong that it's worth talking about his words. And this is the cardinal
00:10:10.500 archbishop of Jerusalem. And our bishops refuse to speak when their brother bishop,
00:10:20.200 the cardinal over there says this. This is unreal. There are still 2 million displaced people
00:10:29.640 deprived of everything 80 of the strip that's the gaza strip is still destroyed and no construction
00:10:37.000 has begun people are literally living in the sewers and the images cannot convey the smells
00:10:44.740 someone who's been in a lot of war zones the smells are what people can't comprehend the smell
00:10:50.760 of burning human flesh the smell of death and decay it's horrible and you have to imagine
00:10:57.200 And when I was in Lahaina after the fire, I was sick for months.
00:11:02.580 And I made the mistake of camping in Lahaina so I didn't take a hotel from a local.
00:11:07.580 That was not bright.
00:11:09.060 When I was in Iraq with the Peshmerga, as they were liberating villages,
00:11:12.800 they couldn't remove the burning bodies from the rubble because ISIS booby-trapped the rubble.
00:11:18.400 And so everywhere you would go was the smell of burning human flesh.
00:11:21.720 And Cardinal Bitsabala has been to Gaza.
00:11:24.360 He knows what he's talking about.
00:11:25.620 He has empathy.
00:11:26.920 These are his flock, he loves them.
00:11:29.440 And I think it's just quite sorrowful
00:11:31.220 how loveless we have been.
00:11:33.560 But this isn't really new
00:11:34.600 and I want to feel sorry for myself.
00:11:36.600 I look at someone like Franz Jägerstatter
00:11:38.360 who was an Austrian farmer
00:11:40.280 who refused to say the loyalty oath to Hitler.
00:11:44.120 His priest told him, just say the oath.
00:11:46.280 His bishop told him, just say the oath.
00:11:49.220 And he refused to say that oath.
00:11:50.900 There's a beautiful film called A Hidden Life
00:11:52.880 by Terrence Malick that shows his story.
00:11:55.180 why do we know the name Maximilian Kolbe we know his name because what he did was exceptional
00:12:01.740 with dying in a starvation bunker in Auschwitz so when you look at someone like Carrie Prejean
00:12:08.420 Bowler what it was a Mark Twain said history doesn't repeat itself but it rhymes she rhymes
00:12:14.120 with father Jerzy Popiescu she rhymes with Maximilian Kolbe she rhymes with um Franz
00:12:23.360 Jager's daughter. So this is just how it usually is. Look at our Lord being crucified. Everyone was
00:12:30.380 gone, and there was St. John. I have a theory on why John was the only apostle that didn't die
00:12:36.880 a violent death, because he was already crucified with our Lord. He was there. They left. What's
00:12:45.480 worse, being nailed to a cross or seeing your Lord nailed to a cross? And so Carrie's being
00:12:50.800 nailed to the cross i think we should all be you know the philosopher the anthropologist renee
00:12:56.380 gerard said when you stand with the vulnerable you become as vulnerable as they are so the
00:13:01.200 palestinians are the most calumniated community on earth you know you can have a u.s congressman
00:13:06.880 congressman fine he's shown a picture it's on film of a dead palestinian child he goes i love
00:13:12.060 that picture can you bring me more of those and there's no censor for him but but all and i used
00:13:18.840 to say anti-Semitism used to mean you hate Jews, but now it means you refuse to hate Arabs.
00:13:26.700 You know, it meant you dehumanize Jews. Now it's, you're not going to dehumanize Arabs. What are
00:13:31.460 you, anti-Semite? You know, it used to mean you might even want to, Jew hatred could lead to you
00:13:36.020 want to kill Jews. Now it's like, what, you're upset by the indiscriminate slaughter of Iranian
00:13:40.800 children? What are you, an anti-Semite? This is what they mean. And so Kerry's being crucified.
00:13:47.500 Okay.
00:13:48.760 I mean, that's the vocation of the Christian.
00:13:50.860 Those of us who haven't fled the Palestinians, like John, it's just God's grace.
00:13:55.860 It's sorrowful to me, and it's a mystery to me, to see why someone like Father Mike Schmitz,
00:14:02.600 who's actually apologized for Israel's crimes early on and has been silent ever since, Bishop Aaron, is very clever.
00:14:11.780 He speaks up on the Somalian crisis in Minnesota, just on cue.
00:14:17.660 Starts talking about Nigeria when the whole world is paying attention to Gaza.
00:14:21.840 Now, I'm in Nigeria.
00:14:22.940 I've been there for a long time.
00:14:24.020 We're not going anywhere.
00:14:25.540 But is he still talking about Nigeria or was that just a distraction?
00:14:29.200 And where's Dolan?
00:14:30.060 Cardinal Dolan.
00:14:31.440 Cardinal Dolan has also never said a word about Jimmy Lai.
00:14:35.100 He's never said a word about our bishops that have been disappeared from China.
00:14:38.620 They're not talking about how in India,
00:14:41.300 the Hinduva, the nationalists,
00:14:43.240 are waging a violent war of ecclesiastide
00:14:45.440 against Christian communities,
00:14:47.000 some of them amongst first century Christian communities
00:14:49.680 that have been there since the first century.
00:14:52.960 So it's as if we're not allowed to talk
00:14:54.820 in defense of the vulnerable
00:14:55.880 when there's a powerful adversary,
00:14:58.160 whether it be India, Turkey, China, or Israel.
00:15:02.620 But really that's, at VPP, we just say,
00:15:05.300 hey, if no one else is gonna speak up,
00:15:07.580 then I guess we got to do it.
00:15:08.820 But boy, boy, boy, would I rather Cardinal Dolan do it.
00:15:13.040 Would I rather Mike Schmidt's father, Mike, Mike do it?
00:15:16.860 You know, how would I love that Bishop Barron
00:15:19.900 did a whole series on the living stones
00:15:23.020 of the first century church?
00:15:24.240 How interesting would that be, Bishop Barron?
00:15:26.540 They have been there, they fixed their nets.
00:15:28.640 The first, Arabic is in the gospel.
00:15:30.840 Arabic is in the book of Acts.
00:15:33.260 The second tribe to convert to Christianity
00:15:35.420 in the second century were Arabs.
00:15:37.360 The Palestinians are the descendants of the people
00:15:39.380 that lived there at the time of Christ.
00:15:41.420 Wouldn't it be interesting for you to tell their story,
00:15:44.760 to tell a story on the ethnic cleansing
00:15:46.900 of the oldest Christian community in the world?
00:15:48.540 But you're not gonna do it because you lack the courage,
00:15:51.900 because there will be consequences.
00:15:54.920 So you can speak against Boko Haram
00:15:57.100 because Boko Haram isn't active in media.
00:16:01.740 They're not gonna censor you.
00:16:03.960 They're not gonna de-platform you.
00:16:05.520 and this is what's quite frustrating let's talk about iran because about iran okay there are a
00:16:14.440 lot of people who are going to say right after that okay whoa whoa whoa iran is the number one
00:16:19.600 place to attack don't don't don't tell me what are we doing when we're attacking iran we're finally
00:16:26.560 freeing the women the jews the christians the catholics over there they're getting persecuted
00:16:31.680 over there isn't this the best thing we can do and why are you fighting it well now that i know
00:16:36.900 that's what we're doing i'm excited like i just didn't know that's what we were doing you know
00:16:41.040 we just did a little micro i have camera crews right now running around tel aviv running around
00:16:45.400 the west bank and um in tehran and if you go to my sub stack or if you go to vulnerable people
00:16:52.640 project.com you can see a little documentary we did just last week we shot it just last week
00:16:57.780 in Tehran of the Jewish community.
00:17:00.020 And you can hear what the Jewish community
00:17:01.640 in Iran has to say for themselves.
00:17:03.520 I was just like most people,
00:17:05.060 and I've been involved in the Middle East in 25 years.
00:17:07.060 It's sort of layers of bigotry or prejudice
00:17:09.360 fall off with each new project that I have.
00:17:13.020 But I've known about Iran for a long time.
00:17:15.340 In college, I had a lot of Iranian friends.
00:17:17.980 I had the privilege of being an associate producer
00:17:19.620 on the Stoning of Sarayim.
00:17:20.980 That's not a big role in the film,
00:17:22.320 but my role was crucial,
00:17:24.620 and my role was actually relating
00:17:26.300 with the Persian community, Iranian community.
00:17:29.000 That was my role in that film.
00:17:31.220 And I was involved in the Green Revolution
00:17:34.520 and working with activists on the ground
00:17:36.920 during the Green Revolution.
00:17:38.780 Iran is under an occupied military.
00:17:41.420 I mean, the regime is so different from the people.
00:17:44.980 The Iranian people are quite wonderful.
00:17:47.460 And I would really like to see them liberated
00:17:49.620 from the yoke of this alien, perverse regime.
00:17:52.460 Women, you know, Iran, just Google Iran,
00:17:55.200 tehran 1967 and and look at what how the women dressed so the idea that this is something that
00:18:02.840 is fundamentally inescapably a part of islamic society or muslim society is just silly um but
00:18:10.200 you have this radical regime that's in power and i just think this war has if anything entrenched
00:18:16.500 them if and uh and if if the regime is if there if the regime is destroyed what we are going to
00:18:24.980 see is sectarianism. We are going to see Iran become a failed state. You're not going to see
00:18:33.900 a free and prosperous Iran. And I'm going to tell you why that's not the goal. That is not
00:18:38.200 the goal. That wasn't the goal in Iraq. That wasn't the goal in Afghanistan. That wasn't the
00:18:43.780 goal in Syria. That wasn't the goal in Yemen. Because if it was the goal, we would still be
00:18:49.200 talking about it and maybe pursuing that goal. We removed Gaddafi to save the women. And what
00:18:55.860 happened? Open air slave markets. We liberated Iraq. We were so proud of ourselves. What happened?
00:19:03.480 Yazidis, I don't want to say, you know, we all know what happened to these Yazidi girls. By the
00:19:08.380 way, I still work with them. I still work with the Yazidi community. There are 100,000 internally
00:19:12.940 displaced Iraqis in Iraqi Kurdistan now, Yazidis and others that have been displaced and in camps
00:19:19.040 for a decade because we were there to liberate them i was involved in the evacuating and caring
00:19:25.440 of american siv holders special immigrant visa holders that served our country that were promised
00:19:30.140 a visa but also democracy activists women rights activists i'll tell you a funny story we evacuated
00:19:36.340 them from afghanistan i still have safe houses in central asia where we have these people where
00:19:41.580 where are these people that care about women so much i mean what about afghanistan why don't you
00:19:45.700 help us. We need some help. They don't care about the women of Iran. And then when we destroy Iran,
00:19:51.600 they're going to go, well, we bombed them. They had every chance in the world to, oh, you think
00:19:56.340 if someone flattened LA, flattened Chicago, flattened Houston, destroyed our farms, destroyed
00:20:04.960 our energy infrastructure, that that would just blossom a utopian society here? No, this is not
00:20:12.040 how it works. Killing and destroying is not creative. We could have thoughtfully worked
00:20:18.300 with the Iranian people over the past 47 years to get a good regime. The goal isn't to bless the
00:20:25.640 people of Iran with a good government because a good government, a democratic government that's
00:20:30.540 allied with the West or can relate to the West, work with the West, is the greatest threat to
00:20:35.780 Israel. They don't want an Iran with rockets, planes. Why? Because no one wants to hear this
00:20:42.680 or say it. We all know it now. The greater Israel project. Mike Huckabee himself basically said,
00:20:49.260 Israel has the right to the entire Middle East. Well, Iran wouldn't let that happen.
00:20:54.200 Not a democratic Iran, not a capitalist Iran, not an authoritarian Iran allied with the West,
00:21:00.980 not an authoritarian Iran allied with China or Russia no Iran would allow that to happen
00:21:08.040 but what so what is Israel's goal a failed state and that's what will happen that's what will
00:21:14.880 happen there will be a failed state and all the people that cared so much we know where to be
00:21:20.180 found but guess where you're going to see Jason and VPP you're going to see me traipsing around
00:21:24.900 Iran and they're not going to be anywhere to be found because they don't care about those women
00:21:31.000 It's just not that easy.
00:21:32.380 Cheering on a war on social media doesn't free people.
00:21:36.200 It's not how order works.
00:21:38.300 The Iranians actually have a saying, which I don't like.
00:21:40.680 It's a little too much for me.
00:21:42.940 But it's like better 100 years of tyranny than one year of war.
00:21:49.060 So we're Anglos.
00:21:50.560 We're like, no, war, freedom.
00:21:54.420 But the point to that is the devastation and destruction to the human family from war
00:21:59.760 if you put it on a scale with 100 years of tyranny the balance might be it might be more
00:22:07.520 balanced than we as anglo-americans um sort of even though we're catholic we live in the society
00:22:15.880 of the glorious revolution in the amer in the english bill of rights and the magna carta and
00:22:21.060 our declaration of independence and this is who we are but i think it's an instructive point
00:22:25.380 that war is absolutely devastating yeah one of the points uh when we spoke earlier you made
00:22:33.120 do the comparison for us about saudi arabia everything you can say about iran you can say
00:22:38.920 about saudi arabia actually no it's worse there's a thriving jewish indigenous community they've
00:22:44.280 been there since thousands of years right in iran they think of themselves as iranian
00:22:50.960 yeah they're jews they're iranian um for thousands yeah since some babylon since they were brought
00:22:59.100 there actually so there's a million christians now is it an anglo-american constitutional republic
00:23:10.600 with our customs our culture no but uh it's they're there imagine
00:23:17.220 can i find a jewish community in saudi arabia can i uh where the you know filipino nuns are
00:23:26.040 getting i mean filipino workers are getting executed for the rosary you know or for talking
00:23:32.540 about their faith with somebody inappropriately in saudi arabia some filipino worker you know
00:23:36.920 when i go to certain gulf states there's you know i there's there's gulf states that i like
00:23:40.780 um when i go to cutter which we're told is villainous and i see how i pay attention i'm
00:23:47.080 from hawaii so i look like this but i think i'm filipino you know so i got my kids are like
00:23:51.900 jalapenos haole filipino and a little filipino and chinese my kids are chinese filipino chinese me
00:23:57.360 so when i go to mass like when i'm in dubai and i see how or in saudi arabia or kuwait and you see
00:24:05.060 how the um the filipino workers are treated or how they're rushed in a rush off of cattle cars
00:24:11.200 and back onto the cattle cars after mass like it's infuriating you don't see that in iraq
00:24:15.580 in fact when i've met filipino workers and as i travel around the middle east
00:24:20.140 the countries that they prefer most being in are the countries that we were told are the most
00:24:26.580 hostile to hostile to our faith those now the one exception is cutter you go to cutter
00:24:30.820 and you just see the christian workers kind of living a much more free and happy and open life
00:24:38.340 um but of course we're told one is our great ally and cutter sort of like our mistress like we love
00:24:45.260 her you know and we don't and we hide her and we ask her to do really bad things then yell at her
00:24:50.720 for doing those things this is the relationship we've had with cutter but um yeah it's it's most
00:24:56.600 people and i would say myself because i'm always surprised you know i was i wrote an article called
00:25:01.140 help i'm an anti-palestinian bigot and i wrote this article after going to egypt to evacuate
00:25:06.800 palestinians from gaza wounded women and children christians but muslims elderly and then we went
00:25:12.880 to cairo and i set up a clan and you can see the interviews they're very powerful at vulnerable
00:25:17.100 people project.com we did clandestine we set up a clandestine studio i had to hide from the
00:25:21.860 egyptian authorities because egypt is not the ally of the palestinian people they don't want
00:25:26.220 upset Israel so here we are hiring from the you know Egyptian authorities we went to the worst
00:25:32.140 neighborhood we created a studio like in a dilapidated old building it's the loudest it
00:25:38.860 was just really hard to shoot there I got so angry I went out into the neighborhood was yelling at an
00:25:43.380 entire neighborhood in Cairo to shush who are you what are you doing in our neighborhood but as I
00:25:47.900 was interviewing the Palestinians and I realized how well educated they are Palestinian women are
00:25:52.720 have a higher rate of graduate education than Israeli women.
00:25:58.120 In the Middle East, the Palestinians are known
00:25:59.820 as the most well-educated community in the Middle East.
00:26:03.700 But that's not what we're told.
00:26:05.160 We can see major influencers on the right saying they're dumb,
00:26:07.780 they have low IQs, horrible things.
00:26:10.020 Things that would come out of Hitler's mouth.
00:26:13.720 And I was listening to my internal dialogue.
00:26:17.900 Like, wow, this...
00:26:19.900 I was interviewing a Muslim older couple, and the man was talking about how when
00:26:24.560 the woman was saying, when my last kid went to college, went out of the house,
00:26:30.100 my husband told me to go back and get my PhD.
00:26:34.060 And in my head, I was like, Muslims don't,
00:26:38.420 men don't wanna have their wives to get educated.
00:26:41.940 Palestinian Muslims, especially, would never.
00:26:44.340 And but woman after woman after woman I interviewed from Gaza had graduate degrees.
00:26:49.580 And I say this, you know, when Joe Biden said
00:26:53.360 about Barack Obama, he was so clean and articulate
00:26:56.340 for a black man, I mean, you know, epic.
00:26:59.980 I was like, I heard my internal, I was like,
00:27:02.480 I sound like Joe Biden inside my head.
00:27:04.880 Oh, they're not anti-Semitic.
00:27:06.480 They're so well-educated, you know, they're so beautiful.
00:27:10.640 I was like, ah, and I went home, I went to my hotel
00:27:14.460 and I sat there and I assessed and I said this,
00:27:19.080 and I've said this in several interviews, this is true.
00:27:21.960 We had a lot of Palestinians move into my neighborhood.
00:27:25.060 My mother lived in the southwest suburbs of Chicago
00:27:28.080 when I was like junior, senior, sophomore, junior year.
00:27:31.820 And we had our local burrito shop
00:27:34.280 and one of my brothers came running in
00:27:36.000 and he's like, the Palestinians are our burrito shop.
00:27:38.980 And I was so angry, like the Palestinians,
00:27:41.220 I don't know, I don't even know what a Palestinian was,
00:27:43.660 but whatever they are, they should be in my burrito shop
00:27:46.080 because I've seen a lot of Chuck Norris movies
00:27:48.420 and they're always the bad guys.
00:27:49.640 And now the bad guys from the Chuck Norris movies
00:27:51.540 are at my burrito shop.
00:27:53.400 So I was just, they're the most calumniated people.
00:27:56.480 And when you meet the Palestinian Christians,
00:27:58.860 they're striking like all the first century
00:28:00.700 Christian communities, whether they be in India, Ethiopia,
00:28:04.720 Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, there's something different.
00:28:10.160 And I meditated on what is the difference.
00:28:12.920 I know what it is.
00:28:14.480 Grace builds upon our nature.
00:28:18.420 It builds upon your nature as a person.
00:28:21.140 Grace builds upon your family.
00:28:23.880 Grace builds upon our nation.
00:28:26.240 These communities, God's grace has been working on them since the incarnation.
00:28:35.040 I want to show you this.
00:28:37.020 On Tucker, this Christian Catholic blew him away by the forgiveness he had for the Israelis who were persecuting them.
00:28:47.000 his mom was shot as they were playing as children and he still forgives him now his mom survived
00:28:56.860 thanks be to god but he prays for the persecutors the ones who shot his mom tucker's blown away
00:29:02.340 so let's just play that clip for a second in 1990 we watch settlers come and go there was an
00:29:10.380 Israeli army vehicle that stopped. And we saw, I was 10 at that time. I saw an Israeli soldier
00:29:18.320 stepping out of the vehicle, pointing a rifle at us, and he starts shooting at us.
00:29:22.760 At you?
00:29:23.940 We were a bunch of kids. I mean, my siblings, my mother was there, and some of my cousins.
00:29:29.380 He starts shooting live ammunition at us. And then my mother rushed us all into the door.
00:29:36.500 She was the last one to get in.
00:29:38.720 She caught a bullet in the back.
00:29:40.240 Your mother?
00:29:40.920 Yes, my own mother, who loves the Lord and he loves Jesus.
00:29:45.700 And exit one, she dropped.
00:29:47.360 Come on.
00:29:47.760 She dropped on the floor, pool of blood.
00:29:50.820 I heard to the back door, called my dad, my uncle, who was a physician, put pressure on the wound, took her to the hospital.
00:30:00.820 You saw this happen?
00:30:02.260 In front of my eyes.
00:30:03.840 my own mother. I'm sorry, I should say we've been talking off camera before we started this
00:30:08.500 interview, and I didn't know the story. It's not in my interview notes, and I detected no
00:30:15.040 bitterness whatsoever in anything that you said. I don't know how. Okay. Sorry, so you're just
00:30:19.540 shocking me. I didn't expect to hear that. Palestinian Christians take the Sermon of the
00:30:25.800 Mount very seriously. Apparently. When Jesus comes and he elevates our thinking, when he
00:30:32.820 elevates our outlook on life, when he takes morality to a whole new standard, when he said,
00:30:41.440 you have heard, do not kill. But I tell you, if you look at your brother and you call him
00:30:46.380 Raka, Aramaic word for fool or stupid, you just have committed the murder. And when he said,
00:30:54.060 and remember the context, Jesus was talking to a Jewish audience who were under ruthless
00:30:59.460 Roman occupation. They were persecuted. They were discriminated against. It was very brutal to live
00:31:07.840 under the Roman occupation. But Jesus is telling his followers, love your enemies. Pray for those
00:31:14.120 who persecute you. This is something that we have grown up understanding the very essence
00:31:21.900 and the meaning of this Sermon of the Mount. So now I have this for you. Because you're
00:31:29.100 speaking out now because you dare to point out the atrocities of Israel at a time when, yes,
00:31:36.800 there is antisemitism going on. We see it from all sorts of folks. Yes, that's true. But you're
00:31:43.700 going to be called an antisemite because you're daring to stand with the vulnerable. You're
00:31:49.740 daring to repeat the calls of Cardinal Pizzaballa and all of the Catholic leaders in the Holy Land
00:31:57.460 for decades now how do you respond yourself to the charge of anti-semitism well you know
00:32:05.160 first of all this all began for me when i was 17 years old and my high school girlfriend was
00:32:13.620 forced by her father to have an abortion while i was in basic training that was my sort of inciting
00:32:19.260 incident to the fragility of life and how children are exposed to violence and that's where our
00:32:25.540 friendship began with our shared commitment in the 90s when we first met to protecting the
00:32:30.760 child and the woman from violence. I was a soldier at the time. I was in basic training when this
00:32:36.440 happened. And that's when my activism started. But then as a young infantryman on deployment,
00:32:41.440 I began to see that they're just, I wanted to order my life to get between the vulnerable and
00:32:47.560 the violent and stand with fathers right away. Because I became a father at 18 and I had two
00:32:51.220 children by 19 here I'm an infantryman my mother had me when she was 17 16.
00:32:56.700 So I knew it was like to be raised by a teenager and I just but then as a soldier
00:33:01.180 I realized how privileged I was as an American and I wanted to leverage that
00:33:04.360 privilege to make myself as influential as possible as useful as possible to stand
00:33:09.500 with fathers that didn't have these opportunities that I'm gonna have is a
00:33:12.400 man of my life strange when I look back to think I had this vision is a 17 year
00:33:16.720 old infantryman but then when I got out of the army and I went to the University
00:33:20.860 of Hawaii I had my little babies my kids are you know from Hawaii they're hapahaolis and but my
00:33:27.040 professors didn't know this and I had blonde hair and blue eyes and they didn't know I was born to
00:33:31.400 a teen mother raised in you know Chicago they just assumed here this is blonde kid at the
00:33:37.080 University of Hawaii must be some trust fund baby and they would call me a racist for being pro-life
00:33:42.280 and that was the biggest charge I'm like wait what I make brown babies I have two already and
00:33:47.420 I'm only 21.
00:33:48.840 It was very strange.
00:33:50.680 And when I really saw the vision for this organization,
00:33:54.140 and our organization's actually,
00:33:55.180 the name is HERO,
00:33:56.000 the Human Rights Education Elite Organization.
00:33:57.640 We have two programs,
00:33:58.980 Vulnerable People Project and Movie to Movement,
00:34:01.700 but the same mission to defend the vulnerable from violence
00:34:04.260 by promoting human dignity and inspiring solidarity.
00:34:07.020 When I had the idea for this,
00:34:08.780 it was to stand with those that no one will stand with,
00:34:11.540 knowing that you'll be calumniated for doing it.
00:34:13.840 And I thought,
00:34:14.920 people say the worst things about me
00:34:17.000 because I'm fighting abortion.
00:34:18.700 So I've been through this, but guess what then?
00:34:21.020 I was just in a book that 50 pro-life heroes
00:34:25.280 in world history, Mother Teresa, Ronald Reagan,
00:34:28.680 Pope John Paul II, and bang, there's Jason Jones.
00:34:31.380 What in the world am I doing in that book?
00:34:33.540 Aren't I the horrible human that I was being called
00:34:36.080 by my leftist professors as a college student
00:34:38.640 in the early 90s?
00:34:40.120 So I don't care, like I just don't care.
00:34:43.460 I always tell my kids, it's better to be thought to be hateful
00:34:50.160 than to be hateful.
00:34:52.060 And it would be a hateful thing for me.
00:34:54.580 And I, you know, look, I'm not naive.
00:34:56.980 As I began to get pushback in my advocacy
00:35:00.580 for the Palestinians, I thought, is this prudent?
00:35:03.660 This is gonna undermine my witness for the,
00:35:05.760 our Afghan ally SIVs or my work in Nigeria or Sudan
00:35:08.660 or my pro-life witness.
00:35:10.380 People are gonna call me to these things
00:35:11.780 and it's gonna undermine my witness.
00:35:13.320 And I thought, no one helped me.
00:35:16.700 I felt alone in the world as a young 17 year old boy
00:35:19.860 trying to fight abortion without the internet,
00:35:21.440 without email, didn't know I had an ally in the world.
00:35:25.820 And I didn't want anyone to feel that way.
00:35:27.800 So be it, whatever comes, that's fine.
00:35:32.000 But there is something that is hard for me.
00:35:33.980 You know, with my work at VPP,
00:35:35.140 we've really worked closely with the Jewish community.
00:35:37.340 We evacuated the last young Jewish man from Afghanistan,
00:35:42.340 Afghanistan. The world doesn't even really know he exists. He's in Canada now. A wonderful,
00:35:47.780 beautiful young man. And I did that for someone I love from New York, who is the PR guy for a
00:35:54.480 major Zionist organization. The hard part for me is that people I love will think that I don't love
00:36:03.540 them. People that I love will think that I have somehow been swept away by some anti-Semitic
00:36:09.320 enthusiasm and i'm just using the palestinians as as an excuse to to use this hatred i always have
00:36:16.200 had that's the part that is hard for me but what the mob says on x or what some stranger says
00:36:23.120 even if they really believe it i don't care the hard part is um the people that you really care
00:36:30.720 about feel hurt and abandoned for example my one friend i mean this issue is very close to him he
00:36:36.520 lost friends on on October 7th you know and I have another friend who I adore who's just ghosted me
00:36:43.840 the other friend I commend him we're still friends on Facebook and we still send each other niceties
00:36:48.040 another friend who I adore she's a human rights lawyer and a hero I just don't think she could
00:36:53.740 take my posts anymore and she unfriended me there was she's one of the most people in the world I
00:36:58.620 admire most she's been heroic for vulnerable communities so that is all that is always the
00:37:04.040 hard part you know that's that's the hard part my gosh yeah well when we stand for the truth and
00:37:09.320 with christ he did tell us it would uh end up with persecution thank you can i add one more thing oh
00:37:16.160 by all means please you know and this is why bishop baron and cardinal dolan um i had a friend who was
00:37:23.680 in a same-sex marriage and we were very we were very close when pope francis had made some
00:37:31.360 statements that were really um that could have been taken many different ways she called me and
00:37:37.060 said you can really support what i'm doing now and i said no no and that ruined our friendship
00:37:44.540 if if our bishop spoke with clarity i wouldn't have to worry about my friends thinking i hate
00:37:53.500 them but but when they sit on the sidelines with their powerful voice it allows these attacks to
00:38:01.300 have resonance but you know you look at was it um archbishop rummel in new orleans who had
00:38:10.380 excommunicated politicians that supported segregation and what did the catholic lady
00:38:16.380 at the time do they went and renamed all their streets and their towns after the politicians
00:38:22.380 that the bishop excommunicated for supporting segregation
00:38:26.760 think how hurt he must have been but today we think of bishop rummel and we admire him
00:38:36.160 we look at franz yeager's daughter we admire him but his priest and his bishop thought he was
00:38:41.640 imprudent he could have gone about it better all the things they say about carrie prajean
00:38:46.160 it's not what she said it's how she said it there was a better place or a better time to say what
00:38:50.740 she was saying it's the same things they used to tell me about abortion in the late 80s it's the
00:38:55.500 Same thing they told Franz Jaeger's daughter.
00:38:57.720 I'm sure they told, someone said to Maximilian Kolbe,
00:39:00.560 you're imprudent, don't do these things.
00:39:03.680 There's a better way to do it.
00:39:05.840 And so it's just, it's the story.
00:39:08.460 It is, it is.
00:39:10.000 Keep fighting, my friend.
00:39:11.660 Thank you, brother.
00:39:12.860 Ladies and gentlemen, Jason Jones.
00:39:15.180 God bless you.
00:39:16.260 Thanks, brother.
00:39:17.660 And God bless all of you.
00:39:19.380 We'll see you next time.
00:39:20.140 Hello, it's Fr. David Nix. If you like this content, please click the link in the description
00:39:29.140 for more like this. Thank you all for watching, and God bless you.