The Tucker Carlson Show - Here’s What It’s Really Like to Live as a Christian in the Holy Land

00:00:00.000 An all-American and veteran-owned company, Freeze-Dry Wholesalers is offering Tucker listeners a lifetime discount of 15% off with code TUCKER at checkout.

00:00:09.980 Using proprietary freeze-dry technology, Freeze-Dry Wholesalers is the only company in the industry that can freeze-dry whole steaks, entire pork chops, and more.

00:00:19.640 With a diverse line of products lasting for the next 25 years, Freeze-Dry Wholesalers is the perfect option for hiking, camping, or stocking up your emergency supply.

00:00:29.440 Receive a lifetime discount every time you use code TUCKER at checkout.

00:00:34.100 Go to freeze-drywholesalers.com today and be prepared for tomorrow.

00:00:38.940 Thank you for doing this.

00:00:40.160 So you first moved to the Holy Land in 1996?

00:00:44.600 Correct.

00:00:45.220 As a nun.

00:00:47.060 How are Christians doing in the Holy Land?

00:00:50.060 Well, it's become a very difficult time for them there.

00:00:59.440 Basically, the Christians are in the same situation as the Muslims being a Palestinian.

00:01:19.020 So the problem is, so there's two different things.

00:01:21.220 If you live in Israel, you're a citizen.

00:01:24.240 And so they can live there and work, but there's sort of some petty grievances that people might have.

00:01:30.500 But if you're a Christian in Palestine, which is where most of the activities of the life of Christ are,

00:01:37.220 Bethlehem, Jerusalem, the Mount of Olives, Jericho, Jacob's Well, that's all within Palestine.

00:01:44.080 And so there's many, that's the predominance of the Christian population there.

00:01:47.640 And they're treated with the effects of the occupation, which means you have checkpoints around you.

00:01:55.100 You can't, you're not, a Christian who lives in Bethlehem cannot go to Jerusalem,

00:01:58.600 to the Holy Sepulchre, without a permit by Israel, and they don't usually give those permits, especially now.

00:02:05.440 A Christian can't?

00:02:06.880 No, without permission from Israel.

00:02:12.300 That's interesting, because, I mean, those Christians that you're describing, I mean, they're the descendants of the Christians.

00:02:18.880 Absolutely, yeah.

00:02:19.620 Who were converted by Jesus.

00:02:20.860 They've been there from the beginning, yeah.

00:02:22.560 I mean, right, Christ came as a Jew, right?

00:02:24.660 Yes.

00:02:24.920 Went to the temple, but the people that converted and have lived there for centuries are, in fact,

00:02:30.480 I think there's been studies done that if you, on Palestinians living there now, and they are the Canaanite descendants.

00:02:37.500 Yes.

00:02:37.680 They're people that have been there for centuries.

00:02:40.060 Or the greater part, not just, Palestine included Syria and Lebanon at a different time, under different empires and things.

00:02:47.000 So, yeah, they're the first Christians, the Christians at the time of Christ.

00:02:50.980 And they can, it's very difficult to practice their faith.

00:02:54.580 It's sort of like you're in a gilded cage.

00:02:56.640 And the best, that's how I look at Bethlehem.

00:02:59.020 Within Bethlehem, you can live there, but you can't go and visit your friend who lives near Jacob's well in Nablus without taking it.

00:03:07.180 In fact, the priest in Bethlehem just told me the other day, his wife is from near Janine, which normally would take you about an hour and a half to get between the two.

00:03:16.320 Her father has prostate cancer.

00:03:19.640 In order to get treatment, there was only hospitals, nothing in the Northwest Bank could deal with it, either in Jerusalem or in Hebron, which is south of Bethlehem.

00:03:29.120 And last year, or a couple of years ago, he was able to go to Jerusalem with a permit to get the treatment.

00:03:34.940 But this year, the Israelis wouldn't let him.

00:03:37.880 So, it took him over five hours to get down to Hebron and a man who's old and sick to doing things.

00:03:43.260 So, whether it's for those kind of activities or practicing your faith or visiting your relatives, which is part of Christian life too, right?

00:03:51.700 You want to celebrate the holidays with your family and friends.

00:03:54.840 It becomes very difficult to do.

00:03:57.760 The reason I'm asking these questions, well, first, I think it's worth worrying about Christians who are the minority population.

00:04:05.460 Well, it's worth worrying about Christians in general.

00:04:07.060 But the United States is a majority Christian country that pays for a huge percentage of the Israeli economy, both through trade and direct grants and military assistance and all the rest.

00:04:17.920 Israel couldn't exist without the United States.

00:04:19.340 So, and it has the support of so many Christians in the United States.

00:04:22.740 And I don't know if they're fully aware.

00:04:27.420 I want to think they would care if they knew how the Christians are doing.

00:04:31.040 And I keep reading that the Christian population in the region has declined dramatically since Israel became a state in 1948.

00:04:39.420 Right.

00:04:39.880 And I'm not quite sure why.

00:04:41.680 Well, again, I think it has to do because the whole issue is that Israel has continued to grow and think that they can dominate the Christian areas, the areas of Palestine.

00:04:53.300 So, they make it very difficult for anyone else to be able to live there.

00:04:57.220 As simple as that.

00:04:58.080 But you would think Christians would get a special pass or dispensation because the United States is the great patron and it's a Christian country.

00:05:05.620 No, because, well, the problem you have is one with the Christian Zionists, the ones who don't recognize the Christians in the Holy Land as being fully Christian, apparently.

00:05:15.140 Because why would a crew – I have a very hard time understanding why someone who calls himself a Christian and then gives money to support the building of settlements.

00:05:26.000 Do we understand what that means?

00:05:28.080 The settlements are in the areas of Palestine.

00:05:30.700 They're taking over the land that belongs to the people of Palestine.

00:05:34.720 And this has been going on.

00:05:35.620 Like I said, I've been there since 1996 and I've seen the continued growth of the settlement.

00:05:39.920 I lived in Bethany, biblical Bethany.

00:05:43.140 And over the mountain, Mount of Olives was the convent I was in, in Jerusalem.

00:05:47.560 And to the east of me was the settlement of Malay al-Amin in 1998.

00:05:53.020 It was a relatively small settlement then.

00:05:55.660 And then you go down the road to Jericho.

00:05:58.400 It was one lane.

00:05:59.800 It's now a larger highway.

00:06:01.700 And that settlement of Malay al-Amin was like a huge city and has closed off the people of Bethany.

00:06:07.200 We are closed off in Bethany from going to our convent in Jerusalem because of the wall that was built on Palestinian land, on Christian land, to – there's a Christian home for boys that the Israelis just took over and cut up to make part of the wall that's separate.

00:06:24.440 So they weren't – it wasn't done for security to build that wall.

00:06:27.180 It was done simply to expand the borders of Israel.

00:06:32.500 Wait, so they went right through Christian land.

00:06:35.340 Did Christians in the west say anything about this?

00:06:37.320 Very few.

00:06:38.660 I mean, I – there was – and also on that stretch at the lower end of the Mount of Olives, there was a nursing home run by a Catholic church.

00:06:46.940 And the nun that was in charge, she spoke to the French press, and soon after she was told – she was sent to Lebanon or to another post.

00:06:59.520 She wasn't allowed to be there.

00:07:01.080 Me, at the same time, we had – the wall was built right beyond Lazarus' tomb.

00:07:05.780 Our school is walking distance from Lazarus' tomb, from where Martha and Mary lived.

00:07:10.180 And they built the wall right above where the tomb is.

00:07:13.320 So that separated some of our teachers from being able to come to school.

00:07:16.700 It separated our families on either side of the wall.

00:07:19.260 So in April of 2005, I went to Washington and spoke to some congresspeople, not to demean Jews or not to even demean the state of Israel, to say, look, we are being affected by this wall.

00:07:32.500 It's affecting our religious life.

00:07:34.240 I can't bring my – I can't go to visit my convent easily anymore because of this wall.

00:07:38.500 It's disrupting our school life, and we'd like to see – it's not for security.

00:07:44.160 It's not separating Israel from Palestine.

00:07:48.540 It's separating Palestine from Palestine in the two.

00:07:51.420 I get back home.

00:07:53.100 I'm sorry.

00:07:53.420 What kind of reception did you – so you went to Congress?

00:07:55.520 Yeah, and a handful.

00:07:57.020 Actually, I remember a very sweet occurrence.

00:07:58.900 He's died since, but Senator Paul Wellstone of Minnesota, I was scheduled to meet him, and he wasn't there.

00:08:06.440 But then he came, and he literally ran down the hall to catch me.

00:08:10.340 So there were a few people that were sympathetic.

00:08:13.780 But overall, no.

00:08:15.540 And I even felt the sense when I was talking to people that the – like I went to a meeting where there were a few aides there of different congresspeople, right, not just in one office, and just felt as if there was someone there watching what he was saying or doing going on.

00:08:31.080 So anyway, so I get back.

00:08:32.360 Did you meet with any Christian church leaders here in the U.S.?

00:08:35.200 Unfortunately – I mean, the Catholic Church has done a lot and said a lot, but I – sad to say, I feel the Orthodox Church in America has been very reluctant to speak out on this issue.

00:08:48.280 Why?

00:08:48.600 Or to get involved.

00:08:50.500 Maybe sometimes we – I think it's partly – it's just simply awareness.

00:08:54.760 Even when people go on pilgrimages to the Holy Land, they probably have Israeli tour guides, and they don't – you know, it's an amazing experience to go to the Holy Land.

00:09:04.840 And it's overwhelming to be a pious person to go there, and you're thinking about going to see where Jesus was, and here I'm on the Sea of Galilee.

00:09:11.480 And you don't really perceive what that wall means, or who are those people living over there, or how come there's only cars with yellow plates here.

00:09:19.720 And then we were in Jericho, and I saw these green and white plates.

00:09:22.700 What does that mean going on?

00:09:24.300 They don't understand it, so they don't get the concept.

00:09:25.920 What does a yellow license plate mean?

00:09:27.680 Yellow plate is for people who live in the state of Israel, and they can go on certain roads – all roads – and for Palestinians who have a Jerusalem ID, are allowed to have a car with a yellow plate.

00:09:42.320 And then Palestinians have green and white plates, and they cannot use – so over that time that I've been here, as the settlements have grown, you build the infrastructure for it.

00:09:50.720 The electricity, the roads, separate roads that are used only by people that have yellow plates.

00:09:56.620 As a foreigner and part of a foreign church, we were entitled to have either those, or they also have white diplomatic plates, the kind of diplomatic and religious plates that are there.

00:10:06.420 So there's very much an apartheid system, very much so, which gave me the freedom to help my Christians' friends in Bethlehem and other places.

00:10:16.860 Like one time, there was a woman who – her daughter, they were from Bethlehem, married a Christian who lived in Jerusalem.

00:10:25.720 So he had rights to be in the city of Jerusalem, have blue ID.

00:10:28.260 But the mother, when the daughter gave birth to their first child, she didn't have any way to go to see her daughter because it would be illegal for her to go into Jerusalem to get there.

00:10:39.800 So I had the school van, and I went to Bethlehem, go get her, and a lot of times we'd have a little more leeway.

00:10:48.540 You know, if I go through a checkpoint, they'll see it's a nun, and I'd go pass through a lot easier than someone else would.

00:10:54.960 So I was able to get her through to be able to go see her daughter at the birth of her granddaughter.

00:10:59.380 We're sorry to say it, but this is not a very safe country.

00:11:02.240 Walk through Oakland or Philadelphia.

00:11:04.020 Yeah, good luck.

00:11:05.860 So most people, when they think about this, want to carry a firearm, and a lot of us do.

00:11:10.900 The problem is there can be massive consequences for that.

00:11:13.740 Ask Kyle Rittenhouse.

00:11:14.980 Kyle Rittenhouse got off in the end, but he was innocent from the first moment.

00:11:17.900 It was obvious on video, and he was facing life in prison anyway.

00:11:22.800 That's what the anti-gun movement will do.

00:11:24.960 They'll throw you in prison for defending yourself with a firearm, and that's why a lot of Americans are turning to Burna.

00:11:30.820 It's a proudly American company.

00:11:32.860 Burna makes self-defense launchers that hundreds of law enforcement departments trust.

00:11:37.460 They've sold over 600,000 pistols, mostly to private citizens who refuse to be empty-handed.

00:11:42.860 These pistols, and I have one, fire rock-hard kinetic rounds or tear gas rounds and pepper projectiles, and they stop a threat from up to 60 feet away.

00:11:52.140 There are no background checks.

00:11:53.320 There are no waiting periods.

00:11:54.940 Burna can ship it directly to your door.

00:11:57.680 You can't be arrested for defending yourself with a Burna pistol.

00:12:01.380 Visit BurnaBYRNA.com or your local sportsman's warehouse to get yours today.

00:12:07.040 Burna.com.

00:12:08.320 You don't want to be passive and tired and dependent, do you?

00:12:12.320 Of course you don't.

00:12:13.980 You want to be strong and self-sufficient.

00:12:16.140 That's the goal, and our friends at Beam can help you.

00:12:18.560 They understand that real strength does not come from drugs.

00:12:22.040 It comes from inside you, internal motivation, internal strength, health.

00:12:27.740 That's the key.

00:12:29.500 Bigger.

00:12:29.980 So we partner with Beam because they have the same values that we have, that Americans have, hard work, accountability, free will, independence.

00:12:37.400 Be strong, don't be dependent.

00:12:40.000 Not until you're really old, anyway.

00:12:41.400 Beam can help you achieve that.

00:12:44.060 This great U.S. company is offering our listeners a new bundle, the American Strength Bundle,

00:12:48.480 and it comes with top-selling creatine and protein powder that delivers what your body needs to perform, to recover, and to stay strong.

00:12:55.600 No junk at all.

00:12:56.920 All natural ingredients that actually taste good.

00:12:59.940 You will love it.

00:13:01.440 You can get 30% off this bundle at shopbeam.com.

00:13:04.960 This is not in stores.

00:13:06.800 Just on that page for people who listen to this podcast only.

00:13:11.260 They're encouraging you to be weak.

00:13:13.120 Don't let them.

00:13:13.820 Go to shopbeam.com.

00:13:15.540 Slash Tucker for 30% off.

00:13:17.080 You may have noticed this is a great country with bad food.

00:13:21.420 Our food supply is rotten.

00:13:23.620 It didn't used to be this way.

00:13:25.200 Take chips, for example.

00:13:26.900 You may recall a time when crushing a bag of chips didn't make you feel hungover, like you couldn't get out of bed the next day.

00:13:34.660 And the change, of course, is chemicals.

00:13:37.460 There's all kinds of crap they're putting in this food that should not be in your body.

00:13:41.180 Seed oils, for example.

00:13:42.320 Now, even one serving of your standard American chip brand can make you feel bloated, fat, totally passive, and out of it.

00:13:53.140 But there is a better way.

00:13:54.240 It's called masa chips.

00:13:55.600 They're delicious.

00:13:56.780 Got a whole garage full of them.

00:13:58.120 They're healthy, they taste great, and they have three simple ingredients.

00:14:02.600 Corn, salt, and 100% grass-fed beef tallow.

00:14:07.300 No garbage, no seed oils.

00:14:09.640 What a relief, and you feel the difference when you eat them, as we often do.

00:14:12.980 Snacking on masa chips is not like eating the garbage that you buy at convenience stores.

00:14:18.540 You feel satisfied, light, energetic, not sluggish.

00:14:22.900 Tens of thousands of happy people eat masa chips.

00:14:27.040 It's endorsed by people who understand health.

00:14:29.260 It's well worth a try.

00:14:30.700 Go to masa, M-A-S-A, chips.com slash Tucker.

00:14:33.580 Use the code Tucker for 25% off your first order.

00:14:35.920 That's masachips.com, Tucker, code Tucker for 25% off your first order.

00:14:43.560 Highly recommended.

00:14:45.480 I'll just be totally blunt with you.

00:14:47.820 Most Americans are aware that there's a system, something like what you just described.

00:14:52.320 Right.

00:14:52.820 But the pretext for it, the justification for it, is that there's a lot of Islamic terrorism.

00:14:57.440 There are a couple intifadas.

00:14:58.460 There are a lot of suicide bombings.

00:15:00.120 And it's Islamic terror.

00:15:01.700 And most Americans have been taught for 25 years that Islamic terror is a threat.

00:15:06.820 And, you know, there's some truth in that, of course.

00:15:09.420 But so we assume that Christians would be getting an exemption from all this.

00:15:17.280 Why would Christians who are not responsible for Christian terror, there's no such thing,

00:15:22.280 why would they be penalized for this?

00:15:24.620 Why wouldn't they, again, when the patron saint state is majority Christian,

00:15:29.400 why wouldn't the Christians there be getting some kind of special pass?

00:15:33.020 I just don't understand that.

00:15:34.680 Why punish the Christians for Islamic terror?

00:15:37.940 Because I don't think it's Islamic terror that's taking place in the first place.

00:15:41.400 I think we have to disabuse ourselves of that notion that this is a battle between Muslim and Jew.

00:15:47.760 Or that, you know, constantly you heard after October, the October event was that Hamas, Hamas, Hamas.

00:15:53.940 Even to this day we hear it's Hamas, Hamas, Hamas.

00:15:56.760 What is Hamas?

00:15:57.720 Hamas are people who have had their homes taken from them, who, if they live in Gaza,

00:16:06.060 have not been able, have basically been in an open air prison for certainly the last 20 years going on.

00:16:11.940 Even when the Israelis withdrew from Gaza, they didn't leave open borders.

00:16:17.380 There was no freedom for people in Gaza to develop their economy.

00:16:21.120 If I know people who wanted to try to go to school in America and couldn't get out of Gaza,

00:16:25.600 you know, had a Fulbright scholarship and weren't able to leave.

00:16:28.600 You mean couldn't get out?

00:16:30.240 Israel didn't give them permission.

00:16:31.480 So what kind of freedom is that if you live in Gaza?

00:16:34.560 They couldn't even fly out?

00:16:35.640 No.

00:16:36.040 And their airport had been bombed in, what, 2000 and early on.

00:16:39.620 There was an airport built soon after the Oslo Accords.

00:16:42.780 But Israel has intervened many times in Gaza and little by little destroyed.

00:16:48.740 You know, when I first went there in 2002, after the second infathe started, I remember saying to my mother back home,

00:16:55.740 you know, this is genocide, even that genocide by Chinese water torture.

00:16:59.720 But now we're seeing genocide on steroids.

00:17:03.500 You're American, I should say.

00:17:04.700 Yes, I'm born in America, yeah, lived in America.

00:17:08.020 And so getting back to Hamas, so also the school I was at has 350 girls.

00:17:14.560 It's in a town that's 98% Muslim.

00:17:18.940 Though it has roots, I mean, it's the roots of where Bethany, where on our school grounds is a stone from the 6th century.

00:17:25.780 This is where Christ met Martha at the resurrection.

00:17:29.760 You know, so we're talking about, and it's the road leading, there's still part of the road that existed when Christ walked during that time

00:17:37.920 and would have seen Lazarus and Martha and Mary.

00:17:40.760 Lazarus' tomb is down the road, right?

00:17:43.200 And so permeated even with Palestinian Muslim culture is the sense that Christians lived here.

00:17:49.620 And they recognized Jesus as a prophet.

00:17:52.140 So they respect him as, and so there's, I'm not saying that everything is perfect.

00:17:57.500 You can't have divisions between, just like even with Christians.

00:18:01.100 You know, some Christians might think we should have, allow politics to be in the church or legislate Christian morality.

00:18:09.260 And others would think totally different.

00:18:10.960 So you can have sort of differences of opinion, if you will, and we can all live with each other between that.

00:18:15.300 So with Muslim and Christian, they can have their differences.

00:18:18.820 But overall, the Palestinian culture is infused with both there.

00:18:24.540 So you were a nun in a majority Muslim town, a Christian nun in your habit, I assume.

00:18:30.380 And which also was to an advantage because pious Muslims are not jihadists, the ones that I know.

00:18:36.400 I'm not saying other parts of the world that may be the case, but in Palestine, it's simply not the case.

00:18:40.540 Or Syria or Lebanon or Iraq.

00:18:43.680 The Muslims, for the most part, are, they've all grown up together, the Christians and the Muslims.

00:18:50.480 And there's a certain amount of commonality and respect.

00:18:55.600 And so me wearing, being dressed like this was just like many of the women there, right?

00:19:00.320 So they kind of respected that.

00:19:01.720 There's the same sort of conservative culture.

00:19:03.900 There's the same sort of idea that we're both have some same basic values of compassion for our neighbor,

00:19:10.240 of taking care of our families and trying to live a fit.

00:19:15.960 They have their form of fasting and almsgiving, and it's actually very important to them.

00:19:20.080 And I think the best parts of Islam come from its development from Christian ideas that Muhammad came to know.

00:19:27.840 I'm sure of that.

00:19:29.300 You can sense it.

00:19:30.660 This is a very different story from the one that we're told in the American media,

00:19:33.640 that Christians are imperiled by Muslims in the Middle East.

00:19:36.360 They are not imperiled by Muslims in Palestine.

00:19:41.460 That is an absolute fact.

00:19:43.740 Yeah, that's just simply not the case.

00:19:46.780 And again, going back to my school, in our school, we had icons, which are part of the Orthodox tradition,

00:19:52.640 pictures of saints and crosses in every classroom.

00:19:56.080 No problem with that.

00:19:57.060 I could show you a photograph, I can't know, but of the graduates of the latest high school graduation.

00:20:02.140 And, you know, they're embracing the nuns there.

00:20:04.640 They're dressed, actually, in a more secular way.

00:20:07.500 And, yeah, it all works together.

00:20:09.700 So a lot of your students were Muslim?

00:20:11.640 All, yeah, 98%.

00:20:13.060 Of your students were Muslim?

00:20:15.020 Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:20:15.980 And about half the teachers during the time I was there have some Muslim, some Christian.

00:20:20.740 In a Christian school?

00:20:21.920 Yes.

00:20:22.360 And actually, that's all throughout Palestine.

00:20:24.360 The Orthodox is relatively small.

00:20:26.620 We do have schools in many of the Palestinian towns, but also Catholic schools, Lutheran schools, and most of the population, most of the students are Muslims.

00:20:35.580 Huh.

00:20:36.420 And the beautiful thing about where the great danger is, if the Christians continue to diminish a key part of Palestinian society, and within Israel as well, you go to Nazareth, you'll see many Catholic-run hospitals, schools.

00:20:52.080 And so it's a fabric.

00:20:53.340 It's a part of the whole character.

00:20:54.700 But I'm just still confused by the idea that the Christian population is declining under Israeli rule.

00:21:02.360 Yeah.

00:21:02.520 You would think just the opposite.

00:21:04.520 What gives them a – what I observed from my time in Israel and going back every year is that they do not want any Palestinians there.

00:21:16.000 So the majority of Christians in Israel and Palestine are Palestinian.

00:21:21.000 So they have to leave too.

00:21:22.720 I can – what grieves me is that the Holocaust is a horrible, horrible thing that happened.

00:21:32.460 People slaughtered fairly quickly.

00:21:37.500 Sometimes the thought comes to me when I've driven between – I'm a – there's a tunnel road that goes from Jerusalem to Bethlehem.

00:21:43.600 And it's only for the settlers to go on down to the continued settlements that lead down further south in Israel to Hebron.

00:21:50.180 Or actually, I shouldn't say Israel, into Palestine, other Palestinian territory.

00:21:55.120 As you're going, that tunnel road has been carved out of land that belongs to people in Bethlehem and Bejala, which you're passing by on that tunnel road.

00:22:04.860 So it's like a living death.

00:22:06.660 How would you like to be a man?

00:22:08.740 That was your grandfather's olive trees.

00:22:10.860 But now it's controlled by Israel.

00:22:13.820 And you're not even allowed to drive on that road.

00:22:16.540 And on that very same road, I remember another poignant picture.

00:22:20.460 There was a woman that worked at our convent, a nurse, and took care of the nuns.

00:22:25.260 And she had a home, a very typical stone Arab home, beautiful home with grapevines.

00:22:32.380 I remember going to pick the grapes at the house.

00:22:35.020 That is now part of – they just confiscated the land.

00:22:38.840 She fought it.

00:22:39.780 She fought as long as she could to try to keep her property.

00:22:43.160 And I remember passing by there some years, and there's slowly, slowly new Israel homes are being built that look very different.

00:22:50.920 And there's her something that looks out of – as if it belongs to biblical Palestine.

00:22:57.340 And so what I was getting at is that these people, they're dying as they're living.

00:23:03.520 And I remember sitting at the home of one of those people in Bejala.

00:23:07.780 And they had lived in the center of town.

00:23:10.540 It was his father's home.

00:23:12.160 And then he built a new one near the Talitha Kumi Lutheran School.

00:23:16.860 And I literally was sitting with them one afternoon.

00:23:19.200 And he gets a call from his brother.

00:23:21.420 The Israelis are here.

00:23:22.400 They're pulling up our olive trees, cutting them down on some of their land.

00:23:27.440 And he ran over.

00:23:28.860 He got – collected as many of the trees as he could.

00:23:32.220 Military order, that's what it was.

00:23:33.700 They just go and do it, even though it's not their land.

00:23:36.780 And then military order, nothing you can do.

00:23:39.200 They have jeeps and weapons.

00:23:41.000 You're not going to stop them.

00:23:42.100 But he was able to take some of those trees.

00:23:44.400 This shows the resiliency.

00:23:46.020 And the word is samud.

00:23:47.120 It's like – it's a quiet persistence.

00:23:51.140 This is our land and we're going to stay here.

00:23:53.320 And this man is a doctor who studied in Hungary.

00:23:55.540 He took those olive trees and they now are in a plot of land next to his new house and trying to grow.

00:24:01.160 So it's like this is – I'm not sure what Israel is trying to do.

00:24:05.680 I mean it's horrific what's going on in Gaza and what is very concerning to me and why I'm grateful to be on your show is that what is going to happen – the people that I know in the West Bank, Christian and Muslim, it's not said.

00:24:23.020 But it's like we're next, that what they've done to Gaza is going to come to us because who's going to stop them?

00:24:30.100 Already in the northern parts where the refugee camps were, I was there in September.

00:24:38.520 They had already been making raids.

00:24:41.700 I was in the center of Janine, right in front of the Catholic Church.

00:24:44.700 They had bulldozed the middle of the road and broken the water pipes.

00:24:49.020 No bullet holes.

00:24:49.720 I lived in 2002 during the Antifada in Bethlehem.

00:24:52.860 The whole city was full of bullet holes.

00:24:54.680 So there hadn't been any confrontations, but they were still bulldozing and doing what they wanted to do to wreck the infrastructure, to make it harder for people to go to work up there.

00:25:02.540 But now, in the last eight months, they've cleared out at least 15,000 people in Tulkarim and Janine in the northern part.

00:25:13.320 They're not in their homes.

00:25:14.500 Do you hear those stories?

00:25:17.100 And these affect Christians as well.

00:25:18.700 If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

00:25:20.260 It's a cliche for a reason because it's pretty good advice, but sometimes it's not true.

00:25:26.920 Cell phones are a glaring exception.

00:25:29.380 You've got your cell phone.

00:25:30.200 You've had it for years.

00:25:32.040 You don't change.

00:25:32.900 Sometimes your cell phone battery life fades or maybe your processor can't keep up, but your phone is bound to run into trouble eventually, no matter what the problem is.

00:25:41.620 And replacing it early is much better and often far cheaper than replacing it too late.

00:25:45.940 Enter Pure Talk.

00:25:46.740 This month, if you switch to a qualifying $35 plan, $35, Pure Talk will give you a Samsung Galaxy A36 completely free, literally free.

00:25:58.200 Just $35 a month for talk, text, and data.

00:26:01.760 And you get to restart your phone lifecycle without paying for a brand new device.

00:26:05.620 So it's a scam-free deal.

00:26:08.560 All on America's most dependable 5G network.

00:26:11.620 It's like a cell phone that works as well as any other.

00:26:13.880 It's just way cheaper and they're not scamming you.

00:26:16.260 So switching is a win for everybody.

00:26:17.720 You save money on your cell phone bill, Pure Talk grows to hire more Americans to support more veterans, which it does.

00:26:24.600 So go to puretalk.com slash talker to get your free phone today.

00:26:27.780 That's puretalk.com slash talker to switch to our wireless company.

00:26:32.580 It's America's wireless company.

00:26:34.220 It's Pure Talk.

00:26:34.900 So it's pretty obvious now that this country is getting weaker than ever, meaning the population is unhealthier.

00:26:42.680 That's what Maha is about, trying to counteract this long-term trend that's culminated in a disaster.

00:26:48.240 Americans are so unhealthy, we can't staff the military.

00:26:50.480 And it's really, really sad.

00:26:52.200 Why is this happening?

00:26:53.020 Maybe because sick people are easier to control.

00:26:55.680 Whatever the reason, there are answers to it.

00:26:58.840 One of them is Joy and Blokes.

00:27:00.680 They are revolutionizing supplements with smart supplements that are personalized for you.

00:27:05.300 They're based entirely on your genetics, your biomarker data.

00:27:09.100 They're not guessing.

00:27:10.680 So they use labs, advanced labs that measure up to 110 key biomarkers.

00:27:16.620 Then their clinicians design a precision supplement plan that's updated as your body changes.

00:27:22.320 So it's not just off-the-shelf vitamins.

00:27:24.240 It's much more precise and therefore much more effective.

00:27:27.080 So there are about 3 billion possible combinations.

00:27:31.120 And the effect is you get exactly what you need and you get nothing that you don't need.

00:27:35.660 You also get 60 to 30-minute consultation depending on how much time you need.

00:27:41.820 You get access to expert-guided hormone care, including testosterone optimization for both men and women,

00:27:47.440 longevity medicine, cutting-edge peptide therapy, and you get it all from home.

00:27:51.320 Right now, new customers get 50% off all diagnostic labs plus 20% off all products and therapies.

00:27:59.080 You also get a free 15-minute health coach consult.

00:28:02.020 And the effect is the desired effect.

00:28:03.960 Stronger, sharper, more energy.

00:28:06.200 You get it right away.

00:28:07.840 Go to joyandblokes, J-O-Y, and blokes.com slash Tucker.

00:28:12.380 Root cause medicine.

00:28:13.700 It's the way healthcare ought to be.

00:28:15.380 Do American Christian churches send money to a government that does this to Christians?

00:28:20.760 Well, I think the ones that send money that support the settlements are obviously the Christian Zionists.

00:28:26.200 There's an organization called Christians United for Israel, Pastor John Hagee.

00:28:31.720 I was in Washington a few weeks ago because, well, they had a conference in Baltimore.

00:28:35.280 So it's slowly growing an awareness by other Christians in America that just like many Jews are protesting and saying not in our name and Jewish, you know, the Jewish voice for peace,

00:28:49.100 there has to be much more done by the Christians in America because these Christian Zionists are speaking in our name.

00:28:54.700 Someone like Ted Cruz, Senator Cruz, is saying and doing what he's doing because he's following a Christianity that is not the Christianity of the Holy Land.

00:29:04.520 It's not the Christianity of a Catholic or an Orthodox or a traditional Christian.

00:29:08.920 It's a heretical belief.

00:29:12.400 What is Christian Zionism?

00:29:14.480 As far as I understand it, they believe in the idea of the rapture.

00:29:18.240 They believe that, you know, it's sort of this cruel bargain they have going with Israel.

00:29:24.700 Because basically what they say that they're going to be swooped up into heaven, right?

00:29:30.680 And then there's going to be a thousand-year kingdom.

00:29:32.780 And then there'll be the end of the world and the judgment by Christ and he'll come back.

00:29:37.560 This is a false, it was condemned as a heresy in 381.

00:29:41.040 Because basically there is no thousand-year millennium to come.

00:29:45.000 No thousand-year period.

00:29:46.680 The end, we are in that time period now.

00:29:50.340 And so it's a false belief there.

00:29:53.180 So basically what they're arguing is that Jesus coming the first time wasn't enough?

00:29:59.900 Yeah.

00:30:00.520 And it's like, in a way, it's denying the Messiah.

00:30:02.660 As an Orthodox Christian, the most important thing in my life is that we receive the body and blood of Christ.

00:30:12.780 And we prepare ourselves to receive that body because Christ came as God and as man.

00:30:18.480 And if you read John 666, first he says,

00:30:22.700 Take, eat, this is my body, and drink, this is my blood.

00:30:26.700 And many a people that heard the saying and found it to be a hard saying and turned away from him.

00:30:31.800 So everybody was Jewish then, right?

00:30:33.540 But some believed and some didn't.

00:30:36.280 And some continued to follow only the law.

00:30:39.360 And some said, and Christ superseded the law.

00:30:42.040 He said there's something more than that law.

00:30:44.040 I am the law.

00:30:44.820 I fulfill the law and the prophets.

00:30:46.780 We believe in the Feast of the Transfiguration.

00:30:48.760 I'm Mount Tabor.

00:30:49.320 It takes place near Nazareth.

00:30:51.720 I've been there many times.

00:30:53.480 And in our icons, in our images, you see Moses and you see Elijah aside Jesus.

00:30:59.800 Because the law and the prophets have been fulfilled in Jesus Christ.

00:31:03.760 He came and said, I'm the church.

00:31:05.720 I'm your salvation.

00:31:07.240 And, you know, what I think often about is where I lived in Mount of Olives, St. Mary Magdalene Convent.

00:31:13.160 Right above it is a Catholic monastery called Dominus Flavid.

00:31:17.420 Christ wept.

00:31:18.240 It's where Christ wept.

00:31:19.940 And I think of it often now because to some degree with Muslims, to a lesser degree, because they retain some of the Christian sensibility.

00:31:28.900 But he's weeping over the people that didn't see him, that didn't understand who he was.

00:31:33.940 And, okay, so they follow only the law.

00:31:36.180 And I think that's why you see these are people that can somehow justify allowing for the starvation and ethnic cleansing of so many people.

00:31:44.880 Because think of the stories from the Gospels where Christ heals the man with the withered hand.

00:31:50.980 And he's looking behind him are the Pharisees.

00:31:54.060 And he's grieved at their hardness of heart because he was healing, healing, doing a work on the Sabbath day.

00:32:00.500 And that was against the law.

00:32:02.020 And so now these Christians of wrong belief believe that they need to rebuild the temple as part of their plan.

00:32:12.560 So they believe that the current state of Israel, which has nothing to do with the biblical Israel, is needed to be built up so that then somehow they can restore and build that temple.

00:32:24.840 Fulfill an obligation of the law and the price of that, they're willing to forego the compassion that Christ talked about and allow people to be starved and wiped out.

00:32:36.420 And Christians in America have to understand that you're allowing both people who support the state of Israel who are Jewish and those Christians who think they're doing something in the name of Christ when it's far from the name of Christ.

00:32:51.760 And it's actually causing the end of the Christian population in the Holy Land.

00:32:56.740 It's going to be, the numbers have dwindled.

00:32:59.260 Now we're getting to the small thousands.

00:33:01.000 I just received a call the other day.

00:33:03.440 Jacob's Well is in the large city of Nablus in the center of the West Bank, which has been grievously, raids take place all the time.

00:33:12.900 And it's very difficult.

00:33:13.700 But what happened the other day was that a Christian-run factory, in Nablus there's about 600 families, around 600 Christians.

00:33:22.220 A number of churches and Jacob's Well, which is a very important site to us.

00:33:25.860 We always go there on a pilgrimage when we can.

00:33:28.080 And their factory, no warning, no permit.

00:33:32.820 First, on June 26th, I believe, the Israeli army came in and confiscated some of the factory equipment.

00:33:39.120 And then two weeks later, they came and blew up a big portion of the factory.

00:33:45.580 So how are people supposed to have a...

00:33:47.220 Why?

00:33:48.480 They gave no reason.

00:33:50.000 There was no permit.

00:33:50.780 They have lawyers.

00:33:52.020 There has been, as far as I know, to this state, no court order, no reason.

00:33:56.100 And the only thing, I mean, quickly what popped into my head, because it's a metal-making factory, okay, they must be using it to make weapons, right?

00:34:03.460 These are Christians who have been there for decades, the centuries, I think, even the family.

00:34:07.940 And it's a well-known business, all right?

00:34:10.720 And no order was given.

00:34:13.720 And I almost feel a little worried about saying anything because I don't know what the repercussions will be with that family.

00:34:20.480 Because they have no recourse.

00:34:22.600 Who do they go to?

00:34:23.660 Where's Ted Cruz in all this?

00:34:25.180 Ted Cruz talks about how he's a Christian.

00:34:27.080 Mike Johnson, as the Speaker of the House, talks about how he's a Christian.

00:34:29.540 They talk about it a lot, actually.

00:34:31.160 I think they have to...

00:34:32.300 We have to...

00:34:33.000 I'm not sure that it can be done by...

00:34:36.580 We have to battle AIPAC and the Christian Zionists by the Christians standing up, say, not in my name.

00:34:41.980 We can't be doing this.

00:34:43.200 So if they're getting money from these organizations, then Christians have to have enough concern to say,

00:34:48.760 I don't want this happening in my name.

00:34:51.520 No, and to my brothers in Christ.

00:34:53.600 Right, exactly.

00:34:54.620 And not only it's the real people, the living stones that are there, that keep the churches open, that keep things going,

00:35:01.620 but also for our Christian legacy.

00:35:03.220 You know, we're supposedly a country based on a Judeo-Christian heritage, right?

00:35:07.720 But so where is that Judeo-Christian heritage when you're destroying the very foundations of it?

00:35:13.180 St. Jerome translated the Bible in Bethlehem.

00:35:16.840 The cells where he was at are under the Church of the Nativity.

00:35:21.080 You know, the very roots of our Christian heritage are there, and we're letting it be destroyed.

00:35:28.060 Not physically and physically by killing the people, but also there's a wonderful person.

00:35:34.480 When you talk about resistance, this all started with Hamas.

00:35:37.680 So for the most part, I would say they're a resistance move.

00:35:40.580 They're simply people fighting for their people, trying to protect their land.

00:35:46.000 And I don't know if we want to reach into the area of the whole problem is, is there was never defined what Palestine is.

00:35:52.500 You know, the Oslo Accords took place, and then there was nothing to, there was area A, B, and C.

00:35:58.480 And you didn't have a Palestine.

00:36:01.580 So little by little, Israel just keeps taking over the landlines and confiscating, building the settlements, adding the checkpoints, and making, strangling the life of anybody living there.

00:36:10.960 Now I lost my train of thought.

00:36:15.060 Well, here's a story you probably haven't heard a lot about.

00:36:17.460 The Chinese mafia is exploiting rural America to create a drug empire.

00:36:23.140 This is not available on cable news.

00:36:26.220 The network's not telling you about this, but it's totally real.

00:36:28.440 Communist-affiliated drug gangs destroying parts of the United States, the parts that Washington ignores, to sell drugs.

00:36:35.680 Laundering money and building a black market network inside this country's most beautiful but least served areas.

00:36:44.520 We've got a brand new documentary on this.

00:36:46.560 It's called High Crimes, the Chinese Mafia Takeover of Rural America.

00:36:51.000 It's available now on tuckercarlson.com.

00:36:53.320 It's excellent.

00:36:54.780 The purchase of churches and schools to aid the operation, the jerry-rigging of power boxes to steal electricity, foreign pesticides, collusion with the Mexican cartels.

00:37:03.860 It's unbelievable.

00:37:05.680 By the way, one of the drug houses is like walking distance from my house.

00:37:08.840 I didn't know that.

00:37:09.900 It's a layered and fascinating story.

00:37:12.240 Head to tuckercarlson.com to watch now.

00:37:14.820 We think you'll love it.

00:37:19.360 The state of Israel, you know, is less than 80 years old.

00:37:23.020 But that area is thousands of years old, controlled by various empires, as you've said.

00:37:27.440 And then finally the British up until 1948.

00:37:31.240 During all that time, huge pieces of land were owned by various Christian churches, particularly in Jerusalem.

00:37:40.300 What happened to that?

00:37:41.540 Do they still own that land?

00:37:42.740 They own the land.

00:37:43.440 But this is where it's sort of the lesser kind of persecution is that they use legal means or semi-legal means because you have land that was under the Ottoman Empire.

00:37:54.600 And there might be some documents or certain leases.

00:37:57.820 And they say, well, the lease is up now.

00:37:59.500 We have to renegotiate it.

00:38:01.160 And suddenly the Christians have lost a portion of their land.

00:38:04.440 Or they'll use middlemen and say, and it's sort of acts of deceit.

00:38:08.700 And they end up buying large – these front companies come and buy off some of the land.

00:38:15.600 And you don't realize that it's going to not Christians or not to Palestinians and being used in another way.

00:38:21.840 In Jerusalem?

00:38:23.300 All – yeah, primarily around Jerusalem.

00:38:26.460 Jerusalem and Bethlehem.

00:38:27.260 There's large trunks that have been taken.

00:38:29.720 The Knesset sits on the land owned by the Jerusalem Patriarchate.

00:38:34.940 What?

00:38:35.840 Yeah.

00:38:36.380 Well, it was their land.

00:38:37.580 Yeah.

00:38:38.700 And they have a lease.

00:38:39.560 They have a lease for it.

00:38:40.840 How did they get it?

00:38:42.520 Well, obviously they allowed them to have – that was a legal operation that was done, yeah, to have that land.

00:38:49.260 When you first got there 30 years ago, were there more Christians than there are now?

00:38:54.000 There were more.

00:38:54.820 I mean, it still has been a relatively small population in the tens of thousands, I think, in Palestine overall.

00:39:02.580 But it's certainly – I think the greater – and little by little, it's decreased.

00:39:06.940 But it's really getting frightening now because I think these last two years is sort of like almost pushed people over the edge.

00:39:16.240 But then you hear of families in communities like five or 10 families that are leaving now, going to Europe, sometimes the U.S. or Canada or Australia.

00:39:25.440 And that's not only Christians, of course.

00:39:27.860 Muslims are a bigger population because there are people – if you're raising your child and there's no job opportunities for them.

00:39:34.600 And quite frankly, there's a good likelihood that they – if you're a teenage boy, that you could get shot.

00:39:41.620 I mean, I know a number of kids in Alazaria where I was, 14, 15-year-olds who have been shot.

00:39:48.200 And look at the difference in that.

00:39:49.540 For what?

00:39:51.120 Supposedly throwing a Molotov cocktail.

00:39:53.280 And now think about when the war started with Ukraine and Russia.

00:39:57.140 I remember a story in the New York Times.

00:39:59.220 It was a huge story celebrating that a beer factory was now generating Molotov cocktails to throw against the Russians.

00:40:07.020 And that was celebrated.

00:40:08.960 In Palestine, hundreds of teenage boys have been killed because Israel will say they were throwing a Molotov cocktail.

00:40:20.040 And I know of one case – he wasn't even – I think he was 12 years old last year.

00:40:23.860 I know a beautiful man, a Dr. Salim, who's Muslim, but who used to take care of the nuns at our convent.

00:40:29.680 He lives in Shofat Refugee Camp, which is part of Jerusalem.

00:40:33.900 They pay Jerusalem taxes, but a wall surrounds them.

00:40:38.520 They're guarded by Israeli soldiers.

00:40:41.080 He tries to run a disability center, but they're constantly being raided, people being detained by the Israelis.

00:40:47.820 And the infrastructure there, you can tell when you're in Palestine, East Jerusalem versus the West.

00:40:55.800 One has nice sidewalks, good schools.

00:40:58.320 The other is decrepit.

00:41:00.420 Anyway, Dr. Salim, there was a boy at the camp there, 12 years old.

00:41:05.420 It was a Muslim holiday, and he was shot dead.

00:41:10.000 And what they said was he had thrown a Molotov cocktail.

00:41:12.400 He was 200 yards from any soldier, and they shot him dead.

00:41:15.940 But that literally happens every day.

00:41:19.400 I have a young man that we just helped come to America a year and a half ago who lives north of Hebron, the Christian.

00:41:25.000 And his family, he went to school a half hour north in Shepherd's Field.

00:41:29.520 We wanted to bring him to America because he was at that age where you look the wrong way at a soldier and its possibility of getting shot.

00:41:37.420 He's Christian, but he could be Muslim.

00:41:38.920 The point is that this is what happens to them.

00:41:41.040 So any normal family, they want to stay in their land.

00:41:45.720 It's difficult to immigrate.

00:41:47.580 How are you going to be treated going to another country and have to pick up your livelihood and leave other family members?

00:41:53.300 It's not an easy thing to do, but yeah, it is happening that the population is declining.

00:41:58.280 And the priests are very concerned.

00:41:59.620 I've talked to a number of priests in the West Bank, and they're aware of the situation.

00:42:04.600 So what we're hoping to do, you know, there's sort of a latent movement of Christians that don't have this Christian Zionist perspective.

00:42:13.020 And, you know, the Catholic Church has always done some to support the communities over there, but we haven't done anything politically because ultimately it's not the money that's needed now.

00:42:21.640 It has to be the change that we have to change the support of Israel.

00:42:26.320 If you allow the settlements to continue, if you continue, you know, James Carville, right, he was under Clinton and he came up with a phrase for the campaign, it's the economy, stupid.

00:42:36.980 The problem with Israel and Palestine is not Muslim versus Jew.

00:42:40.800 It's the occupation, stupid.

00:42:43.020 That's really what it comes down to.

00:42:44.660 And unless we get something where a sovereign Palestinian state where they're granted their freedom is created, and maybe that'll be two states with a boundary, or maybe it'll be some sort of confederation.

00:42:56.520 That's up to the politicians to decide.

00:42:58.680 But unless there's freedom and an ability for the Palestinians to develop and be free to have their country, Christians will continue to leave.

00:43:07.800 And what will happen, not only those living stones will leave, but the holy sites, what gives me the greatest pleasure is after I left Jerusalem, I've lived in America, but two times a year I've been pilgrims, people who want to come and visit the holy sites.

00:43:27.320 Go and see where Jesus Christ was crucified and resurrected.

00:43:30.860 Go see where he was born.

00:43:32.040 Go up to the Sea of Galilee.

00:43:33.740 Be a part of that.

00:43:34.460 And one of our saints says, taking a pilgrimage to the Holy Land is like the fifth gospel.

00:43:40.940 So we can read the Bible all we want, but it's when we go there and really are at the places where our Lord walked and lived and performed his miracles, that you really, it deepens your Christianity and your sense of the...

00:43:54.100 One of the loveliest things is I take people of all ages and I'll ask them, younger people at the end of the trip, so what do you like the most?

00:44:01.320 And some people might say the Dead Sea or something, but I've also been struck that 15-year-old boys will come back and tell me it's when we went to the Holy Sepulcher and to the tomb of Christ.

00:44:10.500 Yes.

00:44:10.600 So there's obviously something there that's important to our Christian heritage, and what's happening is if the Christians are forced to leave, if Israel takes greater control, what we will have is museums.

00:44:24.800 They won't be living places of prayer.

00:44:27.120 And that will be a great tragedy, not only for the Christians, but I think for the whole world.

00:44:30.960 Yeah, because they're not owned by government.

00:44:34.440 I mean, these are pre-existing.

00:44:36.300 Of course, they've been there for centuries.

00:44:37.580 Exactly.

00:44:38.080 And they have gone down and up.

00:44:39.940 I mean, there have been times over the centuries where Christians have had difficult times and then rose up again and did.

00:44:47.400 So I think actually we're in one of those dark times.

00:44:50.560 I mean, we could go into a whole explanation of why the world is.

00:44:52.880 Why do we even allow?

00:44:55.300 This is mind-boggling to me.

00:44:57.180 It's getting painful.

00:44:58.200 I can't look at anything right now.

00:45:00.160 I think a lot of people, every day, these stories of what is happening and people justifying it.

00:45:06.720 To anyone with a conscience, it's sort of like, what are we doing?

00:45:10.480 And how has this evil been allowed to grow and develop?

00:45:16.040 Did you make any converts in Palestine ever?

00:45:19.460 You mean Muslims?

00:45:20.420 Did you ever see Muslims converting to Christianity?

00:45:21.540 It's a – you have to be careful with it.

00:45:23.880 But I will say that I don't know those Muslims that have converted to Christianity.

00:45:27.740 But it's not something you can do openly.

00:45:30.060 Not that they're going to be killed, but it's not – it won't be looked upon well.

00:45:33.940 And it's not easy to do.

00:45:35.160 Is it legal?

00:45:37.180 To proselytize?

00:45:39.680 Yeah.

00:45:40.600 We're in Palestine?

00:45:41.680 Yeah.

00:45:43.440 You can talk to me.

00:45:44.480 I guess it doesn't – you know, the interesting thing is I'm orthodox.

00:45:46.820 In orthodoxy, we don't – aren't really a proselytizing faith.

00:45:51.960 It's a faith that becomes of what you are and how you live.

00:45:55.640 You know what I mean?

00:45:56.120 It says that you don't actively do missionary work in a lot of cases.

00:46:01.380 Mostly it's just by your example.

00:46:03.480 And that was the first Christians, right?

00:46:04.920 And who were martyrs.

00:46:05.860 Or were people – or their way of life because they weren't pagans, because they were trying to treat people decently and people responded to that.

00:46:15.520 You were following the message of Christ and that people said, oh, yeah, well, we really don't want to live like the sybaritic life that we were living before.

00:46:22.380 And that looked appealing to people.

00:46:23.880 So that is what the witness of Christianity is.

00:46:26.440 And that's another reason why if it's gone, it'll only hasten the bloodshed and the destruction in the Middle East because I think that Christians are a buffer between Muslim and Jew in Palestine and Israel.

00:46:39.820 Yes, that makes sense.

00:46:40.820 Were you there?

00:46:41.540 There was a siege at the Church of the Nantivity in Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus, maybe 2002.

00:46:49.000 Oh, yes, I was there.

00:46:50.380 Yeah.

00:46:51.220 Yeah.

00:46:51.380 I had – that's where I became especially close to the Palestinian Christian community because in Bethany, there aren't that many Christians.

00:46:59.320 But we had teachers from there and students from there, the boarding students.

00:47:03.360 And when the siege happened, it wasn't just a siege on the church itself.

00:47:06.780 What they claimed was that there were some fighters that were in the church who – which actually that's a Christian tradition, you know, for people to take refuge in a church.

00:47:15.360 But the Israelis used that as a way to – well, they besieged the church.

00:47:19.600 But the whole town was under siege, not just the church.

00:47:24.000 So that meant that the teachers who lived in the Bethlehem area couldn't get out of Bethlehem to come over to Bethany.

00:47:30.240 People couldn't get food and medicines.

00:47:31.880 After a while, it became – I would get calls and saying, you know, my neighbor has epilepsy and we cannot get a new medication for her.

00:47:39.400 Can you find a way to get something in, you know, through a care organization into us?

00:47:43.600 And finally, when the siege – and during that time, I remember a doctor telling me how – describing how someone had been shot in his house and he was bleeding to death.

00:47:56.680 And he was calling the doctor, you know, what do I do?

00:47:58.600 What can I do?

00:47:59.400 And the doctor literally heard him just bleed to death during that – because no ambulance, nothing was allowed.

00:48:04.680 And after the 40 days, roughly 40 days, which is ironic, I went in there and I met up with some of the people.

00:48:14.860 Everything was strewn with garbage all over the streets, the bullet holes.

00:48:18.760 You know, what Israel likes to do is destroy.

00:48:21.280 Not only do they control the place, but they almost take glee.

00:48:24.780 And we're not talking about Hamas time.

00:48:26.960 We're not talking about, you know, 2023.

00:48:29.900 We're talking about 2002.

00:48:31.060 2002, they would go through the town of Bethlehem and purposely with their tanks, a piece of the smaller ones, like knock over the light poles or the things that are garnished with Christmas trees, you know, decorations and things, and knock them over in the middle of town or pull their bulldozer and smash a car.

00:48:48.040 But again, that same resiliency of the Palestinians, the Samud, I have a photograph.

00:48:53.300 He's actually the father of one of the priests now in Bethlehem.

00:48:56.260 And he's sitting on his car that had been smashed by the Israelis, just with a smile, kind of like, you're not going to stop us.

00:49:03.260 We're going to carry on.

00:49:04.300 You know, you did this to me, but I'm going to carry on.

00:49:07.380 There were people shot inside the church.

00:49:09.620 Yeah, the bell ringer there was shot dead.

00:49:11.660 Yeah.

00:49:12.020 And I know monks were there.

00:49:12.820 Was he a Christian?

00:49:13.400 Of course.

00:49:14.000 Yeah.

00:49:14.420 Yeah.

00:49:15.120 So that was the moment.

00:49:15.960 And Christians were shot outside the church.

00:49:18.060 I don't know if it was exactly during those 40 days, but a young 16-year-old boy, an altar boy of the church, you know, there were curfews going on.

00:49:27.020 And they had tanks all around the city, circling them.

00:49:30.460 And he was out with his 70-year-old cousin, I think it was, and they were just kicking a soccer ball.

00:49:36.480 He was shot dead by a sniper, 16-year-old Johnny Talgia.

00:49:41.840 You remember his name.

00:49:42.900 Of course.

00:49:43.760 And also there was another, Christine Saada.

00:49:45.580 Her father was the principal of the Orthodox school in Bet-Sahur, Shepherds Field.

00:49:49.960 They were driving.

00:49:51.920 And the Israeli soldiers who, that is area A, right?

00:49:56.940 If you want to talk about the politics of it.

00:49:58.840 Technically, that means it was under full Palestinian control.

00:50:01.900 They should have their police and everything.

00:50:03.540 No.

00:50:03.980 Israeli Jeeps were there.

00:50:05.460 And they mistakenly thought that was a car of some militant.

00:50:08.240 So they shot up the car.

00:50:09.880 His wife was injured.

00:50:11.220 He was injured as well.

00:50:12.240 And his 12-year-old daughter, Christine, was killed.

00:50:15.780 What?

00:50:16.260 What did they do wrong?

00:50:18.640 They thought, the Israelis thought that was somebody that was going to do something bad.

00:50:24.500 Was anyone ever punished for it?

00:50:25.980 Of course not.

00:50:27.220 Of course not.

00:50:27.700 I had an incident in front of our school where they had put us on curfew.

00:50:31.760 And our girls, the bedroom of the border girls were on the main street.

00:50:36.280 And I look out.

00:50:37.340 It was curfew time.

00:50:38.180 But I saw, and there were soldiers sort of marching up and down the street.

00:50:41.620 A handful of them, not like a brigade.

00:50:43.920 And there was a man walking up to the soldier.

00:50:47.560 And I thought, oh, my goodness.

00:50:48.480 It's a Palestinian man.

00:50:50.060 It turned out he was deaf-mute.

00:50:51.720 And he wasn't from Bethany.

00:50:53.060 He was from Hebron.

00:50:54.100 But he had relatives there.

00:50:55.080 He didn't understand what was going on.

00:50:57.080 Because they call curfew any time.

00:50:59.180 And then you got to get off the street.

00:51:01.120 So the soldier shot him in the eye.

00:51:02.320 The man's a deaf-mute.

00:51:03.580 And he ended up getting shot in the eye.

00:51:04.740 He survived.

00:51:05.320 But he was shot in the eye.

00:51:06.440 Right outside our door.

00:51:08.180 And for all, for a couple of years, we had a tank in front of the school.

00:51:12.860 And often I had to...

00:51:14.360 Why was, were the girls dangerous at the school?

00:51:16.920 Well, the Palestinians are dangerous.

00:51:19.960 All Palestinians.

00:51:20.660 Yeah, yeah.

00:51:21.240 Five-year-old girls are dangerous.

00:51:22.600 But what was danger to us is Mount of Olives.

00:51:27.560 This was before the, or while the process of the wall being built, there had been a situation

00:51:31.900 where some settlers, probably the followers of Ben Gavir, they had taken a little truck

00:51:38.240 and they had explosives.

00:51:39.720 And they had gone in front of a high school on the top of the Mount of Olives.

00:51:44.840 Fortunately, it was stopped before they blew it up.

00:51:47.380 So every day, I remember, for at least six months, because they'd also done something

00:51:51.920 similar near us, near the Mali Ademim settlement, I would actually go, we had a fairly large

00:51:57.140 property and there's like gates on either side where the girls would come in.

00:52:00.880 Every morning, I'd be up at six in the morning and go make sure that I didn't see like a little

00:52:05.640 bomb someplace because that was what was going on.

00:52:09.320 And I totally wasn't true.

00:52:10.440 With the settlers, you worried the settlers would bomb the school?

00:52:13.180 They attempted to.

00:52:14.460 They attempted to.

00:52:15.220 Why?

00:52:15.340 There were a couple of occasions.

00:52:17.060 Palestinians.

00:52:18.640 But kids.

00:52:19.800 Doesn't matter.

00:52:20.380 It doesn't matter at all.

00:52:23.500 I remember thinking in 2002, when the bell ringer was shot in the church on the site

00:52:30.500 where Jesus was born.

00:52:32.260 So it's kind of the center of Christianity, that in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre where

00:52:36.600 he was buried.

00:52:38.480 I remember thinking like, are American Christians in the United States whose weapons, literally

00:52:43.480 they were using AR-15 platforms for this, American rifles, American ammunition, American

00:52:48.600 bulldozers, are they really going to put up with this?

00:52:54.220 Was there any pushback from the United States?

00:52:56.560 The problem is, is the lack of awareness.

00:53:00.140 I worked at CNN at the time.

00:53:02.620 And I interviewed Benjamin Netanyahu about this at the time.

00:53:05.820 I'll never forget it.

00:53:06.760 And what was his response?

00:53:09.020 Terrorists.

00:53:09.660 Right.

00:53:09.980 We do what we have to do.

00:53:10.860 No apologies.

00:53:11.700 But I said, but that's our church.

00:53:13.200 And it's also propaganda.

00:53:14.640 And the Christians have nothing to do with this.

00:53:15.880 So what are you doing?

00:53:16.860 And it was like, shut up, anti-Semite.

00:53:19.360 But I remember thinking maybe, I mean, I'm just some like semi-agnostic news douche from

00:53:25.480 CNN.

00:53:26.020 But like, where are the ministers on this?

00:53:28.840 The church.

00:53:30.600 I think a lot of times they didn't want to get involved.

00:53:33.320 It's the same fear that the mainstream media seems to have is that we don't want to rock

00:53:39.960 the boat.

00:53:41.480 And it's, and also to be fair, because the mainstream media doesn't do its job fully,

00:53:46.380 people are given a very distorted picture of events.

00:53:49.080 So they don't know what's happened or going on.

00:53:51.540 Or this is a kind of a minor example.

00:53:53.260 But at that time period, my brother was coming up for a job at ABC News.

00:53:58.680 And there was a story on the page six, New York Post.

00:54:02.120 George's crazy, my name at that time was Maria, George's crazy sister, Maria.

00:54:08.180 And what they said, it was like the drudge report, I think that's where it came from,

00:54:11.800 that kind of thing, that I had said that Israeli soldiers were raping women in Bethlehem.

00:54:18.860 Point of fact, someone had contacted me about that in an email from America and said,

00:54:24.360 did you hear anything about anything going on like that?

00:54:27.360 And I said, no, you know, we have a lot of difficulties.

00:54:29.800 I do know where they've gone into doctor's clinics and they've like broken the sonogram

00:54:34.980 machine and they put graffiti on, went to the bathroom on there.

00:54:41.180 The same kind of things that they're doing in Gaza, they were doing it in the early 2000s.

00:54:44.900 Raiding people's homes for, to have a vantage point and then steal the things in there and

00:54:50.260 herd the family into one room.

00:54:52.200 And so I said, but, you know, I said, well, let me check it out.

00:54:54.360 I haven't heard any stories like that.

00:54:55.520 And I contacted friends in Bethlehem, I said, no, no, the Christian said, no, nothing like

00:54:59.600 that has happened.

00:55:00.420 And I wrote back to that person and said that, but it didn't matter.

00:55:03.400 They put it, that cuts what comes out on the news is what they want to come out on the

00:55:06.740 news.

00:55:07.200 So this was someone trying to keep your brother from getting a job at ABC News?

00:55:10.560 Either to keep it or to keep him in line, right?

00:55:14.000 You don't want to step out and say anything against Israel.

00:55:17.500 Did you talk to your brother about it?

00:55:19.280 It's a difficult conversation and I think it's probably better for him to say why or

00:55:24.800 he does.

00:55:25.360 I think, I think it's the, it's not, it's not his problem.

00:55:27.840 I think it's a problem in all of mainstream media and it's certainly a great problem right

00:55:31.840 now.

00:55:32.180 I mean, you know, and even with this, we're dealing, now it's becoming a lot of publicity

00:55:38.180 on the start, even though it is being distorted.

00:55:40.020 I actually watched the news this morning and James Stavridis is on and he's talking about

00:55:44.740 it's all Hamas and they show the emaciated hostage and as if, you know, we would, everything

00:55:50.180 would be okay if only Hamas would release the hostage and, and, and that's the starvation.

00:55:54.820 When it's, it's taking place, millions of people are being starved.

00:55:59.480 Babies are dying there and we're focused.

00:56:02.220 God, I hope the hostage gets freed.

00:56:03.920 He should get freed and he should get freed and Israel should remove themselves from Gaza

00:56:07.460 and allow the, the, the food to get in.

00:56:10.480 And that's, and Christians should be pushing for that.

00:56:12.540 And I think we are seeing that to some degree now, but it's still obscuring the main point.

00:56:17.080 Like I said, the, the great, the unspoken thing when I talk to all my friends on the

00:56:21.620 West Bank now is that, because they know we're next, that it's going to happen and it will

00:56:26.940 happen.

00:56:27.540 Maybe we'll go back to that time where it'll be more like they pay, they play a long game,

00:56:32.020 you know, even with the settlement building, we'll build.

00:56:34.580 And then if America gives a little bit of pushback, okay, we stopped for a while and then

00:56:38.160 we start again.

00:56:38.840 So maybe even in the West Bank for now, if there's hopefully will be some resolution

00:56:45.340 with a ceasefire and, and bringing food into Gaza, that in the West Bank, that they'll

00:56:50.440 step back for a little while.

00:56:53.600 But that doesn't mean that in another few months, there'll, there'll be some provocation.

00:56:57.740 Like I said, they've already wiped out thousands of people from refugee camps in Tulkarim and

00:57:01.540 Janine.

00:57:01.840 They're making life very difficult in many towns in Taiba, in Bethlehem, water is, is

00:57:08.900 not given to the city.

00:57:10.700 So you don't have water unless you have your water tanks and there's no rain.

00:57:13.800 You know, when I first moved to Jerusalem and you do your laundry, you hang it outside

00:57:16.940 and I came there in May, it don't rain until October, if you're lucky.

00:57:20.760 So those water tanks aren't getting filled during the summertime.

00:57:23.720 And so, and Israel controls the access to the water to the Palestinian towns.

00:57:28.200 So if they decide they only get it once a week, you only get it once a week while they

00:57:32.720 have swimming pools in their settlements and green plush grass that Christian Zionists

00:57:36.640 are paying for.

00:57:38.500 Have you, you know, a lot of Christians in the Holy Land, how many support the government

00:57:45.240 of Israel that you know?

00:57:47.320 The Palestinians within Israel?

00:57:49.100 Yeah.

00:57:49.960 Christians support the government of Israel.

00:57:52.300 I can't, I, I don't know that they would be any that really would.

00:57:57.580 What's the, what's the, especially now, I mean, they're literally throwing out Palestinian

00:58:02.500 representatives.

00:58:04.320 So in the U S there's a sense that Christians support this program.

00:58:07.980 Of course not.

00:58:09.060 And, and to the, you know, when I first moved there in 98, there was hope for peace and there

00:58:13.760 was a much stronger peace movement within Israel.

00:58:16.920 People who recognized not just a cold peace, but that we can live together and we should

00:58:22.140 work towards that.

00:58:23.260 But that's certainly been abolished.

00:58:25.000 It's just so strange.

00:58:25.960 I lived in DC for all this, but like at the, you know, the final decade of the cold war,

00:58:31.280 there were a lot of Jews in the Soviet union who were being persecuted.

00:58:36.400 Everyone in the Soviet Union is being persecuted, including the Jews.

00:58:39.120 And, and they came to Israel.

00:58:41.040 Yeah, they came to Israel.

00:58:41.780 They came to the United States and there were Jewish groups in the U S and in Israel that

00:58:45.360 I supported then.

00:58:46.540 And I support now who said, we got to get our people out of there and help them.

00:58:50.740 They were called refuseniks.

00:58:51.680 Right.

00:58:52.380 Yeah.

00:58:52.620 And my dad worked in this actually.

00:58:54.440 And I thought that was great.

00:58:55.900 Sure.

00:58:56.300 You don't see that with any Christian group with Christians in the Middle East.

00:58:59.320 There's no Christian group in the United States that I'm aware of.

00:59:01.480 It's like, Hey, those are our people.

00:59:02.820 Maybe we should help them.

00:59:03.320 No, they are.

00:59:04.120 In fact, there was just a conference down in Atlanta.

00:59:05.920 There's something called churches for Middle East peace.

00:59:08.440 And there's a group like Telos group.

00:59:10.060 Um, there's Christians for a free Palestine, but they're very small and they're not so much

00:59:14.240 part of the Institute, you know, the, the hierarchy of the church.

00:59:18.040 But to us, we had Pope Francis did speak out.

00:59:22.020 Uh, and I think certainly the Catholic church in America has to a lot, do a lot more as an

00:59:26.560 institution.

00:59:27.020 I mean, we should have a Christian APAC group.

00:59:30.420 Yeah.

00:59:30.820 Of course.

00:59:31.880 Yeah.

00:59:32.300 Going on.

00:59:33.040 Like you're not allowed to shoot up the church of the nativity.

00:59:35.300 Sorry.

00:59:35.500 I mean, and even if you're agnostic on the politics or whatever, which is fine, maybe

00:59:40.980 preferable, but you can't do that to Christians.

00:59:43.680 How about now?

00:59:45.360 I agree a hundred percent.

00:59:47.060 So we have to move to that.

00:59:48.960 But again, to be, that gets back to the thing though, is that people don't always see the

00:59:53.900 whole story and we're, we're, we're just flooded with this message that those terrorists

00:59:59.240 are coming to get us next, which is absurd.

01:00:01.460 Has any member of Hamas or anybody of a Palestinian come and threatened America as an American?

01:00:08.320 No, that's not their, that's not what they're about.

01:00:11.500 The thing is that, but that's the tactic that's used is that, um, we have to plaster them as

01:00:16.860 being these jihadists when they're nothing like that.

01:00:19.380 Are they, um, I mean, I'm sure you've dealt with Hamas or know people who are, right.

01:00:25.860 Are they religious fanatics?

01:00:27.180 Are they jihadis?

01:00:29.320 Not the people that I know.

01:00:30.640 Like I said, when I, when I was again in, in, at the school, we had a couple of teachers,

01:00:35.500 uh, Muslim men, and there were some elections going on and it wasn't Hamas then.

01:00:39.900 It wasn't, it was, it was the social party or something, but it was definitely a religion,

01:00:43.940 Muslim religious party.

01:00:45.280 I would have voted for those guys because they, they weren't corrupt.

01:00:49.120 They wanted to serve their people.

01:00:50.900 And that's what it was about.

01:00:52.160 So I'm not saying it doesn't happen anywhere.

01:00:55.320 I'm not totally ingrained in, in the community, but, um, I don't, it doesn't, the vibe there

01:01:01.900 isn't one of wanting everybody to convert to Islam and forcing it upon them at all, at all.

01:01:07.480 And the purpose of Hamas is primarily to resist and to protect their people and their land.

01:01:15.560 It's not just, um, Palestine and Israel where the Christian population has shrunk.

01:01:20.260 It seems like throughout the Levant.

01:01:21.860 Yes.

01:01:22.860 We just, and I think that's part of the whole greater Israel project.

01:01:26.600 You know, isn't it so ironic that they've made such a big thing.

01:01:29.340 Targeting Christians.

01:01:30.620 Targeting Christians.

01:01:31.520 Yeah.

01:01:31.680 While targeting, to, to make control for Israel, for example, in Syria.

01:01:37.560 I, I went to Syria in 2004 and I went to the place, the convent of St.

01:01:41.860 Thecla where, outside of Damascus in Malula, where the nuns were kidnapped by ISIS.

01:01:48.120 Right.

01:01:49.160 And the, the population is over 10% Christian and you have ancient Christian sites as well

01:01:54.420 as vibrant monastic communities there and vibrant churches and hospitals that were run

01:01:58.800 by the church, by, in Syria and Lebanon.

01:02:01.500 Right.

01:02:02.120 And now what have we done?

01:02:04.620 And so Assad wasn't perfect.

01:02:06.420 Saddam Hussein wasn't perfect, but the Middle East is not the United States.

01:02:10.800 And we tried to impose ourselves there and get rid of these governments who, for all the

01:02:16.760 repression, also kept the people to get, allowed minorities to survive there.

01:02:22.640 Including Christians.

01:02:23.140 Including Christians.

01:02:24.020 Yeah.

01:02:24.260 And Christians.

01:02:24.920 Yeah.

01:02:25.040 And, and just recently, and so I find it mind boggling that now we take sanctions off

01:02:31.560 after Assad is gone and we put in place someone who was Daesh, who was part of ISIS.

01:02:36.960 Does a leopard change its spots?

01:02:39.360 And how are the Christians in Syria doing that?

01:02:41.240 Well, we had the bombing.

01:02:41.740 We had the, actually the very, if you may, I'd like to look for the statement.

01:02:45.280 Yeah.

01:02:45.560 From Patriarch John of Antioch, whose brother was a bishop and was kidnapped in 2010 and presumed

01:02:53.020 to be dead now.

01:02:54.580 And in June, there was a bombing, a suicide bombing in the church in, in Damascus, Mar-Elias.

01:03:04.900 And Patriarch John, he didn't pull any punches.

01:03:07.640 He came and he said to the, he gave a eulogy, but he also called out the government because

01:03:12.440 they didn't really condemn the act at all.

01:03:14.500 The ISIS government and, and he says, Apostle Paul in his epistle to the Romans, for whether

01:03:21.380 we live, we live to the Lord.

01:03:22.760 And whether we die, we die to the Lord.

01:03:25.000 The rock of our faith is the Lord who rose from the dead and the martyrs who live, who

01:03:29.880 lie before us today, our children of the resurrection.

01:03:33.140 They dwell in the divine light.

01:03:35.100 They did not die.

01:03:36.200 They are alive.

01:03:37.100 They have passed on, even if in this horrific way to the one whom they loved.

01:03:41.440 He's, he's living like we're supposed to live as Christians, is talking at it, the

01:03:45.820 Christians there.

01:03:46.700 But then he says, but I will say boldly, Mr. President, Abu Jelani, Ashara, the former

01:03:51.700 head of HTS, head of the ISIS group, we deeply regret, Mr. President, that in the immediate

01:03:58.840 aftermath of the crime, not a single government or state official was present at the scene,

01:04:03.860 except for Mrs. Hind Kabawat, a Christian.

01:04:06.460 We regret that deeply.

01:04:07.800 We are an integral component of this nation, and we are here to stay.

01:04:12.620 Let me remind you, the two archbishops of Aleppo, Boulos and Yohanna were kidnapped, and much

01:04:18.180 was said at the time.

01:04:19.680 The Malula nuns were also kidnapped, and here we still are.

01:04:23.600 This heinous crime was committed the day before yesterday, and we will remain here.

01:04:28.220 We appeal to you, Mr. President, for a government that does not get distracted by issuing unnecessary

01:04:32.820 decisions unworthy of mention from the sacred royal door.

01:04:36.100 We call for a government that takes responsibility and shares in the suffering of its people.

01:04:41.960 Mr. President, the people are hungry.

01:04:44.180 If some have not told you, I am telling you, honorable, come and take care of your people.

01:04:50.060 I think that's pretty bold for a guy who had his brother kidnapped, just had a number of

01:04:54.420 petitioners bombed, and he's telling someone who has been known to be a terrorist, calling

01:04:59.340 him out.

01:04:59.780 That's pretty bold.

01:05:01.340 That's pretty bold.

01:05:01.680 I would say that's pretty bold.

01:05:03.200 So, the government of Syria now, the government run by the former ISIS leader, is pro-Israel.

01:05:11.100 Yeah.

01:05:11.700 I mean, I think that's the whole plan.

01:05:13.700 And, you know, when you get to it, they talked about from the river to the sea, right?

01:05:21.440 Where did that statement come from?

01:05:22.960 Look at the charter of Likud, the party of Netanyahu.

01:05:27.040 They very clearly say, from the Jordan to the Mediterranean is going to be Israel.

01:05:34.480 And really, from the Nile to the Euphrates, which means going into Iraq, into the edges

01:05:39.560 of Egypt, and up to Jerusalem.

01:05:41.700 So, that's why we had the war in Iraq.

01:05:44.820 Why did our young people have to die?

01:05:47.060 Why did we have to spend so much money on a war?

01:05:48.940 I was supposed to visit Iraq in early 2000s.

01:05:54.480 Our school secretary, her father, was born in Mosul, and he was a Syrian Christian.

01:06:00.040 And so, this is an opportunity to go and visit him.

01:06:01.960 And that's when they started chopping off the heads and doing things.

01:06:04.480 So, we thought better of making that part of the trip.

01:06:07.020 But how many Christians were displaced from Iraq during that time?

01:06:11.540 Almost all of them.

01:06:12.020 Almost all of them.

01:06:12.660 And now, in Syria, you're seeing the same thing.

01:06:14.660 Which, in 2004, I saw vibrant communities.

01:06:17.520 I saw people who could live, even under Assad, as Christians.

01:06:22.020 Now, they're in fear for what's going to happen to them.

01:06:25.160 I mean, it's hard to see this as an accident.

01:06:28.420 So, West Bank, Gaza, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, all places where U.S. foreign policy touches

01:06:37.440 at the behest of Israel see the destruction of Christian communities.

01:06:41.320 I'm guessing that's, like, not an accident.

01:06:44.000 No, not at all.

01:06:45.420 It's definitely part of a plan.

01:06:46.660 But the thing is, why should we be supporting that plan?

01:06:49.280 And also, you know, we're focusing on the Christians.

01:06:52.080 But, as I said, we had two girls who were Russian background who lived in the cities of Israel.

01:06:57.680 And what you've seen the last 20 years, too, instead of that nascent peace movement,

01:07:02.400 instead of people who tolerated their neighbor and could live with their neighbor,

01:07:07.540 it's become a totally militant society.

01:07:10.440 The girls I know that are there now, it's a lot of aggression and a lot of hatred.

01:07:14.520 And how many Israelis have, are you having big problems in Greece now?

01:07:19.400 I don't know if you've seen the demo.

01:07:20.360 I'm a Greek, right?

01:07:21.140 Yeah.

01:07:21.420 People are parading through the straits because Israelis have left Israel,

01:07:25.300 even though they're the ones that have all the defense, right?

01:07:27.600 All the protection.

01:07:28.780 Even, what kind of a country is Netanyahu trying to have?

01:07:33.060 Do you really want to live in a militarized country that's always in fear

01:07:38.080 and always thinking that they're under attack when they don't have to be?

01:07:42.300 You say it's more hostile.

01:07:43.880 You see these videos of Christians, priests with crucifixes around their necks,

01:07:47.660 getting spit on in Jerusalem.

01:07:50.440 Are those real?

01:07:51.380 Yes.

01:07:51.780 And, I mean, that's happened before.

01:07:53.600 You know, even from the first days that I was there,

01:07:55.460 there'd be occasionally something like that.

01:07:57.320 And occasionally there were graffiti put on walls and, yeah,

01:08:02.220 sprayed on Jesus a monkey, 2013.

01:08:05.800 Jesus a monkey.

01:08:06.680 Yeah, that was right.

01:08:07.720 In Tabca, where the multiplication of the loaves and the fish,

01:08:11.820 a Catholic community, graffiti there,

01:08:14.660 talking about getting rid of the idols or something like that,

01:08:17.060 some sort of Old Testament statement, and burning.

01:08:21.080 Burning a statue of the Virgin Mary in parts of the monastery there.

01:08:24.400 So, but that was a small segment.

01:08:28.220 Like even at that time, Ben Gavir and Smotrich were like sort of outcasts in Israel.

01:08:33.800 They weren't the prominent members of Israeli society

01:08:36.300 and what they represented in those religious zealots.

01:08:40.700 But now they are in power and they're dominating everything.

01:08:46.220 And, you know, they say sometimes that if the Israelis didn't have the Palestinians,

01:08:49.760 there'd be a civil war between the secular and the religious Jews.

01:08:54.840 Which is true.

01:08:56.140 That's what happened.

01:08:57.460 Oh, there's enormous tension.

01:08:59.200 Yeah, yeah.

01:08:59.820 Enormous.

01:09:00.280 Sure, that's it.

01:09:01.420 Do you know anyone who's been spit on?

01:09:03.600 Any Christians who've been spit on?

01:09:04.820 Me?

01:09:05.440 You've been spit on?

01:09:06.600 Of course, yeah.

01:09:07.620 What do you mean of course?

01:09:08.740 That's disgusting.

01:09:09.700 Yeah, well, but that's the least of it.

01:09:12.100 That's the least of it.

01:09:14.740 But again, I'm saying this as a perspective.

01:09:17.200 Yeah.

01:09:17.360 From the perspective of someone who lives in a majority Christian country

01:09:19.900 that's paying for all of this.

01:09:21.380 So that's kind of the.

01:09:22.740 That's the mentality.

01:09:23.340 Or I'll tell you a story.

01:09:24.380 My father is a priest, right?

01:09:25.660 A Greek Orthodox, and he was wearing a collar suit.

01:09:28.500 He visited one time and we visited the town of Taiba.

01:09:33.040 And there was a checkpoint before you enter into the town.

01:09:36.620 Can you give us perspective?

01:09:37.620 Where is Taiba?

01:09:38.200 Taiba is biblical Ephraim.

01:09:39.920 It's when Christ, after he raised Lazarus from the dead,

01:09:43.160 he went about 10 miles to the northeast of Jerusalem, Bethany area,

01:09:48.400 to prepare himself before he would come back to Jerusalem for his crucifixion.

01:09:53.420 Ephraim is known as the town of compassion, of solace.

01:09:57.940 Even in the time of Saladin, they came, they actually, it was called Ephraim,

01:10:01.200 it's now called Taiba, which means the good or the beautiful.

01:10:04.260 So it sort of had that reputation.

01:10:06.120 So he went there to prepare himself for his crucifixion, 20 miles,

01:10:09.540 not even 20 miles from Jerusalem.

01:10:11.940 Interesting.

01:10:12.440 So with your father who was.

01:10:13.540 My dad, yeah.

01:10:14.600 A pretty famous.

01:10:15.900 A priest, an American priest, yeah, dressed as a priest.

01:10:18.240 And my mom was there too.

01:10:19.760 So we were going to drive in.

01:10:20.680 So there's a checkpoint sort of at the entrance of the town.

01:10:23.340 And then you have many olive groves, which by the way, I was just talking to someone the other day,

01:10:28.080 they have about 8,000 acres of land, let's say,

01:10:31.800 and over a quarter of it has been confiscated either by settlers and the army allowing them to take their olive groves.

01:10:38.180 And they have no recourse.

01:10:39.680 There's nothing.

01:10:40.100 Who owns the land?

01:10:41.380 The Palestinian Christian families.

01:10:44.760 And it's been confiscated from Christian families?

01:10:47.220 Well, confiscate.

01:10:47.820 What do you do when they have guns and you don't?

01:10:49.560 I don't know.

01:10:51.640 You call your patron church in the West and you say, raise a stink, call Ted Cruz.

01:10:56.760 Well, we called Mike Cuckabee.

01:10:58.040 And other self-described Christians.

01:10:59.320 You called Mike Cuckabee.

01:10:59.960 Mike Cuckabee came, right?

01:11:01.460 And then the only thing the.

01:11:03.100 So what did Mike Cuckabee, the U.S. ambassador to Israel.

01:11:06.040 He said he was very concerned because also it happened, which they didn't.

01:11:10.540 There's three churches in Taiba, an Orthodox, Greek, Catholic, and Catholic.

01:11:15.800 And there's also the ruins of a 4th century church that still partially stands and people will still go there sometime.

01:11:22.660 Not full services, but just to be at the spot.

01:11:24.740 It's a place that was built by St. Helen in the 4th century, Church of St. George.

01:11:29.440 Settlers burned the brush and also there's a cemetery right next to it burned that area.

01:11:35.400 They burned the cemetery?

01:11:37.840 Everything's stone there.

01:11:38.760 So nothing burns, but they burned the area around there.

01:11:41.200 So you have grass and brush that was burned.

01:11:42.900 And not only that, I was shocked when I saw how much they've infiltrated.

01:11:47.160 It's one thing, the entrance of town and you've taken the open land, the olive groves.

01:11:51.820 They have Bedouins.

01:11:52.580 In that town, there's a beer factory, a distillery, a hotel.

01:11:57.200 And Bedouins are living, have been forced off their land around there and are now living with allowance of the Christians to be there because they have no place else to go.

01:12:07.640 And no one to protect them.

01:12:08.900 So Ambassador Huckabee comes and he's very concerned because of an attack on a church.

01:12:15.300 And also that same week, a Palestinian-American had been shot dead by settlers or beaten to death.

01:12:21.260 Saif Musalat, 20 miles, not even 20, a couple miles away.

01:12:25.020 And he was going to address that as a Palestinian-American to see that Israel would investigate.

01:12:29.820 Nobody's been arrested or died.

01:12:31.860 He's an American citizen?

01:12:32.940 Yes, he's from Florida.

01:12:35.200 He's often, just like I'm a Greek.

01:12:37.200 An American citizen was beaten to death?

01:12:39.280 By settlers.

01:12:40.860 And no one was arrested?

01:12:42.160 No, never happens.

01:12:44.680 Down in Hebron.

01:12:45.620 And my concern in talking to you.

01:12:48.080 And we're sure that happened?

01:12:49.040 We're absolutely sure that happened.

01:12:51.060 How can an American citizen be beaten to death in an Israeli-controlled area paid for by the United States and nobody does anything about it?

01:12:59.220 Well, this is our problem, isn't it?

01:13:02.260 I'm sorry, I keep stepping on your story.

01:13:04.320 So Ambassador Huckabee shows up.

01:13:06.900 He shows up and he says, you know, he's very concerned about what happened and we're going to check it.

01:13:11.380 The next day, settlers were there with cows marching through the town with their cows.

01:13:17.280 So it shows that they are in control.

01:13:20.740 And not only that, just a couple days ago, this is a week after he's been there, you know, in the Bible, there's a story of Ruth.

01:13:31.100 One of the women in Taiba is married to her.

01:13:33.240 She's a Greek-American.

01:13:35.140 They met in school in Boston.

01:13:37.660 He was going to business school, her husband.

01:13:39.840 He came back to Palestine to establish the business.

01:13:42.000 She goes with her husband, becomes Palestinian, you know, going to care for the people of his nation.

01:13:47.720 She got a PhD at Harvard.

01:13:49.700 She's written books about the Holy Land and with the sales of those books, little by little, she visited parishes in America and she raised money so that they could build 30 homes for Orthodox people.

01:14:06.040 So those homes were, cars of the people in those homes were burned the other day.

01:14:12.600 And there's graffiti again on the wall and it says, it names another village and it says, you're going to regret this.

01:14:19.700 And the rest, I talked to two Israeli people who are from Israel and they couldn't even decipher the top part.

01:14:26.120 So, you know, because it's very interesting.

01:14:27.480 A lot of the settlers are actually people from Brooklyn, New York.

01:14:30.460 Yeah.

01:14:31.000 They have dual citizenship.

01:14:33.200 And they go back and forth between these freely.

01:14:35.860 They can go to Ben-Gurion Airport, go through Tel Aviv to come to the settlements in the West Bank.

01:14:41.360 But those people in Taiba, who are actually American citizens as well, they can't go through Ben-Gurion Airport.

01:14:49.640 How is it that an American citizen can't go through Ben-Gurion Airport?

01:14:53.640 Because he's also a Palestinian.

01:14:55.240 Are you sure?

01:14:56.060 I'm absolutely sure.

01:14:57.020 They have to go through Jordan and right now, through a border that is controlled on one side by Israel.

01:15:06.920 And right now it's so difficult.

01:15:08.600 They only open for, I've been told, from eight to one or two.

01:15:12.260 And you've got thousands of people trying to come through, right?

01:15:14.400 So you could be there for hours and you may not get through that day.

01:15:17.540 People make plans to, you know, the only way Palestinians can do anything to be free is to go to another country.

01:15:22.880 I mean, even for a vacation or something, you don't feel free in your own country.

01:15:26.880 I used to feel that when I was living there in the summer times.

01:15:29.700 That's why I would travel to different countries because within Israel and Palestine, you feel like you're in prison.

01:15:35.220 You can't feel like a person.

01:15:36.580 And so if you have the opportunity to go away, to breathe a little bit, you do that.

01:15:42.120 Since you are an American and you obviously know people in positions of authority,

01:15:46.420 when you come back to the U.S. and tell these stories at dinner, what do people say?

01:15:50.760 At dinner, they show concern when you tell the story.

01:15:56.760 But again, maybe it seems too distant for people.

01:16:01.100 Or I have also, you know what, since I've talked to people in our churches and I'm trying really now to focus on organizing

01:16:07.560 because people say, how can we help?

01:16:09.360 Now they're really seeing the gross things that are going on.

01:16:13.560 Where do we send money?

01:16:14.580 What do we do?

01:16:15.740 Yes, people need money, but what we really need is political change.

01:16:18.880 So I'm sort of bordering on three different congressional districts, and we've tried to set up appointments with our congressmen.

01:16:25.920 They've thrown us off.

01:16:27.280 I'm talking about middle-aged women trying to go see their congressmen.

01:16:30.380 When you tell them what you want to talk about, they don't want to make an appointment for you to be able to educate them.

01:16:35.960 And then I wrote a letter to my congressman, Nicholas Langworthy.

01:16:38.840 He writes back an Israeli bullet point, an AIPAC bullet point reply, basically saying, you know, Hamas is the problem and it's okay to send weapons over there.

01:16:50.940 So, but little by little, we have to go and keep educated.

01:16:55.120 If enough people keep knocking on the doors and saying, we don't like what we're doing, why are we sending billions of dollars to Israel and then we're cutting Medicaid, we're cutting, people don't have jobs in his district.

01:17:07.100 In fact, I was listening in and he did a phone town meeting or whatever.

01:17:12.320 And most of the people were concerned because they didn't have enough money for groceries or, you know, what was going to be done with their health care in the coming months and years.

01:17:22.540 And then, no questions about it, he didn't take my question on the thing I wanted to ask about Israel and why we were sending more offensive weapons.

01:17:30.280 We're not talking about, don't play this game, nothing wrong with the Iron Dome and protecting yourself.

01:17:35.120 You're in a tough neighborhood.

01:17:36.020 I'm talking about assault rifles, which was just passed again to give assault rifles that Ben Gavir then just gives into the hands of settlers who then kill the Palestinians in the West Bank.

01:17:49.460 And we're financing that.

01:17:51.700 So, some of the people, have you not had enough?

01:17:54.500 You really want this done in your name.

01:17:56.180 But the politicians make it hard too.

01:17:57.780 They don't want to hear it.

01:17:59.460 And you have, and I understand when I lived there in the early 2000s,

01:18:03.620 Congressman Daryl Issa and Carolyn Maloney was still in office at the time.

01:18:09.100 They were there on an Israeli junket.

01:18:10.740 I think it was the 60th anniversary of something.

01:18:13.160 But they were willing to come and see me.

01:18:15.220 But they wouldn't come to Bethany because that was over the wall or the wall was being built then.

01:18:19.720 That was in the West Bank.

01:18:21.340 So, we met on the Mount of Olives.

01:18:23.260 And they came with me and they saw the wall was being constructed then.

01:18:26.340 And they saw how people were passing through the rocks.

01:18:29.080 And they had not good things to say about Israel.

01:18:31.720 But do you think their vote would have changed?

01:18:34.320 No.

01:18:34.920 Not going to happen.

01:18:36.040 Not going to happen.

01:18:37.460 I, once again, threw you off track when you were explaining visiting with your parents.

01:18:43.920 Right.

01:18:44.740 So, we're heading into Taiba.

01:18:47.160 And the soldiers, the reason the soldiers are there,

01:18:49.880 because just outside of Taiba, on one side you have the settlement of Rimonim,

01:18:55.020 swimming pools and beautiful homes.

01:18:57.220 And the other direction, the huge settlement of Ofra.

01:19:00.960 So, these are in the West Bank, in areas that's supposed to be Palestinian.

01:19:04.860 And so, the soldiers there are supposedly protecting them.

01:19:07.560 But they block the entrance to Taiba.

01:19:09.460 Or, you know, check who's going in and out.

01:19:12.100 And you're going, so we drove, they first weren't going to let us go.

01:19:15.440 They said, no, no, no.

01:19:15.960 You can't come through this way.

01:19:17.440 You got to go around Ofra.

01:19:18.900 Go like 20 miles and come back another road to get into Taiba.

01:19:21.660 I said, no, no.

01:19:22.640 They're only in the country for a couple of weeks.

01:19:24.200 They're only here for a few hours.

01:19:25.260 We're going in this way.

01:19:26.720 Finally, they let us in.

01:19:28.660 And then when we go, and we said, we're only going to be a couple hours.

01:19:30.840 We're visiting families there and we'll come back out.

01:19:33.140 When we come back out, the same game.

01:19:36.000 The soldiers just standing there.

01:19:37.460 They play this game where, to show that they're in control.

01:19:42.340 There was no other cars behind us.

01:19:44.300 They just said, no, they wouldn't let us pass.

01:19:46.720 They're just going to wait for a while.

01:19:47.800 And finally, my father, temperamental Greek, got out of the car and went up to the soldier and said, what is this?

01:19:56.140 I'm an American citizen.

01:19:57.280 We just want to go back to Jerusalem.

01:19:59.400 And they basically just laughed in his face.

01:20:02.300 Eventually, we were able to move.

01:20:04.220 But the scorn they have for Americans is really something else.

01:20:08.240 They scorn for Americans?

01:20:09.300 That's not the only incident where I've seen something like that.

01:20:12.300 They mock America.

01:20:14.680 Mock America?

01:20:15.580 America pays for the whole thing.

01:20:16.880 Well, yeah.

01:20:18.300 Thank you very much.

01:20:20.220 But there's no love for America?

01:20:23.420 Well, look, I have seen, sadly to say, during that time, American soldiers, veterans that would be at the checkpoints and they'd be sort of joking with the soldiers.

01:20:32.860 So there was probably some camaraderie with certain people who were probably Christian scientists or of that mentality.

01:20:38.520 So they were pro-Israel.

01:20:40.120 If you have that view, then it's okay.

01:20:42.620 But in general, no, they don't have any love for Americans.

01:20:47.460 Really?

01:20:48.080 Yeah.

01:20:48.280 Well, that was my perception.

01:20:50.040 I think most Americans would be surprised to learn that.

01:20:53.100 Yeah.

01:20:53.500 It's about time that it changes.

01:20:56.720 Why do you think they're scorned for Americans in a country supported by Israel?

01:21:00.840 I mean, supported by America.

01:21:02.000 I think that's just a part of the arrogance of the country.

01:21:04.880 I think they think they're due for everything.

01:21:08.380 There's not much gratitude.

01:21:11.320 We're past that time.

01:21:12.420 You know, you know, because you're bringing up something now when I think about it.

01:21:15.760 The time period when Joe Biden was a young politician and there was that warm feeling towards Israel and it was sort of the underdog.

01:21:22.040 But we're way beyond that time now.

01:21:25.620 You know, so that's where the sense of before, but there might have been a sense we're thankful to America.

01:21:30.140 But over the years, as this whole progression of the greater land of Israel and the dominance of another people and having the power to do it, there's no more of that gratitude.

01:21:41.580 Have you been attacked for saying things like this?

01:21:47.080 In which way?

01:21:48.240 In the United States.

01:21:49.240 Well, like that little slander then.

01:21:51.100 I mean, I'm sure I will.

01:21:52.560 We'll see what happens after this.

01:21:53.860 I'm sure.

01:21:54.600 I actually come to think of it, you know, we talked before about in the early 2000s, my father was a priest at a large church in New York City.

01:22:03.520 And there was a gathering of a few hundred people.

01:22:07.460 And I talked about the situation in Palestine and everybody was receptive.

01:22:10.360 But then there was a newspaper that I believe was controlled by John Katsumatidis, who's a big fellow in New York City.

01:22:18.460 They reported what I said, but they also watered it down a lot.

01:22:24.160 There's like this idea we don't want to go too far and say anything negative about Israel.

01:22:28.840 And that was back then.

01:22:29.800 That's 15 years ago, 20 years ago.

01:22:32.980 Yeah.

01:22:33.980 So it's not being attacked necessarily, but it's not letting you be truthful about things.

01:22:38.420 Do you think Christians in other Arab countries are treated better than Christians in Israel and Palestine?

01:22:46.100 Well, I can only go from my times of being there in Lebanon, too.

01:22:50.820 At the time I was there, there were churches and they were part of the society.

01:22:56.180 So there was nothing wrong with being a Christian.

01:22:57.980 And in Syria, when I was now, now who knows what's going to happen.

01:23:01.020 But certainly the time when I was there.

01:23:03.620 Well, Israel controls those countries now.

01:23:05.240 Well, they're trying to make inroads.

01:23:07.760 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:23:09.140 Well, what did they do first?

01:23:10.460 They bombed after Assad went down.

01:23:12.080 They get rid of all the military.

01:23:13.780 So what is the point of Abu Jelani being there now, the ISIS head?

01:23:18.640 Without, who is he serving?

01:23:20.780 Is he serving the Syrian people or the Israeli people?

01:23:23.860 What's the answer?

01:23:26.880 Right now, it looks like he's serving Israel.

01:23:28.600 What's so surprising is that you think of, or in the United States, people think of Israel as like this foothold of Western civilization in the Middle East.

01:23:38.140 And so you would imagine the Christians would do a lot better under Israeli control than they would under Assad's control.

01:23:44.360 No, that's not the case at all.

01:23:48.160 Definitely not the case at all.

01:23:49.500 I'd like to talk a little bit more about the Palestinians themselves.

01:23:58.860 I would love to hear it.

01:23:59.440 And their former resistance.

01:24:00.240 Because I think one of the reasons I was grateful to be able to come on is to really give a picture of them and the people as they are.

01:24:06.840 And one thing that's really struck me, I know Muslims, I know Bedouins, all during this time where they've really been suffering, what I really get sense from them is their real belief in God and that their life is in God's hands.

01:24:20.700 And there's such a humility and obedience to their creator and an understanding that this life is not the only one.

01:24:29.960 And there's a real beauty to that that I think so much of the world is missing.

01:24:33.240 And I think even in sort of there's a deeper sense to all that's even going on right now, right?

01:24:38.800 We're in the heart of Jerusalem, in the heart of where Christ came.

01:24:42.080 There was a reason for that.

01:24:44.160 And now we have a situation where the people who were the closest to God are being destroyed.

01:24:51.620 In a simple sense.

01:24:53.480 You know, I live next to the Mount of Olives.

01:24:55.900 And when you go down the Mount of Olives, it's where they said, Hosanna in the highest.

01:24:59.980 Here comes Christ.

01:25:00.940 And often I've gone to parish churches in Palestine and the whole community is, they know all the service and they're singing it themselves.

01:25:09.440 And it reminds me as those people that were on the Mount of Olives greeting the creator, greeting the Messiah who is coming for their salvation and honoring him.

01:25:20.200 And that's what they're doing to this day.

01:25:22.840 And what we're doing instead is destroying that.

01:25:27.740 And what does that mean for the world when we let that go?

01:25:31.680 The last time I was there, I went through Amman, not through Tel Aviv.

01:25:35.520 So I had to go through the border.

01:25:36.960 And then I spent a night.

01:25:38.020 And in the early morning, I was being driven to the airport from Madaba, where there's a mosaic from the sixth century that shows you the places in the Holy Land.

01:25:45.140 The map in Madaba and Madaba is not a very big city.

01:25:50.580 And as I'm going out of it, you very quickly, before you get to the airport, come to lands that are still being grazed by shepherds.

01:25:57.660 And I started to weep because to me, that's so emblematic of what the Lord really wanted us to be like in touch with the land, recognizing that our life depends on what we grow and what we produce and what we do.

01:26:13.760 And those kind of people are the ones who I hear from now who say, they're suffering.

01:26:20.640 They're literally going to be killed.

01:26:23.260 But they have so much more courage and faith than you find in so much of America and in the West, which we've lost.

01:26:32.720 And to me, it's sort of like this whole war is, in a way, we're killing the Christ message.

01:26:41.180 And that message, whatever your theology is, is one of compassion and tolerance and love.

01:26:48.460 And the world is becoming smaller in that way.

01:26:51.160 And I think people sense that, right?

01:26:52.760 How we act to each other and to our neighbor.

01:26:57.180 And the very fact that people, politicians and people can listen to doctors, listen to what's going on, and still somehow have a blank face and think it's okay.

01:27:08.520 How did we come to such a point of darkness?

01:27:12.160 Well, I mean, it does seem like part of the broader spiritual war.

01:27:15.520 Yes, absolutely.

01:27:16.780 I think so.

01:27:17.420 What happens to the two million people who live in Gaza?

01:27:19.980 Well, I can't say that I'm a Trump fan, but I, you know, he's a wheeler dealer.

01:27:26.920 He wants to get that Nobel Peace Prize.

01:27:29.760 He's got people with a lot of money in Saudi Arabia and Qatar that have his ear.

01:27:34.520 We don't have to build a Riviera.

01:27:36.500 Build it for the Palestinians.

01:27:38.660 They go and rebuild the area and let it be, and reconstruct for a Palestinian nation.

01:27:45.180 Why is that such an outrageous idea?

01:27:47.180 Why does Israel think that the people of Palestine have to be their enemy?

01:27:54.520 They say, go to Jordan, go to Egypt.

01:27:57.000 What's the difference another 20 kilometers in?

01:28:00.000 That's really what we're talking about.

01:28:01.640 The difference between Amman and Tel Aviv is 20 miles at the most to drive between the two.

01:28:08.020 So, what are the differences between the people that live in Palestine, that live in Jericho and Bethlehem, and someone who lives in Amman?

01:28:14.780 And what's the difference between someone who lives in Gaza?

01:28:17.180 So, give them a defined border and have the people of other countries, the Arabs too, should support the rebuilding of Gaza.

01:28:25.460 And have Israel remove their military from there and let Gaza have their freedom to be able to develop.

01:28:33.300 Those people, there are some of the most educated people in Gaza.

01:28:36.080 I mean, how many of us have read, I hope, the stories of Mossab Abutoha or Refat, who was killed, the poet?

01:28:44.240 Beautiful, graceful people.

01:28:46.300 Bisan Adhan now, who's on every day on, maybe not everybody sees, they're not in the mainstream media.

01:28:51.420 But these are beautiful young Palestinians who are still trying to live and have joy and see something beautiful in the midst of all their suffering.

01:28:59.580 So, there's no reason that the money can be there.

01:29:04.300 And if Trump, he's not a politician, he's a businessman.

01:29:07.960 Work it out.

01:29:09.240 I mean, I don't know that that's going to happen, but our politicians certainly haven't done it.

01:29:14.460 What's the current plan for those people?

01:29:16.220 It's probably not to raise a trillion dollars and rebuild them a model society.

01:29:20.020 No, but I mean, so what is the plan?

01:29:22.340 Are we in such a world where we can look on live TV that too many people are just slowly going to die now?

01:29:29.580 Or are you going to transfer them?

01:29:31.920 And why should they be transferred?

01:29:35.620 Why should they have to leave their land that they've been in for centuries?

01:29:39.380 And in Gaza, you know, Gaza is, as much as the West Bank, Gaza, the St. Porphyrius Church from the third century was bombed.

01:29:47.840 We also have in the Orthodox—

01:29:49.460 How did a Christian church get bombed?

01:29:53.660 Because it's part of Palestinians.

01:29:57.440 I've been there before.

01:29:58.500 And basically, it's the Holy Family Church and the Baptist Church, they're all pretty much in the same area.

01:30:05.060 So you can't make a mistake.

01:30:07.580 And Christians through—

01:30:08.600 But you don't think that was an accident?

01:30:10.720 No, nothing's an accident.

01:30:13.320 I mean, occasionally a shell might go off, but no.

01:30:15.660 And certainly the last time with the one where they pointed at the cross.

01:30:20.160 Explain that.

01:30:21.440 Well, at the Holy Family Church, the cross didn't topple, but literally inches from it.

01:30:27.200 And I have, you know, in Nablus at Jacob's Well, there's a large church now, and there's crosses on the front face in circles.

01:30:36.520 And the monk always points out to us when I go there, there's a tank shell that was aimed at that cross.

01:30:43.080 You can still see it from an earlier confrontation in Nablus.

01:30:46.840 So don't tell me these soldiers make mistakes.

01:30:49.840 You could—the church in Gaza has, you know, it's pointed, and the cross is there in the middle of it by itself.

01:30:56.620 So it's hard to believe that it wasn't a person.

01:31:01.280 So what would you say to Ted Cruz, the self-proclaimed Christian, supporting tank shells fired at crosses?

01:31:08.660 Like, what is that?

01:31:09.980 Well, I would say, you know, again, it's the disabuse of the notion.

01:31:13.400 It's those same talking points that the congressman gave.

01:31:16.820 Well, but Hamas is the problem, and they're terrorists.

01:31:18.700 Well, Hamas is not the problem.

01:31:21.000 So don't use that as an excuse anymore.

01:31:23.260 And we have to defend Christian values, American values, and dignity, freedom for people.

01:31:31.820 Isn't that what we're all about?

01:31:34.140 Having their rights?

01:31:37.400 What happens on the Temple Mount?

01:31:42.600 What is the Temple Mount?

01:31:43.760 Can you explain what that is?

01:31:44.820 Well, the Temple Mount is the area where the temple existed at the time of Christ.

01:31:50.360 In Jerusalem.

01:31:50.800 In Jerusalem, right.

01:31:51.620 Directly, I lived in the convent of St. Mary Magdalene on the Mount of Olives.

01:31:56.700 Directly in front of me is the Dome of the Rock.

01:31:58.680 And there's the old walls, the walls of the old city.

01:32:03.320 And within that is the area where the temple had been, existed, right?

01:32:08.780 There was also a Byzantine church at one point in the 5th century.

01:32:11.960 Because where the Dome of the Rock is, is where Abraham sacrificed, or was going to sacrifice his son Isaac.

01:32:18.520 Yeah.

01:32:18.660 So, it's holy to all monotheistic traditions.

01:32:21.260 Yes.

01:32:21.620 And so, on the left side, if you're looking from the convent where it's at, is the Wailing Wall.

01:32:26.380 Yes.

01:32:26.620 That's a portion of the temple that still exists, a wall.

01:32:29.460 And so, some, just like the Christian Zionists, the Jews want the temple rebuilt.

01:32:34.980 So, I know Christians who have been there who will take a sign and go take the crescent off the dome and say, we'll put a cross on there.

01:32:45.440 It's natural to all of them to do.

01:32:47.160 So, there is this movement to rebuild the temple.

01:32:49.640 All the time I was there, I heard about that.

01:32:52.680 But, and there was a small movement of it.

01:32:56.000 But there's a mosque where the temple was.

01:32:57.820 Yeah.

01:32:58.020 Now, it's Alaska Mosque.

01:32:59.100 It's the third holiest site for Muslims in the world.

01:33:01.100 And a lot of confrontations you have is because Israel will control getting in and out, being able to go there.

01:33:10.560 So, or they'll say only men over 50 can go to the mosque today.

01:33:14.920 And there's a lot of confrontations there.

01:33:17.180 And people have been killed.

01:33:18.200 So, it is a mosque.

01:33:19.100 Yeah.

01:33:19.280 There's a functioning Alaska Mosque is there.

01:33:22.860 But so, you can't build the temple with a mosque there.

01:33:25.140 And they say that they have the plans for rebuilding the temple and everything.

01:33:29.260 And people like Ben Gavir, the minister who's a religious zealot, have gone on the temple mount.

01:33:35.800 And it's a provocation.

01:33:37.440 The area is controlled by, religiously, by Jordan.

01:33:42.040 But there's an organization that's responsible for that area.

01:33:46.840 Okay.

01:33:47.060 So, you hear people say we're going to rebuild the temple, the third temple.

01:33:50.020 Yeah.

01:33:50.380 But there's a mosque there.

01:33:51.720 So, what's the plan for the mosque?

01:33:53.340 Well, I guess it would be to blow it up.

01:33:56.360 What would, and then you just said that's the third holiest site in Islam.

01:33:59.180 Well, Islam, of course.

01:34:00.260 Yeah.

01:34:00.360 This would be a dark day for anybody.

01:34:02.380 So, then what would happen if you blew up the third holiest site in Islam?

01:34:06.420 Well, you could probably answer that better than me.

01:34:09.380 It certainly would ignite a great conflict in the world.

01:34:13.680 I just want to say this out loud because people sort of blithely talk about it.

01:34:18.220 Oh, what we're really coming to.

01:34:19.720 And I think that's the problem with the Christian Zionists is that, what is your end game here?

01:34:27.420 Well, that's the point.

01:34:28.140 Their belief tells them that's okay.

01:34:30.120 We want to have this third world war because we're going to be taken away.

01:34:34.440 And we'll be okay.

01:34:35.640 And we'll come back later after all the fighting's done.

01:34:38.480 That's sort of basically what their theology tells them.

01:34:40.680 And in the meantime, all the Jews are supposed to convert to their brand of Christianity or die in the Confligation.

01:34:49.380 And so, I'm asking you this because you're a nun.

01:34:52.680 Right.

01:34:53.160 That's not a Christian.

01:34:54.400 That's not a.

01:34:54.980 That's not a Christian belief, no.

01:34:56.880 Or precepts.

01:34:58.420 Yeah.

01:34:59.520 Any idea where that came from?

01:35:01.400 That idea?

01:35:02.100 The rapture?

01:35:02.860 Yeah.

01:35:03.100 Well, like I said, it originally, the idea of having the thousand-year kingdom is a heresy that was in the early church.

01:35:09.860 But the real push of all that becomes from the 1830s.

01:35:13.360 James Darby, Schofield, or John Darby, Schofield.

01:35:16.440 It's sort of, so it's a new theology that has no basis in the foundations of Christianity.

01:35:21.960 It has nothing to do with it.

01:35:24.440 How do you think this story ends?

01:35:25.980 It depends on us.

01:35:29.820 And that's why, you know, maybe I, part of me wants to have that message of that we have to do something politically.

01:35:36.880 The Christians have to wake up until they're, because it's all in the hands of the United States.

01:35:41.600 It doesn't matter what any other country in the world does.

01:35:43.680 If U.S. protects Israel, this will continue.

01:35:46.320 And we will get to that conclusion of the denouement, which will lead to a third world war or something of that sort, for sure.

01:35:54.840 So, but also in a spiritual sense, then we also have to recognize, what do we want to be as people?

01:36:01.180 Do we want to follow the way of Christ?

01:36:04.220 Or do we want to follow the way of a Christ who leads us to a better world?

01:36:09.260 We live in this world as best we can in order to prepare for the world to come.

01:36:14.740 Not, we don't look, Christ came and said, my kingdom is not of this world.

01:36:18.580 So, if you're truly a believing Christian, you want to do all the things that will put you in good graces with God when it comes to Judgment Day, right?

01:36:29.600 And that doesn't mean rebuilding the temple.

01:36:32.760 It means living like a Christian and trying to build a society that lives by Christian principles.

01:36:37.980 And your government acting as one that acts by Christian principles.

01:36:41.580 And so, that doesn't mean slaughtering other people and leading to their cleansing.

01:36:46.400 I really appreciate you taking this time.

01:36:52.240 I think that there's a lot, I appreciate you.

01:36:54.140 I hope it does a little bit to open people's eyes.

01:36:57.460 And I just want to, could I end with one thing?

01:36:59.000 Of course.

01:36:59.820 I think the only way, you know, there was the writer Ta-Nehisi Coates, who you may have differences, opinion on other things.

01:37:05.140 But what really opened his eyes, he went with a writer's group to the West Bank and went and saw how the Palestinians were living and what the reality of the occupation was.

01:37:15.660 And that got him to understand we have to make some changes.

01:37:18.440 And there have been changes in the black church communities, definitely reaching out.

01:37:22.420 But I would like one, I think that we have to have many more people come and see and not go on an APAC junket, but really go.

01:37:30.540 And as Christians, tell your communities we want to go and we want to go and visit our Palestinian Christian communities.

01:37:36.920 And this might be a little, you could decide what you want to do with it.

01:37:39.860 But my dream thing would be to have a trip, perhaps have you come on the trip, perhaps have Mel Gibson, Cat Stevens.

01:37:49.720 It's a funny kind of thing, but he's a guy who was born in the Greek church and is now a Muslim.

01:37:55.100 And Zoran and Brad Lander and try to give the idea and Marjorie Taylor Greene.

01:38:02.560 The point is we have to expose what's going on.

01:38:05.100 I want to go to that dinner.

01:38:06.100 All right.

01:38:06.880 Not just a dinner.

01:38:07.560 You're going to come visit with my friends in Janine, okay, and in Bethlehem.

01:38:13.400 And then you're going to go tell the world what's going on there because you're all much better communicators than I am.

01:38:18.980 And the world really has, aren't we horrified by the idea?

01:38:22.480 Aren't you as a media person horrified?

01:38:24.660 Why can't reporters go into Gaza?

01:38:29.160 Why can't, and reporters are not allowed in large portions of the West Bank now.

01:38:32.800 They call them military zones.

01:38:34.940 What kind of press freedom is that?

01:38:36.420 And what are they trying to hide?

01:38:38.640 So the only way that's going to break that is by enough of us saying, enough influencers going over there and saying, I want to see what's going on.

01:38:47.340 And then report back.

01:38:49.400 And I thank you for giving me at least this little opportunity.

01:38:54.320 Hope moves things in the right direction.

01:38:55.960 Thank you.

01:38:57.140 All right.

01:38:57.400 Thank you.

01:38:58.000 Very much.

01:38:58.680 Okay.

01:39:03.280 We want to thank you for watching us on Spotify, a company that we use every day.

01:39:07.240 We know the people who run it, good people.

01:39:09.220 While you're here, do us a favor.

01:39:11.020 Hit follow and tap the bell so you never miss an episode.

01:39:15.240 We have real conversations, news, things that actually matter.

01:39:18.380 Telling the truth always.

01:39:19.580 You will not miss it if you follow us on Spotify and hit the bell.

01:39:23.360 We appreciate it.

01:39:23.920 Thanks for watching.

The Tucker Carlson Show - August 11, 2025

Here’s What It’s Really Like to Live as a Christian in the Holy Land

Episode Stats

Length

Words per Minute

Word Count

Sentence Count

Misogynist Sentences

Hate Speech Sentences

Summary

Transcript