Hebrew Voices #171 – 3 Jews & An Arab Discuss The War in Israel

Dr. Nehemia Gordon - Bible Scholar at NehemiasWall.com

In this episode of Hebrew Voices #171 - 3 Jews & An Arab Discuss The War in Israel, Nehemia joins a panel of three Jews, an Evangelical and a Palestinian to discuss the Hamas genocide and the war with Hamas.

I look forward to reading your comments!

PODCAST VERSION:https://audio.nehemiaswall.com/Hebrew-Voices/Hebrew-Voices-171-3-Jews-and-an-Arab-Discuss-the-War-in-Israel-NehemiasWall.mp3Download Audio

Transcript

Hebrew Voices #171 – 3 Jews & An Arab Discuss The War in Israel

You are listening to Hebrew Voices with Nehemia Gordon. Thank you for supporting Nehemia Gordon's Makor Hebrew Foundation. Learn more at NehemiasWall.com.

Steven: Welcome to Mormon Book Reviews: Where an Evangelical Encounters the Restoration. I’m your host, Steven Pynakker, and as many of you know, on the morning of October 7th all hell broke loose in the Middle East, especially in Israel. And this barbaric, nihilistic death cult, Hamas, did the unthinkable and the unspeakable. But it’s all there, and we know it’s happened. Now we’re on the verge of the Israeli's response to this brutal attack.

I was just talking to the panel beforehand, before we got started. I was telling them about Mohammed, who’s my friend in the Gaza Strip, and he’s in a very difficult situation. He’s a Muslim philosopher, writer and historian, and is not a fan of Hamas. Now, he does have criticisms of Israel and some of our engagements, which I would understand. If I was a resident of Gaza I probably would too. But Mohammed is one of those people of faith who wants to do things in a peaceful way. So, I just want to ask our audience, those of you who are believers, I’d like you to keep Mohammed in your prayers as well as all the people in the Middle East.

So, many of you probably recognize many of these gentlemen that have already come on. Of course, we know Jason Olson with this book, The Burning Book: A Jewish-Mormon Memoir. It’s got a lot of views, many new subscribers to the channel since my interview with Jason. Jason, welcome to the program.

Jason: Thanks so much Steve, I’m really glad to be here.

Steven: And I want to thank you, because you actually then introduced me to Jabra. Jabra, welcome back to the program today, sir.

Jabra: Thank you, Steve. Glad to be back.

Steven: Now, Jabra is an Arab Palestinian Christian who is also now a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

Jason was raised Jewish, and then at the age of 18 he got baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints as well.

And then we’ve got my really good friend. Honestly, I think God put us together for such a time like this, I believe this for all the panelists here. And a really remarkable story about how Nehemia and I met. It was just fascinating. He had on Dan Vogel, one of the top foremost Mormon scholars there is, and my neighbor sent me a link to the interview, because my neighbor is a Messianic Christian and watches Nehemia, and he showed me. And within an hour or two of me seeing this, I was in touch with Nehemia, and later he became a guest on my program. And later I became a guest on his program, on the morning of October 7th, live, as Nehemia had just been in his bunker three times already earlier that day and he was right in the middle of all of it, and we did a real time thing from Jerusalem on his program. And since then, Dr. Nehemia has been doing almost daily updates about what's going on in Israel. Of course, many of you may have seen his interview on A Rood Awakening, where he talks about this miraculous escape from Israel. Dr. Nehemia Gordon, welcome to the program sir.

Nehemia: Thanks Steven, thanks for having me.

Steven: And of course, then I’ve got my good friend AJ. Now, AJ is a really important person to me because I didn’t think what I was doing was what would be called “interfaith” for a very, very long time. I was just this Evangelical fanboi of Mormonism, and then I realized that it’s much bigger than that. And one of the people that made it real to me was when AJ Levy reached out to me because of my appearance on Mormon Stories, and he and I have become friends.

And AJ, you were raised ultra-Orthodox, and you’re a very good friend of Israel, and you’re doing a work… One of the reasons I wanted to have you on the program today was to talk about the work that you’ve done. Of course, I’ve already had you on as well, so many of you probably already recognize AJ. AJ, I want to welcome you, my friend. We’ve been friends longer than anybody here, for over a year. Welcome back to the show, my friend.

AJ: Thank you for having me, it’s a pleasure to be on and it's a pleasure speaking with everybody here as well, who I’ve seen on your show many times, so, it’s great to be here!

Steven: So, actually, I just want to get started out with you real quick, AJ, because you are actually doing a lot of work on the ground to help the people of Israel. Maybe talk a little bit about the organization that you’re working with, that you’re affiliated with. And then, also how people can help your cause. And also, from my understanding you guys do have a Utah connection, maybe talk about that as well.

AJ: Sure, I’ll try to dive into it pretty quickly. The morning of October 9th, which was after the Jewish holidays were over, a bunch of my friends reached out to me. “We’re trying to get to friends in Israel that were called up to serve,” friends who were driving out to wherever it was to deliver aid to people, and they’re like, “We need ‘X’ item,” and all different sort of stuff. So, myself and many people who I work with that care about Israel and were affected by what happened on the 7th, banded together. We started raising funds and collecting equipment to send out to people that were called up for reserve duty, that were under-armed, well, under-defended really, so body armor and those sorts of items, raincoats. As well as for civilian first responders and people who had been displaced. There’s over 140,000 Israelis who have been displaced from their homes currently in Israel.

So, we opened up a charity called The Support of Israel, which we’ve successfully sent a lot of equipment to Israel. There’s another initiative which should be on national news tomorrow. It’s been on the local news in Virginia, and this ties into the Utah part, where we’re advocating individual states to step up and help support Israel and the people that are living there.

Tomorrow there should be a press conference with the governor of Virginia or the attorney general, I’m not sure maybe both together, where the Commonwealth of Virginia donated. I don’t want to say the number, I don’t want to steal the thunder, but they collected a significant amount of surplus equipment from the police departments and sheriff departments across the entire state of Virginia, been manifested and put together, with the Attorney General's Office and also with local volunteers, and it will be getting shipped out to civilian first responders across Israel.

So, as we saw on October 7th, these places where people live, some of the areas where their first responders were properly equipped were actually able to fend off, or at least mitigate the attacks and the massacres. Versus some other places where there wasn’t the proper training, equipment, and so forth. So, that’s been a priority for me for the past week-and-a-half, two weeks, is really this initiative.

The Utah parties are looking to advocate in other states. Some of the people that we work with have some connections in the state of Utah. We haven’t officially approached them yet, but we are looking for partners, potentially, to help us lobby the right departments in the state of Utah, possibly to help step up and donate equipment. Hopefully that sums everything up.

Steven: Okay, AJ. Now just real quick, what’s the website?

AJ: The website is called The Support of Israel. I actually have it open; I’ll send you the link...

Steven: So, this is really important, because I was telling AJ there’s a lot of people in Utah, of course, that watch my program, and we want to make this accessible for people in Utah. We also want to know any of my connections in the state of Utah, maybe you guys should consider doing something similar to what the state of Virginia is doing. So, this is thesupportofisrael.org and there’s a donate button there.

AJ: And you’ll get live updates every week of what’s been donated and what’s going on. And it’s for everything; medical equipment, food and clothing, protective gear. You can also note, for example, in your donation, what you want to donate it for. So, people that want to just donate for medical equipment, for food, for defense related products, you can state what you want to donate to over there. I appreciate everybody's support with that as well, so thank you.

Steven: Okay, great. Thank you, thanks for sharing that AJ. And of course, Nehemia, you’ve got some stuff as well, and we’re going to get to that in a minute. But before we do that, I know Jason, you’re only available for the first hour, and if this goes over an hour, I want to get your thoughts in here.

Now, last week I released our video with Jabra, and Jason, you were on my very first episode with Nehemia the day after everything happened. Jason, I just want to ask you, as somebody who’s really one of the leading experts on Zionism in the country, in the world, you’ve done some really good work in this area. You were born Jewish, you are Jewish, but you are a convert to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and Jobra has a very interesting story as well to tell about that, which we’ll have him back on for. Jason, I just want to know on a personal level, how has this affected you, all these events that have happened?

Jason: Well, thank you Steve. Personally, I see this as not just a war on the Jewish state, I see this as a war on the Jewish people. So, it’s affecting me, it’s affecting my family, affecting my brother, my sister, my mom, my dad. My dad is a supporter of the Jewish people, but he’s not Jewish himself. But my cousins… we have cousins in Israel, and my friends that I grew up with reaching out, banding together, we all feel that there’s this genocidal thirst for Jewish blood. That the intent to destroy, exterminate the Jewish people is here, it’s palpable. It’s especially concerning for me on college campuses all across the United States, and around the world, but especially the United States. The United States for my family, our ancestors just a few generations back were immigrants from Ukraine, Poland, and Russia, Ashkenazi Jews fleeing pogroms, and now we’re feeling the pogroms are in the United States.

At Cornell University, Jewish students are not allowed to go to their Jewish Life Center on campus because of all the credible death threats. The Cooper Union, we’ve seen the videos where pro-Hamas, pro-terror student organizations are banging on the doors of the Jewish Center. Myself, my family members, we’ve all been in those spaces, and we just feel like the pogroms are coming after us even out here in the Diaspora.

Now, the Jewish people have a lot more strength now with the Jewish state that sees itself as responsible for Jews worldwide. And of course, I’m not speaking on behalf of the United States or the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in saying this, but that’s one source of solace, that there is a state apparatus out there that intends to defend Jewish people all over the world. So, even while Israel is under attack, rocket attacks are still going, that’s intolerable.

I served in South Korea for two years, and if you study North Korea and South Korea, you just have to dig just a little bit and see what would happen if North Korea were to divert its rockets from the sea, which is where all North Korean rockets go, into the sea. What if they diverted them onto civilian population centers? Just that is intolerable for a modern nation-state.

And a lot of people don’t realize that. They just say, “Oh, rockets. No big deal, there’s the Iron Dome.” But you can't carry out your economy, your daily life, and your time with your family when you’re constantly under rocket sirens. And of course, the incessant terror attacks. So personally, we want Israel to win in the sense of having a very strong deterrence so that none of this happens again to the citizens of all types that live there. But there’s a greater war on the Jewish people that is happening globally, and it’s out of control. And we have freedom of speech and all those things, and I think that’s great, but these threats and acts of violence against Jewish people in the United States and around the world are intolerable.

Steven: Yeah. So, that is true, that is happening, and we’re seeing the rise of ultra-nationalist movements in Europe, that many of them are steeped in anti-Semitic views as well. We also see in areas where there’s large Muslim populations in Europe, a lot of anti-Semitic things happening as well. So yeah, this is a worldwide thing. And of course, we’ve seen it here in the United States, as you talked about there, Jason.

Nehemia, I want to bring you into this conversation.

Nehemia: Yeah.

Steven: I want to say welcome back to America. I know it was quite a harrowing story of you getting out of Jerusalem. I just want to ask you, how are you doing, sir?

Nehemia: You know, it was a difficult experience. I never imagined that I would be a refugee. That’s something you learn about in history. I never imagined I would actually experience it, where I was fleeing for my life and going through situations where I could be kidnapped. I’m still getting over it, it’s something I’m still processing. And while that’s still happening, I’m seeing the things around me, the mob coming to attack the plane of what were Israelis in Dagestan, in Russia.

I study Jewish history. That’s what I do, and I studied about the pogroms. One of the things that sparked the modern major exodus from Europe before the Holocaust was the Kishinev Massacre in 1904, and it actually triggered a series of pogroms. Golda Meir… her father was cowering and hiding while the people in Kishinev were massacring the Jews. She was hiding in an attic somewhere with her family, and that shaped her life. And it really shaped a lot of the major emigration from Eastern Europe to the United States of Jews, was in response to the Kishinev Massacre.

And on the morning of October 7th, we were back in Kishinev. And at the time it happened, we thought, “Where is the army? Where is this powerful army that we have? How come they’re not responding to this?” But as more and more information is coming out, we were realizing, “Wow, this wasn’t Kishinev, this could have been Auschwitz.” And that was the intention. The reason it was a massacre of 1,400 people, which is horrific, I still can’t believe it, but not 100,000 is because the Israeli army and other Israeli forces stopped them.

There was this woman in Nir Am, which is a little town on the border there, she was part of what they call the readiness squad. Meaning, it’s ten civilians and this woman. It’s her job. She organizes this squad of ten civilians, they’re supposed to come out with M-16’s if there is ever a lone terrorist that infiltrates. Well, they found an onslaught of 40 terrorists. Actually, more than 40; they killed 40. People were still killed in Nir Am, but it would have been everyone in Nir Am if they hadn’t responded.

So, there are these acts of incredible heroism. At least when I watch the Israeli media, I’m hearing about. I don’t know if that information is coming over to America. There were intense battles that took place. There was an attempt to capture Ashkelon that came by air and by sea; that’s a city of 127,000 people, and that attack was repelled. We’re talking about… and you’re in the navy, Jason, they were throwing depth charges because they were coming from under the water, these terrorist divers, to land in Ashkelon just to massacre the population there.

So, this was horrible. It’s the worst thing in my lifetime, certainly to the Jewish people. It could have been much worse, is what we’re realizing. It’s one of those things… I don’t know if it’s ever happened to you, where you’re driving, and you realize you were almost just killed by a truck. And in this case people were killed, but it could have been much, much worse, and I’m just thankful to the Creator of the universe that… When the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union, they had what’s called the Einsatzgruppen, the special units of the SS that gathered up the Jews in each area and lined them up and shot them… and did other horrific things as well just to entertain themselves. And that’s what we were invaded by, Einsatzgruppen. But we were able to fight them back. And so, it wasn’t 100,000. I don’t know what the final number will be. It won’t be 1,400, it's going to be higher than that. That's a miracle.

Steven: So Nehemia, it’s one of the things that we talked about, and we might as well just bring it up now because you asked me to bring this subject up. Jabra and Jason, one of the things that Nehemia brought up to me was the question I had asked about how in the United States have what’s called the Second Amendment, which is the right to keep and bear arms for self-defense. And we didn’t really explore that question, but to me, as an American, where guns are very common… let's just put it this way. People have guns, my neighbors have guns, it’s very common especially in red states. That’s the world I live in. And so, it’s almost incomprehensible that if these people who live along the Gaza border, if everybody had at least a weapon, a gun of some kind, it could have also helped to defend themselves.

Nehemia, you asked me to bring this up, so I have a feeling you have a few words you want to say about that. And again, I want to hear all the different perspectives on this issue as well because it's obviously a very sensitive issue here as well in America.

But that was always the question. People, too, even said the Jews were unarmed in Europe, and that’s what ultimately led to Auschwitz. And now you have the State of Israel and it's their role is to protect the people. It just seems ironic that they wouldn’t empower the individuals like they do in the United States to defend themselves. Maybe talk a little bit about that, Nehemia.

Nehemia: Well, there’s a backstory to the Jews being armed in Europe. The Weimar Republic had a gun registry law, and so every gun had to be registered. And when Hitler took over, he seized all the guns. He just went through the list and took the guns from the Jews. So, when they then came to murder the Jews and arrest them and send them to concentration camps, they were powerless.

So, they should have been armed. Every family on that border should have had an AR-15 or an M-16. But the Israeli government… you get this impression that every Israeli walks around with a gun; that’s not true. There was a readiness squad of ten people plus this 20-something year old woman who had gotten out of the army and that was her job, to make sure the security on the kibbutz was looked after. But they were prepared for, like I said, a lone gunman, or two or three guys who might infiltrate, not dozens that were coming with RPG’s. So, they were under-armed.

Look, I came to this conclusion… I grew up in Chicago and I never held a firearm until I was in my 20’s, when I did a short service in the Israeli army. I’d never even held a firearm in my life. And then I saw the Yazidi genocide, and I came to the conclusion that every household owner, as a matter of responsibility to protect those under your care, needs to have something like an AR-15, or, if legal, more powerful. And these things will be investigated after the war. I don’t know if it’s appropriate for me to second guess them now. But I can tell you that since the war began, they’ve handed out 16,000 M-16’s. I know those M-16’s, some of them are from the Vietnam War and they say, “Property of the US Government.” And they were sold to Israel basically to dump them because they were worthless to the US. And they were refurbished and everything, and a lot has been invested in them.

But every family there should have been allowed to have an M-16 or an AR-15, or something, because when they came to murder them… The bad guys have guns. That’s one of the things I learnt growing up in Chicago. The bad guys always have guns. And it’s your responsibility as the head of the household to defend your family.

Steven: An interesting thought there. And of course, we also know the vivid images of when the war first broke out in Ukraine. One of the first things you saw images of was citizens having guns. And I think we lost Jabra there, but I’m sure he'll hop back on there as well… and they were there to defend themselves. So, this is not unusual for wartime situations for the population to be armed.

Okay, there’s Jabra, you’re back. We lost you for a second there. Maybe, Jabra, you haven’t chimed in yet. I’d like to maybe get your perspective because you’re unique. You are a Palestinian Arab Christian who’s a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and I thought that you brought a lot to the table in our last conversation. Maybe just comment a little bit about what we’ve talked about so far, and maybe give your perspective as somebody who has this really unique story to tell.

Jabra: So, yeah, I have a lot of thoughts about everything that Nehemia, and Jason, and AJ said. I missed the last part of what you were talking about, Nehemia, but let me just talk about it from the bottom and then go up, if I may say so.

So, here are my thoughts about being armed. It’s your gut instinct to say, “Yes, if everyone was armed, this wouldn’t have happened, or maybe it would have been minimized.” Nehemia brought up the story about the readiness squads, and yes, absolutely that works. But as citizens, especially in the United States or anywhere, actually, even in Syria, the way I look at it is, even if you have all the Kalashnikovs, M-16’s, all the weapons, all the bullets, you will not be able to fight effectively against a superior force that has RPG’s, tanks, airplanes, helicopters, night vision goggles, and all of that. So, you might be able to kill a bit of the enemy, but eventually they will come in and they will rain death on you.

And we see in Syria, even, for example, during the Arab Spring, you rebel against a regime like the Assad regime, which we’ve always known is a barbaric, bloodthirsty system there. The people revolted, the United States is aiding them, the European Union is aiding them, they are giving them weapons and training. But Assad, just because he's acting on his territory with a well-equipped army, is able to quash resistance. And in the end as a population, when you start fighting a war like that, even if you win… it’s like an American lawsuit; whether you’re right or wrong, once the lawsuit is filed you lose because you have to pay the extreme legal cost. You have to pay lawyers $300 to $500 an hour to go through the lawsuit.

And it’s the same thing. Once you make a decision as a citizen to hold weapons against… Let’s say your government turns corrupt, or dictatorial, or whatever, then you’ve lost, because in the end your city, your town, your home, your buildings, your neighborhood, all of that will be destroyed.

Now, this might not apply in the Israeli case, because you’re surrounded by people who are not friendly. I’ve heard AJ, I’ve heard Nehemia, I’ve spoken with Jason, I’ve read his book, and as I said in the earlier interview, the thing that Arabs have never grasped, and actually contributed to, and I came to this realization a few years ago, is the depth, width, and breadth of the Jewish angst. We’re talking about a population of the world that has a collective trauma that goes back millennia because of the pogroms.

It was interesting to hear Nehemia talk about the pogroms in Russia. That is almost like living history. It’s a living memory for the Jewish people. And the Arab discourse… and I say Arab, not just Muslim discourse because it’s an even wider thing, the Arab discourse is not helpful. Arabs contribute to this Jewish trauma, and it basically leaves nowhere for trust. And that’s why I’ve come to the conclusion that the only way to break through that cycle is for someone to decide to model a different way, a different path, a different conversation, talking to the other side.

I’ve already received some flak for the interview that we’ve done from dear friends who are shocked that I would meet with Jason and talk the way I did. But I stand by what I said. It’s the truth, and I think Arabs need to face the truth. We need to be realistic with ourselves.

I feel like when it comes to Hamas, for example, for the last decade and a half, many people have given them a pass because everyone, including me, at the time, felt this is legitimate resistance. But there was always this fear in me that this streak of violence would eventually turn against the Palestinian people themselves.

Let me give you an example, something I wrote about this week. In Ancient Canaan, the Canaanites, the Philistines, the people in Gaza and that area, worshiped the god Molech. And I don’t know if you know Nehemia, what Molech was famous for.

Nehemia: I sure do. My ancestors also worshipped Molech. We learned it from the Ammonites.

Jabra: I know! And I mentioned that, but here’s what Molech’s specialty was. To worship Molech you had to take your firstborn and sacrifice that first born. And when it wasn’t the firstborn, you had to let your children walk on fire for Molech. And I feel like on the altar of whatever Hamas stands for now, because to be honest I’ve lost track of what Hamas stands for anymore, they are sacrificing the Palestinian children. And not just the firstborn, they’re sacrificing every Palestinian child so that they can accomplish whatever purpose they have.

Now, another thought I had this week was that Arab leaders in general, and this is a generalization that I know to be true with every fiber of my being because I lived through it. Arab leaders treat their countries, their populations, as farms, and feudal farms at that. And everyone works on that farm, and everyone is a slave on that farm, and to please the feudal lord you have to do everything in your power, even sacrificing yourself, to please the feudal lord. Hamas has been revealed by these recent attacks, because not only the horror and the massacres, and to be honest, the genocide and the crimes against humanity that they committed in those attacks, on top of that streak of violence that I was always worried about, it was revealed that they have invested the resources that had been given to them to build tunnels, weapons of war, rockets, and all of that stuff.

I fail to see the endgame and the end purpose of that because, again, you’re fighting against a superior force, everyone knows it. Israelis and Arabs might not feel like this is true right now based on what happened on October 7th. They might feel like we had this victory. But again, I wrote this in a post to my friends and I said, “You’ve tried everything. You’ve tried regular war, you’ve tried kidnappings, you’ve tried storming embassies, you’ve tried taking hostages, you’ve tried bombings, you’ve tried bus bombings, and every time, every single strategy that was followed ended up with more defeat and more bloodshed. And what’s being lost are the lives of the innocent civilians and Palestinian people, and as Palestinians we are losing a generation of children to trauma." I’ve seen and I try to avoid those scenes as much as possible, but it gets posted and you see this little child in a hospital in Gaza shaking, eyes bulging, and you see children being carried on stretchers, thanking the ambulance people, and it made me cry. It made me cry. Those children are growing up and there’s no way they are going to recover from this trauma. I don’t think there is. Only grace can save them from it somehow, but I don’t see how they can recover from it.

But like that man who thinks that by arming himself he can stand against a tyrannical US government, you can’t win. The Israelis have world support. Israel is a state, it’s a regular state that’s recognized, it has alliances, it has the weapons, it has the manpower, and it will defeat any armed struggle every single time. The only way that we can have a peaceful coexistence with our Jewish neighbors is by thinking radically out of the box and honestly, practicing radical humility.

And many of my friends have written to me and told me, “This is unbelievable. You’re meeting with Zionists, with Jews, with Israelis, and you’re sympathizing with them. You’re acknowledging their history,” and all of that stuff. Which is anathema to 99% of Arabs and Palestinians. But I’ve decided that I want to listen to the other side, and listen with humility, and remove all of the prejudices that I might have had in the past and just listen with pure intent, with real intent, and model that. Because that’s the only way. No weapon can achieve victory for the Palestinian people. I wouldn’t even say victory, but they want, which is the right to self-determination, living in their own independent state.

And again, as I said in the previous interview, there is even a problem when we talk about that, and the problem is that the Palestinian Authority or Hamas have not been good governments. They have not been good, effective leaderships that give the Israelis any ray of hope that they can achieve something, or they can be stable neighbors. Because listening to what Nehemia said, listening to what Jason said, listening to AJ, what the Jewish people crave, and want, and need, is to feel safe and that they are not besieged by people who want to drive them into the sea. And the Arab narrative, unfortunately, whether it’s in the public street, or governmental, doesn’t inspire any confidence.

On the one hand you have these governments who use that narrative whenever it suits them to basically divert the populace attention from the fact they are using them as feudal labor, they are on this farm. And then you have the populace, who are really emotional, trapped in the past, trapped in this historical thinking, trapped in their indoctrination, trapped in the lies that we've been taught as children, about how this conflict started, its roots, and how it happened.

One of the biggest revelations when I was doing my PhD work was studying about the Mizrahi communities who lived in Iraq, in Egypt, in Lebanon, in Syria, in Libya, in Algeria, in Tunisia, you name it, Yemen, and the story of the pogroms. In Iraq, they call it the Farhuds that were committed against those Mizrahi communities who, you read the literature, you read people like Eli Amir, and the man, before 1948, before the Farhud, he thought of himself as nothing but an Iraqi who is a Jew by religion. To him, Iraq was his country. He was a Jew religiously, but he was as indigenous as any Arab in Iraq. And you learn about that, and then you realize, “Oh, this is a very important piece of information.”

The biggest hurdle to peace negotiations has always been the Palestinian refugees in all of these Arab countries. And then you hear about the million Jews who had been uprooted from Arab countries and driven to Israel or to some other places in the world, and you say, "Well, on moral grounds, we can’t ask for Palestinian refugees to be returned to Israel, to take back their place, because first, those people have died, and secondly, their children, and their children’s children are the responsibility of the Lebanese, the Jordanians, the Saudis, the Emirates, the Egyptian governments that absorbed them." Because that’s what's normal, that’s what you do.

The fact that they’ve kept them in refugee status for so long, and they treat them like nothing… luckily, we had Jordanian citizenship when we lived in Kuwait, so I didn’t experience even 1% of all the inconveniences and the hassles that the people with Palestinian travel documents experience. But those people were my friends, my neighbors, and I’ve seen what happened to them. They could be kicked out of Kuwait and their businesses taken from them at a moment's notice. And that is a moral failure on the part of the Arab leaderships.

I was born in Kuwait, yet I was never eligible for Kuwaiti citizenship because the Kuwaitis wouldn’t do that. And the question is, if you love the Palestinians so much, and if you care about them, why wouldn’t you give them citizenship and end their refugee status? At least they could travel, at least they could have a normal life and have equal rights with work, et cetera, et cetera. But they would not do that because the suffering of the Palestinian refugee populations in their midst suits them. They can use them as cheap labor, they can kick them out whenever they want, and it’s easier for them to look like the heroes and the big nationalist leaders when they want to pump themselves up and talk about Israel.

Because as Nehemia knows, and as AJ knows, and Jason, maybe a little bit, Arab leaders love to do that! If you want to pump yourselves up, you start speaking against Israel and you’re the hotshot, and people are diverted from you. King Abdullah of Jordan is doing that right now. His wife gave an interview on CNN, and there was not one word of sympathy to the Jewish survivors and the Israeli victims. Instead, she narcissistically focused on the people of Gaza, who we should sympathize with. But again, as I keep telling my Palestinian friends, nobody is going to listen to one word you say unless you acknowledge what happened on October 7th.

Steven: Jason, you wanted to say something. Why don’t you chime in?

Jason: Yeah. Thank you so much, Jabra. I just wanted to interject. I just had this discussion with a Latter-Day Saint scholar friend. Israel is a Jewish and democratic state. Everything surrounds these two principles. And I appreciate what Jabra is saying, because a lot of times folks want to make this about race, or they want to make it only about ethnicity. They want to compare it to the situation of black people, African Americans in the United States. The issue is, Israel absorbs all kinds of Jewish immigrants. If you go to Israel… and that’s why what Jabra is saying about what he studied in Mizrahi history is so crucial.

But it goes even further than that. Israel has black Jews, brown Jews, white Jews, all kinds of Jews from Africa that racially are black. But Israel is taking in… it is a Jewish State. It is Jewish and democratic, but in the Jewish category, it is a religious state, and it is bringing in immigrants that practice Judaism, that their religious identities are Jewish. And Israel is bringing them in from all over the world, from every imaginable racial or ethnic demographic, including Africa, India, China, it doesn’t matter. If that’s your religion, Israel is willing to bring you in.

And so, there is this idea that there’s only one Jewish state. Even Netanyahu, I actually agree with how he phrased it, “The one and only Jewish state.” It’s very tiny, it’s very small, it’s very beleaguered, but it’s one place. And I think members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints have to sympathize with this because the early history of the church was all about religious immigration. There was the Perpetual Emigration Fund, PEF, now it’s Education, but in those early days of Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, they were bringing in Latter-Day Saints, Mormons, of any racial background in those days. If they adhered to this particular religion, the church would help them emigrate to Missouri, or Nauvoo, Illinois, or Utah, and there was a way to absorb these immigrants and then find a way to protect them. That required a lot of negotiation with the federal government and state governments, and in the case of Missouri, it failed. It also failed in Nauvoo.

But if anybody can sympathize, this is not about colonialism, it’s not about imperialism, it’s actually about Judaism, and about bringing in all kinds of Jews to one land that Judaism considers sacred. So, I’m forced to reframe this. And not only that, Judaism is indigenous to the Land of Israel. So are Islam and Christianity, and that’s why these things are very complicated.

But I really view Hamas’s intentions as small, but Hamas has great powers backing it. They have Iran, plus Hezbollah, plus the Houthis, plus Syria, and Hamas, and so many other sympathizers, even the Taliban. So, Hamas is a beachhead for an Islamist empire against an indigenous population that includes Jews and Arabs. So, I’m just reframing it. It might sound totally different the standard that people are hearing, but we have to understand… And part of this conflict is that democratic part; it’s a Jewish and democratic state. Israel’s trying tooth and nail to remain democratic, and that’s also why, what Jabra is hinting at, Israel cannot absorb Palestinian refugees, because if Israel absorbs the Palestinian refugees and then it has a Palestinian majority, then there is no more Jewish state. So, it’s this battle and this balance of trying to maintain a Jewish and democratic state. At the end of the day… Yeah?

Jabra: I’m sorry Jason.

Jason: Yeah.

Jabra: So, here is my main thesis, and this is something I believe in deeply. Nations survive and fall by one idea, which the Founding Fathers of the United States enshrined, and I think it's the most important idea, which is equality before the law. I'm not someone who thinks of democracy as, you go, you elect, because we know people don't care about elections. But people care about being equal before the law and having the freedom to worship according to their conscience and believe according to their conscience, and this is enshrined in the United States.

And the failure, I think, in all Arab countries, no exceptions, have been failures in reaching this conclusion that there is equality, that they need to give their people equality before the law and freedom of conscience. And this is a part of the reason why we struggle, and I think the best way to end this whole conflict is to enshrine that idea.

When I was at BYU, I wrote this paper many years ago when Rabin and Arafat shook hands. I wrote this paper and I expressed great enthusiasm and hope. And I was very excited about it, and I think every Palestinian was excited about that. But I think the main failure of those agreements was that Arafat was not told by either Rabin, or by Clinton, or whoever, that that is the idea, that's what we need the Palestinian society to look like. This is the first step towards establishing trust with Israel.

And I think one of the biggest failures on the Israeli side has been… not that it's Israel's responsibility, but I think there has been this short-term thinking that we need someone here, we need Arafat, we need someone to take control of the West Bank and Gaza…

Arafat was corrupt, the whole PLO was corrupt, and them being in there without being told that explicitly was a problem from the start. If that expectation was set, things might have ended up different.

Now with Israel, what is really interesting, just going back to what you were talking about, I think the reason Israel has been really successful at integrating all of these Jewish people from all over the world is because there’s that idea enshrined in Israeli law. Now, I know it has many shortcomings, and Palestinian activists would bring up all kinds of opinions about it, but on the whole, when you look at it, Israel has this system where everyone is equal before the law, and you have this freedom of conscience to worship, say, act, do, however you want.

So, on one hand, I have my very good friends in Kfar Chabad. I study the Torah with them, and they're very ultra-Orthodox. They love the Torah, they’re very conservative. But then in Tel Aviv, just a few miles away from them, you have the Pride parades every year. And this is wonderful.

Now imagine, you can't have that in any Arab country surrounding Israel because most of those people in the parade would be killed. And I think that's what Israel has to bring to the table. Now, everyone now is talking about what's going to happen in Gaza after this whole operation is done. I think the best way to achieve peace is by starting a dialogue around these ideas that Arab societies, Palestinian society, needs to have this idea. And I don't know how to do it. We need people like the Founding Fathers of the United States, people with that kind of vision to do it. Nobody else can do it for the Palestinians but themselves. But the seed of this idea has to be planted, that this is the way forward.

And we need to stop talking in terms that raise this existential angst with our Jewish Israeli neighbors. We need to stop talking about the past. We need to be informed by the past, but we need to have, like I said before, a veil of ignorance over it and start from a new, original position. We need to focus on the future. We need to focus on the children. We need to have peace. We need to have a society that's free, that has freedom of conscience and equality before the law. Israel already has that. The challenge is in the Arab mind because I'm afraid that, because of cultural, religious, or for other reasons, we Arabs can't think in these terms yet.

Steven: Jabra, I want to interject here, too, that one of the great tragedies of the Western education system is that we have the capabilities of educating Palestinians Western values, democratic values and everything like that. Unfortunately, many of our universities have been corrupted by these very same horrible ideas that have infected the Middle East. They have also infected many of the campuses in our country. So, this great opportunity to help westernize the Palestinians, they would literally be taught the same things that are being taught by Hamas in some of these classrooms.

Jabra: Here is my take on academics in the United States. And this is not a cliche, this is a fact. Most academics live in ivory towers, are very detached from reality on the ground. And my wife and I… she's going through her PhD. I did mine, and we talked about how hard academic papers are, and how it’s like they live on another planet. But I think they have something to bring to the table, and I think universities need to be places where people can freely talk, but without prejudice. People need to freely talk in a civilized manner about issues and do this radical sharing, facing of ideas. At least you know what everyone's thinking, and that's where you start.

What's happening in academics right now, unfortunately, driven by the scenes that we're seeing on the street, angry students and all of that, there is a push to limit academic freedom on campuses. And what that does, when we limit academic freedom… And I'll say it openly here; for the last, I’d say, 10 years there has been this push on American campuses. It's driven by a lot of American Jewish organizations, to censor Palestinian professors or any professors who express opinions that are pro-Palestinian. And many people have lost their jobs, contracts have been rescinded.

Just last night, a friend of mine who's an academic told me that she was told to stop and not say anything. And that is not productive, because we need a safe space to express our opinions respectfully, without calls to violence, without supporting violence, with empathy. For example, for Palestinian professors, their allies on American campuses right now, the idea that they need to understand is that you cannot talk about any of this without expressing explicit sympathy towards what happened to the Israelis on October 7th. That was a horrendous, genocidal, barbaric act that does not belong in the second decade of the 21st century. That's the starting point.

Now, you want to argue about apartheid, BDS, all of that stuff? Fine, let's put that on the table and talk about it. But also, when you talk about that, you need to listen to the Israeli allies, and Israeli professors, and Jewish professors, and have them talk to you about their angst, what angst this dialogue brings in them. When you say things like, “Palestine from the river to the sea,” you're basically saying, “I want to throw the Jewish people into the sea.” I'm sorry, it's never going to happen. Firstly, that's incitement to violence, that's genocide, that's ethnic cleansing. And you can't say these things, that shouldn't be a part of your vocabulary.

But you need to listen to the Jewish side, and why this is bad, why this brings up the pogroms, the Holocaust, and all of that stuff. You can't publish… and I sent this to Jason last week. I sent it to you over the weekend. I'm in this pro-Palestinian Arab group. I've watched them for years. I never said a word and I will never say a word, I just watch. And they post this stupid tweet, and in it they say, “It wasn't 1,400 people, it was more like 100. Haaretz revealed the numbers,” and then they “quote” Haaretz. And I'm like, “First of all I've read Haaretz. I have a subscription. I've read it for years and I know for sure this hasn't happened.” But they're spreading this fake information and people are lapping it up. And this group I'm on, it's smart Palestinian academics.

So, we need to have open spaces where we can talk and express our feelings. We need to talk about why this conflict is happening. But we also need to be careful with our speech so that we don't appear to be sympathizing with acts of violence and acts of genocide or supporting further acts of genocide and violence.

And to be honest, there is no way for Arabs to go forward with this without understanding Jewish history, the Jewish point of view, the Israeli point of view, without talking to people like Nehemia and AJ. There is no way forward other than that.

Steven: Yeah, and of course, Jabra, you got flak for having these very conversations...

Jabra: Yes.

Steven: …from some of your peers. But Jabra, real quick. Jason is going to have to hop off here in a minute.

Jabra: Oh, yeah, sorry Jason!

Steven: And I want to get Nehemia and AJ into this conversation as well. Jason, you’ve only got like a minute or two here. Are there just any final words you want to say before you leave the panel discussion?

Jason: No, I'm just so grateful that Jabra can just acknowledge the humanity of the Jewish people. And I think that right now all the Jewish people, almost all the Jewish people in the whole world, are hardening because they're being hardened against. But the way through this is, we Jewish people also need to see the humanity of the Palestinian people. And that's the beautiful thing that even Jabra has tapped into, I think, of the Jewish tradition, on why I go back to Abraham Joshua Heschel and every human being is an image of God. We have to hold on to that, because that is the conscience, the humanity. That conscience and humanity is why Jews are targeted all over the world.

As I've said before, Hitler wanted to destroy the Jewish people because he saw them as the source of conscience and humanity; that they looked at the world in this way, in this beautiful way. I think that every single human being is an image of God, and comes from a common father and mother, Adam and Eve. That story was either revealed to or invented by the Jews, and so I think, as a Jewish people, we have to hold on to those teachings.

Steven: Amen. Well, Jason, I want to thank you so much for coming. The Burning Book is your book that you wrote along with James Goldberg. I definitely recommend it. It's a beautiful story, and you're a beautiful person, Jason. Thank you for being my friend and thank you for hopping on today.

Jason: Thank you. God bless you all, love to you all. We'll talk again.

Nehemia: Bye, Jason.

Steven: We're going to continue here for a little bit longer, and I want to bring in both AJ and Nehemia here. Jabra?

Jabra: Yes!

Steven: You say a lot of good things, but we also need to hear from our brothers here.

Jabra: Yes, absolutely. I want to hear from Nehemia and AJ. So, go ahead.

Nehemia: I think Jabra’s voice is extremely important.

AJ: Yes.

Nehemia: Because I'm hearing people on the Arab side who are expressing similar things, but not that many. And I'm just talking about in English or Hebrew, so maybe there's more in Arabic. I kind of doubt it. There's not that many. There’s Yoseph Haddad, who is an Israeli Arab, and there are people who are expressing what I think is sanity. I mean, look, you talked about apartheid. Israel has two official languages, Hebrew and Arabic. Palestinians, let’s say Arabs, have more rights in Israel than they do in Lebanon.

Jabra: I know.

Nehemia: Lebanon is the apartheid state. In Lebanon, someone whose grandfather fled the war of 1948, and he was born in Lebanon, and his father was born in Lebanon, his grandfather fled, is by law a second-class citizen who can't engage in certain professions.

I mean, it's unbelievable that people of the same descent living a few miles across the border in Israel, many of them… I heard one testimony of this Israeli Arab from the Galilee. I think he was from Umm-al-Fahm, and he said that his family was leaving in 1948 and the Jews went after them and said, “Stay, we want to build a country together.” And his family and everyone in his area, at least, that clan, they serve in the Israeli army. And they feel a part of the country, and they feel their people were attacked on October 7th as well. And some of them were killed. There was a member of United Hatzalah, which is a volunteer organization that helps… it’s like an ambulance organization.

Jabra: They are the ones you call, and they come in. They’re volunteers.

Nehemia: Right! So, there was a man named Awad, I forget his last name, an Arab, and he was not only murdered by Hamas, who knew he was an Arab, who knew he was a Muslim…

Jabra: Yeah.

Nehemia: Because he told them. But then they butchered him and disfigured him to where he was unrecognizable. So, I mean, their desire was definitely to kill Jews, but they'll kill Arabs if they get in the way. And so, an Arab in Israel actually has more rights than an Arab in Gaza or an Arab living under the PLO, Fatah control in the West Bank, and certainly more than in Lebanon.

So, this is kind of this paradox. Jews are accused of having an apartheid state, well, because one of the arguments I heard is, “You allowed Jews to immigrate there, so it’s an ethno state.” You mean like China? China, if your ancestor came to build the railroads in the 1800’s in the US, and you’re Chinese of Han descent in particular, you can emigrate to China. And some do. I know people who have.

So, that's a policy that some countries have. But what makes a democracy, and I'm a big believer in democracy, what makes a democracy is the protection of minorities. And Israel is proud of that. If you have four wolves and a sheep who vote on what's for dinner, that's not democracy.

Israel gives rights to the Muslim minorities. And there are some problems with Latter-Day Saints, I'll admit that, as a relatively new movement, but the traditional populations who were in Israel, if you're a Muslim cleric in the Galilee, you get your salary from the State of Israel. If you're a Christian cleric in the Galilee, you get your salary from the State of Israel that comes out of taxes. I mean, you're not even allowed to be a Jew and live in Jordan. Certainly not in Gaza or the Palestinian territories.

Steven: AJ, I want to thank you so much for coming on. I know you've got… at the beginning. There's a lot to unpack here. We've covered a lot over the last hour, and I really want to hear your perspective on this. Just talk about whatever you want to talk about, what we talked about over the last hour.

AJ: Sure, a lot of great stuff that Jabra and you brought up, and what Jason has brought up, and what Dr. Nehemia has brought up. A few different subject matters that were touched upon. The reason why, with the whole gun control in Israel, that topic, just briefly…

Jabra: Oh, here we go!

AJ: The point, really, the State of Israel, why do they have their laws? They're very careful because they know it's a very hot situation there. So, what they try to do is really minimize civilian deaths in the sense that the people who get the guns and what guns they carry, every single bullet that every Israeli person gets, is noted. And really, the point is the military is supposed to step in and there isn’t ever supposed to be a failure like there was a failure on October 7th. And heads will roll after this is all over, politically, and in the military sector, as they should. And we do see, not to touch upon, but there are certain more radical fringe elements in settlement areas that have gone on and have done personal vengeance, which again is not really…

Nehemia: And those people are hunted down by the Israeli authorities and prosecuted as they should be.

AJ: Yes, exactly. So, it's very clear that any sort of resistance on both sides, people that move out to these predominantly Arab areas and are instigating violence, are kind of acting in a similar sense of where they're not really respecting the law, democracy, and their neighbors. And that's not going to solve anything, because that's just going to inflame people to behave in response with violence. Violence begets violence.

And as Jabra said, you have to first acknowledge that there is violence happening and that there are casualties to civilians, people that are truly innocent civilians. If you want to talk about the music festival, which is something which over the days, more and more people who I’m adjacent friends with that were slaughtered there, who were the kindest, most peaceful people, and from all over the world, that were slaughtered. And beyond just being slaughtered, as Dr. Nehemia said, afterwards their bodies were defiled, their corpses were defiled, and there's no form of resistance that's going to gain any sympathy on any sort of level if that's how the resistance happens. And that's something which, unfortunately, October 7th, October 8th, October 9th, people are like, “Okay, we kind of get that.” Hopefully the world gets that that's not the way to go.

And then what happens, kind of automatically over the next couple days, is that there's a response and there’s collateral damage. It’s a whole other podcast if you want to get into Israel's response and the failure of the state there. I have friends that were quiet for a week, and then after the IAF is responding the way they are, preparing for some sort of ground invasion, minimizing casualties for soldiers, and so on and so forth, and there are plenty of issues there as well, so people then totally disregard, "Oh, wait a second, women and children and older people were butchered.” Just two days ago they buried somebody's head. They only had the head of a child; they couldn't find the body. There’s hundreds of bodies that haven’t been identified because families have been massacred, complete families have been massacred. People were burned alive to the point where they can't pull DNA samples, and there's no form of resistance that's going to gain sympathy.

So, if you want to be productive, and I think from the Israeli perspective, and there are a lot of different voices that are coming out, if you want to be productive, and at least tempering the violence and moving towards a solution that will be mutually beneficial for the majority of the population, knowing you'll never have everybody happy in a situation like this. We have to talk to people from the other side. We have to go out of our way to really have dialogue with people that are suffering on both sides and acknowledge the suffering on both sides. That's something which has been very important for me to think about, those sorts of things.

And regarding the comment that was brought up about the universities, the problem that I’ve found is it's beyond the educational infrastructure, where there's a lot of silencing of opposing voices depending on who holds the keys or has the most support on campus. But the spiraling of information and the barrage of whatever you're into, of anxiety that social media empires are built on, where you're not fed anything that would do anything productive, at least for me and my wife and friends. You're just fed more and more stuff that will drive more and more of your anxiety, or your anger, from whatever side. You won't get anything in your feed unless you go out of your way, and we have these sorts of conversations. Nothing will come onto your social media information or engagement that doesn't drive a certain addiction of anxiety which gets you into this kind of tunnel vision.

And for me, I find it sickening and wild to see that this is just happening for advertising dollars. That people can't sleep at night because they're being exposed to violent videos. And people are getting riled up to do things which they would never do. I don't think people that have acted in ways they have on the streets in Europe and in America and so on and so forth necessarily thought about these things a month ago, that, “I'm going to go and attack Jewish students.” “I'm going to go and attack Palestinian students violently,” without being driven there by algorithms that are built to profit and drive you in that place. And it's something which is very concerning. Any sort of path forward, there has to be this dialogue and understanding of each other's voices, and I would say not just the spokespeople that are feeding for their engagement, like gotcha quotes, having the really difficult conversations, talking about people's day-to-day lives in all of these areas.

I lived in Jerusalem for five years near where East Jerusalem and West Jerusalem meet, kind of the border. And I worked in an area that's… I would call them anarchist Jews that have rejected the State of Israel. They were the original settlers in Jerusalem from the restoration of Israel, so in the 17th, 18th century, I believe, they moved out there, and they live peacefully with their Arab neighbors.

I worked in the kitchen with Arab workers, and you're talking about Jews and Arabs with ten-inch chef knives working right next to each other, and people say, “How's your day? How's your kids?” That is going on as well, and there needs to be more of that, of people just recognizing the humanity. Everybody just wants to have a meal. Everybody wants to spend time with their family, with their elders on all sides. And that's just something which I feel very passionately about, I guess.

Steven: Nehemia?

Nehemia: Yeah! I just have a question for AJ because he's talking about being productive, that the Hamas resistance wasn't productive. And this is a question for Jabra as well. Do either of you think for a minute that it was Hamas's objective to be productive? I think their objective was to draw Israel into Gaza so that Israel would kill as many Arab civilians as possible, and then they would demonize Israel and turn Saudi Arabia, who was looking into a peace deal with Israel, against Israel. I think that was the objective.

It's very similar to what Al Qaeda did on 9/11. The objective was to draw the United States into Afghanistan. And I don't know that it was a mistake to go into Afghanistan; you had to defeat Al Qaeda and root them out. Well, that's what Israel needs to do.

Here's a quote. RT News asked a Hamas official named Mousa Abu Marzook, they said, “Look, you’ve got like 500 kilometers of tunnels underneath Gaza. Why don't you bring the civilians in there to protect them?” And his response was, “The tunnels in Gaza were built to protect Hamas fighters, not civilians. Protecting Gazan civilians is the responsibility of the UN and the occupation,” meaning Israel.

Jabra: Will you send me this quote?

Nehemia: Sure.

Jabra: I haven't seen this quote, but please send it to me. But I concur with everything that you've said. It goes back to my original point about Hamas reverting to that whole Arab leader. I wouldn't even desecrate the word leader by associating it with any Arab man in power. But here's what they revert to. Exactly, the population is there to serve their ends. Hamas gets aid, power, money, weapons, whatever, because of the suffering of the people that it governs. It’s not invested, they have never been invested. It's like the Palestinian Authority; it's a money-making endeavor and they do not serve their populations. It's the same with the government of Egypt. It's the same with the government of Iraq. It's all of these armed governments. This is the logic they think in.

And Hamas could see the writing on the wall. I watched an excellent YouTube video with Fareed Zakaria from CNN. He’s one of those people on that channel that I really respect, and he’s always had a balanced opinion about things. But that's what he said. He said they could see the writing on the wall. They could see Saudi Arabia having a peace treaty with Israel, finally. They could see their support withdrawing in the region. Nobody has been talking about them. And they did this attack in a spectacular way, with as much… my words for it is, “They released the psychopaths on those people in the Gaza envelope.” They released the psychopaths knowing exactly what's going to happen, knowing the extent of the damage, and putting the Israeli government in a position where it has to respond. The minute I heard about what happened, it was like I could see the future. I knew exactly what was going to happen, it was so predictable.

And as I said in the previous interview, I'm a chess player. And when I play chess, I like to sow chaos in my opponents' minds. I don't play the traditional moves. And the untraditional move at that point would have been, "We can call 300,000 reservists, put them on the Gaza border, go after strategic Hamas targets where we’re minimizing as much as possible the civilian damage, depriving them of all the pictures of children and women, and homes being demolished and all of that, but still inflicting some damage."

And I would even be for a campaign to go after their leadership abroad. But what I would have done, I would have sent a message to the Saudis. “This is Bibi Netanyahu, here is my price. You call an immediate summit, and you recognize the State of Israel unconditionally. We have a peace treaty together. You bring in the UAE, which has ordered the Abraham Accords, but we're going for a full-fledged peace accord with Israel, where all the Arab nations, the Arab League meet, and they will recognize the State of Israel, right now. This is my price, otherwise, I'm going for option B.” And that would have taken the initiative from Hamas, because in chess terms, Hamas had the one pawn or had the rook. They had your rook, but the Israelis are catching up still. The Israelis do not have a victory yet. I mean, eventually we know Israel will win this, just by the sheer force of the Israeli military. But I wish that that would have been the response on October 8th… that would have been the response.

Now, I understand why Bibi Netanyahu had to do what he did, and why he's doing what he did. And I'd say Israel has the right to defend itself because of the anxiety we know that the Jewish people and Israel has. That is the logical move. You're playing Indian defense in a chess game, and these are the moves, you’re moving your rook to A-3… We know how this will work.

But there is room for some creative thinking, and I would say there is still room for that, even though the Israeli penetration into Gaza has started. I wish to see the Israeli Government or the American government thinking in those terms, saying, “Okay guys, here is the price that Israel wants.” First, and again, I can't stress that enough to anyone who wants to talk about the subject in my tribe; release the hostages unharmed, unconditionally, now. That's number one.

And number two, Netanyahu should say to the Arab leaders, “Get your act together again to Cairo, or whatever hole you meet in, and say we recognize the State of Israel,” and deprive Hamas and Iran from the PR victory they are having on the Arab mind. Because that's my biggest concern, that the Arab mind is being further polluted by what's happening in Gaza. The radicalization… and again, I'm not saying this from an Islamophobe perspective. The Islamic mindset needs to change. That’s a topic probably for another podcast.

But right now, what's happening with the usual dynamic is that the Islamic mind, the Arab mind, the Eastern Christian mind even, is being polluted by all the scenes of carnage they are receiving from Gaza. And that's my biggest concern because my concern is the future. The past has passed. I can't dwell on it, or I'd go meshugenah, as you'd say in Yiddish. I need to think of the future, and I need to think of those children and kids and the future generation, both Israeli and Arab, because I really care about the Israeli generations too. These will be the neighbors of my nephews, their friends, hopefully. The people they go to college with, the people they will learn from.

And to be honest, I'm selfishly invested in this in the sense that I want to go back to Israel, Palestine, whatever it is. I want to walk into a Chabad shiur and listen to Torah and study Torah with them. I want to go to a Breslov shiur and study there with them. I love doing that. I want to talk to Israeli students. I want that. I want this future that Hamas, radical Islam, is standing in the way of right now.

So, that's why it's even more urgent to think in non-conventional terms, like playing the game in a chaotic manner that confuses Hamas’ and Iran’s strategy book, something that they did not expect.

Steven: That’s fascinating, that’s a very interesting perspective. And like you said, Nehemia, Jabra’s voice is a very important voice that needs to be heard and is a unique perspective. Why don’t you chime in there.

Nehemia: Yes. So, I think the Israeli perspective is that if we don't go in and deal a crippling blow to Hamas, then this is going to happen every year.

Jabra: Yeah, I understand.

Nehemia: And then Hezbollah will say, “Okay, we can get away with this.”

Jabra: Yeah.

Nehemia: I think what's happening in Gaza is absolutely tragic. Something like 50% of the houses have been destroyed.

Jabra: Yes.

Nehemia: Thousands of people have died.

Jabra: Yes.

Nehemia: That was Hamas’ intention, and they’re using them as human shields. They’re preventing people from fleeing. I mean, the people on October 7th weren't given a 24-hour warning. Israel gave a 24-hour warning, and then actually gave a week or more, two weeks.

Jabra: That blood is on Hamas’ hands.

Nehemia: 100%.

Jabra: 100% that they could see that happening. It's hard to see October 7th and October 8th without putting an estimate on the casualties and what would happen to Gaza.

Nehemia: They knew exactly what would happen. There's a famous quote from Golda Meir I’m going to read. She said, “When peace comes, we will perhaps in time be able to forgive the Arabs for killing our sons. But it will be harder for us to forgive them for having forced us to kill their sons. Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us.” Well, that’s not today, not in Gaza.

But I appreciate, Jabra, that you're expressing empathy for Jews who have suffered. And you know, I don't know anybody on the Israeli side who's happy about the death of civilians in Gaza. It's tragic, it's absolutely tragic. But it's a tragedy caused by Hamas, intentionally, very deliberately, and very cynically.

Jabra: Very cynically. And I think Arabs… and I know anyone who watches this will say, “Turncoat, traitor.” Let them say it. We need to take radical responsibility, radical responsibility for the lives of those people. And we need to know where to lay the blame, and the blame is on Hamas, on Iran, on Hezbollah, on all those people who have these rigid, ancient mindsets, who are not open to anything but their vision of a future of whatever state they want that's dominated by their version of Islam.

And to be honest, as an Arab Christian, I want to tell you this. I want to have it out there. The most concerning part for me about the Palestinian Arab rhetoric about the whole Palestine-Israel conflict or Israel-Palestine conflict is this; in the last two decades, it has totally become added to these Islamic causes, and they totally wiped out from the picture any Palestinian Christians. And the Palestinian Christians are having to insert themselves into this and say, “Hey, you're deciding things for us. You're shelling rockets in Israel. You’re not consulting with anyone.” But the Palestinian Christians have been taken out of that whole situation.

And it's even more disconcerting to me when I look on TV and I see these Palestinian flags in New York, and they have the ISIS logo on it, or the Saudi logo, or even saying, Allahu Akbar, or whatever. Because to me that says, “This is an Islamic conflict. You Christian, you stay out of it. But you are a convenient prop when a church falls in Gaza because Hamas was camping next door.” And deliberately, like what happened with that hospital, they were firing from it and one of their rockets misfired. They still refused to take responsibility for it.

This is one of the reasons I'm doing this, it's because someone needs to go out there, and I'm not saying it's me, but I'm saying there needs to be examples of taking radical responsibility and saying there are children dying, but those children are in the care of Hamas. And Hamas did this knowing exactly what's going to happen to them, and this quote that you just mentioned about the tunnels not being for the protection of the people of Gaza, that goes right into what I've always believed about their system. That they are invested in protecting themselves, not the people. The people are props and tools and nobody else matters. Because in the end, this is about them; their power, their wealth, their bank accounts, whatever it is that they're sitting there accumulating.

You know, Khaled Mashal sits in Qatar in a comfortable room, and he makes his announcements. And Ismail Haniyeh calls these families in Gaza. And I'm like, “Well, go there. If you think this is important, go there and face the consequences of your actions yourself. Don't do the media prop, an Al Jazeera video, showing that you care, because you're not invested in this.” How many kids did Khaled Mashal lose in this fight? How many kids did Ismail Haniyeh lose in this fight? Zero. Not that I know of. And the rest of the Palestinian children are traumatized and dying, right?

Steven: I think the term you used, radical responsibility, is a really important way of describing that. Nehemia, I know you actually are doing a fundraiser with your group as well. If you have a chance, pull that up on your computer screen.

Nehemia: Yeah.

Steven: You can share the screen.

Nehemia: My website is NehemiasWall.com, let me share the screen here. Here's an episode we just put out on my program, Hebrew Voices, called What I Can’t Control. And we were talking here about some of the anxiety that Israelis are going through, and there's things I can't control. I mean, in the US, there’s things like, “Well, I can't control the noisy neighbor, and people being disrespectful.” And here it's like, “The status of the kidnapped and number of murdered,” and things like that.

So, here we have a fundraiser where we’ve raised at this point, something like, I don't remember exactly, like $70,000, just to help the survivors. When we were over there, my wife went to help the survivors. My sisters are in the field of optometry, and some of these people ran out of their homes that day without their glasses. I mean, literally, they had to leave immediately, they couldn't stop to get anything. And so, they left, sometimes, in their pajamas, without shoes… the survivors I'm talking about. And so, we decided, “We're leaving, because our situation makes it that it’s the best thing for us. But we're going to do what we can to help the survivors.” Because this is, like I said, it’s Kishinev, and we need to help the people who survived.

I know we probably need to end soon. I wish Jason was here. Can we end with a short reading from the Book of Mormon? Can we do that? Would that be okay?

Jabra: Yeah.

Nehemia: Jabra, I have a passage I'd like to read. You mentioned in your previous interview, Jabra… and I really recommend people go watch that over on Mormon Book Reviews. You talked about the example of the Anti-Nephi-Lehies, who were these pacifists who went out to battle and over 1,000 of them were killed. And look, I'm a text person, that's what I do. I read texts, that's my profession.

Jabra: Me too!

Nehemia: I'm not a Mormon, but I'd like to read from the Book of Mormon, if that's okay with you.

Jabra: That’s absolutely fine!

Nehemia: It’s in 3rd Nephi, Chapter 3. You also mentioned that Hamas is the Gadianton robbers.

Jabra: Yes.

Nehemia: Guys, Google that if you don't know who it is, if you're not from a Mormon background, or the LDS background. So, interesting figures, the Gadianton robbers. They were sort of like these bandits who had a secret society. So, there it's a story of this man named Giddianhi who's the head of the Gadianton robbers. I hope I'm pronouncing these words correctly.

Jabra: It's okay.

Nehemia: And he writes a letter to the head of the Nephis, the Nephites, who are the good guys in the Book of Mormon. You could actually be racially from the other group, but if you follow the right beliefs then you're considered a Nephite, if I understand it correctly. Like, you could racially be a Lamanite, but if you are of the belief of the Nephites, then you can be Nephite, and vice versa. Oh, we lost Jabra, oh no!

Steven: That's okay, he’ll be back on.

Nehemia: Okay. So, he writes this letter. This is chapter 3, verse 2 of 3rd Nephi. “Lachoneus, most noble and chief governor of the land, behold, I write this epistle unto you, and do give unto you exceedingly great praise because of your firmness, and also the firmness of your people, in maintaining that which ye suppose to be your right and liberty.” So, already this is like a tone of Hamas. "You think you've got this country, Israel; there's not even such a country".

Jabra: Yeah.

Nehemia: “Which ye suppose to be your right and liberty; yea, you do stand well, as if ye were supported by the hand of a god.” I mean, this really sounds like Hamas, you believe in this… I guess they do recognize the God of Israel. They just don't think we have any relationship with Him.

“…the hand of a god in the defense of your liberty, and your property, and your country, or that which ye do call so.” So, you have this pretend country, Israel, “and it seemeth a pity unto me, most noble Lachoneus,” again, this is the bad guys writing to the good guys, “that you should be so foolish and vain as to suppose that ye can stand against so many brave men who are at my command.” In other words, “We're going to come and slaughter you all if you don't surrender immediately.”

In verse 6, he says, “Therefore I write unto you, desiring that ye would yield up unto this my people, your cities, your lands, and your possessions, rather than that they should visit you with the sword and that destruction should come upon you.”

And verse 7 is really interesting, because here the Gadianton robbers are fundamentally different from Hamas. So Giddianhi says to Lachoneus, “Or in other words, yield yourselves up unto us, and unite with us and become acquainted with our secret works, and become our brethren that ye may be like unto us; not our slaves, but our brethren and partners of all our substance.”

So, there's two models in Jewish history. There's the model of 1492 Spain and 1497 Portugal. In 1492, the Spanish said to the Jews, which was… I mean, Ashkenazi Jews were a backwater. The main Jewish community in 1492 was the Sephardic Jews, the center of Jewish intellectual life. Rabbis used to come from Germany and France to learn, “How do we write a Torah scroll? Because you guys in Spain, you know what to do. We're just kind of on the fringe.”

So, in 1492, the Spanish said, "Convert or leave Spain. Convert or surrender", those are your choices. So that’s Giddianhi, that's the Gadianton robbers. Hamas is like Portugal in 1497. The choice wasn't convert or leave, it was convert or die.

Jabra: Yeah, yeah.

Nehemia: Here… I guess this is actually Portugal, I said it wrong. There wasn't the option to leave to Lachoneus and the Nephites, it was, “you join us or we're going to kill you all”.

Jabra: Yes.

Nehemia: So, Hamas is actually worse than Spain or Portugal, now that I think about it. There's not even an option to convert, just die!

Jabra: Yeah. Yeah.

Nehemia: When they say, “From the river to the sea, Palestine be free,” they mean the seven million Jews between the river and the sea should be dead.

Jabra: Yeah. And I’ll tell you this, that, again, and I hope… I always say this, people will hear this and they'll say, “traitor, turncoat,” all of that stuff. But let me say this. There is, and I don't approach this from an Islamophobe perspective, but as an Arab Christian who lived in Muslim countries, and I lived in several of them. You are always a second, third, even fourth-class citizen in those communities. You don't have access to opportunities, you're not equal before the law, and there are laws that are specific to you. And this is the kind of vision that, I'm afraid, I'm sad to say, that even the most moderate of Arabs would grant, is that we’ll take over this place and the constitution becomes based on the Quran, and Jews, Christians, all of that are second-class citizens.

And unfortunately, the Christian Arab population, and many people, even in the West Bank… I have a huge family there, uncles, aunts, cousins, and they would tell you that since the Palestinian Authority came, it has degraded to where it’s very Islamic. Christians are excluded, all of that stuff. And so, that's the vision they have. And unfortunately for Jews, we know how Arab governments treat the Jews, how they treated them in Iraq, how they treated them in Syria, how they treated them in Egypt, how they treated them in Libya and Yemen. We know that, and we know that's the model they have in mind. So, I see no reason why an Israeli or a Jew would see any future in a place ruled by an Arab majority, it's very sad for me to say.

But again, this is radical responsibility and radical truth telling, and I think that they need… and I welcome anyone to challenge me on that view. I welcome anyone to challenge me on that view, because even if they do, in the depths of their heart they would know that they would be lying. No Arab is willing to take from their constitutions, the Quran is the basis of this constitution. And to be honest, as a Christian, I reject that. I don't want that.

Luckily, I live in the US. I'm an American citizen, and I don't have to worry about it. But that is the fact. That is the fact.

Nehemia: Yeah. With all that said, Israel is a democracy that has over a million citizens who are Muslims, and they have full rights before the law. And they can work in any job they want. Many of them serve in the Israeli army to defend the country. Not all of them, but many of them. And even the ones who don't, though, have full rights before the law. And I think in that respect Israel is more similar to the Nephite nation, because you could be ethnically a Lamanite, but if you signed up for the values of the Nephite nation, you were considered a Nephite.

Jabra: Yeah.

Nehemia: And I think that's a beautiful thing. There's this concept today called civil nationalism; Jews invented this basically. You talked about how there were Jews who were integrated into Germany and integrated into these other countries. Jews, what they did is, they said, “Look, I don't have German ethnicity, but I can write a beautiful poem, I can write a beautiful book, a beautiful opera, and make that part of German culture, and I can belong to that.”

Jabra: Exactly.

Nehemia: “And I can belong to the state, and I can be loyal to the state.” In Judaism, we have this principle, dina d’malkhuta dina,” “the law of the land is the law”, which means that as an American citizen, I need to be loyal. My religion tells me I have to be loyal to the United States, and if you're a French Jew, you have to be loyal to France. It’s part of your religion, and it's certainly part of our culture.

Jabra: Yeah. And Israelis, the Jews… in Israel, they've done that beautifully. We've seen that, and the Jews did it beautifully in Germany. In my studies, that was what stood out; how amazingly integrated Jews were in every European population. And that to me has always been the greatest mystery. Churchill said, “An enigma folded in a mystery, folded in…” something else, I forgot the exact saying.

And many of them bled and died in the First World War for Germany. And they were loyal czarists. They were braver than Hitler himself. And still, the Nazis managed to turn the minds of the German population, and in most of Europe. I mean, we talk about Ukraine. We have the Ukrainian collaboration, there is the Serbian collaboration, which unfortunately Amin al-Husseini was a part of. I mean, you talk about all of these things, and you think, wow! I mean, Thessaloniki in Greece, those people were as Greek as Greek can be, and still the populations turned on them on a dime, and to me that is the greatest mystery in the world.

Steven: You know, I’ve said it before that anti-Semitism is satanic.

Jabra: It’s ugly, it’s satanic, it needs to be eradicated. I don't know how to eradicate it other than by practicing radical truth, radical responsibility, confronting it and saying things even when it's not comfortable for people to listen to.

Steven: And I think what we also modeled here was, we had a Karaite Jew read from the Book of Mormon today. And I think that was the most beautiful thing.

Jabra: I want to study the Book of Mormon with you, man.

Nehemia: I would love to do that!

Jabra: Let's do it! Let's do it!

Steven: I love it. Hey, AJ, what do you think? Do you want to join in on the study? Wouldn't that be interesting?

AJ: I'm working my way through the Quran now, actually. It's a very beautiful book. I have it actually right behind me. What Jabra mentioned, the way that people even weaponize certain religious texts in a way that when you actually engage with the text… there's a lot of different ways to read everything. So, what are your intentions when you look at a book?

Jabra: Yeah.

AJ: Do you look at the very fundamental violent parts, and say, “Oh, this is the most important, this is relevant for nowadays”? Or do you go through the parts which, I think the overarching theme in a lot of Abrahamic religions, at least, is really loving other humans, making the world a beautiful place, being kind to people, being kind to those that are downtrodden. So, do you focus on that? What are your intentions? Where do you want to go with that? Because you could read any of these books and there’s very violent Jewish people and violent Christians of all different sects, and violent Muslims of all different sects. But there are peaceful people from all those religious backgrounds. So, what are you going to do with that? And that's, I think, very important.

Something for me that I find very important is sometimes also to engage in those texts yourself, like the Book of Mormon. I was actually looking up some quotes prior to this, as well. Look at the Quran, look at something else which isn't necessarily something that you revere in your personal day-to-day but other people do, and you'll see that so many of the common themes of being kind and being nice to your neighbor and stuff that are really the thread of every… of what I find is the main thread of all these texts.

Steven: That's great, thanks AJ.

Jabra: One more thing, Steve, and I'm so sorry about this, but I have to say it. So, my morning, and this has been the case for the last five years, always starts with listening to Scriptures or reading Scriptures. But then for about two hours, I study Torah. And I study it from… I have these files that I collect, and I study the d'var Torahs from everywhere, from Breslov, Chabad, Reconstruction, Progressive, and Reform Judaism. And I have to tell you, I just love it! And I even study from a rabbi whose name is Gordon, Nehemia. Rabbi Gordon, he's a Chabad Rabbi, he was in the Chabad of the Valley in California. And I love listening to his shiurs. May his memory be a blessing, he's dead. But I feel like he's my friend, and I can't have a day without listening to his d'var Torahs and his lessons.

So, there is beauty when we study those texts without prejudice, and we see the good in them and try to put them in a better context.

Steven: Amen. Wow. Gentleman, I just want to thank all of you. And of course, we're going to have links for AJ's fundraiser that we talked about at the beginning, as well as for Nehemia’s project that they're doing as well to help the Jewish people and the survivors. By the way, AJ, just real quick, how is Rabbi Lerner doing?

AJ: I just get updates from there; he seems to be doing fine. Every day they're mobilizing, delivering packages to displaced people, all those sorts of things. Aid is coming in; they have a giant warehouse and they're distributing it to everybody there. So, he's doing good, all my other friends that are in the military, as of now, are fine. I try to check in with them every day.

My friend, who actually called during the podcast… I was supposed to have a call with him prior, but he's like, “I'm in the bomb shelter, I can't call,” and then he called me now. So, there is always that stress and worry that I think everybody in the region is going through, of the feeling anything can happen. And for me, at least, I try to pray for everybody's peace, and really, peace in the region and around the world.

Steven: Amen. Well, thank you all for coming on. Thank you, Jason, my homie, for coming on. Sorry you had to bail early, but that happens. We got through some of our technical difficulties with Jabra there, but everything went without a hitch. This was, I think, a really beautiful, important, conversation we had today, and I'm really proud of what this channel has been able to do, to have, I think, very unique conversations that aren't being had anywhere else. And this, to me, is how it works. This is interfaith in action.

And don't forget to also subscribe to my Utah Interfaith YouTube channel. I’ll have a link in description there. I’ll also have links in description to everything we talked about today. I want to thank all of you again for coming on. The most important thing is this, folks; remember, all the voices of the Restoration will be heard here on Mormon Book Reviews.

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