The Daily Signal - CEO of Passages Explains What Life Is Like in Israel Right Now

Episode Date: October 12, 2023

For some in Israel, daily life is continuing, now set by a backdrop of war.  “Rocket alert sirens will go off, and they'll say, 'Hold on, let me take my computer, let me go to the safe room,'” Scott Phillips said of his friends living in Israel, adding that while talking to him on video calls, “They keep their call going in the safe room. That's the Israeli spirit.” Phillips serves as the CEO of Passages, a Christian organization that has taken 1,000 students to Israel since 2016, including to two border villages that were decimated during Hamas' recent attacks. Phillips was preparing to leave for Israel next week, but is instead mourning the loss of “two of our speakers who speak to our students in these border communities." The CEO said he has never seen anything like this happen in Israel, "where Israelis were just murdered [in] cold blood, and over 1,200 now is the count." Phillips joins “The Daily Signal Podcast” to discuss what life is like for those living in Israel right now and why the attack from Hamas was such a surprise. Phillips also explains how Americans can support Israel and offers advice on how Christians can pray for both Israelis and Palestinians right now.  Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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I'm Virginia Allen. We are continuing to watch the war, the situation in Israel unfold right before our eyes. Today I'm really privileged that I'm going to be sitting down with Scott Phillips. He's the CEO of Passages, which is a Christian organization that takes groups of Americans, especially students, to Israel to give them the experience of the Holy Land. And tragically, Scott knows multiple people who have lost their lives in Hamas' attack on Israel. And he's joining us today to talk about the situation on the ground, how the people are coping who are there, and the importance of America standing alongside Israel and especially the importance of young people standing with Israel today.

So stay tuned for our conversation after this. So what is going on with Ukraine? What is this deal with the border? How do you feel about school choice? These are the questions that come up to conservatives sitting at parties, at dinner, at family reunions. What do you say when these questions come up? I'm Mark Geinney, the host of the podcast for you. Heritage Explains brought to you by all of your friends here at the Heritage Foundation.

Through the creative use of stories, the knowledge of our super passionate experts, we bring you the most important policy issues of the day and break them down in a way that is understandable. So check out Heritage Explains wherever you get your podcasts. It is my pleasure today to be joined by Scott Phillips. He's the CEO of Passages, which is a Christian organization that takes groups of Americans to Israel on tours. And Scott, we're just so privileged to have you with us. We wish it was under better circumstances, but thanks for being here. Well, it's a pleasure to be with you.

So grateful for the opportunity. Well, Passages does incredible work. You all have taken over 11,000 Christian students specifically since 2017. 16 to Israel for tours, including to two different border villages that were just completely demolished over the past week from the attack from Hamas. Scott, when was the last time that you yourself were in Israel? I was in Israel in March. I was there January, February, and March. Three times I was scheduled to go next week on a trip, and we had to cancel that. So it's been a while since I've been. I'm itching to get back. Yeah. I know you know so many people on the ground

there. Have you been in touch with any of the folks you know, any of your friends in Israel? Yeah. So number one, we have a small team in Israel that works with Passages, Four Passages, on the Passages team. Thank God all four of them are okay. Unfortunately, this, this horrible situation's attack on Israel has touched all Israelis. And many Israelis, if not most, you know, know a friend or family members who were killed or taken hostage. So certainly our team members, that has happened. We have other friends, our ground team that programs all of our ground logistics in Israel. Our speakers, unfortunately, we did lose two of our speakers who speak to our students in these border communities.

They were murdered by Hamas. And we're in constant touch with our friends that do live on the border. and that did survive, thank God. And we're doing everything we can, of course, to support those communities at this time. And what are those folks telling you, the Israelis who live right on the border and who just are experiencing this atrocity firsthand?

Absolutely. One of our wonderful tour guides, his name is Raz. He actually organized all of all or most of our visits to the border area because it's lived in a small village or Moshev, they call it in Israel, for 40 years. his whole life. And he's actually done a lot of media on Fox, other outlets. And I'm in touch with him several times a day. And he told me something incredibly just bone-chilling yesterday that a small village or kibbutz near the border, there's more people in that village that are dead than alive

because of these atrocities, including babies, women, children. It's really, really hit hard. And this is the place, one of the places where we take students, almost 11,000, over 11,000 students have been to these two villages. And so they're telling us, obviously, that it's just, it's, you know, the villages and the towns are just completely ransacked, they're destroyed, of course, lives destroyed. So like I said, we really want to do everything we can to be able to support our friends. Yeah, yeah, of course. Is normal life happening? anywhere in Israel or is it just on pause across across the nation? Do you know? It's a little of both, a lot of both. There are restrictions on Israelis gathering and doing

different things like that as far as meetings go, big, big sort of gatherings. But Israelis are working. Our full team is working either in the office or remote. One of the stirring things that I've seen on calls with several of my Israeli friends in various organizations is that when I'll be on a call with them, a Zoom call, and the sirens will go off. Rocket alert sirens will go off, and they'll say, hold on, let me take my computer, let me go to the safe room. So you see them moving to the safe room. And then they keep their call going in the safe room.

That's the Israeli spirit. Israelis are hurting right now, and they're anxious. So many are full of anxiety, understandably so. But life does go on. And Israelis are trying to understand. because this is very different than anything that's happened in many decades in Israel. And so they're trying to figure out what is happening. But they are living their lives and doing the best that they can.

Yeah. If you would unpack that a little bit, just the relationship between Israel and the Palestinians and the difference between Palestinians, Hamas, how that whole dynamic has been playing out for years. Sure, sure. There's a bit of a long history there, but it is, you know, the Gaza Strip particularly is a small enclave in the southwest part of Israel. It borders, at southern borders, borders with Egypt, which Egypt used to control the Gaza Strip before 1967. And then when after the Six Day War, Israel controlled the Gaza Strip until all the way until 2005. When Israel unilaterally withdrew from the Gaza Strip, and I immediately after a year after or so, Hamas filled that vacuum as a terrorist organizations. In 2008 began launching rockets at Israel. There have been wars or battles or operations with Hamas when they would launch, you know, hundreds, eventually thousands of rockets into Israel over the last years.

And then Israel would go and retaliate. Many times Israel wouldn't have to go in on the ground because Iron Dome, which is Israeli technology, that keeps these rockets from hitting areas of major populations, they would, you know, that enabled Israel to not have to go in on the ground. It would be able to stop the rockets from hitting large civilian areas. But this time is very different. Hamas surprised Israel and ended up, you know, with a ground invasion through land, sea, and air, busting through the fence, disabling Israeli intelligence, you know, and then parachuting into

Israel on these drones. And eventually, you know, 1,500 or so or more Gaza or Hamas terrorists were able to infiltrate these Israeli communities and pull people out of their homes and kill them or take them off to, you know, as hostages back to Gaza. So in addition to 5,000 rockets falling And within a day, that's just never happened. This kind of ground incursion has never happened where Israelis were just murdered cold blood. And over 1,200 now is the count. It's very different than it used to be. Scott, in your recent trips to Israel, have you been aware of growing concern, growing tension between Israel and Hamas?

Because I think so many people were taken by surprise, you know, woke up Saturday morning, heard the news, no one was expecting this. And so, you know, I'm sure in many ways it feels like, you know, there's a slow buildup to this point. But were Israelis expecting that there would be some form of this level of attack anytime in the near future? Well, certainly Israel is known for its preparedness. It is prepared. It is able to defend itself. I think that there's a number of things at play here. I think Moss ultimately fooled the world, fooled Israel, fooled the world.

world into thinking that, you know, they're bad actors, they're a terrorist organization, but, hey, maybe they're not interested in this kind of confrontation with Israel, this kind of beyond ISIS-style confrontation with Israel. And I don't think people were expecting this. That's the everyday Israeli, at least. Yeah, yeah. Scott, I want to talk a little bit about what we're seeing in response to what is happening in Israel. Specifically in relation to students' response, of course, with passages you work so much with young people, taking young people to Israel,

showing them the holy land. And we're seeing specifically on many American universities, prestigious universities, like Harvard and UVA, that there's actually a movement in support of Palestine. What is your response to this? And how can young people who do support Israel have the courage to kind of stand up and say, wait a second, no, I'm going to be a voice in support of Israel on my campus, even when there's groups rallying in force in support of Palestine?

I think it's incredibly, they're showing their true colors. You know, these organizations like students for justice in Palestine, they, you know, in the past, it was, you know, hey, would they support the cold-blooded killing, you know, of, of the murders of Israelis like we're seeing right now. But now they've really shown their true colors and shown that they do support this kind of, that they applauding this kind of massacre. And so what I hope happens is that this backfires on them

and their legitimacy on campuses because unfortunately they'd be given too much legitimacy on many campuses and that, you know, boards of regents and university leadership would see this is eye-opening as to what their true colors are in the sense of supporting this kind of murder and massacre of innocent civilians. And so our hope is that this will be a wake-up call to a lot of these universities, these campuses. And of course, passages, you know, we take students to Israel. Our goals are really to, one, strengthen their Christian faith in the place where their faith was born,

and two, build bridges of friendship with Israel by showing them Israel and taking them to these places. So when they get back, we do encourage them to speak up for Israel on their campus to connect with other pro-Israel organizations on campus and beyond, you know, to stand with Israel and also to stand with the Jewish people in America. The American Jewish community has seen such a high rate of anti-Semitism since 2018. and we hope and pray that this does not this incident doesn't increase that but we want our students to make sure that they're standing with their Jewish peers and colleagues and saying you're not alone we're here with you we're your friends we're your allies for you personally where does your heart and passion for Israel come from well since I was a young kid my mom raised me to pray for

Israel to care for Israel raised in a Christian home in a Christian faith and she always taught me to care about Israel. I remember being five years old asking if I could go to Jerusalem. It was just always such an interest and a calling for me, you know, that Israel, the Jewish people has always been an interest to. It went to Israel first time in 2005 and been going back ever since taking groups to Israel and worked for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee for a number of years before meeting our co-founders who were starting passages. And I was just blessed enough to be able to come on board and partner with them to launch passages in 2016. Wow. So neat. Share with us how as Americans we can be supporting Israel right now, both if there's physical ways that we can be supporting. And then for our

listeners and who are believers, how can we be praying for Israel right now? Sure. That's a very important question. I think number one is is educating ourselves and educating ourselves in the right way with facts versus, you know, a lot of the things that we see see out there about what's going on right now. And we have obviously at Passages Israel on Instagram, Facebook, that's our handle to be able to sort of hear some of the facts, our friends over the Phelos Project, Phelisproject.org, a fantastic resource to be able to understand the facts. Of course, the Daily The signal is doing a great job in reporting here on what's happening. And so education is important and then immediately transferring that into action in the sense of on social media, if you're on social media, to be able to understand what the truth is and to be able to share what the truth is, get the truth out about what's happening.

I think before maybe mainstream media and others start to turn their tunes, change their tunes on this. Right now, most are supportive. but this is going to be a long war. So I think that's it. I think sharing the truth is important. And then I think, you know, obviously, tangibly people can give. We're actually launching a fundraiser this afternoon

for these two communities. And that's at passagesisrael.org and there will be a way to give to these most affected every bit of that's going to go toward helping these communities. And I would say lastly, to your last point of prayer, is that is ultimately for peace. That's what all Israelis want and a lot of Palestinians want. Everyday Palestinians, everyday people who live in these areas.

So praying, I think, for wisdom, for the Israeli government, for safety for the Israel Defense Forces, for safety for the civilians in Israel, in the north of Israel. That is another front that could open up with Hezbollah in Lebanon. and of course to pray for peace-loving Palestinians who are civilians and they want to raise their children that they would see through the brainwashing that they get from Hamas and these terrorist organizations. And ultimately, that's what can lead to peace. So I think those are ways to pray right now.

And of course, comfort for those who are families and the affected. It's just hearing story after story of friends who have lost people. It's really, really sad. Really hard. Scott Phillips, thank you for your time today. Again, the website is passagesisrael.orgi for those who want to learn more, your cross-social media platforms, Scott Phillips, CEO of Passages. Thank you so much for your time today. We really appreciate it.

Thank you so much. And with that, that's going to do it for today's episode. Thanks for being with us here on the Daily Signal podcast. If you haven't had a chance to check out our evening show, you can do so. It's right here in the same podcast feed for every weekday. we bring you the top news of the day to keep you up to date on today's news. Also, if you haven't, take a moment to leave the Daily Signal, a rating and review on Apple podcasts or wherever you like to listen.

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