Theology in the Raw - Reflections on Israel-Palestine, the Destruction of Gaza, and the American Church: Dr. Daniel Bannoura

Episode Date: July 14, 2025

Dr. Daniel Bannoura (PhD, University of Notre Dame) is a Palestinian theologian. His research focuses on the Quran, Christian-Muslim relations, and Palestinian theology. He's also a co-host of "Across the Divide", a podcast on faith and politics in the context of Palestine-Israel. And he’s on the organizational team for the upcoming “Church at the Crossroads” conference outside of Chicago this coming September (11-13). Recieve $20 off registration for the Church at the Crossroads conference by entering "TITR" upon checkout. Listen to Daniel's podcast Across the Divide. Click on this link to find Daniel's resource list for Israel-Palestine: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JHWbiYVQ4sD5gX-o0yHC-5hXnY1KPf0kBvw2rZSJfiE/edit?usp=sharing Join the Theology in the Raw community for as little as $5/month to get access to premium content.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey friends, welcome back to another episode of Theology of the Realm. My guest today is Dr. Daniel Benora. He just got his PhD like a week ago, so he is now a doctor. He got his PhD from the University of Notre Dame. Daniel is a Palestinian theologian and his research focuses specifically on the Quran, Christian-Muslim relations, and Palestinian theology. Daniel is also the co-host of Across the Divide, a podcast on faith and politics in the context of Palestine and Israel. And he's also on the organizational team for the upcoming church at the Crossroads Conference outside of Chicago this coming September, September 11th through the 13th. Daniel, last time he was on the podcast was in mid October, 2023. And that episode was the most downloaded episode in 2023.

And a lot has happened since October, 2023. So I wanted to have Daniel come back on and just give us an update from a Palestinian perspective of what's been going on in Israel Palestine over the last couple of years. So really appreciated Daniel's wisdom and intelligence and, and most of all, I think it's humility. I just really appreciate his voice in this important conversation. So please welcome back to the show, the one and only

Dr. Daniel Benora fresh off your PhD. You, you, you defended last week and how did that go? Yeah, actually when you hosted me in the podcast, I had just begun writing my dissertation. So now you're interviewing me right after I finished defending it. Yeah, so I wrote this. People don't know this about me because of my public presence to speak about Palestine and Israel. But actually I'm a scholar of the Quran, the Muslim holy text. That's kind of my research. I don't think he would host me on the podcast to talk about my research. But I work specifically on applying biblical historical criticism on the Quran. Specifically I work on redaction criticism, trying to make sense of the composition of

the Quran using the tools and the methods of biblical scholarship. So I worked on some of the repeated traditions, what we call variant traditions, similar to the synoptic problem in the New Testament of the Quran, and trying to make sense of the variance between them, the similarities and the differences, and what they tell us about the composition of the text. So yeah, I defended last week. What got you into that topic? I mean, you're born and raised Christian in Palestine, and what got you? I mean, obviously, you know... Yeah, I mean, that's a... There'm sure there's a lot to say there,

but yeah, I grew up just in a nutshell. I don't know if I can do it in a nutshell, but I grew up as a Christian Palestinian, a son of a pastor slash missionary, as a Christian minority, a Palestinian Christian minority in a vastly Muslim majority society, the Palestinian society. Muslims have always been my friends and my neighbors and my colleagues and friends and what have you. And for the most part, and this is, there's a long legacy,

something we need to also unpack, which is the legacy of Christian-Muslim relations in the Middle East. A very complex, beautiful, sometimes difficult, but mostly very rich and fascinating history of philosophical, intellectual, sometimes difficult, but mostly very rich and fascinating history of philosophical, intellectual, theological discourse, social, political encounters that are really beautiful and rich. But also, as someone who comes from an evangelical space, we tend to have a more polemical attitude towards non-Christians, non-evangelicals in general, but especially non-Christians. So I kind of grew up in that space where you have these tough conversations about the Trinity,

the divinity of Jesus, the Quran, the Prophet Muhammad. So from a young age, putting aside the politics, obviously, all this was fascinated by Islam and its teachings. And then went to college, and I met a lot of Muslim friends. And I got involved in debates and conversations with them. And then I realized a lot of my attitudes towards Islam were motivated by my own Christian bias, which

tends to be more negative and dismissive, and not really serious or honest or critical. So that kind of led me down like seven ten years of scholarship and study of the Quran and of Islam. I went to the University of Chicago for a master's in Islamic studies and then spent some time in Palestine and then back in the US now doing Quranic studies now at the University of Notre Dame. How would you describe in general the Christian-Muslim relationship in Palestine? I mean, you kind of mentioned it in passing, it can be really good at times, sometimes

it's tense. Is it generally good? I mean, do Christians and Muslims get along fairly well? Or is the getting along well, would that be the minority experience among Christians and Muslims? For the most part, it's really positive and it's really good. Like I said, I have a lot of friends. I have friends in Gaza that I'm in touch with. I lost two Muslim friends who were killed, two men, husbands and fathers. And I have a lot of good, wonderful Muslim friends in Gaza. I have wonderful friends in the West Bank as well, in Jerusalem,

and also from within what is called today Israel Proper. Yeah, it's a very positive and normal relationship. Of course, there are complications. The Middle East in general, it's a very multiethnic and multireligious and even multilingual society. There's a bit of a stereotype you have to work against in the US about the Muslim majority world or what they call the Arab world or the Muslim world.

Not really good language here. So we prefer the language of Muslim majority as in to emphasize there is, there are many fascinating linguistic and theological and religious minorities, but obviously there's a complicated history and it's hard to unpack right now. But specifically in Palestine, Palestinian Christians

do really well alongside their Muslim neighbors. Palestinian Christians tend to be very successful, very affluent in the Palestinian society. Because of ministry, because of the influence of churches, and also Western missions, you tend to have a lot of Christian hospitals and schools that are run by Christians to support the local communities.

We have a lot of Muslims who benefit from Christian ministries. Christian Palestinians have also played a significant role in the politics of Palestine. So the first movements towards nationalism, Palestinian nationalism, and the building of the Palestinian society and the Palestinian political system was done by Palestinian Christians. For example, Khalil al-Sekakini from the early 20th century,

one of the forefront of developing the Palestinian national identity and resisting the British occupation of Palestine. Today, we have Palestinian Christians who are successful business people, politicians, artists, poets, heads of organizations who are doing really well. In the political system today, Palestinian Christians are overrepresented in the government.

There is a certain quota for Christians to be, to hold certain positions in the Palestinian parliament. Also, governorships, we have a number of Palestinian towns. Even though the Palestinians are, the Christians are a minority, the mayor is always a Christian. So for example, Bethlehem now is about 30% Christian, but the mayor is always, and will always be a Christian.

That applies to, I think, 15, 20 cities and towns in the West Bank. So you always have that Christian mayor and administration. And also in the ministries in the West Bank, in Palestine, you have the Ministry of Tourism. And one or two more ministries are always headed by a Christian. So actually we are overrepresented in the government as a Christian minority, like way more than our population would allow for. So we're doing really well.

Of course, sometimes there would be some kind of tension, some kind of conflict, basically, but that could be understood within normal behavior of people living together, especially in small areas, and especially within a very tense political reality that makes it very hard for people sometimes to communicate well with each other. Well, you know, when American Christians think about Islam, I feel like we, and I'm extremely ignorant on the religion, so please correct me if I'm wrong. But it seems like

American Christians have kind of these two categories. Like you have kind of the militant brand of Islam and then the more peaceful kind of branch. Obviously, I'm going to assume that's overly simplified, but if it's generally accurate, what percentage would be of the more militant branch of Islam? And again, if that's even a terrible way of framing it, let me know. Like is that 50-50 or is that like a really tiny percentage or is that the majority? Because I think a lot of American Christians think, some would just think Islam is intrinsically militant, you know.

Yeah, Islam is intrinsically militant as much as Christianity or Judaism is intrinsically militant, you know. Yeah, Islam is intrinsically militant as much as Christianity or Judaism is intrinsically militant. I mean, you have certain texts in Muslim traditions, whether in the Quran or in later traditions, that could be understood to justify some kind of violence. Just like Christians and Jews and so on would use the scriptures and interpret them in a certain militant, aggressive way to justify violence. I would say the violence in the Quran, passages of violence, pale in comparison to what we have in our own scriptures, or our own defense of holy war and just war

theory that we Christians have developed to justify colonization and violence and wars. I've always wondered that, Daniel, because I have not read the Quran. I actually have one. Maybe I should read it. But I've always wondered, like, gosh, I mean, if a critic of Christianity just quoted like Deuteronomy 20, you know, don't leave alive anything to breeze, man, woman, you know, like there's some pretty like, if somebody wanted to say like, here's a violent statement in the Christian Bible, there's plenty to choose from. And I always wondered, are there a lot more in the Quran? Less about the same?

But you're saying... Way less. We have some isolated verses that talk about if people attack you, you can attack them back. There is a very rich history of war and peace in Islam. Maybe this is a conversation for a podcast to have someone who can talk about these issues with you. But yeah, I mean, there are some verses that are usually understood by Muslims to be defensive wars, where God actually prohibited the Prophet and his followers

to attack and to be in warfare for at least 15 years, at least 10 to 15 years of the ministry of the Prophet until these verses supposedly came to give him legitimacy to fight. So the Muslims would say the beginnings of the ministry of the Prophet Muhammad were super pacifist and super nonviolent until there was some kind of, you reach that kind of climax or a point where defensive war was permitted in Islam. You have some verses that are understood within this context of the ministry of the prophet. And a lot of these statements in the Quran do not deviate much from other statements about war and violence that you see in late antiquity.

For example, rules of conduct of war that you saw you see from Roman laws. You see a lot of these are kind of also present in the Quran and early Muslim teachings. We have to understand that Islam did not come out of nowhere. It didn't come down from any, you know, like it's a society, it's a culture, it's a religion that's a product of, or if you want to be less, you know, critical about it, that's engaging with its own environment. So a product of, or if you want to be less critical about it, that's engaging with its own environment. So a lot of the teachings of Islam when it comes to warfare and violence are not very

dissimilar from what you see from cultures around it. And you see this in, for example, the Roman Empire, the Sasanian Empire of the time, the Byzantine Empire, and what kind of conduct of warfare that they have established. Islam is in conversation with these cultures as well. To go to your point about highlighting specific passages to argue for war exists in Islamia, but if you think about how Muslims have used violence and warfare and compared to how Christians have used warfare, just over the last 100 years, over the last two years,

and you see how easy it is for Christians to justify war, to justify slavery, ethnic cleansing of the natives, you know, you name it, right? The Holocaust as well. So Christians have been very good at using the scriptures to justify violence. Muslims could do the same thing. But if also if you compare the amount of violence and warfare committed by Muslims and that of what was committed by Hindus, but also what was committed by

Christians over the last hundred years, Muslim so-called Muslim violence pales in comparison to the hundred years, Muslim, so-called Muslim violence pales in comparison to the theological Christian justification for war over the last hundred years. So we have to be more aware of these nuances, and we have to also be aware of our own biases and how we as Christians have been committing violence and normalizing it using our own scriptures as well. Well, I brought you on not to talk about Islam, but we opened up a massive door here. We're going to have to let that sit on the audience. So I had you on last time, my first time and last time I had you on the podcast was mid October 2023, maybe a week or two after October 7th. And that episode was the most downloaded or at least most listened to episode of 2023

on The Algen RAW. So congratulations, unfortunately, the circumstances. I wish it was under better circumstances. Here we are and we're recording an early July, 2025. This is a big, massive question you could take at any direction you want, but, um, can you summarize, um, where your journey over the last nearly two years since the, really the, the Israel's response to the massacre on October 7th? Like have you, yeah, again, you can kind of begin or end wherever you want to go.

But how have you perceived this whole situation? Honestly, Preston, I'm super grateful for that interview we had two years ago. I still hear about it from people today. I know that a lot of people have been impacted by that conversation. And I don't think I was saying anything significant in that conversation. I think it was very normal to share my perspective. But it seemed to have impacted people a whole lot, mostly because they have never heard from a Palestinian

Christian before. And mostly because Christians, especially your audience, who presumably is faithful Christian communities who go to church and who are part of church and faith communities have not been exposed to the Palestinian Christian perspective or the Palestinian perspective or anything that is challenging the normative Christian support for Israel narrative or the Christian Zionist kind of discourse that is so normal in so many churches and especially in more conservative, moderate spaces.

So I think that's why, you know, there's not, I don't think I'm that compelling or that fascinating, but I think there's that kind of interest in, wait, we need to do better when it comes to listening to what Palestinians are saying, but also what our siblings are saying. And there's a long legacy of this, of this complete dismissal and disregard

for the Palestinians, for the Palestinian Christians, for the faithful remnant who have been living in the land for 2000 years, who have been ignored and dismissed in a lot of our sermons and our church teachings and our political discourse, especially in the US. So I think there's a lot of that is operative here. But also that continues to be the case today.

And this is why, like now reflecting, it's actually super tragic that we are still realizing that Christians, a lot of Christians, I don't want to be dismissive. They're wonderful, incredible people who are doing incredible work right now. But I would say at least a simple majority of Christians, and especially conservative Christians, especially

evangelicals, who have doubled down on their support for a devastating war, have continued to use the scriptures to justify uncritical, unconditional support for Israel. Many of those who spoke up initially after the October 7 attacks, expressing their support for Israel to defend itself. Two years later, and we've seen what the devastation looks like, we're seeing a war that has now been described as a genocide by human rights organizations, by genocide experts, by Jewish-Israeli Holocaust scholars.

Not Palestinians, right? Like Israeli scholars who spend their life studying the Holocaust are coming and saying, and I mentioned here, Raz Siegel, Omar Bartholomew and others, who are saying this is a textbook example of genocide. And you have this and you have reports from Amnesty and Human Rights Watch and the UN saying what's happening in Gaza is a travesty. I can go on and on to explain what the reality of what's happening, the devastation, the loss of life, the complete utter destruction of life and a future. How can we think of a future for the people of Gaza with the utter destruction of life and a future? How can we think of a future for the people of Gaza with the utter destruction of what Gaza is? The thousands and thousands of those who were killed

and 15, 16,000 children killed and thousands who are growing up with no parents, with no medical care, with no education. What's gonna happen to these people when they grow up? What's gonna happen to the child who lost his dad? How is he going to grow up? Is he going to be radicalized as well and continue this perpetual violence that we've seen now?

But then these Christians who have maybe naively, maybe out of zeal, maybe because of kind of the cultural bias of them being Americans, stood in solidarity with Israel, which is for me, I get it. But two years later, when this has become a live stream genocide, what are you doing? So you have, I don't want to name names here, and I think the audience would know these individuals, but anything you want to say now, do you want to go back on your statements?

Do you want to maybe express support for the Palestinians, maybe call for a ceasefire? So that's what's been really, really hard for me to reckon with is that we haven't learned the lesson. The history of Christian dehumanization of others, of justifying violence and war, the lessons of Jim Crow, the lessons of slavery, the lessons from the Holocaust, the lessons of apartheid in South Africa

haven't been learned yet, which is so tragic. So that's been the biggest thing for me to see my siblings and the faith, people in my own family that I love, and I'm called to be in unity with, to love, are the ones who betray me and hurt me the most as a Palestinian, as a believer. So that's been really devastating for me.

So, and we continue, we have to continue doing the work, Preston, to speak up about these issues. And people in church communities, I've heard from so many who feel so distraught by their pastors and their churches and their silence and their apathy, and they feel very isolated and lonely. So we have a lot of work ahead of us.

We need to keep doing this work, challenging these ideologies of violence that exists in the church, and hopefully making a dent in the system and do something better moving forward. I think there's a generational split too among, I would say maybe Americans in general, and hopefully American Christians in particular, but you have maybe Americans in general, and hopefully American Christians in particular,

but you have maybe an older generation, maybe my age and older, that they're still kind of like they get their news from mainstream media, from Fox News or CNN or MSNBC. These mainstream outlets still seem to, how do I put it gently, one-sided. I mean, I would say that they, and I don't know if there's money involved or what's going on behind the scenes, but there's just so much just repeating the same propaganda. But we live in a different age now

of independent media outlets, of, like you said, live streaming the genocide of, we can, you have an internet connection, you have TikTok, you have other avenues where you can go and actually see what's going on. And then you hear some politician or media personality saying something and you're like, yeah, but I have an internet connection. I could see that this is not, just not true. But I think that's different than in previous,

like, if you go back to like the Iraq war or even desert storm or other other wars. And now we look back and we now know like so many lies and stuff that was just not true, you know, about those wars. But now we're being, we're able to see a lot of that firsthand. Having gone through this before, you've grown up in these, you know, one perspective being suppressed and another perspective being promoted. Do you see a shift in public perception of what's going on in the last couple of years more than you've experienced before? Or is it still, I'm sure it's not nearly where you'd want it to be but does it feel different this time? Yeah I mean it's not where I want it to be when it comes to official government position or American foreign

policy positions or platforms of you know the DNC or the Republican Party there's something there's something that is fascinating that is happening politically you see the emergence of of young politically engaged leaders and congresspeople who care about this issue. You see this a lot on the far left in the progressive party. You have the Rashida Tlaibs and the Ilhan Omar and even AOC and others who are speaking about this issue. Bernie Sanders, one known Jewish independent congressman.

So you see that happening in the left, that was not strong. That voice was not there 20 years ago during the Iraq war. So that is happening. I'm not seeing it on the right, like Republican party in the conservative political spaces. I don't want to emphasize that too much. I think a lot of it has to do with AIPAC and the political power of the Israel lobby in the US.

This is something that was examined by John Merzheimer from the University of Chicago in his book on the Israel lobby. And you can look at the numbers and the funds that these politicians get from AIPAC, and you can tell where they stand based on how much money they get from AIPAC. And so there's a strong, very entrenched system where to be a successful politician, you have to be pro-Israel. And if you are not, and we saw that what happened to people like Cory Bush and Jamal Bowman, they came out strongly

against Israel. And then AIPAC spent millions of dollars to oust them from the House. So there's that tension there. There are people who are waking up to this, people on the right, people like Tucker Carlson and others who are realizing, hey, there's a problem that we are being basically bullied by a foreign government's lobby.

And so that's happening and it's fascinating to see. Still has some issues and I think some of it also veers on antisemitism, so we have to be a bit careful about how we tackle that issue. But also, Christian Zionism has been super influential and continues to be the case. I mean, the government has a, you can tell there are a lot of Christian Zionists in the government today. And they still, I mean, you saw the Tucker Carlson, Ted Cruz conversation recently where I would love to unpack that with you, but basically that's cool. Watch the whole thing. It's like, Ted Cruz is like, I'm taught from school, from church, which is important.

This is where it begins. I need to support Israel no matter what. Of course, bad reading of the text, that's not what the text is saying. We can talk about it like ad nauseam here. But there's this default position that you have to support Israel no matter what. So there's that kind of Christian Zionism that goes hand in hand with dispensationalism, with this kind of obsession with the end times and apocalyptic language and expectations. And we saw that also heavily with Iran and Israel recently where there's this fervor

now. Everyone is talking about the end times because there was a skirmish between Iran and Israel. So that is losing a lot of power over especially younger generations. And we're seeing this in the numbers, way less evangelical millennials and younger are not part of that kind of system of thinking. And they have been more veering towards more a more justice-oriented peace-oriented approach. So I think dispensationalism is losing power as it as it seems and following kind of BLM and Me Too movements and so

on people are becoming more sensitive to issues of justice and war and and violence. We're seeing this in the numbers. There's a poll that came out recently that shows for the first time more, the majority of Americans support the Palestinian cause more than they support the Israeli state. This just came out a few weeks or months ago. So we see that happening.

It's happening a lot on the left, but the Republican party, the right, is still lagging behind, but it's kind of slowly trying to kind of shifting towards that. So I could be hopeful, but I don't know how meaningful this would be maybe for another 10, 15, 20 years for actual change in the political system could happen. But at least people are becoming more critical, which is huge because that's how it begins, right? To ask hard questions, to challenge normative statements. I think that eventually leads to the domino effect of all of these things kind of unraveling.

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on the best-sellers trial pack or the new plant-based trial pack. Okay, so that's 20% off plus free shipping on either the Best Sellers Trial Pack or the Plant-Based Trial Pack at moshlife.com. Thank you, Mosh, for sponsoring this episode. Going back to the generational disconnect, I think some polls are taken that even younger conservatives or even Republicans that are under 40, I think more than 50% now are opposed to what's going on.

They might not have been a year ago or even six months ago, but there is a growing disdain for what's going on. We talked offline that some of the motivation on, on the conservative end, might be like an America first, like this isn't financially good for America, which, okay, whatever. But there's still less of a moral outrage. But I think that it's still growing. It is fascinating, going back to maybe AIPAC, that 99% of Republican Congress persons are in support of Israel, even though more than 50% of their base is not. Like, how does that represent?

How is that a democracy? When your elected officials are supposed to represent you, you elect people, and there's a massive disconnect between the elected officials and their support of Israel and the majority who are simply not. Again, when you go to the boomers, it's a lot different. But again, I think that has so much to do with which news outlets you're trusting and where you're getting your information from. Daniel, Daniel, I just, I, I don't know how you do it. I mean, it's, it's, it's frustrating for me who lives comfortably on the other side of the world

and is simply exposed to videos. You've lived this your entire life and you have family members, friends who have been victims of just ongoing war and war crimes and violence. And I just, are you angry? Like how do you keep going? You know what I'm saying? Like I don't, I don't, and yet I'm so glad cause you, I, I, because I wouldn't even fault you if you just kind of just threw your arms up and said, I am just done.

I'm done. Like I just, I can't tolerate this anymore. But you still, you have a wife, a new child, a second child. You just got a PhD. You're looking for a job. You're living your life and still trying to engage the conversation, I'm sure with people that can be really frustrating to talk to, and yet you still keep going.

Where does that come from? Yeah, I don't want to sound very spiritual or pietistic here, but I just don't know what else I can do. First of all, I've always encountered this in my life. So I have a bit of a thick skin. Like, I've grown up in Palestine. You've had these missionary groups, like people like Youth Without Mission, YWAM,

and others who adopted that theology. So I've always been exposed to it. It was a bit odd how you, because these are the people that really encouraged me in my faith growing up, missionaries and like church trips and mission trips that would come and do these vocational Bible schools. But then the more you talk with them, you just realize, wait, they actually hold very problematic, bigoted, even anti-Arab, anti-Muslim sentiments. And I've kind of always experienced

it and I kind of just became part of my identity as a Palestinian Christian that my siblings who I relied on for my faith journey also had these very bad attitudes. So I'm kind of used to it. I remember when I was in college in the US, I was talking to a Christian Zionist. I didn't identify him as such, but he was at Moody in Chicago. We were talking and he made the statement that, yeah, you Palestinian Christians are standing in God's way of fulfilling his desires for the Jewish people you should leave.

And he said it in such a normal way. And I remember responding to him, like, wait, what do you mean? This is my home. And it just ought to me that a decent loving Christian would hold him very bigoted. Palestinians have no dignity, no identity, no belonging to anywhere. They're just like animals.

You can put them in a cage and ship them. They have no say in what is happening. And the Church of Christ in Palestine is standing against God's plans for the Jewish people. What is this twisted, sorry, slightly racist ideology? But it's so normal. And I can try to rationalize my way out of it and explain to him that, no, I belong here. This is my home. So I've always been doing this. Now also fun fact. So, you know, we mentioned this, I studied Islam and the Quran and there's this assumption and I hear this from a lot of people, like, oh Daniel, are you going to evangelize Muslims? I actually just got an email two days ago from someone asking

for resources on apologetics and reaching out to Muslims. And I'm just not, I'm not into that anymore. I used to, but right now, honestly, if people, if there are people that need Jesus today, sorry, this is going to be a bit harsh. I think it's Christians. I think Christians in the U.S. have, again, I'm not generalizing, like, I'm so sorry if I am, but I think so-

No, I'm with you, I'm with youizing. I'm so sorry if I am. But I think so- I'm with you. I'm with you. Keep going. So many Christians are like, do you know the sermon in the mouth? Do you know what the Beatitudes teach us? Do you know what it means to love the enemy and to love your neighbor? Do you know how you can work that out politically and socially and personally? So honestly, between the Muslim families that are dying now in

Gaza and they hold their dead babies in their arms and they plead to God, you know, God, you are sufficient for me, you are sufficient for me. And there's kind of a common Muslim expression in response to suffering that God is all I need, God is all I want. And I see the Christians who are praying for the war, who are supporting the war, who are weaponizing Romans 13 or 1 Samuel or Deuteronomy. Who needs Jesus? Who has lost their way? Is it the Muslim who is crying over their baby?

Or is it the Christian who is contravening the basic teachings of Jesus? So I don't know. So there's, yeah, I'm not, and right now I'm not interested in evangelizing Muslims. I think my calling right now, and this is just because of what's happening in my environment and who I am, is my, I feel it's my mission to help Christians,

hey guys, let's go back to the gospels. Let's go back to Jesus, to Matthew five and seven, and try to actually take Jesus seriously for once. I don't know why this is the case, why I have to do this. I don't know why this is the cross that I have to bear. I'm not being persecuted by Muslims. I'm being persecuted by my own siblings.

But I don't know. They're in my lane, and I'm going to honk. I'm going to keep honking at them. I'm going to have to... I have, there's nothing else I can do, especially because these are people, my family, who are very dear to me and I have to speak up and I have to show them love, but also challenge them to, like, hey, we need to follow Jesus.

We need to take the greatest commandment seriously. And it's sad that 2000 years later, we are still are not taking the commandment to love our neighbor seriously. So it's a tragedy 2,000 years later, we still are not taking the commandment to love our neighbor seriously. So it's a tragedy there in the church. And I think there's a theological crisis, I think, that is coming here to the surface here. What happened to our faith?

What happened to us ignoring Jesus? And you see this right in the, whether it's the Zionist Christian support for Israel, whether it's the politicians, they're quoting Matthew. They're quoting Genesis 12.3, they're quoting Romans 13, really abusing abusing Romans 13, they're quoting the Revelation. Why aren't you quoting Romans 5? What happens? Where is Jesus? Why are you quoting the Old Testament? Of course you ignore the prophets. You go to the Torah, which is fine. You ignore the prophets.

You ignore Jesus who follows in that line of the prophets. You ignore the, you know, we're obsessed with the 10 commandments and we want to have them in schools and everywhere else. But why aren't you fighting for Matthew 5 to 7 to be in our schools? Why are we obsessed with the Torah and not with the new law that was given to us on another mountain, the Mount of Beatitudes, that we're supposed to follow?

So if you're obsessed with the Torah and you're obsessed with the end times and revelation and you're ignoring Jesus, I have serious questions to ask you about your faith. Who are you following? Who gives you your ethical, political, spiritual guidelines? Is it what, you know, Exodus 20 or is it Jesus himself? Is it the end time obsession with destruction and warfare or is it the life of Christ and the kingdom of God? So there's a, I think there is a crisis, I think, in a lot of evangelical spaces where we have really betrayed the basic and simple message of the gospel. And that is showing a lot of evangelical spaces where we have really betrayed the basic and simple message of the gospel.

And that is showing a lot in the Christian empathy, sorry, Christian complicity and apathy towards the war. And also in the theological and the op-eds in the sermons that are being preached these days that completely discount Christ and ignore Him and develop a theology of violence and of war. And there's, I think this should raise a lot of red flags for us. I think we need to do a lot of work in challenging these kind of movements that ignore Christ and use the Bible to weaponize and to justify violence and war. Have you seen success in helping evangelize or even, you know, people say, that's too

strong, they're already Christians, they might be off on this. Well, okay, call it discipleship. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Whatever. All of us need the gospel every day. We always need Christ every day. We always have to be converted every day to follow after Christ. Calling Christians back to the gospel.

Whatever word you want to call that, that's what we need to do. Have you seen, quote unquote, success in talking to Christians who may have been, I don't know, maybe soft Zionists where they're like, yeah, I haven't really thought through it. They just see Israel in the Bible and they see Israel on their map and they're like, I think they're probably the good guys, you know? Have you seen, like, have you been able to help Christians reconsider how they're thinking through this situation? I mean, you have a story to tell, Preston, about your journey as well. I need to interview you soon on my podcast to talk about your journey. Speaking of which, shameless plug, I have a podcast on Palestine in faith called Across the Divide. Check it out. I've heard many stories, Preston,

it's actually been to answer your question, go back to the question, how do I keep going? It's from incredible people who reach out and to tell me, to thank me for the work we've been doing. Not just myself. I don't want to be self-aggrandizing here, but whether it's through a podcast or public speaking, it's been shocking to me to see the amount of impact that has had on people. I'm seeing it left and right from people who follow my podcast and reach out to us or leaving comments and so on. I've heard many stories of Christian Zionists who since October 7 have kind of woken up to this issue and have becoming, have even been protesting and been speaking at city council meetings

and been writing to the representatives. So I've heard a lot of stories of, I've met these people and it's happening. So it is happening, it's happening slowly. But again, there's an issue with the pastor, the pastor's, the attitude of pastors and how they respond to this issue. There's an issue with our seminaries. There's an issue with those heavily over influential evangelical leaders who are just don't care about this

issue. So they don't really, maybe because of lack of knowledge, maybe because of their theology, but to having been really guiding people on how to think about these conversations. A lot of it has to do with ignorance. A lot of it has to do with a very entrenched Zionist, pro-Israel, anti-Arab sentiment. Well, also, I mean, we saw this with, this is not part of the conversation, but we saw this with the mayor of the primary

elections for the mayor of New York City, Zuhar Mabdani, and the anti-Islamic, the Islamophobic vitriol against him, putting aside his politics, just this kind of normal Islamophobic response, you know, and this coming from the left, it's not coming from the right even. I mean, it's happening all across the board, but there's just a general anti-Islamic, anti-Arab sentiment. And that is part and parcel of why Christians support Israel so much is because, oh, well, Palestinians are Muslims, so they're the bad guy, you know, no matter what they're the bad guy. So there's no, we're not gonna deal with it. We're not gonna interrogate what we assume about them.

So a lot of it is very entrenched in churches and in seminaries. I've heard this all the time about, I mean, you asked that question, is Islam more violent than any other religion? The answer to that is very clear to so many people. Yes, it is. It's a bad religion and it's okay if Muslims die.

So there's a lot of that that is at play. We have to interrogate this. We have to challenge kind of Islamophobia and anti-Arab, anti-Palestinian bigotry and racism that is I think part and parcel of the church, of your average church goer would hold these beliefs. So we have to do a lot of work here. Change is happening. It's just happening very slowly. churchgoer would hold these beliefs. So we have to do a lot of work here. Change

is happening, it's just happening very slowly. We have to plug the conference that you and I are gonna be at in two months. So it's happening, but there are some ways for us to kind of keep doing this work and making that change happen in the church. I am so excited about the conference. I'm glad he brought that up. Church at the Crossroads, held outside of Chicago in the suburbs, Glen Ellyn, I believe, September 11th through the 13th. I'm so honored and humbled to be invited to speak at it.

So many other amazing speakers. But yeah, if you're listening and you're in the Chicago area or can get to the Chicago area and you're interested in learning more about this conversation, I just cannot more highly recommend considering attending the conference. Can you tell us more about it? Where did this come from? What's the heart behind it? What can people expect if they come to the conference? Yeah, so Church of the Crossroads is framed as a Christian American, the Crossroads is framed as a Christian-American, mostly evangelical, response to the calls of Palestinian Christians. I'm a co-author of a document that was released in October

of 23 asking Christians to reconsider their ways. There's a group of evangelical leaders from the Middle East to also issue the collective call for the church in the US, in the West, to engage differently and better with its siblings in the Middle East, and especially when it comes to Palestine. And of course, you've had them on the podcast. Mother Isaac has written this book,

Christ and the Rubble, a really significant book, I think. And I know you blurbed the book as well, a really important book where he lays out the Palestinian Christian position about the genocide in Gaza. So the conference is seen as a response. We are saying that the church is at a crossroads, that the church has so far has chosen a very problematic position on this issue and we have to make a choice right now. Are we going to follow that path of violence, of dehumanization, or are we going to follow

after the path of the kingdom of God, the path of justice and mercy and peacemaking? So the conference brings together Palestinian and American speakers and thought leaders and pastors and theologians in conversation, but also in fellowship, to educate, to do the work on understanding what's happening, also to agitate, to be motivated, to be moving out of our comfort zones and working together to mobilize, to network together, to make a difference within our own local communities. So it's three days long. It's right outside of Wheaton, 10 minutes from Wheaton College. So I think it's a bit significant. We're kind of targeting the hub of evangelicalism. But it's a space that is meant for fellowship, for conversations, and for ways for us to connect and do the work together. Yeah, I can't wait for it. Okay, Let me ask you this. If somebody listening is a soft Zionist,

or they are not sure what to think about it, or they're like, yeah, I don't know, but what about Hamas? What about human shields? And Israel's doing what they can. And we need to, like, it's more complicated than this. And I don't want to just hear a bunch of, someone might say, you know, Palestinian propaganda. Would they be welcome? How would they, will they be shamed and berated at the conference? If somebody's, you know, but I do want to learn. I want to hear another perspective. I've not really heard another perspective. How

would they be received? Well, I mean, I would assume, hopefully they would feel welcome and to come to be part of the conversation. We actually had one person reach out to us about it who was a Christian Zionist and was like, hey, please come. Like this is, like this is a, this we need to center our unity and our belovedness and our concern for the gospel and for the kingdom of God. Please come and at least what we ask you to do is to listen to your siblings in Palestine and others. Listen to President Sprinkel and listen to Brian Zand and listen to Ruth Badea-DeBorst and other American thinkers and writers

and see what they say as well. And then navigate what that could look like for you. When it comes to Hamas and Palestinian militancy, we're not really focusing on that heavily at the conference, not for any kind of political reason. It's just I don't know what we can do about Hamas. Just to give my response about Hamas, Hamas as a resistance movement is always

going to exist as long as oppression exists. Obviously, it's a problem. So we're like the Black Panthers, a problem for the US. Just like the ANC in South Africa's a problem, but so we're like the Black Panthers a problem for the US. Just like the ANC in South Africa was a problem. Militancy and violence by oppressed people is pretty expected. That's the normal thing. I mean, you see abolitionists doing similar acts of violence against innocents. You see this with the ANC in South Africa,

and they are called terrorists. So yeah, I mean, we can talk about militancy in Islam. We can talk about Hamas. There is no way that myself or others would be okay with violence or the atrocities of October 7. But at least we think and we hope that we're following after the ways of Christ, the ways of peace and

justice. And we have to also understand the systemic situation, the climate, the environment in Palestine and Israel that make Hamas exist. Our role as peacemakers, who are called to be peaceable with everyone, who do not respond to evil by evil, as we see this in Romans 12, see this in the Beatitudes, we see this in the Sermon on the Mount. Our response is, how do you respond to violence? What does the kingdom of God look like in this context?

What does it mean to be a peacemaker today? These are the questions that we're asking. We're not going to solve the militancy in Palestine or the political system in Israel, a system of violence and ethnic cleansing right now in Gaza and genocide. But it's really a call to Christians. It's a call to follow after Christ and to be obedient

and move away from the rhetoric of, oh, that's sad, oh, I'm gonna pray for it, I'm gonna pray for peace. No, our call is to be hands and feet of Christ. Our call is to be salt and light. So what does that mean practically? When Christ, in Matthew 25, He said, what you did to the least of these, you did it unto me.

The question, what are you doing to the least of these in Gaza? So these are the questions. These are very small questions, but practical questions. We don't expect everyone to agree with everyone. I think people who are coming to the conference, and I kind of saw some of the names, are very diverse people coming from different backgrounds.

And this is a time for us to be in fellowship and to have hard conversations, but also to renew our commitment to peacemaking and to justice and to be in solidarity with those, the least of these. And in this case here right now, it is the people in Gaza. I'd love to hear your thoughts on the, probably the most common response I get is, gosh, yes, it's horrible. What's going on? You know, yes, I agree. There's people being, you know, killed, innocent people being killed. It's a tragedy. But it's, it's Hamas's fault. It's all Hamas's fault. So, so they may, they may agree with the destruction that's happening, and

they're like, that's why we hate Hamas. That's why we need to get rid of Hamas. So you kind of already hinted at it that, well, Hamas wouldn't exist where they're not a prior illegal occupation and 70 years of oppression. That's just, I mean, for anybody with half a brain, obviously I'm not justifying the response, but objectively it's like, would you do that to people? You're gonna get Hamas. And as long as that continues, a Hamas or a Hamas-like response will always be there.

People aren't just gonna roll over, when they've watched their entire family be massacred before their eyes, like what would you do? When you create 20,000 orphans in Gaza, what's going to happen to these orphans when they grow up, who are now traumatized and angry because they lost their parents? What do you think is going to happen?

This is Hamas' fault talking point, it's not very dissimilar from, oh, the Jews are just wealthy and they're greedy and they take high interest. Blacks are inherently violent. Look at Malcolm X and look at the Black Panthers and look what they do. Oh, they're less intelligent than we are. The God made them dark so they can work in the sun

as slaves. So this, I mean, blaming the victim language is common. I can give examples of history of, I mentioned the ANC in South Africa, and they can talk about Algeria. I can talk about in India and the British occupation of India. And we have the example of Gandhi. But the majority of Indians were very militant

and against the British Empire. And they, you know, also committed a lot of violent actions against the British. So I can give you examples from history. This is not new. To, for the violent and the oppressor to blame the victim for their violence, in order to justify their own oppression of them,

is a very typical, very sadly, boring and expected response. I mean, it just happens throughout history and there's nothing new about it. Yeah, but- Real quick, Daniel, so blaming the victim, they would say, well, Hamas isn't the victim. Right. Yeah, but who are the children who are dying to destroy Hamas, are they Hamas? The majority of Palestinians who are dying in Gaza have nothing to do with Hamas.

They did not elect Hamas. Also if even if they elected Hamas, they're not responsible for the actions of Hamas. That's a decision made by Hamas. So yeah, but like you can say, oh, we're attacking Hamas. But when you're destroying 70% of the houses of the structures in Gaza, when you're destroying all the hospitals and the schools and the universities, this is not against Hamas. Obviously, this is not about Hamas. When doctors who are going there and come out and they say they're seeing so many gunshots in the head and

the skulls of children, this is not targeting Hamas. When you see the footage of drones bombing bystanders and you see them, there's no one around them, this is not targeting Hamas. But I'm saying it is blaming the victim because you are using a boogeyman, you're creating a narrative to justify the suffering of the majority. At the end of the day, that's what's happening. So yeah, I mean, what else can be said here?

So we just have to understand that Hamas came to be in 1988. This is 50 or so years after the 40 years after the oppression of the Palestinians began in 1948. Hezbollah was founded in 1982, four years after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1978. 2023 was the most violent year against the Palestinians in the West Bank before October 7th. 23 was the bloodiest year for the Palestinians

since the first, the second Intifada in the year 2000. Can you expand on that? That's something that's a really important point. And obviously this didn't begin on October 7th, but even if you just take just 2023, most of us were completely ignorant of what you just said. Can you expand on that and maybe share some stories or like... Yeah, and this is just in the... This is where there's no Hamas.

This is where you have an Israeli occupation over the Palestinian homes and towns and villages in the West Bank. There was no attacks against Palestinians. There was no stuff against Hamas in Gaza Strip. In the West Bank, 2022, I remember, 2022, it was in the news that 2022 was the most violent year in 20 years.

And 2023 was already surpassed 2022 in September. And these are, I think we're talking about like 300 or so Palestinians killed, including so many, I think 50 or 60 children in the West Bank have been killed. How they have been killed, the details, of course, they vary. Just a few days ago, Preston, three Palestinians were killed by settlers in the West Bank. No one heard about them, right? Also that happened, a Christian community also was attacked. A Christian village was attacked, Taybeh,

100% Christian village in the Ramallah area called Taybeh. Well-known Palestinian beer is produced in Taybeh. The village was attacked by settlers and a lot of the property was destroyed. So we have these attacks by settlers, we have these attacks by soldiers. If you know anything about the West Bank right now, it's basically on lockdown. They have a thousand checkpoints right now controlling the movement of Palestinians. So to back up, the assumption has been in the West on October 6 that Israel is a normal state that is a liberal democracy and everything is fine. There's this kind of tension between the Palestinians and the Israelis but it's

fine, we don't really care about it. For the Palestinians that's just not the case. Palestinians have always been in a state of war since 1948. As in, they have been living under a system of violence and oppression and with so many deaths, confiscation of land, my family lost a lot of land, for example, to an Israeli settlement, destruction, demolitions of homes, and just the general dehumanization, oppression

on checkpoints, and so on and so forth. As Palestinians, there was no ceasefire. There was no peace before October 7. So for us, there's nothing that changed. It's the same system of violence, of dehumanization, of control, of denial of our basic rights, of denial of our basic rights, of denial of our freedom, since 1948. Of course, that's a bit simplistic, because we have different systems of political rule,

we have histories of violence and so on. But for the most part, it's a system of domination that has been called, Preston, by every serious human rights organization to be a system of apartheid, to be similar to Jim Crow. That's why if you've heard about the Ta-Nehisi Coates book, the message, she went to the West Bank, not to Gaza. He went to the gas bank and he said, what I'm seeing here is Jim Crow.

This is very similar to Jim Crow in the US. So that's the reality on the ground. So for, for people in the US to assume that the state that practices apartheid against the Palestinian people to be a normal state is the biggest issue. This is a fallacy that we have to unpack. But secondly, you have to understand that our people who are oppressed for decades

and decades, who are traumatized by war, by occupation, by humiliation and checkpoints, by house demolitions, by shootings, by settlers, by losing my family, lost 12 acres of land to a settlement. And that is a very insignificant story in comparison to the majority of Palestinians. But you should not expect Palestinians to, I mean, you refer to this,

you shouldn't expect them to be quiet. Of course you're gonna have militancy, of course you're gonna have resistance. The majority of Palestinian resistance, thankfully, is very nonviolent and very beautiful. There is a militancy as well against oppression. But that's the thing, if you do not understand the context, if you don't understand reality on the ground, of course you're going to be confused about October 7th.

Of course you're going to be shocked that Muslims and Arabs are doing this because you have no real understanding of the oppression and the violence that Palestinians are facing. Tell me about your family losing 12 acres. What exactly does that look like? Do they come in and pay you for the land? Do they just come in and take it? Is it breaking Israeli laws to do that and they turn a blind eye? Or is a system set up to where they can do that and not be penalized? Or what is it? What does that look like? Yeah. So again, when we say that's a system of apartheid, we're saying that there's a system that gives preference and power and legal protection to a certain ethnicity and not to the other. So that's just how there's a two-tier system. One, if you're a Jew, you live in comfort and freedom

and democracy. If you're a Palestinian, you live under a system of political and military control and domination. So I can recommend two sources here to help. There's a documentary that came out. It's called The Law in These Parts. Check it out.

And also a book by a Palestinian lawyer, Noor Erekat, is called Justice for Some. So the law in these parts and a book, Justice for Some by Noor Erekat. So hopefully these would be helpful here, but you have to understand the political and legal system is of discrimination that is systematic, that is in the law. Israel defines itself as a Jewish state

and giving self-determination only to Jewish populations. So not to the Palestinians, the natives of the law. Israel defines itself as a Jewish state and giving self-determination only to Jewish populations, so not to the Palestinians, the natives of the land. So how that works itself out in different ways, but specifically when it comes to the loss of land. And this happens in the 90s, this happened to my family in the 90s at least. I was a kid, like I remember going to the land to protest against it. My dad, my family members, and all of us kind of went. And as it happens, and this is what the law in these parts documentary kind of highlights, that Israel refuses a law from the Ottoman period

to justify taking the lands of the Palestinians. Back in the 19th century, the Ottoman Empire controlled occupied Palestine. And it was an aging empire. It was very poor, it doesn't have a lot of money. And for the empire to benefit from its subjects, the Palestinians in this case, and also everyone else, they had this law that says if a native, if a person does not cultivate their land for a period of five years, this becomes state land. So it's not cultivated land. And we demand getting taxes for your products, for what you're doing with that land, let's

say for your olive trees. And if you do not cultivate the land, we can take it from you. So this was a way for taxation to take assets and to build its own fortunes. A lot of Palestinians and others, or the whole region, not just Palestinians, would basically say we're not going to do that and we're not going to pay taxes. We're not going to register our land to the Ottoman authorities. Now, the Ottoman Empire is destroyed. The Israelis come.

They discover this law used by the Ottomans and they say Israelis come, they find, discover this law used by the Ottomans and they say, hey, let's use it against the Palestinians. So every Palestinian who had not registered his land before 1948, their land was confiscated. And today, if you have a piece of land that you do not cultivate, you just basically have it there for your children to build houses on and to invest in later. If you're not cultivating the land, they can come and take it from you. So my family, I'm from the town of Beit Sahour next to Bethlehem.

It's the biblical shepherd's field. And there's a hill next to our town. And it's basically a hill that we inherited and we have 13 acres of land on it. But it was fenced off because of the occupation and the kind of what Israel was doing. We didn't have a lot of control over it. Anyway, this might be confusing to people, but the West Bank is divided into areas A and B and C.

The majority is area C, controlled by Israel. So that came under area C. We didn't have access to it. We had the papers for it, but we didn't access it. So as it happened,. We didn't have access to it. We had the papers for it, but we didn't access it. So as it happened, because we didn't have access to the land, we couldn't cultivate it. So eventually the soldiers came, huh, look, you have land that is not cultivated. We have these immigrants coming from Brooklyn or from Poland. We need to put them in that land. So the soldiers came and that's gonna that's the image I remembered. We went and protested.

We had no civil society or we didn't have any security or police to protect this from happening, any soldiers to protect us. You know, so they came in and the soldiers just fenced it off and they shot some tear gas on us and maybe, I don't know, maybe shots in the air. We protested, we pushed back, nothing could happen, eventually they took over the land. And it was as simple as that. And we tried, I think there was an offer to sell the land and we refused, because we don't want to sell the land. And then they're like, okay, well, you don't want to sell it.

Thank you for giving it to us for free. So we'll take it. And that's what happened. I would recommend you mention in passing area A, B and C. I remember when I first, I didn't know what that was until I looked into it. And that's really A, B and C. I remember when I first, I didn't know what that was until I looked into it. And that's, that's really disturbing, especially area C. And it's just people that think like, well, Palestinians have their own land and Israel has their own land.

It's like, it's like, look, I mean, it's just, it's etched into the law. These areas where Israel controls all of area C. Yeah. So that's 60. Palestinians have no. Yeah. 60% of the West Bank is area C, right? Yeah, so that's 60. And Palestinians have no... Yeah, 60% of the West Bank is area C. So we don't have any control on it. And that's our land that we inherited. And then 20% is area B and 20% is area A, which is where the Palestinian government has

control. So technically you have control over 20% of the West Bank, which is basically where the largest kind of city and communities reside But otherwise 80% is not controlled by you and could be easily be taken from you I watched a documentary in no other land the award-winning documentary that is almost impossible to see in the US Which that's that's first of all, that that's, that's pretty horrifying. Yeah. The award winning documentary is almost impossible to see in the US. I did find a small theater in New York City and my daughter and I went and watched it. And it's just a documentary showing just firsthand.

I'm just videoing, you know, the confiscation of land and pretty, pretty violent kind of takeover. I mean, you see houses just being bulldozed over. And is that, I mean, I'm watching this. And I've heard stories about this. So it wasn't like completely unexpected. But just when you see it, and it's not a movie. It's a documentary.

Just videoing it. The guy's like running around the camera videoing bulldozers just wiping out homes and kids having to go live in caves and stuff. I mean, it's just, it's like, but is this, is that just normal? Like what do you watch? You watch the documentary? Are you just like, yeah, this is, this is, this is what I, this is my life. I mean, this is just normal. I mean, this is always, I've always seen this. I mean, I gave the story, there is so much to that story of, of the people from Safar Yatta. By the way, the village was destroyed again recently and the people, the community had to leave. So now that place is what we call ethnically cleansed. The Palestinians are gone. Also,

there's something beautiful about that documentary that you have a Jewish Israeli coming alongside the Palestinians. And it was, I don't know if you noticed that there's that scene there where the people ask him, well, where are you from? And he says, oh, I'm from Tel Aviv. And he was like, oh, welcome. And it was, I don't know if you noticed that, there's that scene there where the people ask him, well, where are you from? And he says, oh, I'm from Tel Aviv. And he was like, oh, welcome. And then there was this kind of this banter between them, right? There's no hostility.

So, but also I've always, I don't know how much I can say here, but I've always been active in those nonviolent protests and movements like M'safer Yatta. I would go to protests and get tear gassed and kind of protest against Israeli destruction of homes and annexation of land. And that's also that the story is so beautiful.

For me, the story is not significant because it always happens. I'm surprised when the documentary got popular because what do you mean? That's been happening all along. But obviously it tells a story in a beautiful way. And there's an element there where is it because there's a Jewish-Israeli person that the documentary got really popular? Like what if the Palestinian was telling their own story without the Israeli? Would he be legitimate? So anyway, there's

a kind of interesting thing happening there. Oh, by the way, getting sidetracked here, but we're screening the documentary at the conference, Church of the Crossroads. I'm in conversation with the director. So if you want to watch the documentary, since it's not been streamed in the US, you should come to the conference. But yeah, I've been part of these movements of protests

and I've always been doing it also alongside a lot of anti-Zionist, anti-occupation Israeli Jews. They actually would go to the forefront of our protests. They would basically be human shields. Actually coming between us and the Israeli soldiers and the settlers to protect us from them. Because they know if they get shot or killed, there's like a big, big, big scandal. And it's a beautiful, obviously this is not, this doesn't make it to the news here, to see that beautiful Israeli-Palestinian anti-war,

anti-violence, anti-occupation kind of movement. But yeah, these have been, as long as I remember, Preston, this all has been happening in the West Bank. Again, what do you think people would do And I think that's where Preston, this all has been happening in the West Bank. Again, what do you think people would do when nonviolent protest is completely dismissed, is ignored by the international community? It's never successful.

Are we surprised people would become a bit more violent? But secondly, this is the Palestinian story of what we call an Arabic sumud of resilience. We're just steadfast in the land. We do not want to leave the land. There's this beautiful image of the grandma, the Palestinian grandma hugging the olive tree image. I don't know if you've seen that image, which is very symbolic of the Palestinian rootedness

in the land. We would never leave the olive trees behind. We would never leave our homes behind. Sadly, we are dealing with a very violent system of domination, of dehumanization, of what is called now Jewish supremacy against the native populations. We just have to keep fighting that fight and we have to keep resisting those systems of violence. And again, not to echo, to repeat myself too much, and we need Christians in the US, especially to come alongside us in that fight for freedom.

I got two final questions. First of all, what do you want to say to, I mean, several thousand, mostly evangelical, almost all evangelical Christians listening, who maybe just feel just kind of suffocated with, gosh, well, I hear this side, that makes sense. I hear that side, it makes sense. And I don't know, you know, a lot of, I think good faith American evangelical Christians just say, it's just so complex. It's just complex. It's just, they're always beyond,

it's just conflict and, you know, like, just pray for peace, you know. What would you say to that person who's just trying to sort through, like, what do I believe, you know, because I keep hearing all these different competing narratives. I would say come to the conference. I would love to meet you and talk with you. And I'm going to be there. Preston is going to be there. I would love to meet you and talk with you about this stuff. I would love to meet you and talk with you about this stuff. There's a way for us to move beyond this, I want to call it apathy, but this kind of sense of defeatedness and powerlessness. The Church from the beginning has been a community of believers

who are committed to radical transformation in society, who are committed to a radical action and work of love. And this is from Acts 1 and 2 all the way till today. For us, if we Christians choose to feel defeated and apathetic, I think it's against the gospel. That's not what we are called to do. I get it. I'm the one who can, you know, I can be,

I easily feel defeated constantly. I'm frequently weeping in my bed because of what I'm seeing, because of what's happening in Gaza. So I get it. But we are supposed to carry the cross. We're supposed to follow after Christ and it's hard. And I know this goes against everything we've been taught in the U.S. about living the American dream, about being comfortable, about our

drive-throughs and traffic lights and Instacart apps and what have you. And that's the thing, it's like we tend to be more American than we are Christian. We tend to be part of a system of comfort and privilege and power than to be oriented towards being along those who suffer and to be in solidarity with those who suffer, to be along the least of these. Yeah, I totally get the sense of alienation and hopelessness. And please, like, do not rush out of that. And if you are despairing, take your time. But also just we have to realize that there is work ahead of us. And the one who is with us is greater than those who are against us. And yeah, just the question that I think I keep asking,

what am I doing in the midst of suffering and evil? What would I have done during the Jim Crow era? What would I have done during the Holocaust? And what would i have done during the holocaust. I think i think the question to believers who are listening what are you doing when there's a genocide. I'm live streams for you and it's not this is not all it's complicated or this is something that we as americans i'm putting myself everyone else here that we are part of this is we're paying our taxes that are funding this genocide. We put in power, whether we like it or not, the officials who are supporting this genocide. So this is not World War II and Nazi Germany. We are complicit.

We are without excuse here. So that's why there is a sense of urgency, there's a sense of a crisis that we're at now. And I just fear that in 20 years we're gonna look back at this moment and we're gonna say, oh I messed up, I should have done better. So that's why I think there's a sense of, I think this is an issue of faithfulness, this is an issue of faithfulness. This is an issue of our witness. This is an issue of the credibility of the gospel.

What is the gospel that we teach? What is the gospel that we live? And I think Gaza has become that moral compass, has become that moment for us as a church to wake up from our slumber and really follow faithfully in the way of Christ. Daniel, I mean, you stated exactly how I felt over the last, especially the last year, year and a half. You know, after October 7th, it's like, gosh, okay, that led me down just a deep, deep, I would say almost like all-consuming study

of the history of the topic. Cause I'm just so like passionate about getting my facts straight, and just being patient and learning and learning and not letting my emotions get beyond my intellect. It's just the way I'm wired. But once I saw that, it's just like there's so much more clarity here than I had originally thought.

And, but to your point, like I believe so firmly that the church will look back on what's going on now and I don't know, 25, 50 years, 70 years, hopefully sooner. And we'll look back and say, what were we, where was the church? Kind of like how we look back at like, you know, Christian Germany back in, you know, the 30s and 40s and say, where was the church in this, you know? Like, this is a Christian country. Like, how did this happen? A lot of people look back and, you know, history provides a lot more clarity, right? You look back and you don't, it's like you have, you know, the more facts are revealed and, you know, people can look more unambiguous silly at what went on. And I feel so confident that

the church is going to look back and ask that question, where was the church in this? And so that's why I'm like, I want to be, I know the phrase right side of history, it can be abused, but I think it applies here. I want to be on the right side of moral history and not look back and say, gosh, I wish I had said something. I wish I had done more. On that note, what can, yeah, somebody's like, I'm a mom, I got three kids, I got two jobs and I can't solve war and Gaza. What can Christians do? If they're like, no, I do think there is a moral crisis here. What can they do?

What difference can they make? Before they move to action, I think, and this also relates to your previous question, if they are confused about it, just spend some time learning. Spend some time listening. It's okay to just be quiet and educate yourself. This is your journey, Preston. This is a journey of so many other people that I've met and talked to. There are plenty of resources there by Christian Palestinians, by Americans, by Israelis.

I mean, you just hosted on your podcast an Israeli Jewish activist and thinker and author, Miko Paled. There are incredible resources out there for you to educate yourself. I get the confusion. The confusion is not because of the facts. The confusion is because you have been nurtured. You have been conditioned to be pro-Israel and

anti-Palestine. I think that's why you're confused. Not because there are two competing truths. So there's, to use the language of deconstruction, there's time for you, for us, to deconstruct any kind of ideology that is dehumanizing and is violent. Any kind of ideology that goes against the Sermon on the Mount. If anything you believe, and if it goes against the commandment to love God and love neighbor,

that belief has to be excised, has to be removed. Do that work. Patient patiently read, study. There are plenty of books. I mentioned when the Isaac's books, book, Christ in the Rubble, there are plenty of books out there. And maybe you can include something in the show notes for people to read and educate themselves

in the documentaries, films, books on theology and history and politics, all of that. But then afterwards, there's plenty you can do. One, you are the most, especially Americans, you are the most free and the most privileged and the most wealthy people in the history of humanity. No one should use the excuse here, if you're an American, there's nothing I can do. That's not true. That's just not true. You are the one who can actually do the you're an American, what I can't, there's nothing I can do. That's not true. That's just not true.

You are the one who can actually do the most as an American and doesn't matter how much money you make. You have a lot of access and power. Um, so just to give some examples, not to just be too theoretical here. Um, do you start with your circles of influence, your family, your church community, your Bible study group. Uh, there's a lot of work to be done with churches and pastors to educate them, to work with them.

Think more broadly if you are more politically engaged. Think about political engagement. Think about protests. Think about writing to representatives. Thinking about just involvement in the local city council and other meetings and so on. Think twice before you vote for a politician who supports war and violence, who follows this kind of Zionist discourse.

There's a lot you can do with your resources, with your money to support Christian ministries in Palestine, to support, for example, Bethlehem Bible College, to go to trips to Palestine, go to Israel, see the Israeli society, but also go see the Palestinians, see Bethlehem Bible College, to go to trips to Palestine, go to Israel, see the Israeli society, but also go see the Palestinians, see Bethlehem, see Hebron, see Nablus, see what's happening on the ground. And we would love to have you and to host you and be with you on that.

So yeah, there's so much that can be done. Think of small scale home group, watching a documentary together, reading a book together, like have a book club with your friends about it. So there's plenty that can be done. If you have more power, more affluence and more resources, like there's fantastic things you can do to support the local Palestinian community

or educate people around you or support whatever kind of initiatives that are happening. There are plenty of organizations in the US that are doing incredible work, like TELOS, like Network of Evangelicals for the Middle East, Chasing Justice and what have you. A lot of these organizations, again, are gonna be at the conference,

so come and meet them as well. So there are a lot of stuff you can do with these organizations as well, to support them, to go on trips with them, to, you know, have conversations with your community. So anyway, I can go on and on, Preston, with what can be done. There's plenty. The question is not, oh, can I do anything or not? The question is like, well, what are you waiting for? Do it now. You can do it.

I wonder if we can have a special, I don't know, a theology and a raw after hours gathering at the conference for people that come and we can, you know, it might be a small group, whatever, but just to hang out and talk, kind of debrief, you know, and have a dialogue. Yeah, we can talk more about that. Yeah, Preston, by the way, you have a coupon for Theology in the Raw. Oh, right. So, I mean, it's kind of late to plug this now, but people should use the coupon and come and meet Preston and have that after party or discussion for sure.

So it's $20 off and what's the code? I think it's TITR. Yeah, TITR. So it's on the registration page. You can type it up. Daniel, thank you so much for the wonderful conversation and I very much look forward to seeing you in September. Awesome.

Thank you. And I very much look forward to seeing you in September. Awesome. Yeah. Thank you. This show is part of the Converge Podcast Network.