Theology in the Raw - S2 Ep1125: An Israeli Christian's Perspective on the War in Israel-Palestine: Lisa Loden

Episode Date: November 2, 2023

Lisa Loden immigrated to Israel in 1974, and with her husband, founded Beit Asaph Messianic congregation in Netanya. Lisa was the director of the Caspari Center for Biblical and Jewish Studies in Jerusalem from 2002–2007, and served on the faculty of the Nazareth Evangelical Theological Seminary from 2008–2013. She currently serving on several peace and reconciliation-related boards - Global Peace Heroes, Advisory Board of the Bethlehem Institute of Peace and Justice and other initiatives. She is the co–chair of the Lausanne Initiative for Reconciliation in Israel and Palestine, and is a member of several ecumenical theological dialogue groups. Lisa writes on reconciliation and related issues for various publications. She and Salim Munayer edited a book on the theology of the land – The Land Cries Out (Wipf and Stock, 2011) – and co–authored Through My Enemy’s Eyes (Paternoster, 2014). Support Theology in the Raw through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theologyintheraw

Hey friends, the Exiles in Babylon conference is happening again, April 18th through the 20th in 2024 in Boise, Idaho. We're talking about deconstruction of the gospel, women, power, and abuse in the church, LGBTQ inclusion in the church, and three Christian views on politics and the gospel. We've got a loaded lineup of speakers, including Joshua Harris, Abigail Favali, Amin Hudson, Edna Wickham, Julie Slattery, Tiffany Bloom, Sandy Richter, Lori Krieg, Greg Coles, Art Perea, Brenna Blaine, Kat LaPriere, Chris Butler, Carol Swain, Brian Zahn, plus a live podcast with hip-hop all-star KB and Amin Hudson of the Southside Rabbi Podcast. Street hymns will be performing throughout the

conference. Worship by Evan Wickham and Tanika Wyatt, and also Max Licato is going to be there. All the information is at theologyintheraw.com. Again, if you want to attend live in person, I would register sooner than later. We're also going to live stream the conference, so that option is there as well. Again, Exiles in Babylon 2024, April 18th through the 20th. Hello, friends. Welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw. As part of my ongoing desire to learn more about the current conflict going on in Israel, Palestine and the history behind it and the politics behind it, I've been having several conversations with people from various perspectives. And so today's podcast is with Lisa Loden. Lisa immigrated to Israel in

1974 with her husband, where they founded the Beit Asaf Messianic Congregation. So Lisa is an Israeli Christian. She was the director of the Kaspari Center for Biblical and Jewish Studies in Jerusalem from 2002 to 2007. She served on the faculty of Nazareth Evangelical Theological Seminary from 2008 to 2013. Lisa, as you will hear, has been involved in many, many, many different ministries, most of which are involved on some level with peace and reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians and as you will hear her heart Lisa is very passionate about finding her identity primarily in the kingdom of God so I really really really enjoyed this conversation I think you will too so please welcome to the show for the first time, the one and only Lisa Loden.

Lisa, thank you so much for joining us on Theology in Her Eye. I really appreciate you taking time to be here. Why don't we begin by you just explaining who are you, where are you, and what is it that you do? Okay, well, first of all, my name is Elisa Loden. I am an Israeli citizen. I am what I choose to call myself, to identify myself as an ecumenical Jewish disciple of Jesus, or Yeshua, okay, because that's his Hebrew name. I've lived in Israel since 1974, which means it's a very long time. And I've been here all the time traveling, yes, but this is not just my base, it's my home. I'm married for, it'll be 55 years next month to absolutely amazing man. And we're on the same page, which is also a great blessing.

That's basically a very short introduction to who I am and where I live, but I don't actually live in one place. I live simultaneously in two places, and those two places are the reality of this world in which we live and in the reality of the kingdom of God, which has already come, but not yet fully here. And as a follower of Jesus, I live in the midst of his people who are from every nation, every kindred, every language, every tongue. nation, every kindred, every language, every tongue. And living in Israel, I have friends in both communities, in the Palestinian community, in the community, and I live in the reality of an intractable conflict, which has gone on for at least 75 years. It depends on how far back you want to look and how you define, actually, the elements of the conflict. So I work across every line. I call myself ecumenical because I have friends who are Catholic, Orthodox, Evangelical, Charismatic, reform, Palestinian, Jewish, you name it. And I think we can be enriched

by seeing how broad and how amazing that reality is. So living in this place, it means that I cross a lot of lines that other people were not willing to cross or not even, you know, see that it's possible. Yeah. Yeah. I would love to, because I know you've done a lot of work with reconciliation, a lot of reconciliation work across different lines that a lot of people think are, it's impossible to have reconciliation. I would love to come back to that. Can we begin by just, I would love for you to help educate us, just giving us your understanding of the conflict. And you can go back as far as you want to go. You can go as detailed as you want.

If you want to give a quick survey, that'd be fine, too. But I've been having on several guests that are giving kind of their perspective on the history. And I think it'd be helpful to have an Israeli perspective to share their thoughts on the conflict. Well, as you said earlier, I don't really represent any kind of solidified Israeli perspective. I can only represent the perspective as I see it. I think when we're talking about history, we first of all need to understand that history is written by people, people who are in different frameworks and they have a different agenda called historiography, how you write the history.

And history over the centuries has been written by the victor. History has been written by men rather than by women. And it has never, not never, but it's rarely written by those who are, shall we say, the underdogs or those who, yeah. shall we say the underdogs or those who, yeah. So in this situation, history is composed not of just facts and objectivity is not a possibility. No one is completely objective, however hard we may try. We live in a kind of a rational world,

but we also live in a world where we have our stories and our narratives, and our narratives also make up our history. And in this conflict, this Israeli-Palestinian conflict, we have two very distinct narratives as to what is going on. And those narratives will stretch back until the times of the Bible, until there's a book written by a Palestinian historian on the 4,000 years of Palestinian history. So depending on what your origin is, where you come from, what narrative you are living, it will be described differently. you are living, it will be described differently. As Jews, which I am, we have a history that for us relates back to biblical times, the biblical times of entering into a land which was promised, the land of Canaan. And so in the main, as a Jewish people, there is a sense of belonging to something that is far beyond today. Not for all, because many secular Israelis will say, well, we're here as a result of the events that maybe began in, say, the late 1800s with a wave of immigration that was escaping pogroms in East Europe, Russia,

and looking for another situation. My grandfather was Russian and my grandmother on that side, my mother's side. And basically, he was looking to fight for Mother Russia during the Russian Revolution. And he chronicles in his memoirs that he went to meetings that were held by whitesmen who came over from England to talk to young Jews in those places in Russia, and actually it was from Belarus, to go and to colonize Palestine, all right? To go to Israel and to live and to build a life for the Jews there. And he made another choice. He stayed in Russia to fight for the revolution. Okay, that's part of his story. And he stayed there. And basically, my mother was born three days after they got off the boat from Russia, having traveled through China and Japan on the way. He'd been exiled to Siberia as a spy for the revolution,

all kinds of things in his past. But this is part of the history, part of my personal history and part of the history of our people, the Jewish people. Our understanding of the promise of the land in those days, I think in the days of my grandfather growing up in Belarus at that time, It wasn't so much a biblical understanding, although his family was definitely Orthodox. It was, we need to make another land. We need to make another, we're persecuted. We have pogroms.

We have this. We need to find a place where we can live our lives out and not be persecuted. This is a major part of our narrative today. As we look back to those days and all of the history that's happened since then. For the Palestinian living in the land, and again, you can read many different perspectives on who the Palestinians are, where did they come from, are they indigenous? There are many different answers to this. They see themselves as those who have lived in this land from the times of Jesus. And if you look at the

book of Acts, you see Arabs there, all right? When the Holy Spirit fell on people, you know, that kind of thing. And they see themselves as those who never left the land, and they've maintained the holy places, and they've kept the land holy in their understanding. And there's also a very physical sense of land, because as a Jew, it was like abstract. It's far away. It's in the distance.

You know, we're going to get there someday. It's promised to us, and it's our land. We'll return to it after 2,000 years. But there's no, like, visceral sort of sense, or there was not in those times. Now, for the Palestinians living here, we once, well, a number of times visited a young man who came from a small village on the other side of what they call the Green Line. And we went to visit him in his village. He said, this is not my land. This is not my village. My land is somewhere else, which is under Israel occupation, because that was my family's land. This is my wife's land.

And there's that real sense of connectedness to land here, I think, that's different from a Jewish connectedness. Now, we're looking back from the Ottoman period and before and all of that, and it's not my desire to go into all those areas, that. And it's not my desire to go into all those areas, but just to give an understanding of how even looking at who owns the land, issues of possession, issue of land ownership are understood very differently from a Middle Eastern perspective than they are from a Western perspective. Land land ownership, possession, usage of land, all of these things. And Israel has adopted a very westernized understanding of land rather than an eastern understanding of land. And if lands were not registered in Ottoman periods,

registered in Ottoman periods, and then Palestinians have no legal right to land that they have lived on for generations. And the whole issue of registration of land in Ottoman times is another whole subject. There's a lot of information out there that you can read to get a good background on this. But the current conflict that we have now, many will date it from 1917 with the Balfour Declaration. But even prior to that, it was a global issue where it had to deal with power. It had to deal with influence and resources. when the nations, the Western nations, we're talking about France and Britain, came together to divide up the land, the whole area. And they drew lines on a map, agreements that then came into reality. So there's a geopolitical issue here that has nothing to do with the rights or the history of the indigenous people. And this is a colonization project, as we all know.

And this is part of the history. So if we want to date the current conflict from 1917, that's a good beginning. But there are other good beginnings, too. When the land was partitioned and it was divided between israel and palestine this created the war of independence when britain had britain had a mandate for the land and they left the land and they created a yeah a partition this was rejected by the palestinians for very good reasons basically that given their population and the population and the land ownership or the land usage, however you want to look at it, at that time, it was anything but fair. And they

said, no, this is ours. We want a fair settlement. Okay. So, this was our day of independence and it was the day of catastrophe for the palestinian people the day nakba and the end of it was that israel was victorious and from that point on the situation has been an ongoing conflict an intractable conflict that recycles it recycles up, okay, up and up and up, plateaus for a little while. It does not retreat. It just keeps rising and rising and rising. And with the military occupation of the West Bank of Palestine, we created a system that has two separate peoples. And there are many things that happened here over this time period, from the time of Israel's independence as a state,

and the changing borders of the land, as we see continuing today, and military occupation of what is Palestine has created a situation which makes things even more difficult, as we have had a huge immigration from around the world of Jews who wish to be here for a variety of reasons. we belong to this land. It was given to our fathers in perpetuity. It is a place where we can build a life that is free from anti-Semitism. And as the numbers have increased, the actual land itself has divided even in different ways so that Israel becomes geographically larger and Palestinian becomes geographically smaller. I don't want to get into all of the attempted peace treaties, all of the things that have happened,

the development from the first intifada to the second uprising, Palestinian people's uprising. The first one was pretty nonviolent. Palestinian people's uprising. The first one was pretty nonviolent. Actually, it was very nonviolent. But the result of it was increasing Israeli control. It's been said, actually, that if you want to reduce it to a very simple statement, that for Israel, the whole issue is about survival. We have to survive as a people. And for Palestinians, the whole issue is about survival. We have to survive as a people. And for Palestinians, the whole issue is justice. And that's where we are today. That's been a brief background. I mean, I could really lecture on this, but that's not our point here. We're having a conversation that I hope people will want to listen to. That's really, really helpful. And I think both you and I are really passionate about

how do we think about this conflict or any conflict as citizens of God's kingdom. And yet it is helpful to get a historical political understanding because that is the situation we find ourselves in. That's really helpful, Lisa. I mean, you sound sympathetic, even if you're maybe not in full agreement. We can, or if we want to go into some of the nitty gritty here, but you sound very sympathetic to the cause of the Palestinians. Even if, as you said, everybody has their perspective, no one's coming at this completely objectively. And I really appreciate that. I fully agree that we think historians are these cold scientists that have, you know, just adding up all the facts. And it's like, no, anytime you tell a story, you're highlighting certain things, you're leaving out certain things, you're not just getting a video recorder of what happened, you know, so. So I've heard, I would love for your thoughts on this. I've heard from different sides about, you know, Israel coming in.

One narrative is, you know, they came in as an occupying power and they basically took over the land. The other narrative is they came in peacefully and every time they offered peace, the Palestinians rejected it. You're kind of, I'm not, I can't quite understand which side you would say is more correct, or is it just so complicated that it's kind of a both and? I'm not going to say that either side is correct. Each side has their own narrative and their own interpretation of the facts they choose to look at. And really a lot of it is a question of choice and you're kind of, I'd say, led by your background,

the history that you've been taught, your sense of peoplehood. And Jews have a sense of peoplehood. Palestinians have a sense of peoplehood. I refuse to take one side or another because I see them both. And I see the truth and the reality in them both. It's not comfortable, but I believe we can cross the divide. Right now, no. Right now, it's pretty much an impossibility because there's too much pain.

Yeah. There's too much grief. There's too much ongoing violence and war. I'll call it a war. Yeah. And it's affecting every single one of us, and it's making us have to look more deeply at ourselves, our attitudes. look more deeply at ourselves, our attitudes. If we cannot grieve for the Palestinian children in the way we grieve for Israeli children, if we're Jews, then there's something wrong. And if as a Palestinian, we cannot grieve for the loss of life of an Israeli child,

as we do for a Palestinian child, then there's something wrong. Particularly as those who are followers of Jesus, those of us who are Christians. God loves all people. Who do we love? Whose side are we going to choose? I think there's a side here. And that other side is the one that we must seek. That's God's side. And it's not side here. And that other side is the one that we must seek. That's God's side.

And it's not that simple. Yeah. I'm curious if you can speak into, so, well, let me kind of represent how a lot of American Christians are understanding the recent conflict. conflict is that, you know, Hamas is an anti-Semitic terrorist organization that wants to wipe out the state of Israel and wouldn't mind wiping out every Jew they can come across. And so the recent violence is simply an outflow of pure evil. The other side of the narrative is, you know, Hamas is a terrorist organization and what they did was atrocious, but it's also a by-product of what you do when you create a concentration-like camp existence for people for almost two decades. Um, and so what do you expect people are going to do is, is maybe a more, I don't want to say sympathetic. There's no perspective that's sympathetic with what Hamas

did that I can entertain. I also am not sympathetic with right now the death toll of 8,500 mostly civilians in retaliation that has been branded self-defense. Killing babies doesn't feel like self-defense. So I'm against the killing of children, period. I don't care what color their skin is. I don't care which God they worship. Um, killing children, innocent civilians is, I mean, we, we both share our nonviolent convictions. I think killing is wrong. You know, it's just, is the face of evil period, but okay, let's set, maybe I'll set that aside for a second, especially killing innocent civilians that aren't holding a gun, trying to kill you back. So anyway, so what's your understanding of October 7th?

What happened? Why would they do this? Where did this come from? How should Christians think about what happened a couple of weeks ago? Well, you've said a lot about it already, but I don't think anyone can say that it happened in a vacuum out of nowhere. It didn't happen out of nowhere. It happened out of 16 years of blockade, where Israel controls everything that comes in and goes out of that space where Israel has been repeatedly attacked by Hamas during the Second Intifada. They were the ones who were doing the suicide bombings. Hamas is a political organization that is based clearly on an Islamic worldview. that is based clearly on an Islamic worldview. Basically, today I just reviewed the Hamas covenant, read it all the way through. You can see it comes from a clearly Islamic perspective.

And I know there are various kinds of Islam. So I'm not saying it's totally Islam. It comes from a particular perspective that sees Islam as the way forward. And in the revision of their covenant in 2017, the original one was stronger about Jews. This one says clearly that they oppose the Zionist entity at every level, and they want it to cease to exist. But they do not stand against Jews on the basis of their faith because they're Jews by faith. So real quick, Lisa, that's an important distinction. They're adamantly opposed to Zionism, not necessarily some secular Jew living in Tel Aviv.

It's not Jewishness per se, it's Zionism that they're opposed to? That's what I read today. And if you want to read it, I think it's paragraph 14, 15. And Middle East Eye has the full text of it. The rest of it, I mean, it does make that statement. And I think they were trying to water it down somewhat because it looks like a completely total racist statement. And so I think we need to take that into consideration. However, how people act on the ground.

Okay, so you have this Hamas who basically came into power as a political party. And it was to do good for the Palestinians. And did they do good for the Palestinians? In some ways, yes. In other ways, no. And you have an internal Palestinian conflict on the political side with the PLO and Hamas. And Hamas, actually, in those early days,

was actually funded by Israel. Most people don't realize that, but that is fact. Netanyahu helped create Hamas to help divide and conquer Gaza. Is that correct? I don't know how to divide and conquer Gaza, because Gaza is a place that nobody wants. It's a place that no one wants, really. But the people who live there have lived there for generations. The Christian community is a very old community. It's very small, less than a thousand and diminishing probably every day. But they have held a place there as Catholics, as Orthodox, and as an evangelical community as well. So they are a part of Palestine, a part of Gaza. Gaza has always been a very crowded place

because Israel actually pushed the Arabs from beyond the border of Gaza now, which is now Israel, into Gaza. So most of the people who are there their their ancestors and even today came out of what land Israel took or conquered so we've got it's a it's an enormous conundrum all right it's very hard to sort through and I can give you a fact here and a fact there. And my fact does not counter that fact. But to hold it all in perspective is, I think, a very difficult task. people are important and that people should be protected and that people should be free to live their lives in ways that build up their societies. And that's not happening. That's not happening. It's not happening in Palestine. It's not happening in Gaza,

which is officially part of Palestine. It's hardly happening in Israel as well, because the threat, the constant threat is there. The threat of, we are not going to survive. And after the events of the Second World War, never again. Never again. We will not let this happen to us. We will not be led to the slaughter. So now, how we've lived that out in the midst of a people who from the very beginning were not given the same rights and privileges as the Jews in the land, even those who are Israeli

citizens. And this is really what started me on this journey. This one part of my journey was in the very early years after we came to live here. And basically, we came as believers in Jesus from a Zionist perspective, but always had a heart for people. And I can say the Zionist perspective for me has been pretty much deconstructed over the years. For us, it's been pretty much deconstructed because the heart is for people. And in the Arab population in Israel, there's a large number of Christians.

And so we began to fellowship with them. We would go to the north. We would actually go to Jerusalem through the West Bank, through Ramallah, through Nablus. The whole area was open at that time. And there were relationships that were formed. But I could see already in the areas where the Arab population also had Jewish citizenship, that their budgets that came from the government were less than the budgets that came for the Jewish settlements there. The Jewish kibbutzim and

mosavim and the Jewish cities. I could see an inequality at that time. So I began to educate myself to what was really going on. And my concern was for people to live in ways that were, that's the word I'm looking for, that gave dignity. It gave dignity. I have friends who are very well educated, and they would apply for jobs in the Israel sector, Arab Christian friends. And as soon as they gave their name, their interview was over. their interview was over there's a level of animosity of suspicion of you know lifestyles are different uh holidays are different okay as a jewish people so that's a part of it i don't know

if that's answered your question or if i've gotten off the subject somehow no that's that's really important and i i i know I'm glad you went there. So, because I have, this is another point of debate, whether, you know, 20% of Israeli citizens are Palestinian. Is that correct? And so you're saying they do not have the same rights as Jewish Israelis living in the land? We're not even talking about West Benghazi yet. We're talking about people living in Israel. Ostensibly, they do. But they're second-class citizens, or have been.

Okay. So on paper, they have all the same rights, but in reality, not so much? Is that how you would? But in reality, like for Arab schools, okay? In order to get government funding for schools, they have to use the Israeli curriculum. And there are certain things now, I think, and this is changing, always the ultra-Orthodox in Israel government have had the portfolio for the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Interior. The Ministry of Education, clear, Interior, issues of status in the country okay so they have status but they are

not required by law to serve in the military and every citizen is required by law to serve in the military that's one major difference so it creates a separation between people and with the law that was passed, I think, in 2018, it's a basic law now that makes Israel a Jewish democratic state. In some ways, it's a contradiction in terms. How so? I mean, I can kind of see where you're going. Yeah, because the language of Arabic was the word I'm looking for. It's no longer one of the main languages of the country. Documents now are not required to be written in Arabic. Now there are street signs, but they still continue to be.

Hebrew is the language. It's not Hebrew and Arabic are the national languages, only Hebrew. Okay? The holidays of Israel are the holidays. Jewish holidays are the holidays, not Ramadan. Okay? These are the holidays of the country. This sort of thing. It's in favor of Jews, not of all the entire population. It's made it a Jewish state, which by definition

cannot be a totally democratic state as I see it. People will argue with me on that, I'm sure, but I'll argue with every point I make. People will argue with me on that, I'm sure. But I'll argue with every point I make. I mean, if people could walk away with that understanding that every perspective is going to have its own kind of emphases and lenses on, then that's – because, again, I think some people are operating from the perspective that there is one correct narrative and everything else is incorrect. And don't give me nuance. Don't ask me hard questions. Just feed my narrative that I grew up with. So I'm curious, so you came in with a Zionist perspective. You no longer have that perspective. You still obviously are a Jewish Israeli citizen,

and yet you also have a deep sympathy and heart for Palestinians. So can you, I'm imagining that your perspective might be in the minority in light of the recent conflict. What would, is there a dominant perspective on, I guess, the history of conflicts, but especially the recent conflict among Israelis, or is there a lot of diversity among Israelis? Do you have Israelis that would condemn the Hamas attack period, but also not be excited about the government's response? Or are most Israelis on the side of the IDF and the government and what Netanyahu is doing and so on. Does that make sense?

Yeah, well, it's very hard to speak in terms of the majority. But from what I'm observing and from what I'm reading, a segment of the population who are opposed to or not in favor of what's going on in Gaza right now, that we need a ceasefire. There's a peace movement here. There's a peace movement in Palestine and in Israel, and they connect in some areas and other areas, no. But there have always been groups that are looking for dialogue, for coming together. You have the bereaved parents circle, who consists of families who have lost a loved one in the conflict on both sides. And the parents come together and the siblings come together and they share their pain

and their narratives to walk another way, to understand that we share in something here. The grief, the pain, the struggle for survival is shared. Every day on the Day of Independence, there is the Day of Remembrance of those who have fallen. We have an alternative Memorial Day. Memorialize, remember those who fell on both sides. I attend that.

I know a number of people, Jews, who attend that. And the numbers have been growing over the years, slowly. But times like this, when you are under attack, when your country, when your place of living is under attack, when the missiles are going overhead, and you hear the dropping, you hear the shrapnel, you hear the planes all day, all night, planes all day, all night. And you know that there are 500,000 Israelis who are right now in the active military. 360,000 of them came out of reserves. Our entire lives are disrupted right now in the country. Many who went into the Reserve Corps have young families at home. Yeah, so it's hard not to be really caught up in this situation.

What happened on October 7th was not justifiable by anybody's standard. We denounce it. We deplore it. There's no way that it can be seen as justifiable. Israel has a right as a sovereign nation to defend itself against attack. And this brutal attack, first of all, was a total surprise, completely disoriented the military, and the loss of life was more than we've seen for decades. It's a very, very deep wound. It's a very, very deep pain in our hearts, the taking of hostages. Every other day, the numbers are going up. I read today they say now 239. And every other day the numbers are going up. I read today they say now 239. And these are innocent, noncombatant citizens.

Now there's some soldiers among them, and I'm sure the military knows how many, but I'm not sure because they're still trying to count and identify the dead still. Three weeks. So the scope of what is happening of Israel going into Gaza to eliminate Hamas completely is going to eliminate huge numbers of noncombatant, innocent citizens. I stand against that. I deplore it. It wounds my soul. It makes me weep for the children sheltering with no shelter. And the ways that we began this by cutting off food, water, electricity, fuel to two million people. I can't justify that. War creates different values. And with war, you must, yeah, if you want to win the war, I am a pacifist. I

do not believe that war will ever solve anything. Maybe it can redraw a map, but what's it going to do to the hearts and lives of people? What is the collective trauma that is over all of Israel today and all of Gaza today and all of Palestine today? What is that going to do for the next generation? We have another generation who's growing up in war. So it's not a simple answer to any of the questions that you're asking. I appreciate that, Lisa. And yeah, I really appreciate your perspective. And I love that you're coming at it, as you said, a few times, you know, primarily as a citizen of God's kingdom. Can you give us a little insight? You've done a lot of work in reconciliation and peace ministries across different lines.

Can you tell us about that work? What got you into that work? And what does that look like? And how is that? I would imagine the conflict now has made that even more difficult for many different reasons. But yeah, what led you into wanting to pursue various reconciliation ministries? Yeah. Thank you for asking that. I was just about to say, can I talk about that now?

Yeah. Really, because I think it's really the most crucial thing right now. My passion is really to see the unity of the body of Christ everywhere, but particularly in this land where I live, to see us functioning as those who are one in Christ. It's never been easy, and it's becoming more and more difficult. But for years, basically, as I said, I started to educate myself and to look at the situation as to why was I seeing a discrepancy

between lifestyles, between what was happening here? And it was because of my acquaintance with Arab Christians going to a prayer meeting in the mid to late 70s of Arab women and Jewish women praying together for one another, for our congregations. And it was peaceful times. Wow. Building friendships. congregations. And it was peaceful times. Building friendships. I started going to some political meetings and it was like, no, that's not your way. So I did not take that route. But my heart's very moved for issues of justice. And I saw injustice everywhere. And I see it more and more. It's proliferating, this injustice everywhere in the name of self-defense, in the name of survival, in the name of, yeah. not my way to follow a political party. I had a phone call from someone that I had met before because we studied in a center in Tel Aviv for a time. And I think the administrator of that center

is an Israeli Arab who grew up in Lod, Salim Unayr. And he had just formed the ministry of Musalikha. And Musalikha is an Arabic word for reconciliation. And he asked if I would develop and lead the women's work. And I said, yes, that was my way. So I began then. And I think Musalikha celebrated many years recently. Yeah. Salah has celebrated women years recently. Yeah, so I developed the women's work by women's conferences to begin with, bringing together from different backgrounds and cultures, creating something where we could sit, we could talk together, we could hear one another's stories, we could do activities together. That work has progressed extensively from that time.

I began to speak about this area. Salim and I spoke together in various countries, in Canada. I worked with Musalikha. Where else did we go? We went to Ireland as well, together, speaking in conferences. A Jew and an Arab working for reconciliation. I also, for five years, taught in the Nazareth Evangelical Theological Seminary. I taught Christian leadership, spiritual leadership, and Christian spirituality. All my

students were men and Arabs. I developed that curriculum. I have many good relationships from that period of time today. Yeah, I was on the advisory board of Musalikha for up until two years ago, when I felt it was my time to move on to other things. And basically, during that time, Salim and I edited one book together, in which we both have articles called The Land Cries Out, and it's a book of different theologies of the land, Israeli, Palestinian, and Western theology of the land. And then we wrote a book together called Through My Enemy's Eyes, Envisioning Reconciliation in Israel and Palestine. And in this book, we wrote it really together. There were a couple of chapters that were his and a couple that were mine, but we looked at the history, historiography. We looked at Palestinian Christianity, Messianic Judaism.

We looked at the issues that divide us, and we looked at a model of reconciliation as well. That's amazing. Yeah, I looked at your books online. They look fascinating. books online. They look fascinating. I'm curious, because on paper, it sounds really beautiful, and you just picture all this peace, but I imagine there's a lot of challenges. What would be some of the greatest challenges you've faced over the decades you've been involved in this work that make reconciliation and peace difficult among Christians, Palestinian christians palestinian christians israeli christians like what are some of the big challenges that keep coming up in this is it just

political is it political different narratives of kind of everything we've been talking about or well i think you know one of the one of the difficult things personally for me has been the fact the understanding of the majority of the messianic community in Israel, and not only Israel, but this is where I live, that politics do not belong to faith. Politics are over there. Let's just concentrate on piety and evangelism, evangelism. And looking to the issues of the world to solve our issues

is not where we should be going. We just need to all get together and maybe share meals together. We should sing together. We can sing each other's music. But let's not talk about the other stuff, because basically we're one in Jesus and everything's okay. I don't believe that. Okay. And I'll tell you, I was really deeply affected. I was in South Africa, I think in 2010, and I had the privilege to be part of a global reconciliation team that was also meeting at

the same time. I've done a lot of different stuff. I've only given you a few things. Anyway, we were led on a day trip through some of the townships in Cape Town by a man named Peter Story, who was Nelson Mandela's chaplain when he was on Robben Island. And he had spent time traveling with Tutu across the country, I mean, all kinds of things. And he taught us and he showed us the reality. And we met the people and we saw the living after apartheid. Okay, after apartheid, township still, blood was not running in the streets.

Okay, and there was a change. But he said that during this time, the church was faced with a choice. And the choice was whether or not it would follow an agenda of piety and growth, personal holiness and evangelism, or if they would stand against the evil in the society. And the church made the choice for piety and growth. And in so doing, they ripped the seamless garment of the gospel. Now, the gospel contains these areas, growth in God, holiness, transformation.

It's all about being transformed into the image of Jesus in our lives. Who was he? What would he do today? He's the one who said, Father, forgive them. They know not what they do. And he died for it. And standing for justice, standing against the evil in society, are part of the gospel.

And it should be seamless. They should be bound together. You should not make a choice. You need to embrace both. And that affected me very deeply. And I've quoted him many times. I always give him credit because I think that's the perspective we must have in the reality in which we live. And it's something that I really endeavor to live by. the reality in which we live, and it's something that I really endeavor to live by. And that is crossing the lines. But I have to say that in the world of Jewish Christians, the general feeling, the general view is that we need to preach the gospel wherever, however, as often as we can, and

we need to grow in grace. But let's not talk about these other things. Yes, there are brothers, but eventually they're going to come and see that we're really right in how we understand scripture, okay? So the hard discussions of theology, you know, and I've been in numbers of discussions on theology. I remain as a kind of the coordinator, the co-leader of the Luzon Initiative on Reconciliation in Israel and Palestine that's been dormant for a while now. But we wrote a statement together, Jews and Palestinians, Arabs and Jews, Palestinians and Israelis. I've written several statements that are online with Arab Christian women and a couple of misantitudes about violence, about unity of the body. We need to be out there to one degree or another, living it out in the reality.

I want to hear your story. I want to hear what happened to your family. I want to know you, where you're coming from. And I want to hear your story. I want to hear what happened to your family. I want to know you, where you're coming from. And I want to carry you in my heart. I want to walk together with you to stand against the evil in our society. And having said that, evil is everywhere you look. It's not just Hamas. It's not just, in hard and the weak term, over-retaliation for what has happened in Israel.

It's beyond thought for me at the moment. And I pray for every Palestinian child. And I pray earnestly for those who are hostages. But I pray as much for those who are holding them hostage, because God can reach the heart of everyone. I can't see the difference. Thank you for that, Lisa. I just so resonate with all of that. And what a model for other areas of reconciliation, too. I mean, if Palestinian Christians and Israeli Christians can be pursuing this, not without its difficulties, what a way forward for many other situations where you have divisions.

I mean, on a much lesser level in the United States, we have our own political divisions. I mean, there's Christians who feel more camaraderie with a non-Christian who votes the same direction than they would with a believer who votes differently, you know, and politics, especially over the last several years has divided the church, you know, it's not, it's not nearly as, I mean, obviously this is on a much lesser scale, but it's still, it's similar. We let other political things divide the church. And I think that that's so, so unfortunate. So you're in, yeah, in many ways, you and the ministries that you've been involved in

are leading the way to help us all. What do you envision moving forward with reconciliation in light of recent events? I mean, obviously things are, I would imagine, on hold, but is this going to just make things even more difficult? Or in a roundabout way, could it actually bring people to Christians together more? Because like you said, I mean, you can condemn evil on all sides. I would imagine Palestinian Christians would also say that. My question is like, do you think that this situation will make things much more difficult for reconciliation or actually create more opportunities for reconciliation?

I think it's going to do both. Right now, those who are living in Israel, my husband and I have a prayer meeting that is every month with Palestinian Christians and Messianic Jews leaders. It's small, but when I say Palestinian, I'm also talking about West Bank, Palestine, and the North. Just this week there was a general prayer meeting

and there were about 200 men leaders. That's another whole issue in this country. We'll go there today. I'll bring you back on and we can have that conversation later. They came together really to pray, to seek the Lord for what's going on now

in the country. They ended up being half Arab and half Jewish, praying together publicly in small groups for the entire day. And my husband said he's never attended any prayer meeting like this. Because the overall prayer was, Lord, we have sinned. Lord, have mercy on us. Lord, this is judgment on us as a people.

We've built relationships over years, okay, with the Arab. We have personally. Not everyone has. Right now, we're all in pain. We are all hurting. And that's bringing us together. The fact that we're believers in Jesus and in pain, we're sharing something in a new way.

From the West Bank, Palestine, Palestine is very different right now. For years in Musalecha, it was founded on the basis of working within the community of faith. And for years, we worked and we brought people together and it broke down. So that today, Musallaha is focusing on working with Muslim and Christians in Palestine, reconciliation, working with secular Jews and Palestinian Christians in issues of reconciliation that include, yes, the narrative, yes, getting to know one another, but includes resistance. And justice has become a major focus.

Justice has to be in the mix. But I see it in Psalm 85 that I always say it in Hebrew, grace and truth have met. Righteousness and peace have kissed. And I see it as an embrace. And that's reconciliation. They all have to be there. If one of them is missing

or one is like way up here and everything else is below, then there's something wrong. They have to be together. Grace, mercy, truth, peace, righteousness, justice. It's interesting in Hebrew, there's no real word, one word for justice. It's called righteous judgment is justice. Is that mishpat?

What is the word? Mishpat means judgment. Mishpat tzedek. Oh yeah, righteous judgment. So on the West right now it's very, very difficult to come together and also they have been very active developing a Palestinian theology, which primarily comes out of liberation theology.

It's colonial theology, and it's very influenced right now by black theology. So that's a very different paradigm. There's a rejection of Western influence, of colonialization, of theology. So they're going a different direction. And that's going to be impossible, I think, for Messianic Jews to even think about. I think there are ways forward, okay? I do. But not now.

Okay? I do. But not now. So right now, what it means, it's reaching out, saying, brother, I love you. Brother, I feel your pain. Brother, I'm crying together with you today. I'm standing against this injustice in every possible way that I can right now, by talking to people all over the world, talking to you, choosing today to make myself, to have this voice be public. I don't care about me. To have this voice be made public, to hear that there's another voice coming out of this conflict, that there is a better way. There is a better way. And I'm hearing bits and pieces also coming from older peace movements within Israel and Palestine, but they are opposed. They are very much opposed by Israeli government and also within the Palestinian areas. It's too hot. It's too hot

right now. Lisa, any final words of challenge or encouragement to my largely Western audience? Not just America, but I mean, lots of listeners from the United Kingdom, Australia, some South Africa, Canada, probably 80% United States, mostly evangelical Christians. We're sitting over here on the other side of the world. What would you encourage us to do? Listen, learn, pray, obviously. And I would love for any recommended resources that you can give us. I think a lot of people are trying to realize how ignorant we in the West are of the situation and wanting to grow in our understanding. But yeah, any final words of encouragement or challenge? and wanting to grow in our understanding.

But yeah, any final words of encouragement or challenge? I think it's very important that you guard your hearts, that you're going to hear narratives of incredible pain, and you're going to be drawn into a narrative. You have to guard your heart while you open your heart at the same time to keep the perspective that we are all of infinite value to God, created in his image, to guard your heart from taking sides, to let out the pain, the anger, the fear in prayer, in lament. And lament, basically, the prophets poured it out. They told it like it was. We don't try to, you know, candy coat anything.

It's real. But where is God? And that's a question that's being asked by a lot of people. And he is here. And he is present. I do not claim to have a great understanding as to what he's doing, how he's doing it right now. I really do not. But my faith is absolute that he is good, that he loves all, and that he wants us

to be conformed to the image of Jesus and not to the world. The wrath of man does not work the will of God. So yes, pray. Endeavor to stay in that place of compassion and love, even as you're standing against injustice. Guard your heart from judgment. We are called to people of hospitality, to be opened and to receive people and not to judge them according to the judgment of our own mind. As Christians know, yes, speak against the evil. Do good. Flee evil. Do good. Flee evil. Do good.

Do good, okay? Do what you can for the good. You know, that's not like for this side against that side, and I'm going to support this, and all my money is going to go to Israel because they're so besieged. There's been a horrific outpouring of, not horrific, that's not the word I meant to use here, an amazing outpouring of money that's come to support the military.

As American citizens, you can lobby your congressmen. The amount of aid that comes to Israel, none of it is conditioned. None of it is conditioned. And for a very long time, the military aid that has gone to Israel has actually gone to the imprisonment of minors held in detention. And there have been not laws, what would you call it, bills put before the Congress. And Christians for Middle East Peace has a lot to say on this subject. They follow these issues very closely, and they have people, friends all over the world from Christian denominations. If you want to know what's happening in your government, be aware, because you can make a difference. Your tax money, where's it going? Check it out. I don't want to chase my tax money.

I think I'd probably turn my stomach where it's going. Lisa, thank you so much. You've given us such a precious amount of your time. And thank you for the work you're doing. Thank you for your prophetic voice and also your voice of lament. I think that's a great gospel-centered combination. So thank you for being a guest on the show. I really appreciate the conversation. Well, thank you for having me. I really appreciate what you're doing and trying to

you know, to speak truth into people's hearts and minds. And they have to be both. Our hearts and our minds have to be, you know, kind of connected. So every blessing, may you know the grace of God in your life. This show is part of the Converge Podcast Network.