Theology in the Raw - Zionism, Racism, the Gospel, and the War in Israel-Palestine: Tony Deik

Episode Date: August 19, 2024

Tony Deik is a member of the Networking Team and Board of Directors of the International Fellowship for Mission as Transformation, Lecturer in Biblical Studies for Bethlehem Bible College, and Research Associate at the Centre for the Study of Bible and Violence. He is a PhD candidate in New Testament studies at the University of Aberdeen and Trinity College, Bristol. His dissertation explores biblical and Graeco-Roman conceptions of justice. A Palestinian Christian from Bethlehem, Tony has lived and ministered in several different contexts over the last thirteen years, including in the Philippines, Hong Kong, England, Palestine, and Bolivia. In this podcast conversation, Tony and I catch up on our new relationship that was formed back in December 2023 and discuss the situation in Israel-Palestine in a free flowing manner. We cover many topics related to this highly controversial situation including whether zionism is intrisically racist, what's the Christian repsonse to zionism, some facts on the ground regarding Oct 7th (mass rape allegations and the Hannibal directive), why it matters, and many other debated things. Haaretz article on the Hannibal Directive: https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-07-07/ty-article-magazine/.premium/idf-ordered-hannibal-directive-on-october-7-to-prevent-hamas-taking-soldiers-captive/00000190-89a2-d776-a3b1-fdbe45520000 The second UN report on sexual assualt on Oct 7th: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/13/world/middleeast/gaza-war-crimes-israel-hamas.html Register for the Austin conference on sexualtiy (Sept 17-18) here: https://www.centerforfaith.com/programs/leadership-forums/faith-sexuality-and-gender-conference-live-in-austin-or-stream-online Register for the Exiles 2 day conference in Denver (Oct 4-5) here: https://theologyintheraw.com/exiles-denver/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Hey friends, welcome back to another episode of theology in the raw. My guest today is Tony Dake, who is a Palestinian Christian from Bethlehem. He serves as a member of the networking team and board of directors of the international fellowship for mission as transformation. He's also a lecturer in biblical studies for Bethlehem Bible college and also a research associate at the center for the study of the Bible and violence. He is a PhD student at Aberdeen university and Trinity college in Bristol studying new Testament. And his dissertation explores biblical and Greco-Roman conceptions of justice. Tony has lived administered in several different contexts over the last 13 years, including the Philippines,

Hong Kong, England, Palestine. And he currently lives in Bolivia with his family. I met Tony, well, I told the story, how I met Tony, met him about seven months ago in England and really, really enjoyed our immediate friendship. I love Tony's honesty, his wisdom. The dude is an off the chart, biblicist. He just bleeds Bible. And we had many great biblical conversations when we were studying together in Cambridge last year. And this conversation is a bit free flowing, is a bit honest, is a bit uncut, and will make some of you really really mad So if it does upset you That's the Algenerah. I mean every episode of upset some people. So yeah, we love to hear your thoughts

You can't drop a comment on the podcast But you can go over to the YouTube version of this of this podcast And if you want to leave a comment good bad or ugly or mean or kind, it doesn't matter. That's free country. So please do give us your feedback. Also, I'm going to be in Austin, Texas, September 17th, 18th at life family church hosting a two day conference on sexuality and gender. The information there to register is at center for faith.com also two day exiles and Babylon conference in Denver, October 4th to 5th spaces filling up would love to have you all there. It's going to be a absolute

engaging a couple of days talking about discipleship and an election the year, sexuality after purity culture and how, what the, or what does healthy media consumption look like for the Christian. And it's going to be an amazing two days. So their information for the excellence conference is that theology in the rod.com you'll want to register soon. All right. Please welcome to the show for the first time, the one and only Tony Dink. All right. Hey Tony, how are you doing, man? I'm well. Thank you for saying thank you for having me. Good to see you again. So yeah, just a little backstory of how we met we in December, 20, 23, you know, so this is two months after October 7th, things are still

very fresh. I'm doing a ton of just reading and rethinking. And I'm just in, in, in this emotionally challenging place really. I go to Cambridge to do research on some other thing, not Israel, Palestine. And I'm in this little place called Tyndale house and his little room, little right library. It's a big library, but you know, it's, it's close quarters. And then I get plopped by, they gave me a desk and I happened to be sitting next to the Tony theologian Palestinian. And even on the list, it says, you know, where are you from? And it said Palestinian and your friend, do you remember your first words to me was you had your debt, your books spread all over the place. And he said, Oh, I'm so sorry for colonizing your coffee. I mean, it's hard to, we're laughing and there's lots of things that are not funny

in the conversation we're going to have. But I, I, I just appreciated how you were immediately. I could see you just had a remarkable resilience. And then, you know, we went out to dinner, we talked more and you said, yeah, it's been incredibly hard with what's going on. So it was a stressful period. I mean, that was immediately after all of the events of October 7th and the aftermath. And it was distressing being there, being far away from home in Britain, in that place in particular. Colonialism and all of that was in my mind. I think I was writing something when you came to my desk. I was preparing for a talk, I think, with a Latin American group. So all of that was still

fresh in my mind. So I want to have you on because there was this conference of people that know Christ at the checkpoint conference in, in Bethlehem. I was invited to speak at it. Unfortunately, I was out of the country and couldn't go speak at it. I really was, you know, I speak at a lot of places, but this is one I was like, I would give anything. I would love, love to be a part of this. But I couldn't. I'm on the steering committee. So, so we, we did invite you and we really wanted you to be there. Everything was last minute, obviously. So tell us, tell us about the, for someone

who has none of those, there's nothing about the conference. What is Christ at the Checkpoint? So Christ at the Checkpoint is a biennial conference that our college, Bethlehem Bible College started in 2010. And the idea was to challenge Christian Zionism, basically. We, yes, to open a dialogue with Christian Zionists, we used to invite actually Christian Zionists to speak at the conference, to dialogue with them, to debate them, to challenge them, as sisters and brothers in Christ.

So that's basically the main thing. And the name comes from the question, what would Christ do? What would Jesus do if he was at an Israeli checkpoint? So yeah, that's Christ at the checkpoint in a nutshell. So do you not... Actually, can you, because I know we're going to talk about Zionism, can you define, when you say Christian Zionism, what exactly do you mean by that? Because I know people have different maybe definitions, understandings of what that is.

I mean, I was just working on a paper and looking at definitions of Christian Zionism. And there's a debate how to define Christian Zionism. Some people prefer, for example, Mithir Raheb in his latest book defines it as a Christian lobby that supports Israel politically. A simpler definition would be that of Colin Chapman. It's basically Christian Zionism, he defines it as the Christian support for Zionism based on theological reasons. That is based on theological reasons. Based on theological reasons.

Exactly. Based on theological reasons. An example of Christian Zionism would be a study that Pew Research did back in 2022, I think, where they asked people what they believe about the land and God's promise. So that's the basic premise of Christian Zionism. And the question was, do you believe that God gave the land that is now Israel to the Jewish people? And 70% of white evangelicals answered yes. So these would be considered Christian Zionists. Now some people would say that theology is not enough for considering someone a Christian Zionist. They need to act upon it. But my argument is that evangelicals are activists.

You know, the Bebingdon quadrilaterals, if we believe in something, we act upon it. Which can be good. It depends on what you believe. Exactly, exactly. Yes, it can be good, but it can be problematic also. If you believe that God gave the land that is now Israel, Palestine to the Jewish people, then you act upon it. You support Jewish expansion, you support settlements, you support Israeli government. That's why you have groups like Christians United for Israel in the US. They claim to have 11 million members.

You talk about 80,000 churches. These are even old statistics, 80,000 churches, 100 TV stations, 1,000 radio stations support this theology, right, that believes that Israel is a continuation of God's people in the Old Testament, and that God gave His people the land that is now Israel, Palestine. And it continues, that promise continues in the modern state of Israel. In my circles, I do come across, and maybe this is a minority position, Christians who don't think the modern state has a theological claim to the land, but they're very supportive of the modern state of Israel as sort of like a response to centuries of antisemitism, 19th century pogroms in Eastern Europe, obviously the Holocaust,

like it's more of a political justification rather than a spiritual one. I'm thinking if, and I don't want to put words in his mouth, but my friend, Mike Cosper, he spoke at our conference and he said, like, I'm not making a theological case here at all. My case is really a response to anti-Semitism. So, would you say that that is kind of more of a minority position? That wouldn't be in the category of Christian Zionism if you define it as that Israel has a theological right to the land, right? It would be Christian Zionism if you take Colin Chapman's definition. I mean, this is the Christian support for Zionism based on theological reason.

Now the problem with Palestine, what we're facing is much more complex than any other colonial theology of the past because you have this very broad range of Christian support for Zionism that's based on theological reasons. You know, you have post Holocaust theology in Germany. You have people like Walter Brueggemann is a theological Zionist. I mean, I can quote him for you. He said that he believes that the state of Israel here in 2015, Walter Brueggemann wrote, quote, like many Christians, progressive and evangelical, I was grateful and continue to be so for the founding and prospering of the state of Israel as an embodiment of God's chosen people

unquote So this is Walter Brueggemann. So you have this vast Bart Carl Bart And Mitterra has spoke about this a lot in his latest book the decolonizing Palestine in 1962 Carl Bart Described the establishment of Israel as a sign of God's faithfulness to the seat of Abraham. So you have liberals, post-Holocaust theology, and then you have, of course, the dispensation lists that we were talking about, like John Hagee and Christians United for Israel. And then you have the camp of Christianity Today that basically says, Christ fulfills

the promises, but we support Israel. Why? Because of Romans 13 and just war theory. And I responded to the argument that misuses Romans 13 in my Christ at the Checkpoint talk. And it's a classical argument. This is not a new argument. Romans 13 was misused and weaponized

to legitimize apartheid in South Africa. That's why the South African Kairos document has a section to respond to the misuse of Romans 13. Can you summarize their argument and then what's your response to it? Yeah, basically, so Russell Moore, for example, in his first article on the 7th of October, he says that we believe the promises of God are fulfilled in Christ, not in 1948 Israel Declaration of Independence. Yet he goes on to provide Israel with the theological software based on just war theory and Romans 13.

His point is that Israel, basically, his point on Romans 13 is like Israel is like the Roman authorities that Paul encourages Roman Christians to submit to. Israel, they are like the Roman authorities. They have the divine right to use the sword to punish the Palestinians. Now, my critique of Moore's argument is that first he uses a naive hermeneutic that Latin American liberation theologian, Clodophis Boff, calls naive hermeneutic that Latin American liberation theologian Clodophis Boff calls the hermeneutic of correspondence of terms. And in this hermeneutic, the interpreter plays basically a matching game between things in the ancient world and our world, right? And all of us should be wary of this way of connecting the Bible to our world.

What Moore does is that he manages somehow to match the civil authorities that Paul is encouraging Roman Christians, probably full citizens to submit to with the modern state of Israel. And this is what I said at the checkpoint, that Romans 13 is inapplicable to oppressive systems such as settler colonial apartheid is indicated by the immediate context of the text.

So if you look at Romans 13, 3 to 4, Paul says the following, rulers are not a terror to good conduct, to agathon ergon, to good deeds or good conduct. Rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad conduct. Do you wish to have no fear of the authority, Paul says, then do what is good to Agathon, and you will receive its approval for its cast servant for your good. Now, our lived experience basically as Palestinians

and the facts on the ground completely invalidate Moore's application of Romans 13 to the Palestinian context. The Israeli authorities, unlike what Paul is talking about, are a terror to good conduct. Paul says, do what is good and you'll receive the approval of the authorities. Many of us in Palestine don't cease from doing good, yet we are terrified from the Israel authorities. Me personally, I mean, a Christian, a biblicalist, I love the Lord, I try to love my neighbors, even my enemies, is a terror for me. My parents were begging me not to go and participate at the checkpoint because they were afraid that I would get arrested.

I'm actually living now in exile. I'm not allowed to go back and live with my family in Bethlehem. My family and I will forced to exile here. You can't go back and live in Palestine? As a family, no. Personally I can enter, but I can't live with my family in Palestine because of Israel's apartheid policies. Because basically we have two sets of laws that are enforced upon us in the West Bank.

So for example, I am married to a Bolivian. So if I were a Jewish settler living in an Israeli settlement in the West Bank, I would be eligible to apply for a spousal visa. There's a visa called spousal visa. Every country has it. Israel has it. I would apply for my Bolivian spouse for a spousal visa, and I would bring her and she

would live with me. But because I'm a Palestinian, I'm under a different set of laws. I only can apply for her for a special kind of permit that is through the Israeli military. It's basically a tourist visa. It doesn't allow her to work. It doesn't allow her to drive a car. It doesn't allow her to use the airport. And it expires every six months, up to 24 months, and then she needs to leave the country.

And actually, one Israeli officer told us that we give you this visa to visit your family. That's it. So our visit finished. We left on a two way ticket. We thought we'd be able to come back because we're Christians. We have good conduct, right? We submit and we have good conduct. And until now we did ergo and agathon, but it's not working. What about, what about the argument going back to Google on Romans 13 that if you do bad, you'll be punished. And I can imagine somebody saying Hamas did bad, really bad. And Israel is punishing them, leaving aside the question of quote unquote 40,000 collateral evidence, you know, the, the, the civilians and all, not even getting into that, but just the motivation

of you did bad to us. So we're going to punish you according to Romans 13, not that Israel's quoting Romans 13, but yeah, well here, here the context is civil authorities, right? This is not, we're talking about people who are under occupation, and this is a national resistance movement. Once you start categorizing Palestinian resistance as terror, this is where you get things wrong. This is a national liberation movement that uses liberation movement that uses violence for national liberation. How was the United States liberated? How were so many countries liberated? So they use violence to liberate Palestine. That's their ideology.

Now, we completely disagree on this. We are committed to Jesus' way of nonviolent resistance. Now I don't know if you've been following up, but the reports from the United Nations, from the United Nations Human Rights Council, for example, this is a very important report just released several weeks ago, says that many things that Israel was saying actually about October 7th is a lie. And the report says that there is no evidence, it might have happened, but the report says there is no evidence even of sexual crimes committed. I am not here defending what they are doing, but we need to put it in perspective.

We need to speak about what happened on October 7th. We need to read it rightly without defending and legitimizing what Hamas is doing or has been doing, their method. But this is a national liberation movement seeking liberation in an era. And this is very important going back to Romans 13. We are in the era of nation states. This is not the first century. So national liberation, even, you know, the other day I gave a talk here in Colombia, and I quoted from the UN General Assembly 3747 that says that people who are under colonization and under occupation, they have the right

to defend themselves, including by violent means. So this is, I mean, international law permits the use of violence within the boundaries of international law, right, for national liberation. Now, did they commit war crimes? Yes, they might. We need to investigate what happened exactly, who committed the crimes, and the people who committed these crimes need to be brought to justice. But the use of violence, the idea of using violence is permissible according to international law. And we live in a very different context than Romus 13 now. We live in a context where national liberation movements have used violence to liberate and for their political rights and for their independence.

We are not in a situation where we are being policed. We are under Israel and we are under Israel's authority. As Palestinians, we are under, in Gaza, people are under the authority of the Palestinian authority there, which is Hamas, and in the West Bank we are under the authority of Fateh. We are not under, directly under the authority of Israel. So we need to be careful. What I'm saying is that we need to be very careful in how we do this hermeneutical move from the New Testament and its world to our world today. And again, I do insist that the application of Romans 13 to legitimize Israel's punishment of the Palestinian is totally wrong.

It is inapplicable. It is inapplicable. And also take into consideration all of the innocent people that have been killed. I mean, we're reaching now 40,000 people killed. 70% of them are women and children. These are punished based on what crimes? Like, what did they do? Right? Like, Israel is a terror to all the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza especially, and East Jerusalem. And no matter you submit or you do not submit, Israel maintains an oppressive

regime in those territories, and even upon Palestinians inside Israel. So submitting to authorities, the idea of submitting to authorities, I submit to authorities knowing that they are a force of good. If I submit, Paul says, you don't have anything to fear. Many in Palestine, they want to live their life. They want to live a normal life. They do not go shooting bullets at Israel, etc. Yet, they are punished. When they are punished, now they then have a different mentality and say, okay, since I am punished for things I have not done, then this needs to be resisted. The paradigm here is resistance. And there are two ways of doing that. Either you resist your oppressor with violence, which is legitimate according to international law, or you resist your oppressor non-violently according to the genius way

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of your first order of Mitopure. If you go to timeline.com forward slash theology and use the code theology, you'll get 10% off your order. That's timeline. T I M E L I N E.com forward slash theology to take advantage of this offer. Go check it out. The thought that, and again, you've said it, but sometimes people don't hear it, that you're not supporting the manner in which Hamas quote unquote resisted. You're, you're simply saying that that is how they perceived their response. Now, most people assume that October 7th was unprovoked. Uh, most people listening probably assume that, um, it is nothing but a byproduct of I assume that it is nothing but a byproduct of rank anti-Semitism that Hamas, not every Palestinian, but at least Hamas wants to wipe Israel and Jewish people off the face of the

earth. They are bubbling over with anti-Semitism and October 7th is simply a manifestation of anti-Semitism. I think you're providing a bit, a different narrative, two points that I want to draw attention to. And I just want to, I want to just mark these out as points you're making and let people wrestle with it. Number one, the October 7th from your, well, not in your, but let's just say the Palestinian perspective, certainly Hamas was not at all an unprovoked. Um, it's a response to 16 plus years of, uh, extremely oppressive blockade, um, without, you know, people use

the term open air prison, uh, or the people that like that because these aren't prisoners. These are civilians, uh, open air concentration camp. And yet people that, yeah, I, I think every term is always going to be problematic because nothing's exactly one to one either way. Blockade would be probably the most neutral, uh, phrase and that there has been like in the great march of return, uh, attempts at nonviolent resistance to the blockade. And lots of people lost their kneecaps and lives for nonviolently protesting the blockade. So there's, so there were previous attempts at nonviolent resistance and they didn't do anything. Yeah. I think, I think for people to wrestle with what it's a really important question. And I'm not, I don't want to, I

didn't really even plan on going here on the podcast, but like was October 7th, can we, we think of it as unprovoked or on some level provoked? I think, I think that's a really important distinction. Do you have any thoughts on that? Cause I have another point I was going to raise. I mean, even the word provoked is not suitable. It does not describe like we have been living, you know, our grandfathers, our parents and us, we have been living under the boots and the iron fist of the Zionists from the inception of Israel. I mean, I was telling you how we left in 2017 after two years of living in Bethlehem.

We were not allowed to go back. And the same story happened with my own grandfather. He was living in Shfaamir, a village in Galilee in 1948. The Zionists invaded his village. They kicked him out. He went to Bethlehem as a refugee. They lived in garages for years. 20 years later, he came back to his house

to find a Jewish family living in his house Right like this is this is this this continues his sister My great auntie was killed when the Zionists and this is not not known when when the Zionists poisoned the water supplies of Hakka to crush the Palestinians and to forbid The Palestinians who were deported from coming back. You know, she was poisoned from this scheme. And I discovered actually, so this was always our narrative, and I later discovered when I was researching that, you know, from Israeli historians actually, that this was an intentional

plan much bigger than Akka, than Acre. And the name of the operation was Shalakh Lakhmecha, you know, cast thy bread in a quotation from Ecclesiastes 11.1. So, so you've been, and you have the same things, the same biblical names, the same misuse of the scriptures. So you've been like generationally, you know, our grandparents, our parents, and us, we have been living under the iron fist oppressive, oppressive.

This is not provocation. This is like, you are crushed. You know, you are crushed. What to do? You know, people like Russell Moore should know that you need to resist. Now, he promotes violent resistance and war and all of that. We as Palestinian Christians, as we wrote in our call for repentance, despite being crushed, despite being under the yoke and the fist of empire and a brutal colonial regime, we still believe in the way of Jesus Christ.

And we believe that the way of Jesus applies not only to us, to our personal lives and personal piety, but also applies to the city, applies to the public square, his ethics work. So that's my comment on the first question of provocation. It is basically, I mean, and if you want statistics, I mean, they're well known and we wrote them in our letter, just the year, you know, to 2023, before October 7, around 300 people were, around 300 Palestinians were killed, including around 40 children. The year before that, 2022, was, according to the UN, and I can send you the UN report, the bloodiest year for Palestinians since 2005.

This is 2022. This is just the immediate context. We're not going, I mentioned the stories of my grandfather, and this is the immediate context. We're not going, I mentioned the stories of my grandfather. This is the immediate context. The provocations in Jerusalem, and this is maybe harder for us to understand as evangelicals. For Muslims, this is their third greatest and most important site, the Aqsa mosque and the Haram Sharif, you know, the Masjid al-Aqsa. You know, and Israel continuously provoking Muslims there. Continuously.

There are agreements, there is the status quo, etc., like agreements, very firm agreements how this delicate place should be dealt with. And the Israelis do not stop provoking there. They basically, and there are groups, they want to demolish the whole thing and build the third temple there. This holy Muslim site, for them it's a very holy site, has been there for 1,400 years. You want to come and just demolish it and not expect anything? You are triggering people's emotions.

People got triggered in the Olympic games just with the depiction of the Last Supper. And Europe is less fuzzy about these things, right? The West, religion is a private matter. You need to multiply this by 10 for Muslims, by 20, by 30. It's very provocative. So all of that, all of that, there is a religious dimension that is being under oppression and apartheid and siege in Gaza and, and, and, and. Man, Tony, I don't know if I've said this on the podcast out loud, because some people may wonder, I've had several Palestinians on the podcast. I've had a couple, one Jewish rabbi settler, actually, another Israeli Christian. I've invited, people should know, I've invited several

more pro-Israel Christians to come on and for various reasons they were unable to. So Christians that come on and for various reasons they were unable to. So it could let you know, I could get accused, you know, you just always have one side of the story. And I I'm okay with that because I, as a Christian growing up in America, I personally, I, if you just turn on the news and look around, I I've been just bathed in the other side. Like I can, I can right now, I could probably represent all the counter arguments, whatever, uh, that I not now no longer think are legitimate. Um, so, uh, but we don't hear everything you're saying. We don't hear that. We don't hear, we don't hear that side at all. So, so I don't, if I am in an unbalanced way, representing more Palestinian voices than Israeli voices, it's it's in part to counter, to balance out the narrative a little bit

that we are just completely bait. Then I mean, I get emails all the time, whenever I have a Palestinian on people saying, I have never heard that side. Never. I can talk. If I, if I talk about somebody ought to talk about Israel as a right to defend themselves, Hamas is really bad. How, guess what? Hamas is evil and they use human shields and they're making millions of dollars and, and, and, and, you know, gobbling up aid and they're the ones that are the problem. And if Israel doesn't get rid of Hamas and they're just rewarding Hamas for October 7th, and then they're going to do it again. And we, I can show you a video clip of leaders saying, we're going to do this again and again and again, until we wipe out is like all these talk. I can, I can read

if we hear that all the time and not that there's, there's, I think we need to hear different sides. Certainly it's just, we just only hear one side here, at least from my vantage point. So, uh, anyway, that, that, that was a little aside going back to October 7th. And again, just so people know, we didn't really plan kind of a specific direction here. So we're just kind of conversing in the moment, the scene, October 7th as resistance, I can see the reasonableness of that because I do know more, more the context, but it's this. And I have in this, I will say this out loud. I haven't said this out loud before.

I did a really deep dive on the case for sexual violence happening. And I a hundred percent agree with you. It's all the evidence that was presented in the New York times article and the documentary screams before silence in, in the reports and all the stuff that we've heard through media have basically all been debunked. I cannot say that there wasn't sexual violence happening. What I can say fairly confidently. And I have a, I wrote an unpublished six page paper on this siding, probably 30 different sources that 90 plus percent, 95 plus percent of the evidence that made it in a popular narrative has been debunked, but it's still flat out lies flat out. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. Flat. I mean, Zach,

is it Zaka? Yes, exactly. Zaka. Yeah. Yeah. They are. I am sorry. They are. I can't trust a word they say. Not that everything to say is a lot, but they have been caught in so many lies. Their founder was a, where a sexual abuser pedophile. I mean, there's the money stuff with that organization and they have, I've seen them on videos weeping over what they are, what they described happen that has been debunked widely. So, and it's so, so now I'm like pulling back like, well, wait a minute. What, what is the actual evidence? Every time I do a deep dive on this story, that story, the New York times articles

debunked by the family of the, the people that allegedly got raped, they got killed and slaughtered. That's horrible. But the family themselves came out and says, she wasn't right. Like there is no evidence that she was right. Anyway, I, I, it's, it's hard because when you say this, what do you justify it? Come on, open up your head. I'm not justifying, I'm just saying like, if there is factually incorrect things that have been widely purported, we need to get to the truth. That doesn't mean we're justifying

the violence that did happen. Anyway, Tony, I know you're- We are Christians, we are Christians. We seek truth, we seek truth. I mean, this is not justifying anything. Like people know our positions. I mean, that's why I'm not afraid to speak. I mean, those who need to be afraid and terrified are people like Russell Moore and others who

legitimize and justify violence. We never justify it. It's in our statements, read Palestinian Christian theology. Our line is very clear. We can speak in liberty. But what happens on October 7th needs to be spoken about. And to be honest, unlike you, Preston, I mean, I decided not to do the research myself, but rely on the Human Rights Council

Independent International Commission of Inquiry. And they published a report, a thick report indicating that the Israeli government has been lying about key claimed atrocities committed on October 7th. We spoke about sexual crimes. The report says there is no evidence. There is no evidence. So until the evidence is established, we follow the evidence, right? And the second thing... Real quick, Tony, there is self-report. People have second-hand,

not first-hand, but second-hand report of people saying they witnessed the violence. But when other testimonies that say they witnessed it have been, have been able to be corroborated with, um, the bodies and independent research in as much as the, the evidence that has been able to be corroborated corroborated with has all turned back to be, to my knowledge, turned back to be false. We still have other secondhand reports that have not been corroborated. And that's where I say, I don't, I can't say without a doubt there wasn't. I'm saying the evidence put forward that has been corroborated

has turned out to be false. And this is what the UN report, and I encourage you listeners to check it out. It's the UN Human Rights Council's Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Palestine and Israel. Their report on the 10th of June 2024, this was published on the 10th of June 2024, and they can check actually paragraphs 14 to 19 on the sexual crimes of this

report. And what they say is basically what you have said now. There is lack of evidence about killing sexual crimes. We're not saying they didn't happen. This is like, you know, when there is violence, people commit horrendous things. So, but we need to be careful. No, because what happened, Preston, is that Israel and their allies needed to demonize Hamas in a way to describe us as animals,

as pigs, as the most heinous criminals in the world that they need to be wiped out. And not only that, that even the collateral damage of tens of thousands could be tolerated because they are that wicked. So where is Satan now? Hamas, Isenwar is Satan. This is like, they made sure that this is the depiction.

This is not just fighters going there. No, these are disgusting, horrific, horrible, the worst human beings in the world. So they needed to repeat all of these things and like fan... I don't know what the word in English, fantasy stories, you know, of like Hamas fighters cutting the breasts of women and then having breakfast and then, I don't know, like beheading children. By the way, the story of beheading children, the report says that there is no evidence. There is no evidence. It has been completely debunked. Yes, that there is no evidence. There's no evidence. It has been completely debunked. The story of-

Baking an infant in an oven that didn't happen, cutting an infant out of a pregnant woman that did not happen, raping the two sisters, there's corroborated evidence that that did not happen. So in just a- These are debunked. Kind of repeat what you're saying. This is not lack of evidence. These were debunked in detail. Thank you for, because we talk about sexual crimes, there's lack of evidence, but these stories of beheading children, et cetera, they have been debunked by Israeli authorities to the one of the head of the kibbutz is saying, no, this, this did not

happen. Like it's not, this isn't, cause people might be wondering, well, okay, Hamas debunked it. I'm not going to believe. No, these are by Israeli families of the people, Israeli authorities in like in the kibbutz. Yeah. So, and we are, because people could say, well, what does it matter? There's, it was still horrible massacre. What, who cares about because of what you said, if you could, if you can dehumanize your enemy to make them seem like animals, that is, that is a textbook path towards genocide. I am not saying you can say it. I'm sure you will say it. I am not saying it is a genocide. Uh, the, um, the ICJ did rule it a plausible genocide. So I stick to legal language because

it is a legal term. Um, but that is that I was saying historically that is textbook genocidal methods. It's what happened in Rwanda. You had on the radio people calling Tutsis cockroaches. This is a well-known thing. And when you dehumanize them, they're cockroaches, then you have freedom to slaughter people. And Nazis calling Jews rats, right?

Yes. If a cockroach dies now or a rat dies now, will you care? That's the idea. You dehumanize, you know, you put people at the level of animals, the worst creatures, so that you can, you know, legitimize it to yourself and to others that you are slaughtering them. And just going back to October 7, why uncovering the truth is important? Because then the question is different. Then the question becomes whether an oppressed people have the right to resist or not.

And let me quote for you, I mentioned it, but now I have the quotation. It's the UN General Assembly Resolution 3743 of 1982, paragraph two, right? And of course, the additional protocol one to the Geneva Conventions of 1949. Okay, the UN General Assembly says the following, it reaffirms, I'm quoting, the legitimacy of the struggle of peoples for independence, territorial integrity, national unity and liberation from colonial and foreign domination

and foreign occupation by all available means, including armed struggle. So then we can debate as Christians, what do we think of this? What do we think of national liberation using armed struggle? Now, many Christians, as we've seen, Russell Moore et al., they don't have a problem with the use of violence. But I know you have, and I have, a problem with using violence, because we take Jesus very, very seriously, not only for me and my heart and me and my heart,

but also for my city. His ethics work. So that's why 7th of October is important because it switches the debate. This is what we should be discussing. How to resist your oppressor, violently or nonviolently. This is where as Christians, we need to engage, not legitimizing with ease the violence of the oppressor. I do want to say, so October 7th, my best understanding is that the stated goal was targeting IDF soldiers to take hostages because as collateral to in part to free the what 10,000 Palestinians are in prison most without any kind of trial. So they're

in a sense, there's thousands of Palestinian. I would call them hostages in Israeli prisons. Would that be accurate to say? And so we know in the past, you know, even one Israeli hostage could free hundreds of Palestinian hostages. And so their target was to use them as collateral. Now I will say in the process they did kill. We don't know the exact number at least in the high hundreds of civilians. We also know that I will, well like in whether or not that was intended or not, that did happen. And I, and I, I can just say full stop. That was absolutely horrible. There is no rationale for that, whether or not sexual violence happened, whether or not that was their stated goal to see loads of

people at the festival just slaughtered. That was absolutely horrible. We also know that the ID would now know, I knew this back in November, but it didn't hit mainstream outlets until last month that the IDF pulled the Hannibal directive and killed. We don't know how many we it's likely that all the burned out cars you saw. Well, the general said, we have a quote from the Israeli general. No car comes back. You know, whatever that he said, he called on helicopters to fire and destroy the cars driving back to Gaza, which had hostages. And we don't know, I don't think we know the exact number. We know a general, Israeli general called on a tank

to fire into a building, blow up the whole house that had at least, I think, 13 Israeli hostages and killed all of them. So we don't know how many were killed by the IDF. Israelis killed by the IDF, we know at least some. Do we have a number on? No, no. But just to add to what you are saying, now the Hannibal Directive is part of this UN report. So this UN report of the 10th of June, paragraphs 223 to 233 of this report, tackles the question of the Hannibal directive and there is evidence that the report argues that there is evidence that the Hannibal directive took place. So that's, I mean, this is like high level reports. This is the UN independent commission of inquiry.

The name of the commission is like this. These are like- Well, Haaretz reported on it. And Haaretz, and a big, and a big report on Haaretz. I knew this back in November, Tony. So I don't, but here's the thing. I only read, I don't read mass media news. I only read independent outlets that are not tied to a political side.

They're just let way less politicized. They're independent. So I knew this back in November. Like all the stuff that's coming out now, I'm like, well, there was an Israel, in January, there was an Israeli article written only in Hebrew that one of the independent outlets I follow, they had it translated in English. And they talked about all the stuff to come out. Now they had those quotes back in January of people calling it a habit directive. 100%. But now it is confirmed by this. This is a very important report. That's why I keep repeating it. This is the UN Human Rights Council.

This episode is sponsored by the Pore Over Podcast. Oh my word, I love the Pore Over Podcast. It is a trustworthy news resource guiding people toward eternal hope. It's not Republican, it's not Democrat, it's not conservative, it's not liberal. Instead, it is a Christ-centered summary of the major events going on in politics and in culture. Like most of you, I am so tired of news outlets that are so clearly biased toward the right or to the left. I want to stay informed with what's going on, but I hate how traditional news outlets shape my heart and try to win me to a certain side. I mean, if you don't believe me,

just ask yourself this question. After listening to say, I don't know, CNN or Fox news for like 30 minutes, am I less or more motivated to love my neighbor and my enemy? If the answer is less, then Houston, we have a huge problem, a discipleship problem. This is why I'm so excited about the Pour Over podcast. Each episode is only about seven minutes long, and they just tell you about what's going on in the world.

They don't tell you how to interpret the various events or how you should feel about what's going on. Instead, they just let you know about the facts of what's going on while reminding listeners that our ultimate identity and hope is in Jesus Christ. I've even met some of the people at the pour-over and they are super awesome. They're not some like closeted liberal

or closeted conservative think tank. Like they're truly genuinely just trying to keep us informed while staying focused on Christ. So don't let traditional media outlets steal your affection away from loving people who might vote differently than you. Instead, check out and subscribe to the Pore Over podcast in your favorite podcast app. Sorry, we're saying Hannibal directive. A lot of people may not even know. So do you want to explain it? Yeah. I mean, the Hannibal, like the, I don't know if they were in inspired by the story

of Hannibal and his director. The idea is to kill one's own rather than taking them as or having them as hostages or prisoners. That's the idea basically. So Israel, the Israeli army gave orders, this is what the evidence is indicating, the Israeli army gave orders to kill Palestinians, even to kill the Palestinian fighters, even if that meant killing Israeli hostages and Israeli citizens. And that's one of the Israeli generals says this was a mass quote, quote, a mass Hannibal and we don't know how much that. So anyway, again, I, I, this is not to me again from

a Christian anti-imperial, you know, kingdom of God oriented, nonviolent advocate, Christ centered person. To me, it, Christ centered person to me, it doesn't really, to me, it's like whether the IDF killed them or a mosque killed, whatever that that I mourned that equally where I get the only reason why I'm getting into this is because if people build a, a, a, an inaccurate narrative of the, of, of October 7th in service to justify, you know, the slaughtering. Well, we need to get them. Look what they did. And there's no innocent civilians. I've heard so many people say there are no innocent civilians, which is mind boggling. And so that, that's

where it makes me. It's like, well, wait a minute, let's make sure we do get all the facts straight because it's being used in service of some just war. So let's go back and at least get all our facts straight and then go, go from there. So, but you see, I look, I get, there are still innocent civilians slaughtered and I absolutely am horrified by that. No matter the quote motivation or the intention that Hamas set out, but I could turn around and say, I mourn the 40,000 people, not just 40,000, but I don't know if he saw that report from that science magazine, I'm blanking on the name of it, that said, given the destruction of all of the infrastructure

and famine and diseases and it could lead to, I think they said 180,000. Yeah, 186,000, yeah. 186,000 people are projected to die. It's a prestigious journal, actually. Yeah. Was it gold? Yeah, it wasn't the Hamas health ministry that said this. No, no, no, no, no, no. It's a prestigious peer reviewed medical journal. Lance, Lance, no, Lance it.

Lance it. Yeah. Lance it. No, no, no, no. Yeah. Lance, Lance it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They can go. It's like, I, I'm going to actually put all these in the show notes, but anyway, we got, we took like a 40 minute detail. I want to go back to Christ to the checkpoint. There were the many talks given and I heard from several friends that yours was particularly powerful. What can you sum up? What was your talk at Christ at the checkpoint? I don't need you to repeat it word for word, but... Let me repeat it. No, I'm joking.

What was your conversation? Yeah, so basically I said two main things. Like my talk was on the topic of mission in context of oppression. And I called it like, I gave it the title, Missiology After Gaza, Christian Zionism, God's Image, and the Gospel. So what I argued in the talk is that, well, I made a two-fold argument, really. In the first part of the talk, I argued that Christian Zionism, in all its full spectrum, not only

dispensationists, in all its spectrum, Christian Zionists depicts, conceptualizes God as racist. That's the first part of the talk. And in the second part of the talk, I offered three suggestions on the way forward, focusing on one, proclaiming God's goodness. Second, calling for repentance. And third, working for justice. That's in a nutshell what I said. Can you summarize those three, expand just briefly on those three points? Yeah, so let me start with the first part. So in the first part, I made an accusation

and I said in the talk that this is not a Stroman argument. I argued that Christian Zionist theologies in all their spectrum, right, from the soft to the hard Christian Zionism, including the continuously evolving post-holocaust, post-supercessionist theologies and biblical interpretations, these theologies, they do not proclaim God as good, loving, let alone as just and righteous. These theologies proclaim that God is a racist. And the burden of the proof, I said, is on these theologians to tell us otherwise. To tell us how, especially after Jesus Christ, can God still have a special relation with

a particular nation or race, including the giving of land inhabited by other people, and be a just and fair God who is not racist. On what basis does God favor a particular nation over another, especially after Jesus Christ? And I was remembering the other day how when we were in primary school, I was in a Catholic primary school and a secondary Lutheran school. And I remember I used to ask our religion teacher, we used to have religious education. And I remember that that wasn't the Lutheran school, you know, when I started questioning faith and all of that.

And one of my questions was, like, why would God choose the Jews as his chosen people? Like, why? Right? And the answer was very simple and convincing. My teacher told me that God chose a particular nation so that he prepares them for the coming of Jesus Christ. I was like, oh, okay. So God is not that bad.

I mean, it's, you know, okay, this is a naive conception of biblical Israel because Israel is not an ethnic nation. They're people of covenant. And I spoke about these things. They're people of justice. They're people with mission, all of that, right? But let's assume that, you know, it's all about race, right? God chose Abraham because of the color of his eyes

and the complexion of his skin. Let's assume that, right? Even that, because of Jesus, does not make God racist. You know, because you have this particular ethnic group that God, for reason X, chose them, so that He prepares them for the coming of Jesus. Done. Finished. Okay? But then, Christian Zionism is saying, no, despite Jesus, still God loves and gives land and privileges this ethnic group.

Okay. Then God is a racist. I mean, there is no other way. Right? Well, you also, I mean, God chose Abraham and his descendants. Let's just follow the first part, but it was not only to bless the nations, the blessed Palestinians, God chose Israel to bless Palestinians and to include Palestinians in the nations. Right? I mean, baked into the very first statement about the Abrahamic covenant is, is to be an inclusive

ethnic, which is why we see so many stories of outsiders being included, which just burst on the scenes of the New Testament. So, ethnic diversity, inclusion, and blessing different nations has always been baked into, even the earlier stages of the promise, but it did seem a little bit ethnocentric. It actually was not. But even, Preston, let's make the argument harder, right? Like, let's assume that God in the Old Testament was all about ethnicity. You know, even that, because of Jesus, doesn't make God a racist. Right. Now, what I said in my talk, I unpacked because there are three things that are, three theological

motifs that are being weaponized against us. You have the notion of election, the notion of promised land, and eschatology. And eschatology obviously is connected to your understanding of land and chosenness, right? It all depends on how, like one dispensationist once told me, it all depends on how you view Israel. This is how you view Israel decides on your end time theology, right?

So you have election and you have the promised land. These are weaponized against us. And I tackled in my talk the notion of election And I asked the question why did God chose Abraham and I said not for the color of his eyes nor for the complexion of his skin God chose Abraham in the words of Genesis 18 19 To so that Abraham may charge his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord of doing justice and righteousness. Siddhaka and Mishpat. Right?

So God chose Abraham for a mission. God chose someone who looked at him, like I keep telling our students, who responded to him. So that he commissions him to be a blessing. How? By embodying God's conception of justice and righteousness. So that when people like Deuteronomy 4 says, when people look at Israel and the justice of Israel, you know, the glow of justice of Israel, they will be attracted to this God, right?

This is the sort of centripetal, right? The centripetal mission of God's people, attracting people to God rather than going out and speaking out God, they were commissioned just to live God's justice. That's the Mosaic Covenant as the expression of God's conception of justice. Live it and you'll attract people.

That's your mission. And obviously this unpacking of ancient Israel, you know, has nothing to do, right, with how the modern settler-coronial state of Israel behaves, right? And add to that, that from its inception, this is what I also emphasize, is that Israel in the Old Testament, they are not conceptualized around ethnicity, around race. And when, which moment, when did Israel, when was Israel founded in the Old Testament? When is the moment when Israel was founded?

It's in the Exodus event and the Mosaic covenant. And Exodus 12, 38 tells us that people from mixed ethnicities came out of Egypt with the Hebrews. Now, all those who said amen to the law of Moses, to God's conception of justice became God's people. And even when the covenant was repeated on the plains of Moab, you have the Gerim, the proselytoy, the foreigners were part of the renewal of the covenant, they were part of the people of God. And of course you have all these names,

you know, Ruth and Rahab, and you have, at the time of Esther, and Esther eight people became Jews because they saw what God did. So, it's a multi-ethnic group that revolves around faith and covenant. These are covenant people, faith people. God's not racist, y'amme. He was never racist. Anyone who says amen to God and to His law, to His conception of justice, is welcome. Pete You know, it's funny, Tony, is when we hung out in Cambridge for that week, we'd talked about Israel-Palestine in a decent amount, but I think we talked about the Bible and biblical theology and the research in the book of Acts just as much. And you described yourself in

passing early as a biblicist. And it's funny, I talked to our mutual friend, Daniel Bonora, that's his first thing he said about you. He's like, Tony, oh yeah, he's such a Bible guy. It's coming out now. You, you very much bleed a biblical theology, which I, which I absolutely love. Tell us a bit about your, well, actually, well, we didn't get to the other three points and we're getting short on time here, but yeah. So summarize that the, those are important points at the end. So you set up this question. God is not a racist, which should be, shouldn't need to be said,

but you said it. And then, what were your three points in response to that? Yeah, so my first point on the way forward was that we need to persist in proclaiming God's justice and goodness. And here is where I unpacked that God is not a racist. And the evidence for God's goodness is in the scriptures that are weaponized against us in the Old Testament and If this argument that I've just shared with you is unconvincing then you look at the New Testament you look at Jesus You know Jesus is Israel Jesus is Israel. We need to proclaim it loud and clear He said in John 15 one he is the true vine, right?

and the vine is a well-known symbol of Israel, and Isaiah, and Jeremiah, Psalms, etc. And Paul, you know, Galatians 3.16, you know, Jesus is the true seed of Abraham. So this is the first thing that I said. God's goodness is evident in the Scriptures, both Old Testament and New Testament. The second point is to call Christian Zionists to repentance. And this is what we started doing in our call for repentance. Now to develop this point, what I did is that I again went to the scriptures. They're always helpful. And I think the paradigmatic text for us to call Christian science for repentance is Acts 10. And this is where the gospel gets preached to the Gentile for the first time. Now before Peter could even start

declaring the good news of the gospel to Cornelius, if you remember Acts 10, he needed to confess the following. He said, I truly understand that God's show no partiality, but in every nation, anyone who fears Him and does the kayusun, does justice, is acceptable to Him, right? So this is this revelation that God gives Peter, this change of direction that he, Peter says, I now understand God showed no partiality. Now, for a long time, and maybe I am not as a

Biblist, I thought that this is a new thing. But when I started studying Deuteronomy for my PhD, I discovered that this has been declared that God is not partial, is from Deuteronomy. And one scholar, Jack Lundbaum, brilliant Old Testament scholar, he says Peter gets the idea from Deuteronomy, Deuteronomy 10.17, God is not partial. So basically for us, what happened there in Acts 10 is a type of theological repentance, a turning of direction. You know, it is not just the conversion of Cornelius, it's the conversion of Peter and the early church from a wrong conception of God and God's justice to the right conception of God as an inclusive and all-loving God who accepts everyone who does righteousness,

justice. And the argument that I have made is that you might argue that these Christians before Act 10 were sort of ethnocentric, right? You might even argue that they were racist, right? They thought of themselves as better than others, cleaner than the Gentiles, you know, we are God's chosen people, all of that, right? But there are two things, there are two differences between this ethnocentric theology and the racist theology of Christian Zionism. First, the context, the original context, these people did not use their ethnocentric theology to legitimize ethnic cleansing and the massacring of others. And secondly, so this is a non-colonial ethnocentric theology

that we find in the early Christian movement. And secondly, they were not at the center of power. They were not the powerful. They went to, they were the downtrodden, right? They were demanginized. And here Peter is speaking with Cornelius, his oppressor. So for the gospel to be preached to the Gentiles, this ethnocentric, non-colonial,

and non-imperial theology needed to be thrown out. How much more do we need to throw in the garbage, the racist theology of Christian Zionism that not only conceptualizes God as racist, but also as the God of ethnic cleansing and colonialism and imperialism. So if early Christians threw away this ethnocentric theology, surely we should deconstruct and throw away this Christian Zionism from our midst. That was my second point. this Christian Zionism from our midst. That was my second point. Could we separate,

trying to, I formulated my question out loud here. Could we separate different kinds of Christian Zion, people who would hold to what you're describing as a Christian Zionist project, certain people who actually might be racist. I'm thinking of the debate between Trump and Biden, where Trump, you use the term Palestinian as like a slur. You know, I don't know if you saw that,

where he called Biden, you're basically a Palestinian. And that was him like taking a jab at him. I think he. And I think what he wanted, my best faith reading is he wanted to say you're basically a terrorist or there's no way around it. It was horrible. I always try to say what's the best faith, but that was terrible. I was like charred by it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It wasn't shocking. I wasn't shocked by it. I was like, of course he would say, you know, but like, but that, but that's like a good example of when people do think Palestinian, they just think of a, I think they can't have racist, but here, here, here

Preston, I don't mean racist people. I speak about theology. Okay. That's a good distinction. That's where I was. That's where I was getting at. Cause I know a lot of people who would hold to a Zionist theology, but they've never really studied. They may have never read a book. It's just like, yeah, I read Israel in the Bible, Israel here. I've probably thought about it for about 10 minutes and yeah, I'm for Israel. I don't know why, but I'm just, you know, I wouldn't want to label every person who, for various reasons might hold to a, what we would describe as a Zionist theology as a race. It could take a two minute conversation with them.

Preston, most people are victims. Normal Christians, they don't know. That's why our call for repentance isn't targeting Christians. It's targeting leaders, theologians. That's an important distinction. This is a very important distinction. And it's important to distinguish between a racist theology, i.e., a theology that depicts God as an ethnocentric God, a racist God. Like we are also, as Christians, not called to be fools.

Like, yes, we love the word obedience, obedience. Whatever the Bible says, you know, just do it, right? So if the Bible says God is racist, amen. No, it is not that. First, the Bible doesn't say God is racist, right? And then if we think that God is racist, then we need to rethink. We need to think through. So if, you know, like one elder in our church once told me like, but brother, Israel is Israel, you know? So he means that the modern state of Israel is ancient Israel. Such proclamation, you know, he didn't think it through.

When we proclaim these things, how do we depict God? Imagine that he's talking to a Muslim. Like, okay, like what kind of God are you proclaiming? For goodness sake. So we need to think through what we say. And what surprised me is that big theologians, it seems, don't think through the implications of what they say on theology proper, on the doctrine of God,

on our understanding of God. Like this is like at the heart of theology. Tony, I hate to cut this conversation off because we're just getting warmed up. Where can people find, do you have a website or where can people learn more about you? I don't have a website. No, but they can watch the stock. Maybe that's a good. So it's recorded on YouTube. Okay. I'll pick and do that. Put the, put the talk in there. So Tony, man, appreciate you, brother.

Thank you. At the very least have stirred people's thinking. How about that? That's, that's, that's what we're all about in theology and raw. Thanks so much for your, thanks for your time, brother. Yeah. This show is part of the Converge Podcast Network. Hi, I'm Haven, and as long as I can remember, I have had different curiosities and thoughts and ideas that I like to explore, usually with a girlfriend over a matcha latte. But then when I had kids, I just didn't have the same time that I did before for the one-on-ones that I crave. So I started Haven the Podcast.

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