Participants:
Series Code: LI
Program Code: LI190438A
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00:25 Welcome to the Liberty Insider.
00:27 This is your program to bring some discussion, 00:30 insight and immediacy 00:32 to religious liberty developments 00:34 in the US and around the world. 00:36 My name is Lincoln Steed, editor of Liberty Magazine. 00:40 And my special guest on this program 00:42 is Attorney Sonia DeWitt, 00:45 and also, as I keep proudly saying, 00:48 a Liberty author. 00:50 Let's talk about something interesting. 00:52 Israel, it's always in the news. 00:54 Very interesting country. Yes. 00:56 In the build up to this opening, 00:58 I was remembering 01:00 going twice with the Holy Land tour 01:03 that 3ABN organizes 01:05 or I think now Jim Gilley 01:07 does it a little bit separately. 01:09 But it was in association then with 3ABN. 01:11 Fabulous experience. 01:13 You and I are Seventh-day Adventists. 01:15 And I well remember reading and it impressed me, 01:18 that in the early days of our church, Ellen White, 01:21 who the visionary of Seventh-day Adventism 01:24 had to actively dissuade many Adventists from going 01:28 to Jerusalem. 01:29 They wanted to be there 01:30 to await the second coming of Christ. 01:34 And after being there, I can see what stirred them. 01:36 In fact, there's often a comment made that, 01:39 there's sort of Jerusalem fever that can overtake people 01:42 and goodness, those the crusaders 01:44 in the medieval period bought into it. 01:47 But people go a little strange in this holy treatment, 01:51 not holy, but you know, the sense of a holy precinct. 01:55 But that was then, 01:56 now we're at another analog to that 01:59 where many Christians in the United States, 02:02 the so-called Christian Right are very enamored 02:04 with what happens in Israel. 02:07 They see it as inextricably tied up with final events. 02:10 And unfortunately, they don't always 02:14 have a deep affinity for Jews. 02:18 It's for the land, right? 02:21 But what can you and I make of that? 02:23 Because like it or not, some events and pronouncement, 02:28 and actions are sort of drawing Israel and the US 02:31 close together and you can't, you cannot ignore it. 02:35 Yes, for the last few decades, support for Israel 02:39 has been pretty much mandatory by the American government. 02:44 And that's... 02:46 It's kind of ironic, though, because if you look 02:48 at the history of the Israeli state, 02:53 originally, it was founded by secular Jews, 02:57 and it was opposed. 02:59 Well, more than secular, socialists. 03:01 Right. It's a socialist state. 03:03 They were... 03:04 The religious Jews were very much opposed 03:07 to any state that happened before the Messiah came. 03:12 And now the religious Jews have pretty much 03:15 taken over the state and it's their state. 03:18 And it's kind of ironic to me, considering the history, 03:22 that, that's the way it's worked out. 03:24 But in America, we are very... 03:28 We support Israel 03:30 and that's not questioned by anybody, 03:34 because primarily of the Christian Right 03:40 eschatology. 03:42 They believe that the final events 03:45 will center on Israel, 03:46 that all the Jews will be converted, 03:48 and there'll be a big war and... 03:51 And I do believe that the Jewish society 03:55 here and in Israel find that vaguely offensive 03:58 the idea that the religious right see them as a target. 04:03 Well, I think it more... 04:04 That they have to be changed into something else. 04:05 More than vaguely offensive. 04:07 Yes. 04:09 But they also are pragmatists, and they know 04:12 how to use that to their own advantage. 04:14 They've gotten a lot of political advantage 04:16 out of that. 04:17 But at the same time, I'll give some credit. 04:19 I think the Christians and activists in the US 04:23 as well as most of the Western world 04:26 has a deep seated affinity for Israel, 04:28 because they remember the Holocaust, 04:31 and the great injustice 04:32 to a whole people there under the Nazis. 04:35 So there's a, you know, a softness toward Israel, 04:39 and unfortunately, 04:40 I think at a little dispensation, 04:43 allowing them a few missteps. 04:45 We don't critique them very much. 04:47 Right. 04:48 And certainly that plays into it and our guilt 04:51 for how we didn't help the Jews in World War II. 04:54 I think it's a big factor, which is a really despicable 04:58 chapter of American history. 05:00 I don't know. 05:02 Do you think people... 05:03 Who feels the guilt? 05:05 Well, I think it's an institutional guilt. 05:07 It's not necessarily, maybe a personal, 05:09 kind of the same way that Germans still feel 05:12 some measure of guilt for the Holocaust. 05:14 I mean, there is... 05:15 Oh, yes, the Germans are doing the Japanese... 05:18 I talked to some Japanese, some of them, 05:19 they'll clam up, they won't... 05:20 I had a classmate in at Andrews, Japanese. 05:26 And I would often try to talk about World War II to him, 05:29 you know, some of the things, bad things that went on. 05:31 All I would get, "We're so sorry, so sorry." 05:34 It was shameful. And I... 05:36 Yes, the Germans have gotten to that point. 05:38 I don't think in Australia, or England, Canada, the US, 05:42 I don't think there's a sense of guilt 05:44 because the average person doesn't know what happened. 05:46 If you know the history, 05:48 there was a great hardheartedness. 05:51 The US refused entry, entry to many Jews in the build up 05:56 to World War II, knowing full well, 05:58 they had a standard policy. 06:00 Roosevelt and Churchill had a calculated policy 06:07 to keep the Jews bottled up in Germany, 06:09 so Germany would choke on the problem. 06:12 It was very hardhearted. 06:14 And then the US infamously collected German citizenry 06:19 from Latin America, thinking they might be spars, 06:22 work them over and when they were done, 06:24 sent them on a ship to Germany, where they nearly all perished 06:28 in the detention camps, because most of them were Jews, 06:31 not Nazis by any stretch of the imagination. 06:35 So there is reason to have guilt, but I don't... 06:39 I've never picked up the American society 06:42 has any sense of lost opportunity 06:46 or something they could 06:48 have done differently with the Jews. 06:49 Well, I think... 06:50 I think there's an institutionalized 06:52 sense of that, and that plays into our support of Israel. 06:55 But, in modern times, certainly the Christian rights' 06:58 influences are little more influential. 06:59 Absolutely, they're writing 07:03 their prophetic fulfillment into the State of Israel. 07:06 And, you know, I guess we'll have to wait and see 07:08 exactly how it plays out, but it's not that simple. 07:11 This is a secular state. 07:14 It involves people who are descendants 07:16 of the Old Testament people. 07:17 And, of course, their worst enemies 07:19 try to question even that, 07:20 but I think that's barking up the wrong tree. 07:24 But it's certainly disruptive to American foreign policy 07:28 to reflexly support any country, 07:31 to the detriment of other interests. 07:33 And I think it's hampering US's role in the Middle East. 07:38 They're not seen as anything close 07:40 to an even, that they've broken. 07:41 Well, I think it's a more favored relationship 07:45 than our other allies because... 07:48 We have many other allies, 07:51 but we feel free to criticize any of our other allies. 07:55 Somehow criticizing Israel 07:58 is tantamount to racism or something, I mean. 08:03 Well, and again, I play the devil's advocate 08:05 or the alternate view. 08:07 The stakes are very high with Israel, 08:08 because there's surrounding group, 08:11 less now than before, 08:12 but who are clearly dedicated to eradicating them 08:15 from the face of the earth. 08:16 So it wasn't just they'd be at some disadvantage, 08:18 they might cease to exist 08:20 if we encourage their opposition. 08:21 So I think that's at least encouraged the attitude 08:25 we have now. 08:26 Well, certainly that's true. 08:28 And I am sympathetic to Israel's plight 08:31 in that sense. 08:32 And I think, you know, there, it is a difficult, 08:35 very difficult situation. 08:37 But to uncritically accept everything an ally does... 08:40 Well, we shouldn't do that, no. 08:42 And not encourage them to engage in behaviors 08:45 that are more human rights friendly. 08:50 That it's... 08:52 I mean, of course, you know, we don't... 08:56 We can't say that our foreign policy is moral 08:58 in any real sense. 08:59 But at least we should try as much as possible 09:03 to encourage moral behavior in our allies. 09:07 I remember when I was in Israel, 09:10 one day we went into the Palestinian authority area, 09:17 through the checkpoint, 09:19 and it was not far from Bethlehem. 09:22 And they are in the shadow of the security wall, 09:24 which is quite impressive when you see it, 09:26 although it may be what we'll eventually see 09:29 on the southern border here, I don't know. 09:31 But it's a big, high concrete wall, 09:33 I'd say about 16-17 foot high with pillboxes. 09:38 And you see the young Israeli soldiers with the guns 09:41 staring out, was very formidable. 09:43 So almost this close 09:45 as we are to the back wall of the studio. 09:49 I stood there 09:50 with a Palestinian Christian businessman. 09:55 And he had a great burden to talk to me. 09:58 I was just wandering around looking at the wall, 10:00 and then he came out of a business 10:02 and he called out to me, "I need to talk to you, 10:03 I need to talk to you." 10:05 And he was very happy when he found out 10:07 I was originally from Australia, 10:08 and he had some friends that went there. 10:10 But he said, "You know, 10:11 I am the person that's losing here." 10:13 He said, "The Muslims in the Palestinian areas 10:18 are opposed to Israel. 10:21 The Israelis marginalize us living in this area." 10:24 But he says, "Here in this area, 10:25 the Muslims, I'm treated as a stranger, 10:28 myself, I'm threatened." 10:31 And this is a story that I've been meaning 10:33 to have in Liberty for a long time, 10:35 the plight of Palestinian Christians 10:37 both in Israel 10:39 and in the Palestinian territories, 10:42 that it's not always a, you know, 10:46 it's not a persecution where their life and limb 10:48 is everyday threatened, 10:49 but it's a very tenuous existence. 10:52 And they don't fit into anyone's concern. 10:54 The US doesn't think about them much, 10:56 Israel doesn't think about them, 10:57 the Muslims' states and societies, 11:01 they're an irritant. 11:03 Yeah, being a Christian in the Middle East is different. 11:06 Not really... 11:07 Well, you know, we've had comments in Liberty Magazine. 11:10 Right now, I think, correctly, it's not fake news 11:14 to characterize what's happening 11:15 in the middle age, Middle East, rather, 11:17 as the final expulsion of Christians 11:19 from the Middle East. 11:21 It happened once before, in the early days 11:23 of Christian persecution, people forget. 11:26 You know, very well, from studying history. 11:28 Egypt was majority Christian at one point. 11:32 Palestine, that's where Christianity began. 11:35 You really got to shake in and think about that reality, 11:38 because we're so used to it being majority Muslim, 11:40 very few Christians, the dispersed communities 11:46 and the Christians that are there, 11:47 many of them belong to ancient branches of Christianity, 11:51 so we don't sort of see a cultural connection to them. 11:55 But once that was, that was Christianity. 11:58 And I remember with the Arab Spring 12:00 when it began, the very first opening salvo 12:03 of it was the bombing of a couple 12:05 of Christian churches in Alexandria, 12:07 or Egypt, where there's, 12:09 I think about 15-20% Coptic Christians in Egypt. 12:15 But they're at threat and they're moving away. 12:18 So very, very difficult situation. 12:21 But Israel is in the center of the storm, isn't it? 12:23 And it's interesting to me, 12:25 and maybe we can comment a bit on it. 12:29 What's going on in the US, 12:32 where with the sensitive relationship, 12:35 and this present administration have taken 12:37 two very big steps, I think, to stir the pot, 12:41 not to calm things, by recognizing Jerusalem 12:44 as the capital which seems reasonable 12:46 on a logical level. 12:47 But when you know the history was a UN mandate divided city. 12:51 It was taken by conquest, never accepted. 12:55 And then the second thing apart from the, 13:00 the status of Jerusalem was accepting 13:02 the annexation of the Golan Heights, 13:05 which was taken in a war from Syria. 13:09 Yes. 13:10 These are provocations which, 13:13 you know, the US has a right to do it, 13:14 but they seem sort of nothing much 13:18 to be gained from it 13:19 and you just stir people remind them 13:21 of their past events. 13:23 And my understanding is that Trump's advisors 13:27 very much adamantly counted him against... 13:30 We would hope so. 13:32 Declaring Jerusalem to be the capital. 13:35 And it's pretty much symbolic anyway, 13:38 because it's going to be a long time 13:40 before they'll be able to build an embassy there, if ever. 13:43 But it's, so it's not going to happen for years, at least. 13:48 But the policy probably will be overturned by then. 13:51 But it's the symbolic value of it is, is disturbing. 13:56 I mean, when you're trying to create peace in a region 14:01 that is so fraught with turmoil, 14:04 why would you do something that is so 14:06 deliberately provocative? 14:07 I know, and so loaded with not just political, 14:10 but religious ramifications. 14:13 Well, let's take a short break here. 14:15 We'll be back. 14:16 Stay with us. 14:17 And we'll talk a little bit about that hotspot area 14:19 in the Middle East, 14:21 but in the hottest of the hot, Israel. |
Revised 2019-06-14