My good friend, Dr. Rob Dalrymple recently produced a fascinating interview with another friend, pastor Alex Awad.
Mr. Awad is a Palestinian Christian who spent much of his adult life pastoring a church in east Jerusalem.
He begins by telling the story of his father’s murder by an Israeli soldier in the early days of Israel’s war for Palestine. His widowed mother was an amazing, godly woman who raised her seven children to love Jesus. And the love of Jesus radiates from Alex.
Mr. Awad is also one of the founders of Bethlehem Bible College in the city of Bethlehem which is located in the West Bank. I have visited there many times.
Mr. Awad’s commitment to, and public promotion of, non-violence as the way of Jesus is another piece of evidence undermining the stream of Israeli propaganda insisting that all Palestinians hate Israel and only want to destroy it with violence.
Baloney.
Let me also promote Rob Dalrymple’s online ministry. After watching his interview with Alex Awad, please check out Rob’s website at Determinetruth Ministries and subscribe to his podcasts. He does excellent work and you may want to support his ministry.
Now enjoy a wonderful interview with a wonderful man:
Several weeks ago I posted a breaking news story from +972 magazine discussing an Israeli military program blasphemously called “The Gospel” that used artificial intelligence (AI) to bomb civilian targets in Gaza.
Now +972 has broken a second story exposing two additional AI programs also being used for bombing Gaza. They are called Lavender and Where’s Daddy?
As the article describes, Israel’s favorite tactic is to bomb suspected — note SUSPECTED (Israel’s military leaders admit that the programs have as much as a 10% error rate) — Hamas fighters in their homes at night, slaughtering entire extended families in their sleep.
Apparently, the program title Where’s Daddy? is meant to be a cruel joke, as in: We know where daddy is sleeping, and we are going to bomb his entire family to smithereens. Ha ha ha.
Yes, Israel has intentionally been slaughtering civiliansfrom the beginning of its war against Palestinians in Gaza.
It is no accident that the death toll is now more than 33,600 people, 70% of whom are women and children. Over 13,000 of them under the age of eighteen.
Compare that last figure to the approximately 500 children killed during the past two years of fighting in Ukraine. Here is more tragic evidence of the gruesome anti-Arab racism animating the Jewish-supremacist state of Israel.
Below is a brief excerpt of the +972 article followed by a video clip of an excellent editorial by Krystal Ball from Breaking Point news:
During the early stages of the war, the army gave sweeping approval for officers to adopt Lavender’s kill lists, with no requirement to thoroughly check why the machine made those choices or to examine the raw intelligence data on which they were based. One source stated that human personnel often served only as a “rubber stamp” for the machine’s decisions, adding that, normally, they would personally devote only about “20 seconds” to each target before authorizing a bombing — just to make sure the Lavender-marked target is male. This was despite knowing that the system makes what are regarded as “errors” in approximately 10 percent of cases, and is known to occasionally mark individuals who have merely a loose connection to militant groups, or no connection at all.
Moreover, the Israeli army systematically attacked the targeted individuals while they were in their homes — usually at night while their whole families were present — rather than during the course of military activity. According to the sources, this was because, from what they regarded as an intelligence standpoint, it was easier to locate the individuals in their private houses. Additional automated systems, including one called “Where’s Daddy?” also revealed here for the first time, were used specifically to track the targeted individuals and carry out bombings when they had entered their family’s residences.
You know the old maxim, “If you want something done right, then do it yourself.”
Or, if you can’t do it all by yourself, then connect with a powerhouse group of dear friends who all share a common vision and do it together. It’s a lot more fun that way to work with highly competent friends who all want to work for the same goals.
This is the origin story of a new group that I am a part of that is creating a new podcast dealing with the violent, tragic — now genocidal — relationship existing between Israel and the Palestinian people.
The group’s name is “Christian Forum on Israel-Palestine.” Posted below is our first video were we introduce ourselves and briefly explain what we hope to accomplish in the coming months.
We are currently making arrangements to interview an important Israeli historian and activist (I will keep his name a secret for now) who will offer an insightful, vital introduction to the history of Israeli-Palestinian violence.
If you want to know who he is, then be sure to subscribe and come back!
I urge you to visit our YouTube page and press the subscribe button. You will not want to miss any upcoming conversations.
Here is the channel’s official description:
This channel promotes understanding about Israel-Palestine, by hosting conversations with scholars, activists, and people directly affected by events in the Holy Land. Each episode elevates an important voice, explores contrasting perspectives, and shares insights that we think are urgently needed. We want to challenge stereotypes, dismantle barriers, and humanize everyone involved. Rather than defend a single narrative, we encourage critical thinking and informed engagement with the complexities of Israel-Palestine. Join us as we imagine for the Muslims, Jews, and Christians of Israel-Palestine a future based on justice, equality, anddignity.
Both of these guys are friends of mine. I am a member of the discussion group they both mention. Darrell Bock is a Zionist and supporter of Israel. Rob Dalrymple is a non-Zionist and critic of Israel.
Here is a great example of how two brothers in Christ can disagree amicably while holding very different positions on an important subject — Israel’s assault against Gaza.
It makes for a very interesting conversation.
After the video, I make a few comments below to further nuance the conversation in ways that I thought could be helpful.
I notice that Darrell prioritizes Israel’s ostensible, divine right to the land over and above anyone else’s claims to the land as their home. I cannot agree with this decision for a number of reasons, both theological and practical.
Darrell wants to date the beginning of the Gaza trajedy to October 7. This is another example of what I call “APR time,” that is “After Palestinians Respond.” October 7 did not occur in a vacuum. The members of Hamas were responding to a very long history of Israeli antagonism. It was a response — yes, a terrorist response, but a response nonetheless — to Israel’s prior oppression.
The weight of the current problems cannot all be layed at the feet of Hamas. Yes, Hamas is bad news. But these hostilities existed long before Hamas came into the picture. They are now a major factor, but cannot be seen as the principle cause of today’s conflict in Gaza.
I am not a scholar of Hamas, but I will note that the Hamas charter (revised in 2017) does NOT call for the elimination of Israel, as so many seem to believe. You can read the full charter here. I agree with much of it, although I definitely do not endorse Hamas Islamicism. However, for the sake of fairness and honesty, I must point out articles 16 and 20 of the charter: 16. Hamas affirms that its conflict is with the Zionist project not with the Jews because of their religion. Hamas does not wage a struggle against the Jews because they are Jewish but wages a struggle against the Zionists who occupy Palestine. Yet, it is the Zionists who constantly identify Judaism and the Jews with their own colonial project and illegal entity. 20. . . . Hamas considers the establishment of a fully sovereign and independent Palestinian state, with Jerusalem as its capital along the lines of the 4th of June 1967 . . .
Notice two important points: Hamas condemns Zionism (as do I) NOT Judaism. It is an anti-Zionist movement; it is not promoting antisemitism, per se.
Secondly, the charter calls for a Palestinian state with its western border along the Green Line, the 1967 armistice border separating Israel proper from the West Bank. In other words, they ARE NOT calling for the eradication of all Jews from Palestine. They are calling for the eradication of Zionism from Palestine. As I do. I read these two sections to say that Hamas is calling for the coexistence of a Palestinian state and a non-Zionist Israel side by side. In other words, they are willing to accept a two-state solution.
“From the border to the sea, Palestine will be free” is not an antisemitic slogan. It is an anti-Zionist slogan calling for equal rights, justice and liberty for ALL the people of Palestine, Jews and Palestinians alike. The slogan has nothing to do with ethnic cleansing.
Whether or not you choose to believe Hamas and trust the words of their 2017 charter is a separate question from whether or not we represent them honestly and accurately in our debates. The 2017 charter explicitly contradicts some of the more common, extremist claims made about Hamas by the representatives of Israel and the defenders of political Zionism.
Let’s watch a video together, then check out my analysis afterwards:
Yes, Frantz Fanon was an anti-colonialist writer, activist and fighter who worked to liberate both Martinique and Algeria from French colonialism.
His two famous anti-colonial books (which I have read), The Wretched of the Earth and Black Skin, White Masks, advocated violence as the necessary means for overthrowing western, colonial rule throughout Asia and Africa.
On the basis of this association, the Christianity Today (CT) video implicitly assumes that, like Fanon, all anti-colonial movements must advocate and engage in violence, by definition. Since this particular video is set within the broader context of CT’s current pro-Israel, pro-Zionist video series, I can only assume that this critique of “violent” anti-colonial ideology is somehow related to Israel’s current war in Gaza.
The most common framing of anti-Zionist criticism of Israel nowadays is to describe the country as a settler-colonial state in need of an anti-colonial deconstruction. Hamas is sometimes described as an anti-colonial, revolutionary movement.
Implicitly, then, CT is portraying the Hamas attack against southern Israel on October 7, 2023 as a contemporary example of Frantz Fanon’s violent, anti-colonial philosophy working itself out before our very eyes.
Again, by saying that “anti-colonialism is not value neutral” we are meant to conclude that all anti-colonialism embraces Fanon’s perspective on the use of violence. Hamas becomes the implicit proof of this implied conclusion.
So, what’s wrong with all of this?
First, notice how much of the heavy lifting in this CT presentation is being done through implication. Very little is said explicitly. The supposed lessons to be learned about the inherent violence of anti-colonial movements today – which includes the majority of folks, like me, who are criticizing Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank – are a subtle subtext resonating between the lines of what CT is saying out loud.
This method of communication is a common feature of political propaganda: don’t openly accuse your opponents of being horrible monsters, but sprinkle enough rhetorical breadcrumbs to lead your listeners to the intended, malicious conclusion. It will become embedded in their consciousness as an “obvious” conclusion they arrived at under their own steam.
The second, more important problem with the CT video is its implication that Frantz Fanon’s embrace of violence is representative of all anti-colonial movements. But, of course, this is not true. One of the largest and most successful anti-colonial movements of the twentieth century was led by Mahatma Gandhi, a staunch advocate of non-violent resistance. Gandhi led the campaign to shed India of British colonial control and succeeded through using a variety of non-violent actions.
It is simply alse to suggest, as this video does, that all anti-colonial activists embrace violence as a legitimate means of resistance.
It is also worth noting that this argument is not only historically false, it is also illogical. The CT video draws out its false implication by means of something called a false syllogism. Here is an example of a false syllogism:
Socrates is a philosopher
Socrates is Greek
Therefore, all Greeks are philosophers.
The conclusion (C) is obviously false even though the two premises (A, B) are both true. That is the essence of an illogical false syllogism.
The illogical argument embedded in the CT video goes something like this:
Frantz Fanon was an anti-colonialist
Frant Fanon was an advocate for violence
Therefore, all anti-colonialists advocate violence
The scurrilous accusation implicitly embedded in the CT video – that I, for instance, encourage violence and warfare because I embrace an anti-colonial philosophy – is a politically conservative, pro-Zionist attempt to demonize my criticisms of the way Israel is prosecuting its war against the people of Gaza.
It is also ignorant of, or deliberately ignoring, the many Palestinian activists who follow the way of Gandhi by embracing non-violence in their anticolonial, anti-Zionist activities. Some of these brave men and women are my friends, and I have seen how frequently they are physically assaulted by violent Israeli soldiers while maintaining their peaceful behavior.
In this way, the video perpetuates American misinformation regarding the Palestinian people and the oppressive circumstances under which they live in Gaza and the West Bank.
In any case, according to international law, the Palestinian people have every legal right to employ violent measures in their attempts to rid themselves of Israeli colonial rule. Personally, I am a passivist, and my sympathies lie with my non-violent friends who are pursuing peaceful means of resistance.
And, yes, Hamas committed war crimes on October 7th for which the guilty should be prosecuted. But as a matter of law: Palestinians have a right to use force to free themselves, despite the video’s protestations. Here is another matter where American’s display their ignorance of Israel’s history and the current realities on the ground.
Israel is the blatant aggressor in the current Gaza conflict.
No amount of scare-mongering, illogical argument, false syllogism, or historical falsehoods can change that fact. Don’t allow yourself to be fooled by CT’s lazy, malicious tomfoolery.
In the following clip from Breaking Point News, Krystal Ball offers a good summary of recent developments in the assault against Gaza.
Be sure to watch for the recent Israeli national poll showing that 83% of the Jewish people in Israel favor the “voluntary immigration” all the people from Gaza.
I am not sure how anyone can consider such an action to be voluntary, given the fact that Israel has flattened their homes, turned the region into a vast parking lot, and destroyed any semblance of Palestinian civilization in the area.
Certainly every eventual “emigrant” will have a rifle to his or her back motivating their “voluntarism.”
But, then, we should never underestimate the delusional power of Zionism to turn reality on its head, causing its adherents to imagine that black is white and up is down.
Also wait for the statistics demonstrating that Israel’s bombardment of Gaza has been the most destructive war of the 21st century, by far:
Regular subscribers will recognize Jonathan Kuttab. I have recently posted several interviews featuring my friend.
Here is another where Mr. Kuttab, who was educated partly in America, discusses the errors of evangelical, Christian Zionism and its contributions to the violence in Gaza and the West Bank.
Rev. Dr. Munther Isaac is a professor at Bethlehem Bible College as well as the pastor at the bethlehem Lutheran Christmas church. Terry and I often worship at this church whenever we are in the West Bank.
Pastor Isaac understands that now is the time for a prophetic word addressed to the western church. He declares hard truths powerfully.
He is a Christian leader speaking to his fellow believers in the western Church — a Church that largely approves of Israel’s current campaign of destruction against his people. How can this be?
President Biden recently condemned Israel’s “indiscriminate bombing” of Gaza. Israel’s defenders reply by insisting that Israel’s bombs are carefully calculated to hit only designated targets; there is nothing indiscriminate about them.
A recent investigation by journalists at +972 magazine now explains how to resolve this seeming contradition. The massive bombing campaign is not indiscriminate. It only looks that way because of a new Israeli computer program linked to artifcial intelligence.
The new AI program can isolate a vast array of possible targets within seconds and send misssles to each of them. As a result, the massive levels of damage caused by Israel’s bombing campaign is not only deliberate but well calculated.
It is precision bombing on a massive scale.
The Israeli military has so much confidence in this new AI killing program that it has been labeled “The Gospel” — a most repulsive, ghoulism blasphemy, in my view.
The Israeli army’s expanded authorization for bombing non-military targets, the loosening of constraints regarding expected civilian casualties, and the use of an artificial intelligence system to generate more potential targets than ever before, appear to have contributed to the destructive nature of the initial stages of Israel’s current war on the Gaza Strip, an investigation by +972 Magazine and Local Call reveals. These factors, as described by current and former Israeli intelligence members, have likely played a role in producing what has been one of the deadliest military campaigns against Palestinians since the Nakba of 1948.
. . . has seen the army significantly expand its bombing of targets that are not distinctly military in nature. These include private residences as well as public buildings, infrastructure, and high-rise blocks, which sources say the army defines as “power targets” (“matarot otzem”).
The bombing of power targets, according to intelligence sources who had first-hand experience with its application in Gaza in the past, is mainly intended to harm Palestinian civil society: to “create a shock” that, among other things, will reverberate powerfully and “lead civilians to put pressure on Hamas,” as one source put it.
Several of the sources, who spoke to +972 and Local Call on the condition of anonymity, confirmed that the Israeli army has files on the vast majority of potential targets in Gaza — including homes — which stipulate the number of civilians who are likely to be killed in an attack on a particular target. This number is calculated and known in advance to the army’s intelligence units, who also know shortly before carrying out an attack roughly how many civilians are certain to be killed.
In one case discussed by the sources, the Israeli military command knowingly approved the killing of hundreds of Palestinian civilians in an attempt to assassinate a single top Hamas military commander. “The numbers increased from dozens of civilian deaths [permitted] as collateral damage as part of an attack on a senior official in previous operations, to hundreds of civilian deaths as collateral damage,” said one source.
“Nothing happens by accident,” said another source. “When a 3-year-old girl is killed in a home in Gaza, it’s because someone in the army decided it wasn’t a big deal for her to be killed — that it was a price worth paying in order to hit [another] target. We are not Hamas. These are not random rockets. Everything is intentional. We know exactly how much collateral damage there is in every home.”
Give special attention to Israel’s bizarre rationale for excusing this murderous behavior. Israel is “not like Hamas,” we are told, because Israel deliberately targets civilians; knows exactly how many civilians will end up as ‘collateral damage’; and so is killing massive numbers of innocent men, women and children knowingly, intentionally.
And this makes Israel superior to Hamas?
Really?
Here we have a good illustration of how the arrogance of privileged power-brokers can scorch the conscience, twist our sense of right and wrong, and rationalize even the most ludicrously cruel, murderous calculations.
That’s the common question we usually ask ourselves when watching a movie like “Schindler’s List,” the academy award winning film about one man’s efforts to rescue Jews from Hilter’s gas chambers.
Schindler risked his life to save others. And he was not the only one.
Others such as the Dutch woman, Corrie Ten Boom, broke the law by hiding Jews inside their homes, risking their freedom while trying to rescue people like Anne Frank, who hid in her neighbor’s attic.
Even though the majority of German church pastors supported the Nazi regime, there was a small minority of faithful ministers of the gospel who eventually lost their freedom because they would not remain silent in the face of Nazi criminality.
Books like Defying Hitler tell the stories of the many ways in which ordinary people in Nazi Germany said No, refusing to march with the majority who refused to speak up or to act out against the wanton atrocities unfolding around them.
Which, again, raises the question, What would I have done?
Would I have remained inactive and silent? Or would I have spoken up, protested, or used whatever means I had at my disposal to work against the genocide and save whomever I could?
Now we all know the answers to those questions. We don’t have to wait any longer.
We are living in a unique moment of history. For a real genocide, a horrendous program of ethnic cleansing is now occuring before our eyes.
Though the American/Western mainstream media gives it all scant attention, anyone with a wider bandwidth of human interest can watch the scandalous, ugly images of daily attrocities as they unfold in real time.
Al Jazeera, Middle East Eye, The Electronic Intifada, The Gray Zone, and the Katie Halper Show (among others) are thankfully offering the news coverage that corporate America does not want us to see.
And that news is shockingly repetitious. For what Israel is now doing in Gaza and the West Bank “is a textbook case of genocide.” Those are not my words but the words of Craig Mokhiber, formerly the Director of the New York Office of the United Nations High Commissioner of Human Rights.
Mr. Mokhiber is the former director because he recently resigned from his position at the United Nations over its efforts to censor his reports on Israel’s attrocities in Gaza.
As a result, Mokhiber ranks among the heroes with Mr. Schindler and Corrie Ten Boom for doing what he could to speak out, protest, and even to hinder the genocide unfolding before our eyes.
He has shown us how he answers the question, “What would I have done?”
It is all too easy to cast ourselves as heroes in our own imaginations, especially when we have no contemporary circumstances to offer us an immediate heroic option.
So, I always imagine myself the hero. But today I do not need to imagine anything. I can face the evidence squarely by looking at my actions today.
What am I doing today to protest, to act, to work against the textbook case of genocide now being written in the pages of modern history with Palestinian blood?
This is the answer for both you and me.
If I am doing nothing to defend Palestinian life today, then that’s what I would have done to defend Anne Frank — nothing.
If I am doing nothing to protest the genocide now occurring in Gaza, then I would have remained silent as I inhaled the stench of Auschwitz.
We can all go to bed tonight knowing that we have answered the perpetually troubling moral question: What would I have done?
