Dru Johnson (00:00)
In this episode, we talk one last time to Drs Bruce Fisk and Daniel Bannoura about their response to the response to their first episode that was with Robert Nicholson. And so we’re going to give them the last word. So you weren’t just hearing their view and then somebody else’s view, but how they kind of interact with those views as well. If you like what we do here at the Biblical Mind, you can like and subscribe. You can give us a
Really good rating, hopefully. You can also give to the cause at the biblicalmind.org slash give. those can be recurring gifts, which will get you a copy of our book of essays by scholars associated with the center, or you can give a one time gift. All are appreciated. Now to our episode.
Bruce N. Fisk (00:43)
thanks, Dru I think what was helpful to me is the way Robert laid out essentially what is the Israeli narrative, the Zionist narrative, and frankly Robert’s own personal perspective. And I I wondered if you’d allow me to kind of recap that,
Dru Johnson (01:02)
Mm-hmm.
Bruce N. Fisk (01:03)
because that I think that’s gonna highlight some of the fundamental differences between us. does that how does that sound?
Dru Johnson (01:10)
Yeah, sounds go for
it.
Bruce N. Fisk (01:12)
Okay, so I I took some notes. So here here we go. So the story that Robert tells is first of all that Zionism, as he defines it, is simply the movement for Jewish national self-determination in the Jewish homeland. Israel is not supremacist, it’s not an ethnostate. and and he wants to argue that Jewish privilege in Israel is no different than, let’s say, Irish privilege in Ireland. there’s no policy.
To actively oppress or marginalize non-Jews. Israelis en masse want to live in peace and security alongside Palestinians. And any any warfare, any battle is purely defensive. By contrast, according to this narrative, Palestinians are are collectively resolved to eliminate Jewish presence between the river and the sea. And they’re sure they’re frustrated with Israel, but they’re especially frustrated with their own corrupt leadership.
And what they really need is a leader who can inspire them, you know, to stop resisting, to put down their weapons, to embrace coexistence. a couple other elements of the story. the West Bank territory is not occupied, it’s disputed. and in the West Bank, sure, Israeli militants are on the rise. they’re not called terrorists, but the vast majority of Israeli Jews would would love to see.
you know, a Palestinian leader emerge and and this surge in in militancy is is a just a minority on the side. and then just finally regarding Gaza, which I think should be front and center, Robert is, and this is a quote, completely in principle in support of what Israel has done since October seventh. he he said he’s not talking about the details.
but he says, I don’t know how Israel could have had another response. And then turning to Christians at the end, God is up to something in the Holy Land. And so Christians need to kind of get out of the way, display humility and empathy to both sides, and beware of you know being militarized or weaponized in in the in the discourse. So that’s my summary. I don’t know, Drew, whether you think I got most of it right or unfairly.
There’s a lot of holes in that. but that lays out what you know, frankly, is not just the the Robert Nicholson narrative, it’s the it’s mostly the Israeli official narrative.
Daniel Bannoura (03:48)
Great. Yep.
Bruce N. Fisk (03:50)
which he I I c I I struggle to see any any real daylight between the two, except when he turns to talk about, you know, the Christian response. so so help me if if if there’s something I’m missing.
I he is he’s even a bit of a closet supporter of Netanyahu at various points. Netanyahu’s not a warmonger. He’s been soft on Hamas. he’s tolerated them for too long. he says it’s probably time for him to go. Quote, thank you for your service, unquote. so anyway, I’ll stop there and just see if I’ve missed something, Drew, as you think about it, or or maybe Danielle.
Dru Johnson (04:32)
in the in this conversation, the because this this did come up in my mind. I don’t typically think a lot about the interviews I go into. I just kind of like go with it what I know and and it’s a conversation. But this one I have thought a lot about, the the first and and that that interview. I so I question the move, and again, this is a genuine, like I’m not sure what I think about this. I th for me, I think
like the Israeli narrative versus Robert’s narrative or versus, you know. I’m not sure if that’s a helpful distinction to make, because I feel like that will just be reversed on everybody. Well, that’s just, you know, the Bethlehem Bible College narrative. That’s just the
Daniel Bannoura (05:15)
Yeah.
Dru Johnson (05:16)
Gaza narrative, right? So I I know what you mean by it. I also and I think and again right now I’m I’m hoping we can do a lot of delineation in this discussion, because I think a lot of people don’t know how to tear these things apart and I certainly don’t always
w I feel like Robert comes at a very like historical militaristic, this is how states work, right? Like this is this is how states work, this is the problem in this state. which he does think has, you know, he does think the state, because it is a Jewish state, has a special relationship to God. and so there’s this kind of just like, yeah, you know, dems the brakes, as we would say in English, right?
And and there’s part of me that’s like, yeah, this is kind of how it goes in the region. but I feel like you guys are actually trying to argue something radically different from okay, so if this is this is how it just goes in the region, this is how the people speak in the language of violence, et cetera. but that’s not what you guys are interested in at all. So I wonder.
if you could help me refocus on what you guys are actually interested in, apart from that, okay, this is how history has has unfurled and this is the way people generally act when they’re in these situations. And if you think that’s fair for me to ask you that too.
Daniel Bannoura (06:34)
I would jump in here quickly because I also want to respond to Robert and his own discourse that he’s active in and cannot to follow up what Bruce said. But yeah, when it comes to the history, he gave us a very Israeli narrative, one-sided. Really kind of want to be cautious here, but it’s a very kind of orientalist discourse of these Jews who come to Jewish homeland returning.
And then the Arabs who are like confused, they saw immigrants with their technology and wealth and they were kind of very hesitant and a bit xenophobic perhaps, but kind of confused and frustrated. yeah.
Dru Johnson (07:13)
can I stop you real quick? Orientalist,
most people are not gonna know what you mean by
that. So just a sentence.
Daniel Bannoura (07:17)
Right, Yeah, I know it’s a long legacy of
Western, mostly dismissive and flat narratives about the East, about the Orient. Comes out of enlightenment. We are the enlightened. We are the wealthy. We are the powerful. We are the Christians versus the Orient that is mostly backwards, uneducated, Bedouins in deserts with their own kind of sexual fantasies and barbaric ways of thinking.
been very prominent in literature and in the arts and politics, really furnished colonialism and missionary activities in Africa and the Middle East. We’re gonna bring the light of Christ to those savages.
Dru Johnson (08:01)
Mm-hmm.
Daniel Bannoura (08:01)
And it goes through, you can see it everywhere in culture and you still see it today with language like when language was against immigrants, third world language about these guys
Dru Johnson (08:13)
Mm-hmm.
Daniel Bannoura (08:13)
were not as civilized as we are.
They’re not Christians. They don’t follow the Judeo-Christian heritage. So it’s this kind of, it’s a bit of a classist attitude that is very harmful, not only ideologically and like, because it’s not fair and it’s not objective and it’s not nuanced, but it also has real life impact on the lives of people. So a lot of that is, the…
Dru Johnson (08:34)
And that that language has
resurged a lot in the in even within the American discourse, like you’re seeing this on black communities, right? That they’re barbaric, et cetera. So okay, thank you for that that clarification.
Daniel Bannoura (08:44)
Right, yeah. So
there’s a lot there. So when he gives his narrative about the history, obviously he gave a very brief introduction to what Palestinians would have thought or what we think, myself and Bruce. But then he gives more detail about this really or the Jewish or the Zionist narrative. But it’s also devoid of context, devoid of the history of Palestinian nationalism of
the Arab wide revolt against the imperialism, the Ottoman imperialism, and then the British and Palestinian aspirations for liberation and for independence. And he reduced the Palestinians into these populations that were kind of fearful about these people who come with the technology and wealth. So it reduces people into just very confused populations with no culture, with no history, with no ambitions, with no national desires to rid themselves of decades of colonialism.
through the Ottomans, and then the British Empire that took over the Sykes-Picot, the splitting up of the Middle East against aspirations of Arab and Palestinian nationalism and so on. So that is kind of that Orientalist discourse. And I saw that throughout Robert’s analysis. And this is typical. see this a lot of especially 20th century Western scholarship on Palestine and Israel tends to be like that. And he kept conflating Israel and the Zionist project with Jews.
And it’s also very problematic. Jews have always been in Palestine, have always been part of the Middle Eastern fabric, whether in Palestine, in Egypt, in Iraq, but always he tends to conveniently, and it’s very, effective for the audience to make all the Arabs who are very frustrated and confused and skeptical of the Jews. not about the Jews, it’s about the projects, about what happens in the early 20th century. Conveniently, of course, Robert would skip over the Nakba, the catastrophe of 1948 and 47.
before even the state of Israel, the driving out of the Palestinians, the destruction of Christian villages in the north, like Kifr Bir’im and others and Eilaboon, and the whole erasure of the Palestinian identity. And it becomes these Arabs who are just not comfortable with Jews living among them. So it’s a very harmful, very distorted, very binary or…
just not fair, not objective. And he emphasized, yeah, I want to do history. History is important. But then he wouldn’t give us a very biased and very selective narrative of history. Of course, people, this is kind of what the Zionist mentality is going to be. Well, yeah, of course. yeah, Arabs are bad here. Of course. Why didn’t they? Were they so afraid of Jews?
He gives nuance to Zionism, which is nice. like, there’s no dispute that there are different disagreements among the early Zionists, but fundamentally it’s about what happened. It’s not about what, you know, certain early Jewish or Zionist thinkers thought like, you know, from the Cultural Zionist Project and others. Fundamentally, there was an ethnic cleansing, an erasure of the Palestinian people to push them out. 750,000 were forced out to establish a Jewish homeland.
That is the fact of history and that is what revisionist Israeli historians agree on. Transfer was always part of the project. And this is not the Ilan Pappé radical person. This is these mainline standard kind of Jewish Israeli historian narrative or understanding of what happened in 47 and 48 and 49. So there’s a lot to unpack here, but I think this is very clear to me. There’s a very clear agenda. There’s a clear bias.
that gives a lot of beauty and complexity to Israel while flattening and simplifying the Palestinian story.
Dru Johnson (12:28)
Okay, yeah, and it’s good to hear excuse me, somebody who can pick up those cues sensitively. because again, I hear them and I they kind some things wash over me, right? the the the term Zionist, and you know I brought it up with him as well. I and this is another thing that came up after listening to our interview.
I so I we did a we sponsored a a conference recently on politics in the Bible, with the American Bible Society, and we forbade our presenters from using the term Christian nationalism.
Because it’s used in such a wide variety of ways, it’s almost lost its meaning and people have loaded it with all kinds of individual terms. So we said, like, look, just describe what you’re talking about. Don’t talk about Christian nationalism. So to be clear, because this was a point I think I still left a little bit unclear on, when you say Zionist, you’re including all like so the Marxist kibbutz kibbutzniks, the Theodor Herzl, the modern Jewish supremist, as you call it.
it, the like that’s the term Zionist includes all of those, Christians who who support it, et cetera. and and I I would assume then that it’s because it’s not helpful to delineate all the differences for the purposes of what you’re talking about.
Daniel Bannoura (13:55)
Yeah, mean, so historically speaking to Robert’s point, yeah, there’s been a very robust debate among many of the early Zionists. You had the political Zionist of Herzl and Jabotinsky and Ben-Gurion. That is the one that won the day. That’s the one that established a Jewish state that necessitated the transfer and the expansion of the Palestinians. But of course, you have the cultural Zionism of like Ehad Ha’am, for example, and Esho Ginsburg, I think the name of this kind of, you
Palestine being a spiritual center, not a political power state. And you have also the kind of the binationalism of Martin Buber and Judah Magnus and so on that kind of saw this binational idea of a state. So that’s nice when you have these discussions in the 20s and the 30s. And I think Palestinians and Arabs were kind of aware, think naively kind of aware of Jewish kind of, you know, buying plots of land and living there. But eventually the Jabotinsky vision
of the Iron Curtain is what won the day. Eventually, the Jewish terrorist militias in the 40s moved towards expulsion of the Palestinians. people can look up 500 ethnically cleansed, erased villages in Palestine. So
Dru Johnson (15:10)
Yeah.
Daniel Bannoura (15:11)
yeah, we can have the historical debate of the 20s and the 30s of Zionism, but fundamentally Zionism is what Zionism looks like. That is what the Zionism that we Palestinians experienced from 1947.
until today of Jewish supremacy, of Jewish control over all of historic Palestine, now renaming it of Israel, and of a system of apartheid, of segregation based on ethnicity. If you’re a Jew, you have all the freedoms and the privileges. And if you’re a Palestinian, whether a Palestinian within Israel, certain laws that deny you basic
rights are given to Jewish Israelis or the Palestinians within East Jerusalem and the segregation there and the pushing out of the Palestinians, denying them permits to build their homes, taking over land or the West Bank in general, which is what happens to my family, taken over our land to build settlements, denial of basic rights of movement, denial of access to water and resources. And the vast majority of the West Bank is area C and area B that is controlled by a military.
foreign military over the lands and the homes and the villages of the Palestinians. So if we’re gonna deny all of that, yeah, Zionism is great. It’s Jewish nationhood. It’s beautiful. It’s great that Jews would migrate, come from Europe and have their sovereignty, but that only is legitimate and good if the Palestinians’ rights and freedoms are denied, because they just become those people that we can push to the side. They have no claims to nationhood or freedom or…
or sovereignty, they’re just people, inconvenient people who have to deal with, who obviously do not have good leadership, who are not strong enough and whatever the stereotypes that are used to bolster the Zionist narrative. So it’s a nice story to tell yourself, but if you give the Palestinians the same dignity, and if you consider international law, human rights, humanitarian law, UN resolutions,
None of that Zionist narrative of what Zionism is makes any sense because if you consider international law, we know that the occupation is illegal. We know the settlements are illegal. We know that Palestinians have a right to return to their homeland. But Robert and others like him want to ignore all of the international law, UN resolutions, and make this kind of naive narrative of Zionism that precludes Palestinians from their freedom and from their liberty.
Dru Johnson (17:45)
Yeah, sorry for cutting you off there.
Daniel Bannoura (17:46)
You good?
Dru Johnson (17:48)
s just tactically speaking, this is my how my mind works. so Americans I don’t think are gonna be persuaded at all on the issue of international law. because America
Daniel Bannoura (17:58)
Sure.
Dru Johnson (17:59)
doesn’t participate in international law because of you know, we don’t want our soldiers to be in international courts for doing their job in some cases, right?
Daniel Bannoura (18:09)
Makes sense.
Dru Johnson (18:11)
or at least that’s how it’s
Bruce N. Fisk (18:10)
Yeah, it it’s not entirely it’s
not entirely true, Dru I mean, the UN Charter is something that lays out certain constraints. and when the US wants to bomb a country that has attacked it, it appeals to self-defense as part of that UN charter. You know, it w it wants to appear as though it’s behaving in a legal manner, proportionate,
Dru Johnson (18:32)
Right.
Bruce N. Fisk (18:33)
etc. So you know, I think the way the US plays is when international law serves it.
and this is the way many superpowers and and powers work, it it’s fine to appeal to it. But when it doesn’t, in the case of you know the current crisis at the U ICC, then all of a sudden, you know, the US pushes pushes hard away.
Daniel Bannoura (18:52)
You sanction, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Bruce N. Fisk (18:55)
I know you had something I know you had something else going on, but I wanted to s to speak a little bit to the Zionism issue that that you
Dru Johnson (19:02)
Yeah, please. Yeah.
Bruce N. Fisk (19:03)
could I could I take on that. so
Robert referred in his comments to his own episode where he he ha it was called something like Jesus Genghis Khan and something something on Hebraica. And I I went ahead and and and looked at that. and in that he he talks to he talks about Benjamin Netanyahu’s definition of Zionism, which apparently Robert asked him specifically. and this is let me just read to you what Robert said.
Summarizing Netanyahu, he basically said, Netanyahu basically said that Zionism is about establishing a Jewish state because a Jewish state is the only way to protect the Jewish people. The state has an army, an army has power, and power is the actual thing, the only thing that stops people from trying to kill you. And so this kind of goes back to your earlier comments about political realism and the notion that states operate, you know, in their own interests and power is their currency. and so I I get the impression that.
that Robert himself is fairly much a a realist in that sense. and and and further that this definition is central for him, and that is that Zionism is about protection. the current I I I agree with everything Daniel just said and but it is that the case that the definition and the the notion of Zionism that has prevailed is one of protection premised on the idea that the Israel
Jews cannot trust anyone else. They have to look out for themselves. And secondly, that the Arab world essentially, and certainly Palestinians and Iranians in the Persian world want to erase them. So I just wanted to add that piece to the to the discussion.
Dru Johnson (20:53)
Yeah, I think that was maybe the very first thing you said in our last time together was the the description of the Israeli view of security first, everybody’s out to get us. As one of my Israeli friends will say, you’re you know, if you believe everybody’s out to get you to kill you, th that can be both true that you’re you’re paranoid, and it’s actually true that people are actually trying to kill you, right? so
Bruce N. Fisk (21:19)
Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean somebody’s not trying to kill you. Yeah. Exactly. A yeah, and that’s and that’s fine and good.
Dru Johnson (21:21)
Right, yeah, yeah, yeah. the the woody Allenism.
Bruce N. Fisk (21:27)
you call you characterize my language as I recall from in your conversation with Robert as speaking of Israel as a victim. and and I was speaking rather in in terms of, you know, this question of fear and
Dru Johnson (21:41)
Okay.
Bruce N. Fisk (21:41)
this question of of, you know, isolation or the need for self protection.
but either way, you’re you’re right. I mean, it could be the case that they’re fearful for their own survival for good reasons, right?
Dru Johnson (21:54)
Yeah.
Bruce N. Fisk (21:55)
that that’s the the the question we have to debate.
Dru Johnson (21:58)
Yeah, and that’s you know, well, there’s there’s all kinds of things that that could be said about their the yeah, and I think maybe I put it in victim terms. sorry if I misconstrued that, but I meant in the sense that they’re afraid of future victimhood is this the over the horizon victimhood.
okay. So you guys did you put together a book. Bruce, you edited
Daniel Bannoura (22:21)
the
Dru Johnson (22:22)
this book. You had a lot of people contribute to it. yes, there it is. being sorry, being Christian after the desolation of Gaza, pattern after the book being Jewish after after Gaza. Daniel, you wrote hold on. Is that that’s the other that’s the the the Binart
Daniel Bannoura (22:39)
This is the Peter Beiner book.
Dru Johnson (22:41)
book, yeah. excuse me, I’m little bit ill.
The Daniel, I would love for you to talk about your chapter on Hamas, because you kind of do a a descriptive piece on how Hamas uses violence and how they rule, in in Gaza specifically, that I think I think most people don’t they just think Hamas bad. They don’t really have much further thought beyond that. Yeah.
Daniel Bannoura (23:06)
Yeah,
I kind of noticed the influence of Hebraic studies on you, Dru with your Hamas. The hit, the hit, the
Dru Johnson (23:11)
Yeah. Yeah. I can’t help it. I’m sorry.
Daniel Bannoura (23:15)
hit, not Hamas. Yeah, thanks. Yeah, thanks for that, Drew. This is the article I wrote on Hamas and violence. Before I address the article itself, I want to address just two things that happened with that previous interview. One is that Robert did not read our book, which is fine. mean, people are busy, but it’s also when you
give this narrative that is very pro-Israel, that doesn’t engage with aspirations and the hopes and the realities of the Palestinians, that not reading the book is more of that expansive vision of reality, that there’s no critical and serious engagement with what Palestinians are saying. There’s a lot of
whether it’s Philo-semitism, whether it’s kind of post-supercessionist, or whatever kind of perspective, or whatever the academy is offering scholars. There’s a lot of interest in the history of Judaism and in Israel, the language of Robert and other Christian Zionists, God is doing something there. So the lot of interest and obsession is among some Christian Zionists, like the John Hagues of the world, but little engagement with us, with the Palestinians.
Dru Johnson (24:23)
t to be fair to Robert, I just asked him to respond to the interview. So but I I take your point, but yeah. Yeah.
Daniel Bannoura (24:26)
Yeah, I’m not critiquing him for not reading that
specific book. I’m making this important
Dru Johnson (24:34)
okay.
Daniel Bannoura (24:34)
point that there’s no serious engagement with what we are doing, right? Or our stories or our own narratives or our own experiences like when Robert is not willing to call the occupation occupation. We’re having this conversation right now when just a few days ago settlers went into a village of Tal in the West Bank and slaughtered Palestinians, right? Without that,
grounded understanding of what’s happening on the ground, there’s a really problematic discourse that comes out of it that completely denies the rights and the freedoms of the Palestinians. So something we have to be critical of this. And remember, Dru I made this point last time, people go to Israel, but they never go to Palestine or what the Palestinian territories. But that’s exactly what I mean. You can go to Ramallah and meet with Palestinians, but do you actually get what Palestine is?
that perspective, that story, that history. And Robert made a fantastic point that we should not assume that people, most Americans do not know what’s happening over there, right? They shouldn’t assume that people know, which is a really valid point. And I’m just worried that he’s also guilty of that. He might have gone to Palestine a few, or to the Palestinian territories many times and met with Palestinians. But I think the presentation with you shows a lack of really a deep and genuine and
I don’t want to accuse him of any of that, but actually a proper engagement with our literature, our history, our political analysis and so on. So even when we talk about the genocide in Gaza, this is based on, you know, intense reporting by human rights organizations, by Holocaust genocide scholars like Omar Bartholomew and Ra’s Segal, Jewish Israeli historians of the Holocaust, who saying because I’m a Jew, because I’m an Israeli, because I’m a Holocaust…
scholar, can tell you, and here’s my detail, here’s Amnesty International or Bitsalem’s exhaustive report, why it’s a genocide. We’re not using this language to be inflammatory. This is grounded in research and analysis. All we’re asking you, engage with what we’re saying. When the whole interview, Robert wouldn’t even mention my name or Bruce’s name, it shows a lack of kind of serious engagement with who we are and what we stand for and what we say. And that is for me is a bit telling. But anyway.
So now I’ll get to your…
Bruce N. Fisk (26:54)
Can
can can I speak to the the genocide comment just real briefly? I know you want to talk about Hamas.
Daniel Bannoura (26:57)
Yeah, sure. Yeah, yeah.
Bruce N. Fisk (26:59)
so yeah, in terms of of of genocide, what Daniel’s underlying is is really critical. And and
Dru Johnson (27:06)
Yeah.
Bruce N. Fisk (27:07)
in terms of what’s going on in terms of the surge in in violence in in the West Bank, which is sort of genocide light right now, these things are well documented and and it it it strikes me that that Robert doesn’t
see a problem. Like I Dru you you used the language of extreme when you referred to terms like colonial genocide, apartheid, terms that came up in our first conversation and you characterize them as extreme. And I don’t know if y you we we can flip this conversation, but I would love to hear why you think, as opposed to what Daniel just said, that talking about what’s going on in Gaza as ex as genocide is extreme. Are you willing to to speak to that?
Dru Johnson (27:51)
Yeah, I would love to talk about that.
I yeah, and I think colonialism as well. And I think maybe this is my academic side on because I was just talking to a political science yesterday who listened to that interview, who said, I actually agree with everything Daniel said. I just don’t think you should call it a genocide because of technical legal reasons, right?
And so and you know, and Ihab Hassan who’s who’s a Palestinian scholar who just posted we should not conflate Holocaust with Holocaust should be separated out from what’s going on in Gaza because it doesn’t serve either party well to conflate those two as if they’re somehow in in the same in the same kind of territories of action.
Daniel Bannoura (28:33)
Sure. Sure.
Dru Johnson (28:35)
and so I think that’s
i yeah, and maybe extreme isn’t the right word. maybe I wonder if I walked away from that interview thinking, just quite honestly,
is like, okay, if we s there’s a way in which we say we don’t want to paint people with a broad brush, but if we I walked away from that interviewing feeling like, okay, so Israel are genocidal Jewish supremacists who really don’t care about the Palestinians and want to kill all of them. that to me is a broad brush, almost racist description of Israelis, which obviously does not hold up to most Israelis if you pull them off the street. I know, but I I’m saying
Daniel Bannoura (29:16)
But that’s not the claim, right? That’s a straw man,
Dru Johnson (29:19)
That’s that that’s the that’s the feel. I’m telling you,
Daniel Bannoura (29:19)
right? Yeah. Sure.
Dru Johnson (29:21)
I I walked away and that was the feel. Which does not does not serve your cause
Daniel Bannoura (29:27)
Totally.
Dru Johnson (29:28)
of calling Christians, I think, to what you’re trying to get them to inspect more closely.
Daniel Bannoura (29:32)
But again, that’s not what we’re saying. We’re saying that the policies of the state of Israel and what they
their conduct in Gaza, as per the experts of Holocaust and genocide studies, are telling us the vast majority, the vast majority
Dru Johnson (29:42)
Some, right. So I mean there some people Well the former head
of the the UN Gen human rights who who qualifies genocide was coming out early on saying we should not call this a genocide for very specific reasons of cause you have to treat things differently if they are formally, technically, legally a genocide. He may have changed his mind on that since then, I don’t know. But to me those are all
Daniel Bannoura (30:02)
Yeah, yeah, I think there’s generally a concern.
Bruce N. Fisk (30:04)
But but but but but true
true that’s the point. If the
US refuses to call it a genocide, one of the reasons for that, maybe the main reason, is because under international law that requires a response. So as long as you keep as long as you keep Rwanda from being a genocide, then you don’t have to, you know, invoke the UN Security Council and move in and do something to intervene. So it’s very convenient not to call it a genocide for those kinds
Daniel Bannoura (30:29)
Right, of course.
Bruce N. Fisk (30:30)
of international legal reasons.
Dru Johnson (30:31)
Well,
in honestly, like the kind of off the street reaction would be the fact that some people are calling it a genocide and we’re arguing about whether technically it is a genocide basically makes the point anyways, right? That the behavior is such that it is being marked as genocide by people who know this
Daniel Bannoura (30:46)
Sure. Yeah.
Dru Johnson (30:48)
stuff, right? And then experts are squabbling about or they’re quibbling about you know, the different things that you should do and and how you label it.
Daniel Bannoura (30:56)
The ICJ
is still discussing this case. you know, there’s no like official kind of position right now, but it’s been shown. All you have to do, Dru is just read the report by Amnesty, by Bitz Salem and see what they’re saying. And it’s very clear that Israel has satisfied the four out of the five conditions for what
Dru Johnson (31:15)
Yeah.
Daniel Bannoura (31:15)
qualifies as genocide. I would love for people not to, instead of getting stuck on the word, just argue, like give us your rebuttal, give us your counterargument, not just dismiss
Dru Johnson (31:21)
Yeah, well then that that was that was my point with Christian nationalism. Yeah.
Daniel Bannoura (31:25)
it.
I mean, that’s what’s
Dru Johnson (31:25)
Yeah.
Daniel Bannoura (31:26)
happening. They’re just dismissing it. And they want to accuse us, you’re being like anti-Semitic or, know, we’re just saying these are the facts. These are the facts in the West Bank and Gaza. Deal with the arguments instead of trying to like, you know, make some kind of strom and to kind of, and also add homonyms to attack the people. Yeah.
Dru Johnson (31:45)
Well no that and that was that was my point is I
think just communication wise, I think some of the arguments get lost when the trigger words get pulled out, right?
Daniel Bannoura (31:54)
Sure, sure.
Dru Johnson (31:55)
and and then it sounds like talking points and you know it’s
Bruce N. Fisk (31:57)
Fair fair enough.
Daniel Bannoura (31:58)
I totally understand,
Bruce N. Fisk (31:59)
But the alternative
Daniel Bannoura (31:59)
yeah.
Bruce N. Fisk (32:00)
the alternative is what Robert chose to do. And and here’s a quote from Robert. He said, Let’s put aside Gaza because of it. Let’s say it is in flux. We don’t know what’s happening there or what’s gonna happen. That that almost summarizes completely what he had to say about Gaza. So you
Dru Johnson (32:18)
Mm-hmm.
Bruce N. Fisk (32:18)
could we can get lost in the jar jargon and you know, there’s there’s plenty of discussion to be had.
And as as Robert as Daniel says, you know, the ICJ is takes a long time. You know, the the body count, you know, the the dead will be dead long before there’s any kind of final decision. But but to say let’s put it aside, it’s we don’t know what’s happening there. That that’s almost a selective willful certainly uncertainty, if not i ignorance about what’s going on, or a refusal to look at some of that hard data. Okay.
Daniel Bannoura (32:54)
But also, Robert said that he supports what happened in Gaza, so that’s why. But also, what we were saying, Dru just read Amos Goldberg, read Omar Barto, read Raz Siegert, read the reports, and people can make their own judgment eventually. I understand the sensitivity that how the descendants of a genocide would commit a genocide. It’s completely frustrating and confusing, and I get it. But it’s because of that legacy of the Holocaust, we’re saying, hey, like…
We haven’t learned the lesson, it seems. Like there’s a problem here that the exceptionalism that was given to the Jews in Europe is now being practiced against Palestinians. And this is serious. And someone like Omar Bertov, who describes himself as a Zionist, he would say, it is because of the Holocaust, because I’m a Jewish Israeli Zionist, I have to speak about Gaza. So rather than using the Holocaust to whitewash what we’re seeing in Gaza, use that.
have the same consistent ethic to say any never again should apply to everyone. And that is the problem with this kind of Christian Zionist discourse. It is unwilling to be fair and objective and deal with the facts themselves. And we’re seeing this in this kind of in this discourse here about the genocide and about what happened in Gaza.
Dru Johnson (34:09)
Yeah. one one last thing on I think another well yeah, because I do want to
Daniel Bannoura (34:13)
I’m excited
Dru Johnson (34:16)
talk about Hamas because the because is Israel, the state of Israel is gonna say, well that’s the whole reason we’re we’re in Gaza, right? So the book is about Gaza. The
Daniel Bannoura (34:24)
Right. Yeah. Right.
Dru Johnson (34:26)
reason they’re gonna claim justification is because of Hamas. one question I had for you that I think percolated in my own mind was
Collective punishment, I don’t think I don’t think you ever brought up collect collective punishment, but it gets brought up a lot in this discussion. and and I was trying to think like any time somebody attacks somebody else, collective punishment is always the result. like there’s
Daniel Bannoura (34:50)
Mm.
Dru Johnson (34:51)
not a single war. And again, I I was I’m a combat veteran from the from Colombia and the the drug drug wars in Colombia.
Like I saw directly how it impacted the the the normal people on the ground. so I I I could you help tease out w why you think people say collective punishment rather than just saying, Yeah, anytime w wars break out, everybody is punished. That that is that that is actually literally the nature of war. I had trouble separating
Bruce N. Fisk (35:19)
It’s that b okay,
so on the ground that may be literally the nature of war, but war crimes are also literally the nature of war, right? I mean crimes are committed all the time.
Dru Johnson (35:26)
Yes, they absolutely. Yep.
Bruce N. Fisk (35:29)
And tar to tar listen, just yesterday one of the I I forget whether it’s Ben Gavir or somebody who you know advocated destroying entire homes and villages because of the death of a of an Israeli in a in a very,
Dru Johnson (35:44)
yeah, yeah, yeah.
Bruce N. Fisk (35:46)
you know, bizarre conflict.
And so that’s an explicit call for collective punishment. It’s one thing to say as you are implying, Dru that this, you know, you know, in the fog of war, you know, there’s indiscriminacy and there’s disproportionality and there’s collective punishment. But each case of that needs to be examined. And each case of that needs to be interrogated and litigated if we’re going to take seriously this notion of a separation between combatant and non-combatant in a in a theater of war.
Daniel Bannoura (36:17)
I think we’re agreeing if war crimes are being committed, I mean,
Dru Johnson (36:17)
Yeah, that that’s helpful. Yeah. Yeah.
Daniel Bannoura (36:21)
we can just stop there. We just have to be. But if you say that you support what happened in Gaza, you’re saying you support war crimes, whether you want to call them collective punishment, whether you want to call them genocide, you support them.
Bruce N. Fisk (36:30)
Well well, in in Robert’s defense,
he’s gonna say he’s gonna say, I didn’t discuss the details. He he didn’t want to talk about the details, which is
Dru Johnson (36:37)
Right.
Bruce N. Fisk (36:38)
a two-word phrase that covers everything that’s happened over the last three years, and somehow that thinks it gives him a pass. I’m sorry, Robert, but it doesn’t. You know,
Daniel Bannoura (36:46)
Right. Yep.
Bruce N. Fisk (36:48)
you can’t say, Let’s not talk about the details. I agree with what Israel’s doing in principle, without implicitly supporting an awful lot of what we’re calling war criminality.
Dru Johnson (37:00)
Okay, with that, because we are running out of time, I wanna because this is exactly where your book goes, is the details, right?
Daniel Bannoura (37:05)
Yeah, right.
Dru Johnson (37:07)
and so Daniel, you want to tell us about Hamas, the the the enemy that I don’t mean enemy in that, but it is literally the enemy that Israel is fighting in Gaza. well just give us a a quick summary of your chapter, and then I wanna talk about how other authors kind of plug into the the larger discussion.
Daniel Bannoura (37:26)
Yeah, I would argue that the enemy is not Hamas. The enemy is the Palestinian people. And it’s not since 88 when Hamas was established. It’s since 1947, the beginning of the 20th century, when we are seen as a problem to the expansionist project. Before I talk about Hamas, just because in the beginning of the conversation, there was this point that was a bit confusing to me about Islamophobia. And I’m grateful for you, to highlight the point that I made that
Islamophobia and anti-Arab dismissal and bigotry are operative in what we saw in Gaza. If the people of Gaza were Christians or white, I don’t think we would have seen what happened. And then he, think Robert wanted to dismiss that and say, well, that’s not really clear. There are a lot of kind of hoops you have to jump. But of course he didn’t give us any counter argument. He referred to the polling by Pew that talks about these kinds of subcultures and how they think about certain subcultures. And I checked the polling and I mean,
It’s valid, Muslims are viewed 10 % favorably, just along with atheists. 11 % I think atheist, 12 % Muslim. So that proves the point that when you have 12 % favorably view of Muslims, you’re not exactly gonna have an issue with the killing of Muslims in Gaza, right? There’s been extensive, and it’s mind boggling to me for someone who’s supposedly an expert on the Middle East, is not aware of the research.
that is done on all of that. And there’s a lot of research that has been done on Islamophobia and on anti-Muslim, anti-Arab bigotry, especially in the US, especially among Christians. So for him not to highlight that and to try to dismiss that point without addressing that, think it shows the bias that I’m referring to.
Briefly, can refer people to the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, ISPU. They do the American Muslim Poll, for example. People can check out the ISPU. There are fantastic books written by scholars. A friend of mine, Jordan DeNiro Duffner, a theologian, wrote a book on Islamophobia, a fantastic book on Islamophobia among Christians. think chapter seven deals specifically with Christian
anti-Muslim bigotry in the US, so highly recommend chapter seven of Jordan Duffner’s book on Islam. There’s also the book by Dana Womack, Reinventing Islam, Gender and Protestant Roots of American Islamophobia. So there’s a lot that has been done there that Robert and others could examine. And also lastly, Thomas Kidd’s book, American Christians and Islam, that traces evangelical discourses about Muslims.
from the colonial period up to the early 20th century. So there’s a lot of this, this is all documented and I can give…
Dru Johnson (40:18)
We should we should
also note the Christi in Christian history there’s not always been there’s been amiable relations between Islam and Christianity in the medieval period, right? So this this is not a standard line throughout all history.
Daniel Bannoura (40:25)
Yeah, there’s beautiful rich. Yeah. This is just that
discourse that exists is very prevalent. It’s been normalized just a few days ago. Trump was accusing Schumer of being a Palestinian, like a Jewish politician using the word Palestinian as a slur. I can give you quotes and quotes from politicians, Marco Rubio and so on and so forth, all the way to John Hagee.
and evangelical and Pentecostal pastors who are saying awful things about Islam and they’re getting standing ovations and clapping because of all they say about Islam that doesn’t belong in the West. Islam is contrary to Western society. And you have alarming numbers of Christians, especially evangelicals, especially conservatives, who believe these things about Islam. So to say that anti-Muslim sentiment, whether it’s legitimate or not, I’m not disputing that. Of course, you know, there’s
a rich history here. Whether to say that that is not operative in how people in the West think about Muslims and Palestine, especially in this kind of Judeo-Christian culture within which Robert and others think, it’s just not honest. And we have to be critical of this. Now, when it comes to Hamas, mean, obviously there’s a lot to say, and I would encourage people to pick up the book, buy a copy and read my chapter on it. And I do a thorough
Christian theological analysis of Hamas and what it stands for. Robert, of course, again, it’s convenient to use a language of this apocalyptic kind of movement. it’s not an interesting, but using that language also is now against Iran, which is also not the case. But it’s a tense. The discourse against Hamas in the West tends to be very, again, very binary, very lacks a lot of nuance.
And then also doesn’t engage with the reality on the ground. Why would Palestinians choose Hamas, especially with the failure of the two-state solution, the Oslo Accords? Hamas famously refusing to join the PLO because it the corruption of the PLO and it presented this puritanical, like, uncorruptible vision of a political future for the Palestinians that is grounded in resistance to occupation.
and is refusing to capitulate. And they presented themselves as that alternative to the corrupt PA. And I want to, there’s a lot to say about this argument about the Palestinian leadership. don’t have time for it. But of course, what Robert again conveniently fails to show, to say that the PA, the Palestinian government, this corrupt government that we don’t, know, because we don’t have leadership is in place, is given legitimacy, is paid for by Israel. They literally give pay the PA.
The US wants the PA and power. Palestinians have a lot of incredible leaders and thinkers and intellectuals and you name it. And these are either assassinated or put in jail or suppressed because the PA has maintained its legitimacy and its power through the blessing of the occupation forces and of course the American government. Yeah, go ahead.
Bruce N. Fisk (43:38)
Dani Daniel, Daniel, in in
Robert’s defense, he does talk about Netanyahu’s support for Hamas.
Dru Johnson (43:45)
Yeah.
Bruce N. Fisk (43:46)
although what he does very interestingly is he doesn’t talk about it in terms of well, he he talks about it in terms of his tolerance, sort of wanting to keep those guys over there on in their yard on their side of the fence. But he what he doesn’t address is the fact that Netanyahu wants to support and wanted to support Hamas and and ensured funding of Hamas.
Precisely to keep the Palestinian community divided. So you’ve got to create an alternative discourse and popular movement to to prevent you know Fatah from becoming the the you know the group that can consolidate and organize and unify the people. The last thing Netanyahu wanted, as a person who was committed to oppose and and eradicate any two-state option, the last thing Netanyahu wanted.
Was to see Palestinians unite. And so his support for Hamas is part of that agenda. And that’s something that Robert doesn’t address.
Daniel Bannoura (44:43)
Right, of course.
Dru Johnson (44:43)
Wait, so
are are you saying that like so this would have been the time when Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State that it was actually cause she refused to negotiate with Hamas, right, because she said they were unnegotiable, in innegotiable or I don’t remember the phrase she used, but that this is an actual active project of the State Department to divide the w the West Bank from Gaza?
Bruce N. Fisk (45:06)
I’m
blaming I’m blaming Netanyahu as somebody
Dru Johnson (45:09)
Okay.
Bruce N. Fisk (45:10)
who who wanted to prevent a two state you know, he didn’t want a conversation partner, he didn’t want a single voice, so Hamas becomes the convenient alternative. and you know
Daniel Bannoura (45:21)
The
boogeyman to use, And now, Dru what’s wrong with Palestinians? mean, Robert said this, don’t like our government and our president because we see them as puppets for the occupation forces and for Israel. But also, as a puppet, they can do whatever Israel wants them to do. Why not pursue that? Why don’t you offer the Palestinians a path towards statehood? Why there’s been a peace normalization plan?
by Palestinians and by all the Arabic countries since 2002? A normalization plan. Give Palestinians their state, we’ll normalize relations immediately. 2002. What are we doing? So it’s convenient, again, the boogeyman is very convenient for those who want to maintain power. Why would you want to give up your power, control over the West Bank and of Gaza and of all of proper Israel? You wouldn’t, so you would use the boogeyman. Anyway, so now going back to, and of course you would want to.
keep the boogeyman alive and feed the boogeyman. And there’s a lot to say about all of that that Bruce kind of mentioned here. Now Hamas came out in 1988 as an alternative to the secular Palestinian project and influenced by the Muslim Brotherhood. In its constitution or in its kind of statement of 1988, the declaration, very problematic, adopted.
very problematic language against the Jews, conflating the Jews with Israel. Awful. It also reflects a very naive, frankly, like a Palestinian issue. They don’t really know, understand first the history of Judaism in Europe and anti-Semitism and so on. When the Jews came to Palestine, they said we’re Jews, so they would call them Jews, right? So like my grandma, when she talks about my Christian grandma, bless her soul,
when she would talk about the soldiers who came into our village, Beit Sahour, she was not going to say, the Zionist Israelis. She would say that the Jews came. Right? So it kind of comes from that. But also there is a lot that document included a lot of anti-Semitic tropes about the protocols of Zion. It used also a hadith by the prophet about this kind of apocalyptic kind of battle between Muslims and Jews. Problematic.
but also within the same constitution, which is people would also ignore. It also talks about an interfaith reality where Jews and Christians and Muslims would live together in peace within a Palestinian state. So it adopts terrible discourse, kind of grounded in their own experience, not nuanced, not intellectual, not academic, in the Palestinian experience. Also wrestling with the fact how
Do these people have so much power over our land? How for 40 years then were they able to maintain so much power to take over the Palestinian land? So no wonder that conspiracy theories about Jewish domination and the the Kabbal would be infiltrate their psyche and how they think and how they view the enemy. How could they defeat the Arab nations and how would they withstand UN resolutions and so on? There must be a Kabbal. There must be some kind of, you know, fill in the blank of the anti-Semitic trope.
kind of adopted this position that we need to fight and liberate all of Palestine because and you see this in the constitution in that document it sees Israel as an extension of colonial the colonial project in the Middle East this an extension of what the British and the French and the Ottomans and so on and so forth and it claims at this idealistic position all of historic Palestine is by right ours and we need to reclaim it so this kind of it’s an it’s an absolutist
Dru Johnson (49:13)
Yeah.
Daniel Bannoura (49:15)
idealistic vision
of the liberation of all of historic Palestine that goes against the Palestinian secular project of the big compromise where we’re asking for a two state solution, i.e. please give us 20 % of historic Palestine. That was a big capitulation by the PLO. And Hamas saying, if you do this, you’re denying our access to our historic. And I think I talked about this briefly.
Palestinian culture and history is not in the West Bank. It’s in the coast. It’s in Haifa. It’s in Iaafa. It’s in Nazareth. It’s in Tiberias. That’s where the intelligentsia, that’s where the culture, the economy of Palestine was not in my village in Bethlehem or, you know, so on and so forth, right? And if you want to have a two state solution, perhaps Jewish history is in Jude and Samaria, the West Bank. Maybe you should switch, you know, if you want to like deal with that. But Hamas were like, no, we have a maximalist.
standard of all of Palestine is right, is rightfully ours, and it’s also based on UN resolutions about Palestinian right of return and so on and so forth. So very critical of it, I bring my own Christian Palestinian critique of violence and of anti-Semitism in Hamas. At the same time, we have to understand two things. One, Hamas developed and evolved.
Christian Zionists and other supporters of Israel do not want to understand. Again, nuance is a problem. So you don’t want to understand the development and evolution of Hamas, just like any and most political parties develop. The Republican Party of Abraham Lincoln is not the party of the Republican Party today, right? And in 2017, it came out with a revised constitution or declaration.
that explicitly rejects anti-Semitism and clarifies our struggle is not against the Jewish people, it’s against the Zionist project, a colonial project, and we adopt a decolonial anti-imperial position against colonialism and against Zionism and against Jews. And I think it makes an affirming statement about Jewish people of conscience who stand with the Palestinian people. So there’s an evolution. think Hamas was aware of how that language was used. And I think there was a
development and maturity in how they thought about themselves in relation to the Jewish people. It doesn’t excuse the anti-Semitic language in the original document, but they amend in their new document. There’s a very clear distinction here. And I would encourage everyone to look up the translation of the 2017 document. I have very little qualms with that document, to put it bluntly. It might be shocking to people. Secondly, the adoption of violence and militancy against the occupation.
If we want to say that Hamas, of course without any nuance or context, is an apocalyptic militant Islamic jihadist movement, again convenient bogeyman flat binary discourse we’re creating here, of course we have to oppose Hamas. But if we understand Hamas, what it stands for, Hamas is the Arabic is Arabic acronym for the Islamic resistance movement, you have to ask yourself what are you resisting?
If Robert and every Christian in the US understands, goes to Palestine again, go to Palestine, go to Palestine and see the reality on the ground. It is not surprising that people want to resist an oppressive military system that denies them their rights, that kills them frequently. 2023, Dru was the bloodiest year for the Palestinians before October 7th in over the last 20 years.
And all of these deaths were in the West Bank, not in Gaza. Against 50 or 60 children were killed, for example, in 2023 before October 7. The bloodiest year in record over the last 20 years. So when you have no understanding of Israeli violence, of Israeli annexation of land, of restrictions of movement, in Gaza itself, the suffocating blockade of Gaza was deemed illegal by the international, I think the ICC or the ICJ, the limitation of
denial of basic rights for the people of Gaza, access to water, to their land and so on. Are we surprised people are gonna resist? was speaking of Peter Beinart, sorry for the shameless plug, I have a podcast as well, Across the Divide, and I interviewed, that’s why I have his book next to me, I interviewed him recently, Peter Beinart is a Jewish Orthodox journalist, incredible person, comes from South Africa, his family is South African, highly recommend people listen to that conversation. And he was reflecting,
making a very for me was shocking as a Palestinian listening to a Jewish American. He was comparing the ANC in South Africa, the terrorist of South Africa, of the apartheid to Hamas. And he was like, I’m not surprised Hamas exists. like Hamas is actually a necessary part of the oppressed people. Like you have to have a Hamas, a militant group that is devoted to
liberation through military means, especially in face of an oppressive militaristic system of occupation and apartheid. And he made a very compelling point. As soon as apartheid was over and the ANC military wing was dismantled immediately. The ANC was a terrorist organization that did horrible things in South Africa. Horrible things. So.
We just have to have to have that understanding of what drives people to militancy and understand the context and whether it’s the ANC in South Africa, whether it’s the abolitionists in the US. Horrible crimes committed against white enslavers, right? If you think about the Haitian slave revolt, if you think even go back to the slave revolts of the Roman Empire, Jewish revolts against the Roman Empire, the Warsaw ghetto uprising in the 20th century, you always have those militant radical groups that do awful things.
But if you understand the context of the Haitian slaves or if Nat Turner in the US or John Brown as a white Christian abolitionist and what drove him to violence, we can make sense of it not to excuse the crimes and insofar as war crimes were committed in October 7. These are crimes. We cannot excuse them. But we have to understand the context of what drives people to violence. So Hamas’s militancy is not very distinct.
I mean, obviously, it’s very distinct because of its own environment. But it’s not unique in the sense that people would adopt radical militancy in response to violence and oppression. And then third, like, yes, please do. Yeah, yeah.
Dru Johnson (55:56)
I’m gonna have to stop you there just because of time. But I think those
examples, especially John Brown, Nat Turner, I think it’s really helpful to help people start categorizing and thinking about okay, what’s the same and what what is different. Bruce, I’m gonna give you the last the last voice here on I I just wanted you to tell us more about the book, honestly, and tell us what’s in the book and
Bruce N. Fisk (56:18)
so the book project emerged
out of our frustration, I think, with the fact that that the Gaza debacle, the Gaza assault
The post-October 7th events were doing very little to change what we consider to be the evangelical discourse. And so we gathered authors to reflect, and the the book emerges in sort of three parts. One to talk about what’s actually happening both in Gaza and Israel and the West Bank. We have in that section authors like Gary Burge and David Crump, whom some of your viewers might know, Donald Binder, based in Jerusalem. a second section.
Section of the book kind of gets theological and biblical. We have Lisa Loden, who’s a Messianic Jew based in Israel. We have several Palestinian voices, colleagues of Daniels, like Yusuf Al-Khouri, Tony Dake. We also have Ruth Padilla de Borst and Rob Dalrymple, Ruth from Costa Rica, Rob from the US, just reflecting on.
theologically on what’s going on and how we need to think about the conflict and and and peace and justice more broadly. And then some stories and examples. We wanted the book to include anecdotes or or narratives of people who have you know been there, who have experienced maybe a change of heart. And so we have several people that are testifying about their own experience. That would include people like Mercy Aiken, who man many people would know, and others.
Ross Wagner, a co-editor and and and colleague, provides a sort of a theological conclusion to the book. And you know, in that section as well, we have a call to to Christians to to r reject sort of simple binaries, to reject the kind of narrative that comes out of places like John Higgie’s, you know, Christians United for Israel or the Southern Baptist Convention.
or Samaritan’s Purse, led by Franklin Graham and and other folk who who are aren’t seeing this moment as in any sense a moral crisis, and are maintaining the same kind of narrative that they have maintained in the past in defense of of Israel and excusing their behavior. My my biggest challenge to to Robert would be that he missed an opportunity to specifically name
what what needs to change. you know, he he, like all other Christian Zionists, I’ve made a long list of these folk who will always say something very similar to Israel isn’t perfect. They will acknowledge in very sweeping remarks that Israel has, you know, committed has behaved i inappropriately, but you will not find one of them. I have one exception. You will not find one Christian Zionist
or pro-Israel Christian who’s willing to get specific and to say, here are some here are here are three ways, here are five ways, here are things that happened in Gaza that’s happening today in the West Bank that we need to oppose. They just don’t do it. And Robert’s among them. He he absolutely refuses to get specific. Either he believes sincerely that nothing horrific is happening, or he just thinks that it’s, you know, really detrimental to the pro-Israel cause to start getting specific. So they’ll all say Israel isn’t perfect.
And see that as sort of maybe feigning some kind of objectivity. So this is a book that’s trying to name some of the specific things and use the experiences of fellow Christians, scholars, activists, lay people, Jewish, Christian to to speak against that and to get specific about what we think needs to change in our tribe, in our context, in our conversation.
Dru Johnson (1:00:23)
Well, I think the book and these conversations have given everybody a ton to think about. And I know I’ve learned a lot from from you guys, even in these conversations and from reading the book. So I appreciate that. is there a world, I’ll f finish with this kind of a yes-no question. Is there a world in which somebody considers everything that you’ve said, takes it very seriously to the core, and still says, I still believe in a Jewish state, and I think that’s a fundamentally good thing?
Or is that just always gonna be anathema?
Daniel Bannoura (1:00:57)
I just don’t know what that means exactly. I prefer one. I oppose Islamic states. I oppose Christian states and Jewish states. This is a
Dru Johnson (1:01:07)
Okay.
Daniel Bannoura (1:01:08)
pre-modern idea that is anti-liberal, anti-democratic and anti-liberal. And we’re seeing what that looks like in Palestine. I think we need to think in democratic terms.
pluralistic terms defining any state by ethnicity or religion is I don’t think it is acceptable in our day and age and we’re seeing what that looks like in Palestine and Israel. Jews thrive, yeah, good. Yeah, yeah, okay, I’ll stop here.
Dru Johnson (1:01:32)
Wait, hold on a second, ’cause I know you have a lot to say. the i is that a
Christian position or is that a progressivist ’cause that to me just sounds like a typical progressivist position.
Daniel Bannoura (1:01:44)
All of my political positions are driven by my Christian perspective on what life and what politics should look like. have an example of Christian political
Dru Johnson (1:01:51)
Okay, so you have a Christian belief and d democracy.
Daniel Bannoura (1:01:56)
states have not fared well in history and I think we need to move beyond those criteria for statehood and pursue a more democratic solution.
Dru Johnson (1:02:07)
Okay, excellent. And Bruce, you were gonna say?
Bruce N. Fisk (1:02:10)
Yeah, no, I I I would echo what Daniel’s just said. I I think Jewish state means different things to different people. if it just means a place where Jews are safe, well I’m I’m sorry, that’s not what it means to most most people today. It means a place where Jews have what I’ve called hegemony. And yeah, just to repeat what Daniel said, I don’t I don’t support that whether it’s Muslim
republics or Christian nationalist states or or a Jewish state, we can do better.
Dru Johnson (1:02:42)
Okay. Excellent. Thank you guys for your time. For your extra time.
Bruce N. Fisk (1:02:47)
Hi, thank you for your patience. Yeah. Yeah.
Daniel Bannoura (1:02:47)
Thank you. Thank you, Dru Thanks for hosting us. This is wonderful.
Bruce N. Fisk (1:02:51)
Yeah. Appreciate it.
Dru Johnson (1:02:51)
I’m glad
to have the conversation.
