Theology in the Raw - Israel-Palestine from the Perspective of a Gazan Theologian: Dr. Yousef Alkhouri

Episode Date: May 20, 2024

Dr. Yousef AlKhouri (Ph.D. Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) is Christian Arab Palestinian theologian and activist. He was born in Gaza to a Christian family that has a long heritage of serving in the priesthood of the Greek Orthodox Church. He is married to Merna and they live in Bethlehem, Palestine. Yousef has written several poems in Arabic. In 2007, he published his first poetry collection under the title “You are Not My Beloved.” In addition to teaching at BethBC and lecturing to international groups on various topics pertaining to Palestine and Palestinian Christians. Dr. AlKhouri is also a board member of Kairos Palestine, Christ at the Checkpoint, and the Academic Alliance for Interfaith Dialogue in Palestine. He enjoys reading, writing, and teaching. He loves music, nature, and traveling. https://bethbc.edu/Faculty/yousef-alkhouri/ The conversation covers various topics related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, including the role of Palestinians as cheap labor for the Israeli economy, the impact of Hamas on the economic situation in Gaza, the media's portrayal of the conflict, and the experience of Palestinians at checkpoints. The guest emphasizes the importance of nonviolent resistance and calls for the church to prioritize the message of Jesus over nationalism. He also encourages listeners to educate themselves about the history and theology of the conflict and to visit Palestine to see the reality on the ground. Support Theology in the Raw through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theologyintheraw

Hello, friends. Welcome back to another episode of Theology and Ra. My guest today is Dr. Yusef Al-Khuri, who is a professor at Bethlehem Bible College. Yusef was born and raised in Gaza to a family that has a long heritage of serving in the priesthood of the Greek Orthodox Church. He received his MDiv from Alliance Theological Seminary in the United States and his PhD from Vri University in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. His PhD thesis was titled, The Kingdom of God and Empire's Contemporary Palestinian Christian Contextual Biblical Interpretation. I asked Gusev to come on the podcast to give us a firsthand account of what life was like growing up in Gaza and then now living in the West Bank, both in terms of the current conflict, but also just what

it was like growing up in a part of the world that is getting a lot of attention these days. So I really enjoyed this conversation. I most of all enjoyed the Christ centeredness of Yusuf and his contagious humility and grace. So please welcome to the show, the one and only Dr. Yusuf Al-Khuri. Yusuf, it's such an honor to have you onology in Iraq. Why don't you begin? I would just love to hear what, what, what was it like being raised in Gaza? Thank you for having me. It's an honor. What feels like grown up in Gaza? I can still smell the sea wind. I can feel the sands of the shore. I can hear the crowds in the markets. It's a vibrant city

with a lot of culture and history. And lively people who love life and enjoy and appreciate what God has granted them in a land that they are indigenous to. So I grew up in Gaza and this that they are indigenous to. So I grew up in Gaza in this atmosphere of appreciation and deep rootedness to the land and loving the Mediterranean. The people would go every single morning to swim. I remember growing up going at 5 a.m. to the beach just to take a soak in the water for an hour or two

and go back, take a shower, go to school or to work. That's the reality of many Palestinians who live in Gaza. They are enjoying their land. Tell us, give us a timeframe. What year were you born? I was born in 1986, a year before the first civil uprising, Intifada. And I hope now we can even just fix this misunderstanding of what Intifada really means. Because Intifada is a very positive movement of civil disobedience and uprising against

military occupation that was brutal against the Palestinian indigenous people in Gaza and in the West Bank, Jerusalem and historical Palestine in general. So I grew up during the first Intifada where the Israeli military had frequently broke into our neighborhood, even our house, just looking for freedom fighters or Palestinian youth. One of the stories that I still remember, one day a unit of Israeli military broke into our house. They turned everything upside down and my grandmother was quietly, I think she was maybe in her mid 60s or early 70s, quietly baking local bread. And while the soldiers are leaving the house, she called on one of them, and she handed

him a loaf of bread. And he told him, maybe you are hungry, any friends, please feed on this. So during the first intifada, you get to see the atrocities that the Israeli military committed against the Palestinian people. At the same time, you have stories of someone like my grandmother who countered the violence. So they did this peacefully, maybe with a stone against a tank. And still, I think this is was a peaceful disobedience in many ways. That's everything I've read about the first Intifada, which was what 1987 to early nineties.

I think, I mean, it's, it was largely a nonviolent resistance again, unless you count throwing a rock at a tank. I'm going to say, I don't, I wouldn't consider that violence. But there was, with any nonviolent movement, there's going to be some violence, but overwhelmingly it was a largely a nonviolent uprising. Is that, is that, is that right? Yes, definitely. Gaza, my grandmother's story is one of many others, even in the West bank and the town of Bezaharour where I live currently, the Christian and the Beit Sahourian community, who is Palestinian, indigenous to this land, they went on a civil

disobedience. They took the Israeli task cars that were imposed on them and IDs that were imposed on them by the military occupation, and they threw them away as a kind of protest that we reject to be controlled by the Israeli military and pay tax for the benefits of the Israeli military. So you have many stories of Palestinian nonviolent resistance during the first Intifada. Mad Fientist What was the... Sabi, you've kind of already touched on it. Was there a violent response

from the IDF toward a nonviolent resistance? Would that be what you experienced? Yes, definitely. And there are numerous occasions that can be highlighted, even in terms of Gaza and the siege of a shoddy refugee camp during the first Intifada. Where literally the Israel military created a whole wall around the refugee camp and attempted to starve the people inside the camp. But the Palestinians who live in Gaza or the Gazan Palestinians, they bake their bread and they start throwing the bread over the wall to the people who are starving in the refugee camp.

So there were practices where the Israeli military was extremely violent or imposed some measures that could have caused mass killing of Palestinians in Gaza, but at the same time in the West Bank. Of course, if we look at the history of the Israeli occupation of Palestine or settler colonialism, let's be more accurate in terms of classification, is one of constant violence against the indigenous people of Palestine. The mass cars and the genocides committed against Palestinians. In between the 1917s up to 1945 and between the 1917 and 1947 and then 1947 to 1949 and afterwards. That's something that we constantly

had to deal with as Palestinian people during the first Intifada, the second Intifada, now in Gaza as an example, too. Now the second Intifada as I understand it, and then now we're talking what, uh, 2000 is, it's, it's in response to the kind of the failure. One might say the sham of the Oslo accords that had this veneer of peace, but I mean, everything I read on that is like, it was, it wasn't, how about you, those peace accords Oslo, uh, Camp I read on that is like, it wasn't, I don't call. How about you those peace accords also camp David to, um, there's the one retelling of that is it's yet another effort of Israel offering peace. And yet again, Palestinians just rejected the peace offer is how some of my friends would, would tell that story. Do you want

to offer your perspective on those peace accords? Well, there is a lot going back here, especially there is a lot of misinformation out there about Palestinians rejecting peace proposals throughout history. But it's always, you know, the blame comes on the Palestinians, the indigenous people who lost their land and were exiled and dispossessed, the blame doesn't come on the colonizers. Even when the colonizers offer peace, it's not actual peace. It still comes at the expense of long history and heritage that was taken away and erased

by the colonial power like the Israelis. But let's go only for the Oslo Accord in 1993, which comes after. And it was actually by means of ending the first Palestinian civil uprising against the Israeli military. So the PLO, the Palestinian Liberation Organization, on leadership of Yasser Arafat, later on the first president of the Palestinian Authority, naively accepted a peace proposal by the Israelis. And naively, this is not my wording, it's actually a wording of the Israeli historian

Ilan Pepin in his book, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. Because the PA, the PLO, back then PA later, didn't really understand the diplomacy and the wordings that the Israelis used to trap them into the peace agreement, which offered them some kind of sovereignty but without sovereignty. What does that mean? It means that Palestinians don't have full sovereignty over their land, border, natural resources. I was meeting with someone last week, and I told them,

actually, for Palestinians to collect rainwater is illegal in Israeli terms. To collect rainwater? Yes. So this is only example to show you the extension of the Israeli control over the Palestinian people, including in the lands that designated under the Palestinian authority or given to the Palestinians after

the Oslo Accord. And the Oslo Accord agreement came with also the Paris agreement for economics that almost completely controlled the Palestinian population in the West Bank and Gaza when it comes to their economic status or exchange. So in general, all the peace agreements were given or proposed to the Palestinians where a real one didn't stand on the 1967 borders, for example, or the partition plan of 1947 that guarantees that Palestinians, Arabs, will have a statehood and then the Israeli Zionists will have another state.

It always was like the Israelis are not willing, for example, to accept that Palestinians have right to return, have right to self-determination over their land, have right to be stewards of their own natural resources. And many others, like Jerusalem, the final state of Jerusalem, that's the East Jerusalem part of the Palestinian state. And Israel actually wishes that all Palestinians would disappear from this land and it can occupy the whole of it. That's the reality that we get to see nowadays on Gaza because Israel constantly for the last 30 years has been denying the Palestinians their basic human rights

and their statehood according to the international law. Can you give us another example? Someone could say, wow, is that really true, like denying basic human rights? Do you have another example of what that looks like? There are numerous examples. I think every part of Palestinian life is an example of how Israelis are controlling our livelihood.

For example, I live in Bethlehem. Gaza is only 60 kilometers away from where I am, which means only 40 miles. It's much easier to travel and do this interview with you in person than me going to visit my family in Gaza. And sometimes even for a Palestinian like me to travel from Bethlehem to Ramallah, which is only 30 miles away from where I am, I need to travel on Israeli highways, have to cross

through at least two or three checkpoints, which sometimes are closed for a mysterious reason for two, three, four hours. So this is part of the, this I would consider even the inconvenience of life under occupation because there are more brutal realities that we experience on a daily basis, which means in Bethlehem, for example, almost nightly invasion of Israeli military and detention of young people in refugee camps

or in the city. So there is a lot we can't unpack here in terms of economy, human rights violations that go beyond even the convenience of freedom of movement. I want to come back to what being what the Americans like we don't understand most people in the web people haven't been to the land or even people that have been to the land, but haven't been to certain parts of the land, don't know the experience of the checkpoint, what it's like going through these checkpoints. So I want to have you, I want to come back to that though. Going back to the, so the first into FATA, the piece of chords that weren't really fair. And again, people can go and read on this, that this is well

documented. Even I just glanced at the Wikipedia page, which I normally don't do, but if you do, they actually do a pretty good breakdown of the different kind of versions of that. All of the different versions though, are all clearly like, no matter what version you take, it wasn't a fair offer. Like you said, it wasn't like a kind of two state solution the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, right? Like that wasn't a nonviolent resistance. It's almost like the nonviolent resistance didn't

seem to work according to maybe thinking, so we're going to try the more violent responses. Is that true? The second intifada was much more violent and that's what led to the massive blockade on Gaza? Or again, I know that's kind of a broad brush. Yes. So Palestinians celebrated the 1993 Oslo Accord, and they thought that the arrival of the Palestinian liberation organization, the PA, promises more peace with the Israelis, and they will be granted a statehood or some sort of statehood that will guarantee sort of the start of reconciliation with the Israelis. And by the way, just keep in mind that Palestinian people and Israeli civilians usually mingled with one another

and some towns and cities, and they lived peacefully or coexisted peacefully. And just keep in mind, there was always this power dynamics, who's superior and who's inferior, who's the colonizer and who's the colonized. But in between 1993 and 2000, where Palestinians dreamed that Israelis will grant them a statehood, Israel failed to do so.

And in the year 2000, when Ariel Sharon was a minister in the Israeli government back then, this created Al-Aqsa Mosque, which is a very holy site for Muslims in Palestine. And if you know Palestinian society in general, we are a very religious conservative society. So places mean something to us, especially when it comes to mosques, churches or synagogues. So the desecration of Al-Aqsa mosque resulted in outrage among the Palestinians who thought that now the Zionists are going after Al-Aqsa mosque and caused the start of the Second Intifada. The Second Intifada was more violent from the Palestinian

side, it's true, but it was also the result of the Israeli violence who caused a very destructive effect on the Palestinian society. It comes to demography, but also to the geography of this land and the infrastructure in the Palestinian towns and cities, in the Westpac in particular. Palestinian towns and cities in the Westpac in particular. The numbers of people who were killed, those who were detained, the infrastructures of cities like Bethlehem, for example, the 40 days besiege of Bethlehem where the Israeli military closed off Bethlehem from the outside world. And people had to stay inside their homes for 40 days and nights.

And of course, one of the parts of the city that was besieged is the Church of Nativity, where it's believed that Jesus Christ was born and actually was targeted by the Israeli tanks. So we had this violent response from the Israeli military, which caused also more violent responses from the Palestinian, especially those who are more into the Islamic Jihad or Hamas or Qatayat Shodh Al-Aqsa, which belongs also to Fatah. And they saw this violence as a reaction to the Israeli domination, subjugation, suffocation of the Palestinian people for years.

I wonder too, because I was actually there. I was at Al-Aqsa Mosque in 99, so just a few months before Ariel Sharon spearheaded that. I wonder, I mean, because if you go back to even like 1982, it was, wasn't it Ariel Sharon where he got the nickname, the butcher when he spearheaded this absolute massacre of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon over, I mean, I forget how many hundreds were just slaughtered

all night long. I mean, it was brutal. So you can't separate... It's actually a question. I wonder when he then does that with Al-Aqsa Mosque, what's that, like 18 years later? That's not disconnected from the memory of Palestinians, what Sharon, the reputation he has against Palestinians, is that fair? Shaiq Al-Masri You know, as a nation, as Palestinians, we memorize the names of our great, great grandparents, three and four and 500 years. So we know very well and we remember very well the memories of those who

caused damage and pained our society. So definitely people in the 2000s remembered what Aryeh Al-Sharon did for the Palestinian refugees in Sabra and Shatila in Lebanon. But they also remembered his rule and others and the colonization of Palestine since 1948 and even a little before that. So we have a lively memory still of the Nakba and of all the mascars that were committed against our people. That when the Intifada happened, this whole pain and trauma came out again. Going back to like growing up in Gaza, so it was your whole family Christian? Were you born into a Christian family? So

what was that? What's it like being a Christian in a largely Muslim city or land of Gaza? Was it, was it conflict or is it peaceful or a little bit of both? This is an excellent question. Yes, I come from a Christian family. Actually, my family has a long history and heritage in the Orthodox Church, particularly in the Office of Priesthood. 36 generations of my family were priests in the Eastern Orthodox Church. 36 generations? Yes. My bedroom was built in Gaza around the 5th century. So, when people ask me, built in Gaza around the fifth century. So when people ask me, when you converted from like,

whatever to Christianity, I told them, oh, actually my bedroom was built in the fifth century. And people forget that Gaza has always been a vibrant area for Christian monasticism, especially in the third and fourth century. Saint Hilarion, the father of Palestinian monasticism, who was a disciple of Saint Anthony the Great, who was the father of monasticism, started in Gaza, and Gaza was connected to the Sinai. So this is just a glimpse. So my family comes from that history of following Jesus and committing to the message of the

Good News for centuries. Growing up in Gaza, you know, the Christian community has declined rapidly over centuries. Of course, because of colonialism in the 1800s, 1900s, the Ottomans and then the British and the Israelis caused severe decline for the Gazans and Gazan Christian community. In Der Al-Balah, for example, a part of the Gaza Strip, that's Deir el-Balah, which means the monastery of dates, if we take it literally, which tells you that there was a Christian monastery over there and it was some kind of a Christian town. Now it has none, no Christians presence there.

But over the last at least 30 years, there has been a decline of the Christian community in Gaza from 3,000 or 3,500 to about 1,200 in the last maybe 12 years. And nowadays, the number of Christians are less than seven or 600, and they are all now sheltering in the Orthodox and the Catholic Church. But the growing up in Gaza after the 19, of course, during the First Intifada and the Second Intifada, you feel this intimacy with your Muslim neighbors because we are connected to this land. We have our history and roots in this land and the feel of belonging and the shared suffering brought us together. Of course, after Hamas came to power, things have changed in Tibet.

Let me be here more clear. In 2005, the United Nations, the United States, and the European Union asked the Palestinian Authority to conduct a democratic election and to be, of course, supervised by all these parties to make sure that it's a clean election with no corruption. So Hamas was mainly a militant group, has decided to join the political career and create its own party that would join the Palestinian parliament and even go for the presidency.

And Hamas declared that it will be a movement for reconciliation and faithfulness to the blood of people and their cause. Meanwhile, Palestinians already had experienced Fatah and the PA for about 10 years or even more. And they found that their approach with the Israelis has failed. So many people went for Hamas because Israel has failed to fulfill its agreements with the Palestinian authority. So the Palestinian people thought that their authority is corrupt and it's only providing support for the Israeli occupation.

So they went for Hamas. And Hawass won the election fair and square. It was approved by the UN, the European Union. It was a fair election. And the Palestinian people democratically elected Hamas. But what happened next? None of the Palestinians were given a chance to enjoy their democracy or to see at least test the waters what this democracy will bring about to us.

The first thing that's been done is collective punishment by the international community against the Palestinian people, particularly in Gaza. And Israel, of course, used and took advantage of what happened during that election to enforce the division between Gaza and the West Bank. So Hamas and Fatah fought in Gaza. They had like a very short fight between the PA and Hamas

and resulted in the complete division now between Gaza, the government of Hamas, and the West Bank with the government of Fatih. And Netanyahu, if you are familiar with the news, has maintained this division and even reinforced it over and over again by allowing Qatar giving Hamas almost 60 million dollars every month or so, just to maintain their own government in Gaza Strip.

So during that time, with the rise of Hamas, they've become kind of sensitive to the Christian community, feeling that we are a minority Living in a majority Muslim country and now we have a government that claims it's to be a Muslim so there were fears of course because of that and One incident that a Palestinian Christian was killed by an extremist group Caused a lot of fear in Gaza among the Christian community. So that created some kind of chaotic mixtures of feeling in 2007, 2008. But later on, I would say, a Palestinian community, a Palestinian Christian community in Gaza coexisted, lived peacefully, lived together peacefully, of course, with their Muslim neighbors.

And we see this example even today in the time of genocide. Muslim communities are protecting the church in Gaza City. The Christian community was sheltering at the Orthodox Church. They shared their food and resources with their Muslim neighbors, and the Muslim neighbors, they share also their resources with the Christian community. So we can see that we are in the same experience and the same land. We feel what's happening. We have people, beloved ones, who were killed by the Israelis. We have ones that were detained by the Israeli military.

So we have this shared experience that also brings us together beside our long history of coexistence and making life together. Hey friends, my book, Exiles, The Church in the Shadow of Empire is out now. I am so excited and a bit nervous about the release of this book. This is a topic I've been thinking about

for many, many years, and finally put pen to paper to write out all my thoughts. Specifically, I'm addressing the question, what is a Christian political identity? As members of Christ's global, multi-ethnic, upside-down kingdom scattered across the nations, how should we as members of that kingdom think through and interact with the various nations that we are living under?

So the book is basically a biblical theology of a Christian political identity. We look at the nation of Israel. We look at the exile of Israel. We look at several parts of the New Testament, the life and teaching of Jesus, several passages in the book of Acts, the letters of Paul. Do a deep dive into 1 Peter and the book of Revelation, and then explore some contemporary points of application. So I would highly encourage you to check out my book, Exiles, and would love to hear what you think, whether you hate the book, love it, or still think it through it,

would love to hear what you think by dropping a review on Amazon, or I don't know, post a blog, just, you know, rip it to shreds, I don't really care. I would love for you to just wrestle with this really important topic in this really volatile political season that we're living in. I, I, I'm curious. I've heard from people that weren't raised in the land that, um, so I'm not sure where they're getting this information from, but I just would love to

know you being raised in Gaza. Are the children being raised in Gaza in the school? Are they kind of like, I don't want to say brainwashed, but like taught to be anti-Semitic? Do you get a lot of teaching growing up in the school system that just fosters a hatred towards Jewish people? It's all true? I totally disagree. As a Palestinian Christian, I went to public school since my sixth grade. So I had to memorize the Quran as part of my curriculum and I enjoy doing this just to learn about my Muslim neighbor's faith. I went to the law school in Gaza City, Al-Azhar University for three years, where I had to study Quran, I had to study Islamic law,

and I had to study the life of the Prophet Muhammad. So, of course, you can interpret certain teachings and passages in the Quran as antisemitic. Of course, you will find people who are very extremist fundamentalists in their interpretation of certain texts of the Quran to be anti-Semitic. That doesn't mean that children are brainwashed to anti-Semitism. It's interesting when Palestinians are accused to brainwash their kids to hate Jews. With the fact that we live next to the Jews and most of the time people are not after exiling the Jews who occupy our land. Actually we have been investing time and energy in finding

a way to share the land with the Jews peacefully. Even when Palestinians say from the river to the sea, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, that all people who live in the land can live freely and equally. We are not talking about exiling a certain group of people at the expense of the other. We are talking about reconciling and building together. I was going to ask about that as my next question. So, the phrase from the land of the sea is not genocidal, like get rid of all the Jews from the land of the sea is not genocidal, like, get rid of all the Jews from the land of the sea. It is how can we all live peacefully within this land together.

That's what it means. I mean, people can maybe mean different things by it, I guess. But... Of course. And I need to remind people that everything we say, every word we read carries several meanings and can be interpreted in whatever way, depends on the intention of any person, of course, including from the river to the sea.

But let me be very clear and give a background of history. The Palestinian people who lived on the land from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea before the 1948 and before the Zionist militia invasion and expansion of Palestine and takeover, disposing of Palestinians from their land, Palestinian Jews, Muslims, and Christians coexisted, they lived together peacefully. And I think this is the kind of utopia that I still believe it's possible that we are looking for and demanding when we claim that

free Palestine from the river to the sea. Palestine will be free. It's free for all people, Muslim, Jewish, and Christian to worship in this land, to live, enjoy the abundance of this land together. It's not genocidal. I think the only genocidal thing that happened is when a settler colonial regime claims that it wants the land from the river to the sea to one group of people without the other. Meanwhile, what we are calling for is for inclusive society in Palestine where all people from different backgrounds can coexist and live together peacefully. And then you already said like intifada, because these are really hot phrases right now in

the American context with the, at the time of the recording, we still have a lot of campus protests and you have people chanting from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free. And people are interpreting that as a genocidal statement. Now, I don't know what American, or maybe they're Palestinian, but just protesters, what they mean by that. But you're saying that the phrase, at the very least, doesn't, it doesn't intrinsically mean that.

That's not the heart behind the maybe the original statement of that phrase. And tafada does not mean wipe out all the Jews. It's just an uprising against what you would see as an oppressive occupying power so that we can all be free, right? Exactly. I think you captured the heart of what I'm saying. It's actually these phrases are liberating for all people, including those who live in this land, Palestinians, Christians, Arabs, and Jews, who don't believe in an ideology of domination and supremacy.

And for example, just I've heard many people talking about Intifada, and they have just gave certain interpretation for these terms that don't serve actually to help people understand the depth of the Palestinian experience, but also they don't understand Arabic in order to translate what Intifada means. What Intifada means is to shake off. You know, when you have a dust on you, you shake off this dust, you shake off the dust that oppression brings unto you. It means rising up peacefully as revolutionaries against oppression.

It means to, for me as a Christian, refusing to be imprisoned in a tomb to be alive again. So for me, it has a theological connotation even. Of course, some people will interpret it differently, but as a scholar, as a Palestinian Christian, as a theologian, I see it has positive connotation that is liberating to everyone. That's super helpful. And that's on it. I mean, that's the people I listen to, journalists and scholars and stuff,

that's exactly what they say. It's just in the mainstream news here, it's being pegged as an intrinsically genocidal statement. Or intifada means like violent revolution that has genocidal connotate. You know, like that's the, that's the perception of a lot of Americans, I think. One more question about Gaza. And I want to come back to life in the West Bank. So there was this in response to the second Intifada and Hamas being elected and all the

stuff, the history you gave, you know, from 2005 onward, there was this blockade on Gaza. Some people call it an open air prison. Other people call it an autonomously ruled land. Like Israel gave Gaza to be autonomously ruled and they said, okay, and it's really Hamas that's gobbled up all the resources and driven the economy into the ground. Those are two very different perspectives. Can you tell us, I mean, you weren't there, I think you left around that time, but you have family there. So I mean, you could, what's life been like in Gaza during this 18-year, 19-year blockade before October 7th? blockade before October 7th? So the blockade started from 2006, almost 2007,

up to October 7th. Let's make this the point. And yes, I left Gaza a few months after the blockade started. I returned to Gaza three times since then. So I got to see it firsthand, what it feels like to live in Gaza. I actually reject the term of open-air prison because it connotates that Palestinians are

criminals, which is not true. Palestinians are being implicated or made into the largest concentration camp. These are not my words. This is actually the words of an Israeli sociologist in 2004 who started talking about how Israel is turning Gaza, even before Hamas and everything else, is turning Gaza into the largest concentration camp. And the scholar, I think his name is Baruch Kumberling, who wrote this article in 2004 or so. So Gaza is a concentration camp. Even though the Israelis withdraw some settlements, they still maintain control over the borders,

the shore, and the aerial space. So for example, Palestinians cannot travel out of Gaza without Israeli approvals. They cannot fish in their rightfully legal borders on Mediterranean without the approval of the Israeli military. And the same when it comes to the aerial space. The first thing that Israel did during the second Intifada actually, destroying the only airport in the Palestinian territory, which was in Gaza, in the Rafah, and, of course, the port of Gaza.

And later on they destroyed the power generators that were mainly supplying Gaza with power. Almost 30 percent or so of the power supply of Gaza were made locally and the rest of it was imported from the Israeli side. So Israel destroyed almost all the infrastructure that would have helped Palestinians create their own like livelihood in Gaza Strip. And of course, after the blockade,

you have many items that people couldn't get from outside world, including chocolate, by the way. Chocolate? Yes. Why? You make bombs out of chocolate or something? I think so. You would read the list of things that were not allowed to Gaza and you think like, what's this madness is all about? And I remember, for example, that electricity in Gaza, for example, my parents would get

connected to power only four to six hours every 24 hours. So for example, when I go to visit my family in Gaza, and I only had the chance to do this three times because it's always restricted by the Israeli military permission approval to go see my family. And I witnessed my mom would wake up around three or four a.m. to wash the clothes because it's the only time where they will get electricity. About 95% of water in Gaza before even October 7th was undrinkable. The unemployment rate of Gaza was around 47%, 43 to 47% before October 7th.

And all of this because of the Israeli blockade around Gaza. That's the reality of it. You don't get to import, export anything. You cannot move even if you are sick to Israeli hospitals or Palestinian hospitals in the West Bank without Israeli permissions. And every aspect, literally every aspect of your life is being controlled by the Israelis. So Gaza, yes,

the Israelis withdrew, but the Israeli remained as an occupying power who's in control of Gaza in many ways. Did Gazans get work permits to be able to leave Gaza and go work in Israel? Because that's what permits to be able to leave Gaza and go work in Israel? Because that's what people have told me. I've read it's something like 10 to 15,000 or something. For 2.2 million people. Well, let's just say half or 2, so 1.1 million working people, even if it's like 20, 30,000 work permits,

it's not a very high percentage. Still, that's true. And it wasn't always the case. So it was only in seasonal work. I think what's important for people to know that Palestinians are the cheap labors for the Israeli economy. And I'm sorry to say that about my people, but that's the reality of it, as people who live under occupation. The Israeli government, over the years, they tried to bring workers and laborers from other countries, Asia and Africa.

However, Palestinians know this land very well. They eventually had to go back to the Palestinians and ask and give Palestinian permission to work in this land. So the only reason that the Israelis, it's not for the good hearted government they have, but because they need Palestinian labor, cheap labor to build and to, of course, to empower their economy. So the work permits are really to give people jobs that the Israelis kind of don't want to do?

I mean... Or they don't know how to do. I'll give you a fascinating story. When the Israeli settlers occupied Palestine in 1948, a group of settlers occupied a village and they tried to work hard to plant the land and the soil of that village for several years. They couldn't. They didn't succeed. They eventually remember that if we can bring back the Palestinian men, the owners of that village, toward the land, they might fix it. And that's

what exactly happened. When the Palestinians, the indigenous people, came and planted the land, suddenly became fruitful and plentiful. The same thing applies to many stories when it comes to how to build houses. It's our land. We know this land very well. Where to build a house, where you shouldn't build a house, and how to build a house. Of course, into other parts of the economy, the Palestinians are well informed because of how they belong to this land. So the Israelis, as settler colonial society, they are always in desperate need, I would say even for the Palestinian Hill. So cheap labor, of course, has become part of it. Keeping in mind as well that Israel has succeeded to make the Palestinian economy and

the Israelis are entangled, somehow inseparable even. Palestinians have to use Israeli currency. They rely on the central bank of Israel to get their currency. And of course, many of our products we get in the market made by Israeli companies. Thankfully, now there is more awareness about by boycotting Israeli products because they are eventually give support to the Israeli military. But that's part of the economic reality in Palestine. How much of the blame of the, well, just life in Gaza as a whole, the poor quality of life in Gaza. How much of the blame do you put, or maybe not just you, but the average Palestinian puts on Hamas?

Because that's, again, I'm in constant conversations with people and, you know, I've even read somewhere that Hamas, the top three leaders are worth like $11 billion or something. And somebody said there's more aid flowing into Gaza than any other place, or at least there's a lot of aid and Hamas gobbles it up to make, to build tunnels everywhere and build rockets or whatever. Like, like, so it's really the, all the aid and help that Israel is giving Gaza. Somebody even told me like, well, Israel provides free water and free electricity. And, you know, it's interesting to hear you're laughing. Yeah. So I guess in general, like, do you see like most of the blame on Israel, but

then some of the blame on Hamas or what role does Hamas play in the economic downturn in of, of Gaza? We have a common proverb here in Palestine that politics corrupt, like politics corrupts people. So whenever you have someone who's very ethical with integrity, when they get to politics, somehow they lose all of that. That's very evident in the states at many levels, too. That's a pretty universal principle. I'm going to sign, I'm going to co-sign on that. universal principle I'm going to sign. I'm going to co-sign on that. Yes. So we need to understand that Hamas, when it came to power, it was unexperienced to play in the politics of the game. It was only a resistance movement for almost two

decades. And Hamas is very young compared to the PLO or PFLB or other Palestinian factions, by the way. So it's very young and it's only 30 years old or 40 years old at max, when it comes from the principles to the creation and solidification of the movement. So when Hamas came to power, it was faced with a backlash from the entire world and the blockade, they started creating the tunnels in order to smuggle food to Gaza. And later they found out that it's very beneficial for the economy. So they start to impose tax on these tunnels that will provide food, cigarettes, even cars to Gaza at a certain time. So Hamas, at a certain point, yes, certain groups and leaders of Hamas, of course, I

would say like it's politics corrupt, they became part of the political game and they try to be beneficiaries of what's happening in Gaza. But let's not overgeneralize. I think that's very important. And let's not use this as an excuse to justify the genocide that's happening in Gaza. We need to forget that Hamas is only a small group of the Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank. The number of Hamas members is roughly around 35,000, 40,000.

It doesn't even come close to a fraction of the Palestinian people. But also the majority of Hamas members are Palestinian refugees who were displaced in 1948 from their homeland and were not allowed, against, of course, the international law, which grants them the right to return to their homeland. Israelis didn't allow them to do so. So Gaza Strip has become an example of people who are in despair because of the blockade, trying to find ways to make living and to keep the economy running. And of course, the government was in Gaza, took advantage in certain extent to that in order to build their

own wealth. So, you're saying the original intention of the tunnels was to get more aid into Gaza? It wasn't like to start building a big military kind of base of operation at the beginning, at least. I know that's probably how they're used now maybe, but... Not at all. The first, the tenants were only in service of bringing food, medicine, cigarettes to Gaza. I remember I was in Rafah once and I saw the tunnels. And they are not as sophisticated as people might think sometimes. But they were made back then, when I was there, say in 2013 and later on in 2019, to bring – I remember one of the things, the commodities is cheese. So Gaza's would rely on the Egyptian cheese.

So it comes through tunnels only. Because all the products that need to come to Gaza has to go through the Israelis. And the Israelis, many times they just say no for certain items. So people can get them usually from tunnels. They say no to cheese? They wouldn't let cheese in the Gaza?

I can't recall if cheese was on one of the items, but I remember seeing like how people getting cheese from the tunnels and cigarettes because Egypt was like a lifeline for the Gaza economy. I heard somewhere that even toys and potato chips weren't allowed or at least had a period of time or something. I don't know where I read that. I don't know if that's true or not. There are many funny examples of what wasn't allowed in Gaza for the last 17 years, but many of them are unjustifiable. You've used the term genocide a few times now, and that can be a very volatile statement. The counter-argument to that is, well, if Israel is trying to commit genocide, they're

doing a really bad job at it. Even if we take the numbers from the Hamas Ministry of Health, 30, 30 to 40,000 people killed. And, you know, some of whom are militants, that's still a really small percentage of 2.2 million people. They tell civilian, I guess this is another, you know, whatever Israel is going to say, bomb some area, they warn all the civilians to flee ahead of time. In what I'm trying to represent this counter argument, in what history of genocide do people warn the civilians to leave?

That just seems like, obviously, they're not trying to kill civilians. Now, people will say war is hell, collateral damage happens. You've heard all the talking points, but I think that is an interesting point. If you're trying to commit genocide, why would you tell civilians to flee? Yes.

You can ask the civilians to flee to nowhere. There is nowhere for them to flee. That's exactly. You trap them into a concentration camp and you start bombing them. Then you say, oh, they are allowed to leave and flee. But you are controlling the land, you are controlling the borders. So the Israelis asked the people of the north to move to the south. They did. What happened? I have stories and testimonies of people, they were bombed by the Israeli air force.

When people went to the south, to the, assumingly, safe zone, and they were bombed. I think the videos came out a few days ago from Rafah, two days ago from Rafah. The Israeli tanks were bombing refugee camps and tents, where people were supposed to be moving into. They were now targets. Israelis are moving people back to the middle. So you're trying to move population in that prison and continue to bomb them and then say and justify that we actually call them and we drop leaflets on them to ask them to move and that's make it justifiable? Of course it's not.

There is no way that just informing people to move from a place to place justifies you bombing and killing thousands of people and the majority of them are civilians. I'm not talking about just someone who's getting his in use from TV and media outlets. I'm talking about some, I'm talking about someone who has family, someone who has lost the friends

and extended family members in this genocide. I know what's happening on the ground. I hear stories from people firsthand and it's painful. And I believe it's painful not only for us Palestinians but for people sometimes the ability to comprehend that genocide is still possible in the 21st century where we have the media outlets and we have social media and we have embraced this kind of inclusion ideas and elevated humanity to a supreme status, but we still are able to commit genocides.

We thought that we are done with the Holocaust and we said never again. Still, we did it again in many ways in Bosnia, we did it again in Rwanda, we did it again in Ukraine, we do it again now in Gaza. So humanity has constantly failed, but we seem to be in denial of our failures to maintain the human dignity and livelihood. And that's exactly what's happening in Gaza. So the media in the West, I believe, is complicit, not only complicit, there's active participant and guilty in what's happening to justify the genocide in Gaza. Just trying to underestimate it.

If you, assuming you pay attention to mainstream media and the West, when you, when you look at the headlines, when you look at the reporting that's done by again, a really wide range of media outlets, both more liberal, more conservative, whatever. And then when you look at real, when you talk to family members, you know, do you see like a lot of disconnect between what's being reported, how it's being framed, and what's actually happening? Yes, definitely. You know, I studied in the States. I lived in the States and I visit frequently. So I watch US news outlets almost every day. And it's disheartening. Sometimes it's very frustrating and enraging to see how disconnect there is between what's the reality on the ground

and the US media. Definitely, and I can tell you why, because it's interesting fact that these outlets don't have reporters on the ground and the reporters are not allowed to be on the ground and they only get their information from the Israeli military who's committing the genocide, while people who are on the ground denied access to these media outlets to share that information. So what happened? Younger people lost their trust in those media's outlet because they see on social media firsthand from Palestinians who are going through genocide, moving from the north of Gaza to the south

of Gaza and out to the middle. And they get to see the documentation. It's a live stream genocide by Palestinian journalists, even civilians, who started using their phones in order to document the atrocities committed against them. So it's interesting how people can trust the media outlets where they don't have reporters and the distrust and question the credibility of those who are going through the genocide. There's been polls taken. It's really fascinating that the age

demographic in America is like opinions on the conflict. Maybe that maybe the word conflict is too soft of a term, but for the sake of just the opinion on what's going on is really split in age demographic. Older people are typically way more on the side of Israel. Younger people are way more not on the side of Israel. And they, they showed that like a lot of this is because younger people are on tick-tock and other social media. They get up most of the news from social media and you go on TikTok and you have, I mean, loads of videos from Israeli soldiers.

I mean, filming like looting and pillaging and spouting off genocidal rhetoric. And you have footage taken from Palestinians of what's actually happening. And younger people just aren't, they're not watching CNN. They're not watching Fox News. They're just seeing firsthand what's going on and that's really fascinating.

I mean, yeah, it's disheartening. Everything is disheartening, but it's on a sociological level, it is fascinating that the means by which we get our information is just determines kind of our perspective on things. Hey friends, if theology in a raw has blessed or challenged you in any significant way, and it's kind of our perspective on things. bucks a month. And in doing so, you get access to all kinds of different premium content. And most of all, you just get access to the theology in the RAW community. We have all kinds of awesome chats and messages back and forth. And it just, it means the world to us

that you support the show. As the show has grown, so have all the expenses and all the work that goes into pulling it off. So again, if you would like to support the show, you can go to patreon.com it off. So again, if you would like to support the show, you can go to patreon.com forward slash theology and raw. And I just want to thank my, uh, uh, the people that are, are already supporting the show. Thank you so much for keeping this show, not only going, but also thriving. So patreon.com forward slash theology and rock. I still haven't returned to the checkpoint question, but I have to ask, um, I mean, you're a committed follower of Jesus, your to the checkpoint question, but I have to ask, I mean, you're a committed follower of Jesus. You're a Christian theologian. How have you felt about the response from the evangelical church in the West? And I was a big evangelical church in the West.

That's such a big, broad statement. But in my experience, it seems like still most evangelicals in the West are, they think they would say Israel is justified. This is not a genocide. They have a right to self-defense. They are just trying to get Hamas war as hell, you know, all the talking points I know you've, you've heard. How does that make the Christian community among Palestinians feel when they hear the response from the Western Evangelical Church? Ali Kassim I would quote an Anglican missionary in Palestine and Lebanon in the 1940s who wrote back to his Anglican mission agency that Palestinian Christians feel betrayed by the Christian West.

This was in the 1940s. We still feel betrayed by the Christian West. Not only as a group of Christians who are Palestinians, but actually we feel that the West betrayed even its own values to be committed to Christ's message, first and foremost. We get asked about our political position as Palestinian Christians who are committed to the just cause of our people, but we always say that our focus and our center is Jesus and his kingdom.

So for example, when Hamas started with its violence against the Israelis as kind of liberation method, Palestinian Christians such as Naim Ateek brought his justice and only justice, calling Palestinian Christians for nonviolent resistance and Palestinian Christians embraced that value. In terms of Palestinian Christians who are committed to Jesus and his message, to the good news of the kingdom, that we don't respond to violence with violence, but we embrace a non-violent resistance way

that calls out the humanity in our oppressors in order to liberate them from the sin of oppression alongside our own liberation. Unfortunately, what I see in the evangelicals in America, there is a fascination in war and death, rather than in the prince of peace and peace. There is this embrace of colonial supremacy, rather than humanity. At the beginning of this whole experience of atrocities and genocide, a couple of Palestinian theologians published a call to

repentance. We called the church in the West to repent from its commitment to war and just war theories which are very colonial, very Western, imperial in nature, rather than the justice of God, in nature, rather than the justice of God, rather than the message of Jesus. I was reading a book, just actually finished this book, fascinating, and I believe the church in America needs to read it, Mirror to the Church. It's about the genocide in Rwanda. And Emmanuel Thelonio. I have that book, yeah. It's not well known, but yeah, it's fascinating.

It's a powerful testimony. And he talks about how one of the reasons of the genocide in Rwanda was that the blood of tribalism is thicker than the water of baptism. And unfortunately, that's what we see here in Palestine, how the evangelical West, or Christians in general, not to be very restricted to evangelicals because Catholics and many other denominations are also inclined to uphold Zionist ideology. Joe Biden is a Zionist who is a Catholic as an example, it seems that the interests of racial, colonial ideology is more important than the ecclesia, the people of God, the body of Christ that brings us together. For me as Palestinian Christian, I'll take advantage of being here with you, Christian. And I think to call the church in the West for repentance because I believe we should be followers of Jesus,

committed to the message of the gospel rather than our nationalism. Don't let our nationalism, the blood of our nationalism, be thicker than the water of baptism that they bring us and unite us as the body of Christ. Pete Yousef, that's so, I mean, that's super powerful. I've often said that my, whenever I think about politics, or just my place in the world, my starting point is I am, fundamentally, I'm a member of Christ's global, multi-ethnic kingdom that has been exiled among the nations. That's my starting point when I think about

immigration, when I think about war, when I think about whatever. And I do fear that, like, when I hear other, especially American evangelical Christians, their starting point is kind of more of their national identity. And even if, you know, Israel I would see as an extension of American nationalism. And so when something breaks out, like the current war conflict, you know, they kind of, which side am I, which ones, you know, I don't want to be on the side of Hamas, so I must be on the side of Israel rather than saying I'm going to be on the side of the thousands of civilians on either side that, you side that are caught up in this conflict. The, the, the militarism again, maybe on, on kind of on both sides, but it's a little unbalanced, let's say. Um, and also

our, our, our, our, we have, like we Christians have spiritual family members like you and your brothers and sisters. We have brothers and sisters in Christ who are weeping over what is going on. Like that's, that's my primary side, you know, like that's brothers and sisters in Christ and, and Jesus himself says, and, and, and Mark three and other paths or Mark 6 that, you know, our spiritual bond runs just as thick as any kind of blood bond that somebody would have. And I don't know, that's my motivation for having you on here and other mutual friends that I'm getting, I feel like I'm getting to know a lot of Palestinian Christians over there and they... I'm fascinated at how dominant the nonviolent ethic of Jesus is among Palestinian Christians. So, I embrace that ethic,

but I'm in the minority in the evangelical church. You know, like, this is not... Like, I'm a fish out of water here, but is it the opposite there? Like, if you're a Palestinian Christian, the default is you believe in the nonviolent ethic? Would that be an accurate summary? Yes, the vast majority of Palestinian Christians believe, and even Palestinians believe, in peaceful nonviolent resistance. Not only Christians, but the vast majority also Palestinians. We have many examples in terms of theologians or institutions that promote nonviolence and calls for justice and peace. For example, we can talk about Kairos Palastine, Sabil Center for Theology of Liberation, Bethlehem Bible College, the institution that I teach at and minister to people through, you have

tent of nations, this is a land family that the Israeli settlers have been trying to annex for so long while Palestinian families resisting peacefully, nonviolently, that these attempts to occupy their land. So it's part of our deep conviction that we have the responsibility to carry the cross of Jesus and to have the humility to obey his teaching even when it seems not easy and when it is costly. And I think we are examined with fire when it comes to, are we following Jesus or we are only following our national interests? And when Christianity is gloomy and nice, we are Christian, but when it's at stake, then we'll start to interpret the gospel in a way that fits only our agenda and our national

interests. Yusef, I never came back to it. I, I know it kind of doesn't fit the context of what we're talking about now, but I did want to ask about, uh, the checkpoint because, um, I know this, this is something that's, it's, I I'm growing to my understanding of it. I I've never experienced it. I actually did experience that as an American tourist and, but I didn't even think of it. It wasn't American tourists. It's like you zoom right in there. What's that point? You know, but like what is, what is it? What is your experience like as a Palestinian at these checkpoints? And first, maybe explain it for somebody that has no clue what we're even talking about.

So Israeli checkpoints are all over the Palestinian territory and areas that separate the Palestinian territories are from Israeli ones. There's roughly around between temporarily and permanent ones around 500 checkpoints all over the country. Mainly to dominate and control the Palestinian movement. And these checkpoints, Palestinians, the vast majority of Palestinians who can go through these checkpoints need permission. So you cannot just go through the checkpoint without the permission.

You need a permission granted by the Israeli military in order to go through the checkpoint and to pass through it. Unless if it's a checkpoint in between Palestinian towns, then mostly the Israeli military, when they stop you, they will interrogate or look at your ID, which is also approved by the Israeli military in order to pass through. But let's talk about the Israeli military checkpoints that in Bethlehem, for example, that separates Bethlehem from Jerusalem or in some parts of Hebron, Old City to the other part. These are buildings, it's military power and it looks like an airport where you come to check in but it's with a high intensity of security. But Palestinians can only go through the checkpoints walking, while the Israelis can cross checkpoints driving. So for

Palestinians to go through the checkpoint, they have to walk like about half a mile through several security checks through the checkpoint before getting to the line where they have that check in, for example, like in the airport, to cross to the other side of the checkpoint. People experience deep humiliation on checkpoints. So even those who have permission sometimes takes them hours to cross from place to place. For For example, my father-in-law who works in construction for 40 years, almost 30 years, he used to work in Jerusalem. And his workplace is only 20 minutes drive from his house. But in order to get to work around 7, he used to leave his house around 5 a.m. So it can take a Palestinian to go

for a 10 or 20 minutes drive. It can take them like two or three hours because of military checkpoints. My personal experience at the checkpoint varied from extremely difficult ones where I was stripped naked and searched thoroughly by the Israeli military and lived naked in an open air prison for six hours before being asked to dress back and was permitted to leave. Or many times that I was denied even to pass to Jerusalem with my family. My last experience was

traumatizing to me, but also to my niece, my only niece. Her name is Maha, and Maha was nine years old. And we went to the checkpoint, and the plan was we were going to go to Jerusalem together. And my niece, Maha, originally from Gaza, she was here on a Christmas trip. After the humiliation that we as family experienced, including Maha and myself, the Israelis denied me entry, and Maha had to leave with the rest of the group.

And whenever I call Maha, she tells me, like, I don't wanna come back to, me, I don't wanna come back to you. I don't wanna go through that again. If in the future you can come and see me, that's perfect. But for her, the trauma still exists. It's part of her experience at the checkpoint. It's part of our own experience as Palestinians in general. Those who were killed at the checkpoint,

women who were pregnant and are giving birth weren't allowed by the Israeli military to go through checkpoints and they died with their babies. So the Palestinian experience of the checkpoint is as one of who we are, it became part of us. That's why even theologically when we talk about our theology, it became part of it. What would Jesus do if he stands at the Israeli military checkpoint today? How he would react to the Israeli soldiers.

And that's how the whole concept of Christ at the checkpoint as a conference at Bethlehem Bible College started. How as Palestinian Christians, evangelicals in our tradition, we imagine Jesus would respond to standing or crossing a checkpoint, a military checkpoint. Thank you, Yousef, for sharing that. I'm sure it's hard to even rehearse in your own mind. Before we go, what would you like to say to our audience? Any final words you can say whatever you want. Most of my audience are evangelical Christian. I mean,

it's around the world, but mostly in North America. So yeah, the floor is yours. What do you want to tell us all? Yes. I believe as followers of Jesus, you know, to be Christians, followers of Jesus from different church families and denominations, we are called for one thing, to be Christians, followers of Jesus from different church families and denominations, we are called for one thing, to carry the good news, to preach the good news, and to live out the good news to this world, and to choose what our priorities lay. Is it on Jesus and the gospel of the kingdom or on the empire and the presidents and the emperors of these worlds. It concludes nationalism, racism, and ethno-religious supremacy.

I think our calling first and foremost is to be obedient to Jesus. And it's most importantly when it's costly, when it's uncomfortable, and it even feels against the grain of what's happening around the world. And in these times, what we really need from our evangelicals, evangelical and Christian, and total brothers and sisters, first, to be committed to Jesus fully. Because I know when we commit to Jesus fully,

these barriers between us will fill down. Second, it's very important to educate yourself about what's happening in the history and the theology. A lot of great resources available out there from Palestinian Christian theologians, Bible teachers, stories of families and biographies, memoirs of Palestinians who went through the Nakba, who experienced the war, atrocities firsthand. And just with open heart and mind, with a

humility, learn, I think, just educate yourself, learn about it. Third and foremost, I think is important because it can change a lot. It's come and see us. Come see us. Go with us through Bethlehem, through the checkpoints. Let us show you the reality on the ground because for many people, the reality what we are talking about seems unreal because it's too much to handle. But when they come to Bethlehem, when they come to Palestine, when they watch the stories of Palestinians, they get the head that actually it is real. And after that, I think it's very important

to examine where do we stand. To be standing in solidarity with the Palestinian people, I don't mean to be pro-Palestine or anti-Israel or pro-Israel, anti-Palestine. I mean to be pro-Jesus and pro-the kingdom of God and gospel of the kingdom, which sees the face of God in the Palestinian and Israeli alike and thinks that both groups of people are worthy of life and dignity because Jesus Christ died on the cross for them in order to bring about justification, liberation, and redemption to all people. So, this is my message.

Yusuf, thank you so much for taking your valuable time to be on Theology in the Raw. Do you have a website or anything you want to, if people want to find more about you and your work, where can people go? I work at Bethlehem Bible College. I have some videos online on YouTube. I don't have a website yet, so maybe in the future. But you can read what I write about Palestine, the theology from Palestine on Bethlehem Bible College website and Christ at the checkpoint.

Please pass on our blessings and greetings and prayers to our family members in the West Bank and in Gaza. So, thanks so much for your time. Thank you so much. Thank you. This show is part of the Converge Podcast Network.