A Personal Conversation With The Ambassador

0:00 Mr. Ambassador, I have to tell you that this is something that is unscripted. You've walked into this podcast studio moments ago. We've never met before. I think some of our paths are we might know some people like Ambassador Huckabee. Dear friend. That's awesome to hear. Great man of God. You mentioned Dennis Prager. It's an honor to meet you. Dennis Prager as well. Yes. Also a good friend. And so I want to make sure, in fact, I'm going to try to say your name. I'll do the American version is Michael Leiter. Right. But how would you say it in Hebrew nice and clear? Yechiel. Yechiel is chai el, which means may God grant life.

0:41 Amen. That's my first name. That was my great-grandfather's name. So I was the firstborn of my family, so I was named after my great-grandfather. That's amazing. Who came as a refugee from the First World War, Ukraine. Yes, oh my goodness. 1916 to the United States. And then my grandfather came as a refugee from Vienna after the Nazis had entered Vienna, Austria in the Anschluss of 1938. So yeah, I'm here as Israel's ambassador to Washington and I remember the first time I sat down the Oval Office opposite the President of the United States, the Vice President Vance and Secretary Rubio and I'm thinking to myself, boy my dad came to this country with with a crusty piece of bread in his pocket and a quarter in the other pocket.

1:29 He was eight years old and here I am you know, sitting in the Oval Office of the President of the United States. So it's, you say unscripted. Yeah. I think most of life is unscripted, right? We're all doing plan B. God had his plan A in the Garden of Eden. Yeah, thank you, Adam. And we screwed that up, right? Yeah, thanks, Adam. So it's all plan B. And, you know, listen, the message of Abraham. Yes. Here we can talk about biblical figures, right? Yes. We're in the church. 100%. Abraham came with the unscripted message to the world. He told the world a thought that man creates God.

2:11 He said, no, no, no, no, no. God creates man. Man doesn't create God. It was a revolutionary message. It was also a bit unscripted. Yeah. So we can follow in his footsteps. Absolutely. And we will. By God's grace, we will continue on. Boy, with what you just said a moment ago, my mind's jumping around and I'm telling my old brain right now, boy, I have to remember that and come back around before we come to the conclusion. But I can't risk that. I want to say this. You just talked about how your family came to this country. I have. In fact, I've had Dennis Brager tell me, Jack, I've never heard a Gentile say what you said. And here's what I said. I said, Dennis... I am so committed to the scriptural record account of God's relationship with Israel and with the Jewish people that I believe that the crafting creation of America, the founding fathers producing documents that almost flirt with inspiration that had never been written before in the history of man.

3:17 All of that's obviously fantastic. I actually believe that God created the United States of America to be, as it were, at the very least, a big brother to the future founding of the nation or the reestablishment, I want to say, of the nation of Israel in 1948. I believe that God created the United States of America to be almost a nursery, a protective place for the Jew to come here until the time of Aliyah would be available to them. I believe that America... contrary to Tucker Carlson's pathetic theology, I believe that America has been blessed because how America has treated Israel.

4:03 I believe that America will be blessed based upon how we treat Israel. But if we disdain or discomfort Israel, it's not so much the politics of it all, it's the heart of God. God says regarding Israel, you're touching the apple of my eye. I believe that. And so I hold a radical view. The United States of America has been a place to cradle the rebirth of the nation of Israel. And I think that's why we've got people who, you can say this much more than I, but people like Golda Meir and even Netanyahu himself who spent a great, great, exactly. Their roots are here. So it is an honor to have you with us. It's an honor to be here. I can't thank you enough for hosting me.

4:44 Oh, my goodness. There's so much in what you said that I'd love to unpack with you. Yeah, let's go. But, well, first of all, I don't think Tucker has theology. I think he has some political notions, and, you know, he maybe dabbled a little bit in some reading, and somebody is probably pushing his buttons. Yeah. There's an incredible, I don't mean to be disparaging of anyone, but there's the worst combination, the most toxic combination is arrogance and ignorance. There are ignorant people who are humble and there are arrogant people who know a lot. But when you've got arrogance and ignorance together, that's the most toxic brew.

5:28 So he should stick to politics and leave theology to yourself and other pastors around the country. In any case, it is... I know that many are trying to escape this now, but when you go back and look at the founding fathers, they were very much rooted in biblical Israel. That's right. And they were looking, I mean, this is a big difference between continental philosophy, political philosophy, and the Dutch, English, American political philosophy. Whereas continental philosophy abandoned scripture The Dutch influenced the English, and they were the remonstrants at the time.

6:09 They were very biblically rooted. Absolutely. They influenced, of course, the Glorious Revolution in England, which afterwards was translated here into the United States as Founding Fathers. I'm sorry to interrupt, but even before that, remember the Pilgrim Fathers back... They left England and wound up in Holland for a great period of time. That was the influence. Exactly. And when you look at the speeches of the pastors who came over on the Arbella, for example. Yes. You know, you're talking about crossing, they saw it as crossing the sea, right? Crossing the ocean was crossing the... That's what Sam Adams said. They were going to liberation. Absolutely.

6:49 And John Adams wrote to his wife something very similar. And there's an incident about Jefferson coming out of church on Sunday, and he was stopped by someone who said, Mr. Jefferson, I didn't know you attended church on Sunday. on Sundays, and he said, well, for the sake of the future of the United States of America, that's what I'm gonna do, that we all have to do that. Because it needed to be rooted, even if he wasn't exactly a card-carrying member of the Bible Society, but it needed to be rooted in those values. The Founding Fathers understood that. So there's this association, this affiliation, which has been grown into the most amazing collaboration that we had over the past year.

7:32 I mean, Pastor, I must tell you this. I saw our pilots and your pilots sitting together for months preparing for Epic Fury. And in the 12-day war in June, you can't just put 200 F-35s in the sky from Israel and 200 F-35s in the sky from America and fly over enemy territory together without one plane coming down. Not a one. Okay. And nobody bumped into each other. Okay. Well, there was an incident of three American planes in Kuwait, but when we flew together over Iran, it's hard to explain that just with scientific data. It's true. But it takes months of preparation.

8:14 And there was never this level of collaboration between two armies. And that's because we went together, the United States and Israel, the United States as senior partner. Okay, we may be theologically rooted. We must be an older partner. Well, and your technology ain't so bad either. Well, not so bad, but we're the junior partner. We know we're the junior partner. The United States has interests all over the world. We're very local, okay? But we flew together in the most incredible, cooperative and collaborative effort to defeat evil. In history. To defeat evil. You know, there's such a difficulty right now. We spoke before about, you know, wokeism, right? Yep. One of the ills of wokeism is that there's no such thing as good and evil.

8:57 There's no objective truth. There's no objective morality, right? There's no objective good. We determined together the depth of this operation against Iran was we were saying, yes, there is such a thing as objective good. There is such a thing as objective morality. And what Iran represents is objective evil, which needs to be defeated. That's what happened on October 7th. Yeah. What is remarkable is the fact that we're hearing more and more that the Persian people, I like to call them the Persian people, who in their history, date back, we know this even biblically out of the Old Testament, where Zoroasterism was their religion. I was told by someone who's within the movement to bring back the Shah's son, Reza Pavlevi, that the, contrary to what the world thinks, that the Iranians are carte blanche Islamic, that that's not the case.

9:56 Oh, not at all. That there's a fraction, there's a tiny element of them being Muslim or Islamic. They want the yoke of Islam out of their country. Well, they certainly want the yoke of this fundamentalist, extreme version of Islam in the country. I mean, these mullahs, these ayatollahs, do not represent the people of Iran. It's a very small minority that's still represented by them. This is a brutal, barbarian, totalitarian regime. that represents perhaps 15 to 20% of the people, but with an iron boot on their necks. And what they're doing really is exporting this brand of extremism throughout the entire region. I mean, think about it. You know, if you go into the average university, you go to a Islam expert, he'll tell you, no, the big divide is between the Shiites and the Sunnis.

10:44 It's incorrect. That's right. The big divide is between the fundamentalist extremists And the accommodationists, the moderates. You know, when President Trump, God bless him, gave us the Abraham Accords in 2019, 2020, it was a radical change within the region because it put the UAE Bahrain on the side of moderation. In a sense, and this is something that the great professor of Islam, Bernard Lewis, who taught at Princeton for many years, he always used to say, he says, you know, Islam has not undergone a reformation yet. And the Reformation took place 1,500 years after Jesus. We're now 1,500 years after Muhammad.

11:26 Interesting, right? And what the Reformation within Islam is dealing with is whether or not to accommodate Judeo-Christian civilization or not. Now, if you're a accommodationist, if you're interested in reform, then you're going to say, well, Islam can now live side by side with Judeo-Christian civilization. But if you're going to be a counter- reformer, if you're going to reject accommodationism, like you're going to reject moderation led by Iran, what's the first thing you're going to do? You're going to destroy Israel. Absolutely. Because Israel is this, you know, Judeo-Christian enclave in the middle of the Middle East. Yeah. A prospering, free, modern state of liberty in a very rough neighborhood.

12:14 Yeah. So you have Shiites and Sunnis on either side. That's why you have Iran supporting Hamas. Hamas is Sunni, whereas Iran is Shiite. So how does that work out? It works out because they are both, first of all, opposed to the West. They first say we destroy Western civilization, then we fight out amongst ourselves, Sunni Shias. But first we have a common enemy. And that's why Iran is exporting this. Yes. And they're not alone. I mean, Qatar, That's right. Qatar is exporting this form of fundamentalist Islam. They do both, by the way. It's very dubious what they do. Sure. Because on the one hand, they support the fire department and then they support the arsonists.

12:58 Right, they support everybody. Pouring billions and billions of dollars. One thing I can tell you, having been in Washington now for a year and a half, some of the, we'll call it the Tucker Orbit, Wow, what a strange word that is. They say, you know, Israel, the lobby, the Jewish lobby, the Israel lobby. One thing I can tell you with certainty, we do not control Washington. I mean, I've got an uphill battle all the time, you know. That is so good because so many people will say, oh, the Jews control everything. If that's true, then why isn't it going better for them? Yeah, it could be going a little better for us. Let me tell you, I got my work cut out for us. We don't control anything. But we could never compete with the amount of money that Qatar is pouring into this country.

13:39 That is. You're talking about hundreds of billions of dollars. Universities, policy centers. K to 12. K through 12 education. This is true. Exactly. School books. We don't have any lobbying firm in Washington. Now, they call AIPAC the lobbying firm, but AIPAC is an American Jewish organization that has the right to say- That's what they say though. They'll label you guys something that you're not just for them to fuel their- Qatar has nine lobbying firms in Washington. Paid lobbying firms, nine. Not including Saudis, not including the others. No, no, no, no, we don't have one. And AIPAC is operating in what they believe is the best interest of America.

14:22 They believe in America first, they just think part of America first is having a strong Israel, right? Can you be condemned for thinking that? Well, listen, I'm not an AIPAC, but I believe that it's very much in America's interest to have a strong Israel. And I think that relationship has proven in history to be a good one. I have a secret for you. Yes. You're not alone. Yes, amen. Because almost every American administration, some differences, there are variances, but the reason why the United States of America has supported Israel for so many decades, since the Six-Day War, by the way. Before the Six-Day War, not so much, when we proved that we could win. When you, uh-huh. Right? Yes.

15:03 So every administration has supported Israel to one degree or another. As long as we mention the Six-Day War, we're having an associative conversation, right? So can I go off on a tangent here for a minute? Please. There's a great book by the American author James Mishner. Everybody knows him from the more famous novels he wrote, but there's a little-known novel called The Drifters. And in there, he's got a piece about the Six-Day War. And he says, you know, we're modern people. We don't believe in miracles, right? We don't believe in miracles. Right. So the splitting of the Red Sea, the moon shined on the water. We have scientific explanations for it. The moon, the water, a windy night, something.

15:43 Says 2000 years from now, there'll be another generation of pseudo intellectual liberals. They'll get back to the six day war and they'll say, gee, how did the sons and daughters of soap and lampshades of Auschwitz defeat 150 million enemies in six days? You know, war is... The moon, the hood. No, each day stood for 100 years. Oh, gosh. It was really the 600 Years War. You're interesting. This is what's going to happen. You're right. That's what's going to happen. But, you know, think about that for a second. You know, 80 years ago, 20 years before the Six Day War, 1967, we were helpless and hopeless. I mean, you know, Auschwitz, 12,000 being burned a day, And nobody gave a damn.

16:28 That's right. Nobody stopped it. That's right. 20 years later, we're flying, you know, Mirage jets that we hijacked from France and defeating 150 million enemies in six days in a war that begins on Sunday morning and ends Friday afternoon to light the Shabbat candles. Yes. Right? And... people don't stop and say, gee, could this have something to do with those dry bones in Ezekiel? Exactly. I mean, you had bones in Auschwitz. Bones. Those were bones. Literal bones. Brother, you're getting into Bible prophecy here that is spot on. And all of a sudden, well, explain it differently.

17:09 Spot on. The challenge isn't for those who can identify biblical prophecy. The problem is for those, the challenge is for those who refuse to accept it. That's right. So, I mean, you know, explain that. logically, that a people that's exiled from their land for 2,000 years, that's spread to four corners of the earth, comes back after Auschwitz, the greatest crime committed by mankind to mankind, and loses 1% of its population in 1948, against all odds, creates, recreates, as you so poignantly said before, recreates, recreates, recreates, and then, you know, people forget three weeks before the Six-Day War when Nasser...

17:50 told the president of Egypt, he told the UN. Sadat, yes? No, no, Sadat came later. That came later. In 1967 it's Nasser, Gamal Abdel Nasser. Got it. And he tells, in the aftermath of the 56 operation, which was to open the Suez Canal, which we did together with France and Britain, there were UN troops to keep the peace between Egypt and Israel in Sinai. Three weeks before the Six Day War, Nasser said to the troops, get out. They got out and he moved 90,000 troops into Sinai. And he was asked on television three weeks before the Six Day War, what do you plan to do with 90,000 troops in Sinai? You know what he said?

18:30 I'm going to turn the Mediterranean red with Jewish blood. He announced it. That was his answer. I'm going to turn the Mediterranean red with Jewish blood. And the press probably laughed. And that was even before we had legacy media, right? Yeah. But, you know, and then we had a prime minister. His name was Levi Eshkol. He was a lovely grandpa, but he couldn't make a decision about what to do about the garbage collector's strike, the police strike, the teacher's strike. And he had to make a decision whether or not to strike first. Yeah. Wow. Can you imagine? And he makes that decision. Now, you've got to ask yourself, somebody who was hesitant about all of his prime ministerial decisions suddenly takes a decision to launch a preemptive strike.

19:13 Yeah. and saves the country and wins the war in six days, is that like not a hidden hand? Right? I mean, when we study economics, we have no problem saying there's a hidden hand, you know, Adam Smith's idea of a hidden hand. Well, is there not a hidden hand to history? Isn't it obvious? Well, maybe, okay, look, I've been a follower of Yeshua for 50 years. So somebody might say, oh, you've been brainwashed. Yes, I have. My brain has been washed of idiocy and I understand the scripture. And in the book of Amos, and Joel, or Yoel, is it? Yoel. Backs him up.

19:54 Amos, he says, once I gather the people into their land again, again, they shall never again be uprooted. He didn't say they'd have no troubles. He said they would never again be uprooted. And I get a lot of pleasure saying that... Since May 14, 1948, The state of Israel is not going anywhere. And I don't base that on the incredible, awesome might and courage of the IDF or the IAF or the government. I say it based upon the promise of God. And it's amazing to go to a land where Mark Twain said something to the effect, what a wasteland.

20:35 This is ridiculous. It's horrible. Only about 60 years before the state was founded. Yes. It's amazing. You go there today— For one thing, some of the greatest wines in the world are now produced in Israel. But it's so absolutely beautiful that when I show people pictures of Israel where we'll take vast amounts of people on tour of the land and Bible sites, when people take pictures, you would think you're looking at some areas of the Sierra Nevada of California or – You know, Colorado or something. People don't realize. They think it's just a sand pit. It's not that at all. It's absolutely gorgeous. Stunning. Why? What's happening? God said that the land was going to be brought back to life.

21:16 You mentioned Ezekiel. Not only the bones would be standing up, but sinew and flesh would be put on them. That the land would begin to prosper and produce. And. And that the people would once again breathe. He says, I will put my breath in your nostrils. That's reminiscent. Back to life. It's exactly reminiscent of what God did to a clay mound called Adam. He breathed in him the breath of life. And so somebody like Tucker will try to school somebody like Tim, Tim, I'm sorry, Ted Cruz and his condescending matter not realizing that, well, you know, are you supposed are you are we supposed to support Israel and everything?

21:56 What is Israel? And the answer you can you can ask what what Canada is or a Canadian or Germany and a German country. But Tucker's question, if he would only have gotten a good answer that day, should have really straightened him up. And that is you cannot answer... so simply regarding Israel, because Abraham, God says, I'm going to bless your descendants. That's those who believed like Abraham believed, but it's even more than that. It's the genetic people. It is the promised land. I have to tell you, Mr. Ambassador, one of the great joys I have as a Gentile teacher of the word of God, I get a lot of pleasure of showing on the screens, the geographical location of the land that God promised to Abraham.

22:45 So, for example, Barack Obama said after his Cairo speech, we want to see Israel return back to her pre-67 borders. Immediately from this pulpit, I announced, no, no, no. Why stop at 67? Why go back to 67? Let's keep going. You're saying the Jews have no rights and no existence. Let's keep going. Let's go back. Let's go back. I got to share something. Let's go back to the day that God told Abraham, here's the borders. And when you look at that, it has shut the UN up and anybody else because Israel is yet to inhabit its promised borders. That day's coming. There's so much I'd love to unpack with you about what you just said.

23:28 on the issue of borders, I want to go back to water and the greening of the desert. I want to tell you a few things about that. But on this issue of borders, you know, in that interview with Ambassador Huckabee, my esteemed colleague, who I'm so honored to serve with at the same time, and I was asked afterwards when... when Ambassador Huckabee was attacked over that issue of the borders of Israel. Yep. So if we believe in the Bible, does that mean that Israel should now occupy Jordan and Iraq and Lebanon? You remember when he kind of sarcastically intimated that we're expansionist? Yep. And I must tell you, I love this discussion about greater Israel.

24:10 You know, our critics say greater Israel. We're a country, we're always compared to New Jersey. Right. But we're not New Jersey because you take out the Negev Desert, right? Yeah. We're more like half a Rhode Island. And people can't begin to understand just how tiny we are. So you're talking about greater Israel next to all the countries around us, even Lebanon. I mean, we're a fourth of Lebanon. It's just astounding. But this whole issue of the biblical contours of the land of Israel, The biblical contours, the boundaries of Israel was a revolution because it was the first time it was said that only God has an empire over the world. That's right. It limited boundaries. It wasn't meant to expand boundaries. It came and said the Nile to the Euphrates meant that you can't go beyond that.

24:54 That's right. Okay. Exactly right. Exactly. Not like the Persians and not like the Assyrians and not like the Babylonians. Or the Nazis. Or the Nazis later. Take the world. Take the world. No, the idea of boundaries in the Bible is a limiting of human capabilities. It's, you know, you have to stop at a certain place because one man or one nation can't ruin the world. Only God can ruin the world. That's right. Can run the world. And that was a revolutionary idea. And it was soiled in that, by Tucker. It was absolutely soiled. He soiled the biblical text. But what I want to say about the development of Israel and what you beautifully described as the greeting of the desert and how much we've developed. When I came to Israel in 1978, I came to a dormitory.

25:39 I went to study rabbinics. And they told me, you have 90 seconds in the shower. I said, 90 seconds in the shower. I come from Scranton, Pennsylvania. We shower. Yeah, spend half the day there. I said, no, we have a shortage of water. And believe it or not, there was this gizmo on the shower head. Oh, like a governor? That shut off. Yes. After a certain amount of time. So today, Pastor, we are a net water exporter. You're getting me excited here now. Okay. In a couple of decades, we went from a water shortage to a net water exporter. We export water to Jordan. We export water to the Palestinian territories.

26:21 We are a net water exporter. We have no longer a shortage of water. 87% of water. of our industrial water is waste water that's recycled. 87%, it's the highest in the world. And all of these developments we have, you know what we can do in Africa if everybody would just stop fighting with us? Everybody just stop fighting and let us be and cooperate with us instead of fighting all the time? There are 900 million people that go to sleep every night hungry. We could end food insecurity today. In a five mile radius of Tel Aviv, you've got all the solutions to food insecurity. What you just said a moment ago, people watching this program right now need to know this loud and clear, and I love what you just said.

27:03 The famines that are in the world, they are political or religious, 100% based famines. They're not... Look, no one... sits around and tries to eat in the middle of the Sahara Desert, you don't live there for a reason. But places like Ethiopia, for example, or Sudan, where there shouldn't be any famine, but there are political... Sudan was a breadbasket of Africa. And now people are suffering. People say, well, you know, I don't get involved in politics. Politics, that's dirty. I don't get involved in that. I just believe in God. I just can't stand that comment because when I read my Bible, through Moses, God is the one who invented government. Right.

27:44 What's happened is people, by politicking it the wrong way, have ruined the... construction of government. Government is a sacred institution by God. And you think about how the kings or the leadership that you see throughout scripture. And then you come, you mentioned earlier in our opening about our forefathers. I'm a big fan. I read everything that Sam Adams has ever put out. And I wish Americans would read about Sam Adams because Sam Adams is the one who over and over again mentions the fact, that we are going through our Red Sea experience. He said to the Second Continental Congress, he said, wait a minute.

28:28 God says he's no respecter of persons. He did this for Israel. He delivered them from the yoke of Pharaoh. King George III is our Pharaoh. He's going to deliver us. And he gave this tremendous speech. I forget the date of it, but it was impromptu referencing so many biblical works of God, which inspired the Continental Congress. And they wound up getting the job done. The point is, our source is founded upon the great quotes of John Locke, who wound up quoting scripture. Thomas Jefferson, a lot of people what Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence was lifted from John Locke. Did you know that I wrote my doctorate on John Locke? I didn't know that.

29:08 You didn't know that? Gosh, I wish I could do that. Here's a little bit of prophecy. Tell me. Tell me. Well, you can get it. It was printed by Cambridge University Press. You can get it on Amazon. You got to take out a mortgage. We have to get that. You got to take out a mortgage because it sells for like $130. But yeah, I wrote a book on John Locke and his use of the Hebrew Bible. But yeah, because in the 17th century, what I was fascinated by was as the divine rights of kings was losing its luster, where did these philosophers look for guidance? I said, hey, there is a book that tells us about what God would choose as governance.

29:51 And this is a little known fact, by the way, but... The idea of Washington not being one of the states, that comes from Hugo Grotius, who is the founder of international law, who is a Dutch legal scholar and philosopher, who said that the Netherlands should—the capital should—the capital should—the should not be part of any one of the 12 states. 12 states, like the 12 tribes? Why? Because Jerusalem was not divided among the tribes. So all the tribes could feel, it sat in between Benjamin and Judah. Centrality. But everybody should feel that they belong to the capital.

30:33 So that's why you have D.C. It's not Maryland or Virginia. That's right. That was patterned after Grotius, who patterned after the Hebrew Bible. I love this. Absolutely epic. Yeah. So again, I think, again, all the more, I do believe the founding of America for many other reasons, because you gotta think about it, is Egypt in the Bible? Of course, Israel of course, the most mentioned nation in the Bible. Babylon, Medo-Persian Empire, you go on, there's other countries. Libya's mentioned in Ezekiel. Louv, yeah. On and on you could go. You cannot open the Bible and turn to the United States. You don't see it in there. But how could, to prove my point, how could you see the most free nation that's ever been, religious freedoms, military power, finance and wealth, I mean, on and on it goes.

31:26 And what was Martin Luther King quoting when he was fighting for black rights in this country? Yes. Right? He saw the promised land. Yes. Right? Yes. One of the most famous speeches. The promised land, which to me, harkened back to John Winthrop's A City on a Hill. A City on a Hill. All of that. You've got this remarkable nation, yet I can't find it mentioned in the Bible, but therein might be our saving grace as well. I think that America is a miracle. that again, in God's infinite sovereign wisdom, used it and uses it for a lot of reasons, but the main thing was to be that cradle for the rebirth of the nation Israel. That said, I'm concerned about where we're going in the American pulpit.

32:09 I'm not a real fan of much of America's pulpits because they're not teaching about God's promises to Israel. They're not... Mr. Ambassador, the Bible tells us in the New Testament, from a Jew, mind you, from Saul of Tarsus, known as the Apostle Paul, that you Gentiles should love the God of Israel, Romans chapter 9, 10, and 11. that you guys should love the God of Israel so that the Jews who don't know God would be provoked to jealousy to know their own God from you. He told the Gentiles that. I believe that with all of my heart. We have a lot to learn. We have a lot to learn.

32:50 What I'm saying is this. Why are not these Gentile churches reading the Bible and these pastors teaching their people the full counsel of God If they did, it would shut down the progressive lunacy of replacement theology. Oh, the church is Israel. The Christian's the new Jew. Really? That is, in my opinion, it's a demonic doctrine. It's satanic. It allows for then anti-Semitism. It allows for people to not recognize the borders of Israel, the government of Israel. And all of this just happens to just dovetail beautifully into the narrative, or at least they use it, the Islamic argument.

33:37 which is what we're dealing with in our world today. I'd love for you to talk on this. You know, I know, even though we've never talked together, I've seen, I've been to Israel 23 times. I have seen areas that everything was fine. And either Abbas or UN or PLO or the PA said, Israel, get out. And when Israel got out, They didn't maintain their crops. They didn't maintain their irrigation. They completely fell apart. And who came to their aid? Gaza. Yeah. Who came to their aid? People don't even know this. Israel came to their aid. I saw it with my own eyes. Nobody believes this. Can you speak on this? Well, you know, I don't want to presume to be an expert on Christian theology.

34:24 But I will say this. I cannot believe in a God that... would turn his back on me because I can't, well, I can't believe in a God that would turn his back on you because I don't wanna believe in a God that turns his back on me or you or, you know, if he turns his back on the Jewish people. Could turn his back. I mean, if he negates the covenant that he has with the Jewish people, why can't tomorrow he negate the covenant he has with the Christian people? So I think we kind of should leave that discussion aside. The fact, and you know what, maybe, maybe, that had a voice up until May 14th, 1948.

35:05 You know, it was hard to say that the Jews still had a place in God's world in Auschwitz. You know, it was easy to say, you know, where is God? The Nazis can get away with this. You've got that kind of brutality. You know, I could see somebody hard pressed to say the Jews are still at the apple of God's eye. But after 1948 and the history of Israel, I think you gotta stop and say, something's going on here. Something's going on here. We talked about the dry bones before, we talked about the prophecies of Isaiah. Something's going on here. And if you go, you talk about America creating a cradle of liberty for the entire world, look at that one area of the world where democracy, where fairness, where equality, hasn't made a dent other than Israel.

35:58 You go look in the Middle East and just hasn't made a dent And in the Abraham Accords, you start seeing that accommodationist element within Islam willing to say, we can go in that direction too. Gradually, slowly, but we can go in that direction too. That's a civilizational change. You know, Pastor, I wear a kippah, right? I can walk down the street of Abu Dhabi and feel comfortable. Mm-hmm. I can't do that today in Paris. That's true. Okay. You'd be hard pressed. I can't do that today in London. That's a civilizational change. That's right. And the potential here for real enlightenment in the Middle East is there.

36:40 And you see Saudi Arabia kind of in this internal tug of war. You know, one day they're gonna make peace with us, the next day they're drawn back and so on. But it's gonna come if we are successful, and I think we will be successful ultimately. in removing this nemesis from the neck of the world, this Iranian revolution, which the 1979 Khomeini revolution in Iran is as big an issue as all the revolutions in history. People don't appreciate this. This was an attempt to move Islam back into the Middle Ages and take Islam back into a, confrontation with the West, with Judeo-Christian civilization, and what we're fighting now against Iran is not just to open up the Straits of Hormuz, and not just to prevent them from having nuclear weapons, but fighting against the exportation of evil which will ultimately encompass the world.

37:30 We fought an ideology against the Soviet Union. It was an ideology we fought that was going to devour the entire world. Well, their intention is to do the same, make no mistake about it. And if you don't stop it there, It's going to come here, not only in the form of Sharia law in your back door. It's going to be much worse. The whole story of Genesis, this is how the Bible opens. The Bible opens with discernment. Yeah. God separates the waters above from the waters below. He separates the dry land from the wetland. He separates the light from darkness. He separates plant life from animal life, animal life from man. Day from day. Day from day, right? Keep the Sabbath day. And he separates one tree from...

38:12 from all the other trees. And what happens? Man loses discernment. That's right. When man loses the ability to discern, the world comes to end. Comes disaster. Disaster. Exactly right. And we've lost so much of the West. has lost the ability for discernment. They abandoned Genesis, there's no more discernment. And one of the things I have to do as ambassador is remind everybody that there is something that's true. There is a truth. Israel was attacked on October 7th. After it left Gaza, because it was pressured, We gave up all of those agricultural centers that were developing flowers for Europe and food for Africa. We turned it all over.

38:53 We gave it to the Palestinian Authority. Within a year, the Palestinian Authority was annihilated. Hamas took over, which we said was going to happen. And they built up. Do you know how many... tunnels of terror that were in Gaza? I've lost count of how many kilometers? 250, 300 something nuts? Well, I'll tell you. No, it's much more. Gaza, and this is really important for your viewers to understand because they've heard so much about Gaza. Gaza is 24 miles long and 8 miles wide. And underneath 24 miles long and 8 miles wide is 350 miles of terror tunnel. They took all the money they received from Qatar and from other places around the world, billions of dollars, and built these terror tunnels from which, in which they stored missiles, arms, explosions, drones, and from which They entered Israel and just slaughtered anybody in their wake, babies, women.

39:54 They raped women as they were killing them. Okay, they cut off people's heads. I saw the 47 minute video. And I just, you know, when some senators on the Hill asked me, you know, why we're being so aggressive, why we're, so what would you do? Tell me what you would do. That's a scary question to ask them. I'm afraid what they might say. Do you know that our, Well, they never answered because you know that in fact, when you actually look at the facts, not feelings, but facts, we had the lowest combatant to non-combatant death ratio in modern urban warfare. I don't doubt that. Lower than Fallujah, lower than Mosul.

40:34 And when you have real experts that went through, like John Spencer, who's a lecturer at the US, the academy at West Point. He's the number one expert in the world on urban warfare. When he went through, he said, there's never been a war fought with greater sense of morality than this. We fought with our hands tied behind our backs. And quite frankly, Pastor, my son, my oldest son, would be alive today. I just read this today. If we did what we're being accused of doing, he'd be alive. Because we didn't strathbomb population centers. That's right. Right? We sent... Infantry and he was special ops and he led the forces into Gaza from the first day fought for 15 days on the 15th day of the war It was just before the Sabbath was the Sabbath where we read in synagogue the portion of Abraham Purchasing the cave of the Machpelah to bury Sarah.

41:29 Well, he was looking for a tunnel He was looking for his cave right as a child of Abraham and it was This cave was laden with explosives. It was booby-trapped and And he found it. It was 321 in the afternoon Friday. And he wired the troops. He wired back to the command center. I found the tunnel and he said, Shabbat Shalom. Have a peaceful Sabbath. And as soon as he said Shalom, Hamas set off a massive explosion that brought the house down on top of him and another three of his commandos. On the other side of the wall, there were another five of his commandos that lost their legs.

42:09 And when people tell me, you know, we overreacted, right? We didn't put the civilians in front of these terrorists. They put them there. Nor did you put the weapons in the tunnels. And we didn't put the weapons in the tunnels, and we didn't dig those tunnels, and we can't live with jihadis on our border. And let me tell you something. If there was an issue like that in any other country in the world, there would be nothing left on the other side of the tent. Just imagine that happening in Laredo, Texas. What would be left of the other side of Mexico? They would have no compunctions whatsoever of just eliminating everything and setting a security zone that's hundreds of miles deep. Of course. What we have now in Gaza is a security zone.

42:52 We didn't remove anybody from Gaza. They could, if Egypt would let them leave. Egypt is keeping them there. They refuse to open the gates. Look at Egypt's wall up against the Palestinians. Nobody talks about that. Nobody talks about that. We're just, as a matter of fact, I was on a conference call yesterday with four senators. And I told them, I said, do you know how many... excuse me, Gazans have left over the past three years since October 7th through Israel? 50,000. 11,000 for medical purposes and another 40,000 who have visas. Anybody gives them a visa? You're so concerned about the Arabs of Gaza? No. Give them a visa. Let them go to England. All these guys who represent the cause of the Palestinian people, they don't give a damn about the Palestinian people because if they did, they'd give them visas.

43:39 One of the joys of us taking people to Israel, it's many, but one of them is to go to various places from anywhere, from any one of the villages to Mamila, and go to Aroma, my favorite place, What do you see? You see Jews. You see, I guess, non-Jews. You see Muslims, everybody. People need to know this. They need to see, in fact, when we take people, their minds are changed because they're sitting down and they see all of this coexistence happening, and it blows their mind because CNN painted a completely different picture.

44:20 And I don't know the numbers you might, but, There's a great PragerU five-minute video that was put out years ago about the Israel test by George Gilder. Great book. Really good book. He talks about how... Israel's got this much water, but over the years, you said it, they've increased the water, not lessened it. While all the while their population grew so much. And that population is this percent Jewish, this percent Arab or this percent, you name it.

45:02 And people, it's absolutely amazing, which is why it's called the Israel test. It's so amazing to see, uh, that I too have been to Paris. I too recently in England and there's areas where Londoners told us, yeah, you don't want to go down there. You're going to want to go around the city to go to that part because it's Friday afternoon. It wouldn't be good for you. It's the call to prayer. I knew exactly what they were talking about. That's a pretty sad thing. But again, I might be too harsh, but we saw the decline of Christianity in Europe a long time ago.

45:46 And radical Islam will fill a void. We're seeing that void filled in Europe. In the United States, I believe the answer is always the word of God, as our founders believe that, for America, and this is for Israel too, our relationship to Israel, is America, at least its houses of worship, need to return back to the Word of God. People need to return to the houses of worship. Yeah. People don't understand when I tell them as an Orthodox Jew, when I go to speak in a church Sunday morning... And I drive up to the parking lot and it's a beautiful day.

46:27 And the parking lot is filled capacity. Correct. These people aren't going out fishing. No. They aren't going out golfing, surfing. They're coming to church on Sunday morning with their families to talk to God to. to learn and to receive his blessings and to beseech him for their needs and for the needs of their family. And these are their communities and these are their country. This is the hope for the future. That's right. And I know that it's the hope for Israel, too. I think that there's an awful lot that we need to compare notes about, both our communities in dignity.

47:07 Our history is kind of rough. We went through these Middle Ages, and there was always these theological debates. A lot of those people said they were Christians and did terrible things. But we're beyond that. We're in a different age today, particularly because the state of Israel came into existence. So I think it's sending a message to our Christian brothers and sisters. And I just want to conclude by saying thank you. Everywhere I go, I say thank you. To you, thank you to your congregants. Thank you to the United States of America for being a beacon of light in this world. And I hope that we'll continue to do great things together for the sake of humanity, because that's what God expects of us. He gave us that charge to be partners in creating the proper destiny for humankind.

47:49 And I hope we'll live up to the challenge. Yeah, amen. And so as we wrap this up, as I said earlier, people, pastors will ask, our relationship with the Jewish people, the Jewish states and all, And so I'll always answer and go to scripture. And there's something that for me in my own private life where, and I can't explain it, but I had no religious upbringing. I'm not saying that my home was atheistic. Right. It was a moral home. I don't know what guidelines my dad and mom lived off of. My mom had some sort of understanding of Catholicism.

48:31 She was orphaned at a very young age in Hawaii, and she was raised in an orphanage, Catholic orphanage in Hawaii. So she had a very odd view of God, but she didn't pass it on to us. And then my dad, being a farm boy from South Dakota and then the U.S. Marines, he just learned if you want something done, you've got to do it yourself. No one's going to hand you anything. So when I was 19 years old, I walked into what was very unfamiliar looking, very odd looking, because you know, my picture of a church was this beautiful Gothic type building with stained glass. This was more reminiscent of a warehouse. I saw all these people my age going into this building and I went in there and 2,000 teenagers sitting there and this guy comes out and he starts teaching the Bible.

49:20 I'd never seen a Bible, never even heard from the Bible. But fast forward, I knew that night that I was responsible for my own evil conduct in my own life. Taking advantage of people for my own pleasures, seeking my own comfort, not yours. And I became keenly aware of my own internal darkness that I needed. There was no light. And there was some sort of experience where I knew I was in trouble. But I knew I was in trouble. But like Isaiah said, call upon the Lord and you shall be saved.

50:03 This is a word that was given to Israel, but that happened to me. And I didn't understand anything about Jerusalem, about Israel, about 48, about, I didn't know. I didn't even know I was a Gentile like that. I didn't know that stuff. Something happened on the inside. But I got to tell you, this is the point. That And I don't know what it's called. But within that week, I had gone to a Christian, they used to have Christian jewelry stores in those days. Now it's all online stuff. And you could go and they sold Bibles and little trinkets and necklaces and crosses.

50:43 And I saw this interesting concoction of jewelry. And it was the Star of David. And out of the Star of David, beneath it was the ixtus, the fish. You've seen the, they call it the Christian fish. It's the ixtus, and then below that was the cross. And I don't know about, I didn't know much about those other two things. The cross, I've heard about that. What is this funny little loop? It turns out to be a fish. What got my attention was, that's the Star of David. And what happened to me was, from that moment, it's unexplainable, and it's stuck with me for 50 years. I began to, first thing I knew, something was different.

51:25 I went home and I looked and I found Israel on a globe. And from that moment on, there was some bizarre passion and affinity to the nation of Israel, the Jewish people, though I had never met a Jew. And there was this unexplainable love. And As I read, I came to this thing that Dennis Prager, I hope he watches this. Dennis asked me, why are you a lover of Israel like this? And I said, well, first of all, you guys gave us the scriptures and so much more.

52:06 And I could go on and on. How is it that you guys are more Nobel Prize winners than anybody else? I could go on and on. How you guys took a desert, turned it into a forest. I could go on and on. But I said, the absolute, and I went on, I said, the absolute sealing the deal is this. And I said, Dennis, can you look this up in your Hebrew Bible? And he said, yeah, yeah. He pulled out his phone and he looked up and he went to, it's Proverbs 30. Solomon wrote this, Proverbs 30, verse 4. And it says, who has ascended into heaven or who has descended? Who has hollowed out the seas in the palm of his hand? And who holds the wind in the fold of his robe?

52:49 What is my name? And what is the name of my son if you know him? That's Proverbs 30 verse 4. And from that moment on, I knew that the Jewish people, the nation of Israel, the apple of God's eye, the promised land, the chosen people had given the world the greatest gift that could ever be given. And that is salvation through a Jew born in the hill country of Nazareth or Bethlehem by two young people, whose genealogy you can trace in the scriptures, and something about my life became, I don't know what, Jewish?

53:35 Something about, I don't know. Today, I would say to the Jewish individual, don't leave your Judaism. Come home to all of what the prophets had foretold. And for me, there's an affinity that... is stronger. This is almost terrible for people to hear. I'm an American through and through. I'll die for this country. I love my nation. But according to the Bible, Israel will exist forever. And I'm going to go with the winning team. And I am just honored to be with you today.

54:16 I thank you that you gave us audience. I'm so honored to be here with you. And thank you for that. I mean, I learned a lot and I appreciate you very much. And if I can, I just want to leave you with a thought from my son. So when he came back from basic training the first time, he had marched for 50, 60 miles, you know, with so much weight on his back. And I saw he was like, his eyes were sunken. He was tired. And I said, Moshe, how is it that your knees don't buckle, that you don't collapse? He was always joking with me, so he said, I add more weight.

55:01 I said, come on, what do you mean you add weight? I'm asking you how you carry all that weight and you don't collapse. And he said, no, I'm serious. I add the hopes and prayers and dreams of my grandparents on my shoulders throughout the ages, and I remember that I'm carrying their weight. It makes it much easier to carry the material weight. We are all carrying hopes and prayers and dreams of our ancestors on our shoulders. And the way for us to move forward and do the right thing is to add a little bit more weight, add that weight of those hopes and prayers and dreams. That's awesome. And then we'll make it work. Amen.

55:42 Mr. Ambassador, it's an honor. Thank you. Thank you so much.