"Perspectives on the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict” by Steven*

The one may be overpowered by another, two can withstand him, and a threefold cord is not quickly broken.

Well, this is Strength to Strength. Welcome, everyone, here to the call this morning. The purpose of Strength to Strength is to assist the Church in earnestly contending for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. And this morning, we are anticipating having a brother share with us about some of the needs in the Middle East. And as we all know, two weeks ago, there was a horrendous attack on the Israeli settlements by Hamas.

And that was two weeks ago. And there's been much bloodshed since then, much pain. And the whole world has felt that. The web of these attacks, the web of these deaths, has really impacted our world. And this morning, as Christ followers, we're here to think about how can we think about this?

What is the proper framework to think about these things? And our goal with this call, the goal that Brother Stephen has, is to really help us to understand that these are people. They're not just statistics. And in our world, we hear so much. There's so much information that comes at us. And we can forget that these deaths are mothers, our children, our sons, our daughters of people. And also, of course, we know, too, that this part of the world, the Middle East, has been a hotbed for many years. And there's also lots of theological arguments around this part of the world. Obviously, for us as Christ followers, this is where many of the stories of the Bible happen.

So much of the whole storyline of Scripture happened right here in the Middle East, right here in Palestine. And so our hearts are naturally drawn there. It's the story of the Bible. And how do those of us who live in the New Covenant, how do we think about all these things? How do we think about the nation of Israel, the current nation of Israel? These are questions that are pretty hot topics. But one of the things that here at Strength to Strength, we really want to make clear, is that we want this talk this morning to focus on the people, whether it's Israelis or whether it's Palestinians. We don't think that we think that God cares deeply about each one and desires that all men will be saved, that all men will come to the knowledge of truth.

He's not willing to end with perish. And that's really our desire here this morning. I was just reading in Galatians this morning. I just want to read a couple of verses here out of Galatians 3:28. "So in Christ Jesus, you are all children of God through faith.

All of you who are baptized in Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are one, for you all are one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed and heirs according to the promise." And so at Strength to Strength, we don't take up the belief of dispensationalism, of the belief of God working on two fronts with the nation of Israel and with the Church. We believe that we're in the New Covenant, that Jesus Christ has fulfilled the Old Covenant, and today he is working with those who call themselves Christ, who have been baptized, whose sins have been cleansed, and who are living in accordance to his teachings.

And so that's what we wanted to say that upfront here, that we really do care deeply that the Church, particularly in the West, for those of us who can so quickly get aligned with powers, with the powerful Western countries, for those of us who we tend to be influenced by some of the conservative Christianity that's around us, that really thinks that the United States should align themselves with the powers of Israel and other powers that are allies in the Middle East. And so this morning, this is not about somehow building up that belief at all. We really want to expose it as an error and help us to think in ways that are in alignment with Scripture.

James says this: "Pure and undefiled religion.

Pure and undefiled religion before God, and the Father is this, to visit orphans and widows in their trouble and to keep oneself unspotted from the world." And to keep oneself unspotted from the world, can the world, can the powers of our day affect us? Can they influence us? And the answer is absolutely yes, they can. And so we hope that through this call here today, this morning, that it can help us be unspotted from the world and its powers.

So thank you for joining us here this morning. I would just ask that you would pray with us as we go through this call. There's many touchy situations. It's very complex, as you will see as Stephen talks. And so I pray that you would pray for Stephen and the others. There's only very few true Kingdom Christians in that part of the world, whether it's on the Israeli side or whether it's in the Palestinians. Very, very few.

And our prayer is that God would use these true followers there to be his hands and feet in this time. So let's just bow our heads for prayer before we get started. Father, we come to you in the name of Jesus, the one who came and walked among us, the one who walked these lands that we'll be looking at here right shortly. And Father, we know that he brought a new and living way.

Father, we know that he wept over Jerusalem. He wept when he saw the temple and how sin had taken over that place, how it was the rich lording over the poor. People were taking advantage of, were exploiting those who were coming, the pilgrims who were coming to worship the temple. And Father, we know that today these same issues and struggles are there in that part of the world, that people are people, that nations are nations. We're not here to somehow imagine that the majority of people should relate as Christians in this part of the world. But Father, our heart this morning is that through this call, that the true Christians, whether here or whether there, would be encouraged to continue to follow in the upside-down ways of the Messiah.

That we would have a heart that, in the face of evil, is willing to absorb evil as your Son did, and even is willing to absorb evil in the horrific death that your Son experienced on the cross. And so Father, we know that the gospel is foolishness to the world. And so Father, renew our minds, renew our hearts this morning. Father, give us a heart that weeps for the pain that's here in this part of the world, to think of losses on the Palestinian side, the horrific lives they've had to live under suppression by overrolling governments and even ideologies within their own myths that have brought so much pain.

And Father, be near to the ones who experienced horrific death at the hands of Hamas two weeks ago, Father, and are still, many are obviously don't even know where their loved ones are. And so Father, I pray, Father, that as followers of Jesus, our hearts could be soft, that we could realize that there's so much pain, that we can know how to pray, that we can know how to support those, the Christians that are there striving to be your hands and feet. So Father, pray a special blessing on Stephen and his family. We know that they've chosen to stay there while others are leaving and have chosen to, they want to be your hands and feet.

And so Father, I pray a special blessing on Stephen as he shared with us this morning, as he kind of gives us some of the understanding of what's happening on the ground there. And we ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.

All right, Stephen, you can unmute your phone there. And so obviously, we are being careful here this morning due to security reasons. Your part of the world has so much conflict in it, and there's lots of danger there. And so the last thing that we want to do over here is put you in danger. And so that's why we're not using your rolling aid, and we have your camera off. But yeah, thanks for being willing to join us here. I met with Stephen earlier this week.

And while we were meeting, it was late at night there. While we were meeting, he was interrupted several times with his wife giving him some updates on some of the things that were happening right in the West Bank, which is right close to where they live and riots and things like that. And so they live in a very hotly contested part of the world where feelings are running high. And so thank you for coming on here this morning and being willing to share with us. So Stephen, just if you can, give us a little bit about who you are, just for the callers here.

Stephen is an Anabaptist brother from the US, serving there with an organization. So yeah, tell us a little about your history, kind of, and how you landed there in Israel.

Yeah. So there's nothing extremely special about it. We answered a call to a need for somebody to fill the position I'm in. So we've been here two years now. Prior to this, I've worked in other parts of the world where predominant religion is Islam.

And that would be where my work is. That's what it would predominantly be as well here. That's predominantly who I'm working with. Yeah. And my family's here with me for boys.

Yeah, I'm not sure what you all want for an introduction there, but we've been here two years planning.

I mean, the idea is that we'll be here another three, but Lord knows what the next three will bring. So see how that works out, actually. Sure. Yeah. Can you hear me okay? Can you hear me okay or? Yep. Can hear you really well, Stephen. Thank you.

So give us a little bit we'll jump into some I'll pop the map up here right shortly. We can kind of talk about some of the context that you're working in and kind of help people understand some of the geography there.

We hear about these places all the time, but sometimes a lot of us probably have never been there. And so just looking at some of the geography and some of the layout can help us understand the current situation and also where you work and things like that. But give us just a little bit of an overview of the last two weeks. How has it affected you? What was happening in the days before this Hamas did this attack? And then kind of how has that affected you there?

So two weeks ago, Saturday is when I think they say about between 6:00 and 6:30 in the morning is when the Hamas first attacked. That was the final day for the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles, Feast of Booths, Sukkot. Not sure if you're familiar with any of those three names, but Old Testament feast.

And it was the final day of it.

Yeah. So in many ways, it was the week prior to that just packed with people in Jerusalem. People come from all over the world. Even many Christians actually come during that time. They even have a peace march through Jerusalem. Christians do.

But just I don't even know how many people they say were in town for that week. And mainly in Jerusalem. I'm sure there's probably some in other parts visiting family as well, but the majority of those people are coming to Jerusalem.

And yeah, then Saturday's attack happened on the Sabbath here. So Sabbath is certain it's different in different areas of the country, but in Jewish areas of the country, there's usually not public transportation, and everything's real quiet. People are staying home. They're resting on the Sabbath.

And so that's the setting for when this attack happened, coming off of a holiday and on the day of rest. So the preparedness level of people for it was not it wasn't there. They weren't expecting it.

And then in the next week, pretty much everybody that was able to, that had come in for the event, had left.

Streets were, somebody told me they're emptier than when COVID happened, which they actually had a pretty serious lockdown during COVID here where you couldn't go anywhere for a while. So just night and day difference. Most people aren't going out of their house.

And a lot of it was fear because and that's continued now, even into this second week. It's probably lessened some. But I would say the fear, a lot of it being Jerusalem is a mixed city. I'm not sure on the demographics exactly, but there are a lot of half of it is basically half of it is Arab.

And yeah, there can be a lot of tension in communities that Arab communities that border Jewish communities. And so everybody is staying home just to try to not get caught up in something, basically.

So yeah, that's what the last two weeks have been like here. The West Bank, then, where I predominantly work, the military came in with a big front-end loader, and they took big rock piles and dirt piles and piled up all the roads, leaving the Arab areas of the West Bank.

And I would say that was basically just a control measure to try to eliminate more issues than what they were already dealing with in Gaza. And basically, that's basically shut down the amount of my prior work that I'm able to continue doing at this point just because of the access in and out of a lot of the places we were visiting isn't at this point, it's not available. Hoping that that opens back up soon somewhat. But yeah.

Sure. And so like I said, we'll get some we'll look at the geography here, and you can kind of unpack and kind of get into a little more of some of the things that are happening there and some of the history behind some of these dynamics.

But we hear about all the rockets coming into Israel out of Gaza. And has that affected you there in Jerusalem? What does that look like for you as a family where you live? So the IDF has a pretty good rocket alert app. So basically, when one comes, leaves Gaza, they pinpoint its trajectory where they're expecting it to land. And then that app will alert the people in that area.

I'm sorry. I'm getting messages from my wife here. Just checking to make sure that everything's fine. And so That's fine. Go ahead. Go ahead and answer her. No, no. It's okay. They're helping a friend pick olives right now, and I'm away a little bit from there so I could get better reception. And I'll head back there when I'm done, but I just wanted to make sure nobody's fallen out of the tree or something like that.

So the rocket alert app does pretty well, and it warns the various areas. So it'll say South Jerusalem, West Jerusalem, East Jerusalem, whatever, or the other areas all throughout Israel. The times that it has alerted our particular area, the times it has alerted our particular area, the first Saturday it did a couple of times.

I'm getting a bad echo. Is that my problem or? Okay. Well, let me just we're not able to hear that. We're not hearing that here on this. But I'll turn my mic off. And when I'm not talking, I think that would help. That'll probably help.

Okay. At first, I wasn't sure if it was somebody else on muted or if it was my echo. But it's gone now, so that should work. Fantastic. All right. So yeah, the first Saturday, the alert went, and then they have a siren then that runs in town as well, similar to what you might have a tornado siren in the Midwest.

Any of you are used to that or not, but that'd be a similar type. Then there was quiet Saturday, the last part of Saturday, Sunday. Monday, they went again. Then I think it went a whole week until just this past Monday where it went again. And usually, the IDF says you should go to your safe room, stay there for, I think it's 10 minutes or something like that. And it's a good idea, actually. Probably the chances of our particular house out of the entire city getting struck by a rocket is pretty slim. But with the Iron Dome shooting the rocket out of the it's not quite the right terminology, but with it exploding the rocket in the air, there's actually a lot of shrapnel that comes down from that as well.

And so that's where a number of your injuries are coming from that you'll see. It's just the shrapnel from the rockets.

In fact, there in the Lutheran Church in Bethlehem, had a good-sized piece of a rocket. Picture I saw was probably about the size of a basketball, maybe, landed in the yard of the Lutheran Church on Wednesday this week, I believe it was.

So yeah, when the sirens go, I'll go gather in the safest part of our house.

One mealtime that it happened, we sat around the floor and had a meal together.

Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I've never had to live in circumstances like that. And I'm sure that's quite sobering for you. I'm sure living in that type of environment, you can maybe a little better understand what many of the Palestinians are experiencing, whether in Gaza or in West Bank right now. So why don't we go ahead and pop up my map here, and we will look at that. Okay.

So can everyone see that? Okay. And what about you, Stephen? Are you able to see that? Yep.

All right.

Are you still experiencing that echo? Nope. It went away. I don't know where it was, but it's fine now. Fantastic. Okay. So let's go ahead. And yeah, so you tell me where to point and just go ahead and kind of give us a little understanding where you are, where you serve, what you serve with your organization, and then also whatever history you'd like to share here at the beginning.

Yeah. So maybe I'll start with this, maybe give a little bit of terminology so that as I talk, it makes sense. You'll see both around Gaza, the dotted line, and also close to where your arrow is now, there's another dotted line that makes kind of a big I don't know. It's not really an oval because it comes in around Jerusalem there. But so if I refer to Palestine as we're talking here, that's what I would mean.

The West Bank would be the area you're in now with the arrow if I use that term, or if I'm differentiating between the West Bank and Gaza. Everything else that you see there would be I would term that Israel.

Terminology for us, it really doesn't seem that important, but for the people here, it's really important, actually, what you say because it really shows which side you're on. Even though I'm not actually in many ways, I'm not actually taking a side. It really does show which side. They feel like you must be on this side or that side because of how you say it. So yeah, we live in Jerusalem.

From 1948 to 1967, half of Jerusalem was part of the West Bank. The term West Bank comes from it being on the West Bank of the Jordan River, which yep, there you go, the dotted line that runs up along there. It separates Jordan, the country of Jordan, where you see Amman.

To the right, a little bit of your arrow there. Amman there. That'd be the capital of Jordan. So the West Bank, basically, it was Jordan up until from '48 until '67.

There's a lot of nuance in the history of this land that I am not a scholar of the land, the history of the land in that sense. So you may hear things that sound like it contradicts or whatever, but generally, that's what it would have been considered. After '67, then all of Jerusalem was annexed to what is Israel now, even though East Jerusalem, the areas of Jerusalem that had been part of Jordan before are still predominantly Arab, predominantly Muslim as well.

Even the Old City, which dates back to I think they say the walls of the Old City are about 500 years old, the current walls. Even that would have been in Jordanian rule, to my understanding.

And so yeah, like I said earlier, my work is mostly in the southern part of the West Bank and yeah, basically below Jerusalem.

So the rockets coming from Gaza towards Jerusalem, I think it's about 40 miles as the crow flies straight across there from Gaza to Jerusalem. Most of the rockets are headed north, actually, towards Ashdod, Ashkelon, Tel Aviv, that kind of area.

And then closer to Gaza, what they call the Gaza envelope, a certain strip of Israel land around I can't quite read those names there, Ofakim and Sderot. Ashkelon would be Gaza envelope. So predominantly, the rockets coming would have been headed to there or straight north. But I think just to show capabilities, sometimes they would send them towards Jerusalem. In fact, one of them actually hit in an Arab village on the outskirts of Jerusalem, and I believe it hit a mosque.

Killed at least one person there. I forget the details of it. That was probably a week or more ago. But yeah, there's no rhyme or reason. They aim, and that's it. It's not like they're guided missiles or anything.

So yeah. What other questions did you have? And so how people understand about that? Sure. And just maybe you could share a little bit too. What do you do with your organization? What is the purpose of you there? And then also, what areas does that take you into?

Are you working in Jerusalem, working with, you said, Israelis or Arabs? Or yeah, what are some of the needs that you're serving? So we're basically trying to meet needs of the handicapped population or disabled population in the southern West Bank.

So from where Jerusalem is at on that map, from that point south. And my rocket alerts are going off now for the Ashdod area, I think. So yeah.

That is wheelchairs and other handicapped equipment help the people who are not able to get around. And the reason for their disability can be many things.

There is a lot of diabetics who have, as that has progressed, they become amputees. There's a lot of children who are born with disabilities. That is primarily due to the Islamic tradition of marrying within the family, marrying cousins, first cousins often.

Yeah. Accidents. I mean, yeah, basically whatever the need for whatever the reason or the disability, we'll do what we can to help. And I would say the biggest thing is it's to help show people that even this person's life matters. We want people to see the value of other people. And so by us showing that other people matter, we're hoping and we are seeing that they do recognize that. They are very, very appreciative of the care that we have for their child or their parent in some cases in our helping with them. So I guess being hands and feet of Jesus and specifically in this area of disability.

Sure. So obviously, so you're working with Arabs mostly in these Palestinian areas, a lot of it in the West Bank. You all get over into Gaza as well, some. But what is the attitude of these people towards you? So here in the West, often, depending on what news you're intaking, they can be portrayed as just evil people that are just out to any Western person or Israeli, they're out to take out. So yeah, how has that been for you serving in those places?

I can think of one time where in the two a little over two years we've been here where I've been concerned about my safety. The situation was a little tense. Only one time, and that was actually just recently, a few weeks prior to the war, and it was mostly by my own mistake. But once things were talked about a little bit, it was cleared up, and it wasn't an issue. So I don't it's not like I face a lot of aggression towards me because I'm Western or a lot of hostility.

My wife, on the other hand, because the Mennonites covering okay, for my wife, she wears a white hanging veil. So that tends to look a little bit like a Jewish person. And so she can feel it if she's not with if she's not with me. She said she seems like she gets not so happy stares and things like that.

But the general feeling, most people will tell you, most Arabs will tell you, they don't mind Jewish people. They don't have a problem with Jewish people. They don't like the government and the military because of the oppression they feel from them. So that is definitely that comes with a little bit of a caveat because you don't actually have Jewish people living in Arab areas that aren't controlled by the military.

You know what I mean? They're not intermixing in areas that are Arab government controlled. And so I don't know how that would actually work out. But they say that they don't mind Jewish people. They don't like the government and the military.

Now, yeah, for me though, I haven't sometimes they'll try to talk to me in Hebrew, which I don't understand. And when they realize I don't understand that, if they speak enough English, then they'll switch to English, and the situation's fine. They figured out I'm not a term you might be familiar with is settler, Jewish person trying to settle in the West Bank.

They figured out I'm not part of that. And so then they figure I'm here to work with the Arab population, and so they don't mind.

The idea you'll see this a lot in the news, especially in the last two weeks, the idea that all Palestinians are terrorists is not very accurate.

Yeah.

Sure. And then there's, of course, to just the side where the oppression that has come from the Israeli government, obviously occupying the land. It's not even 100 years since Israel has been founded kind of as a nation in that area. And, of course, feeling 75 this year.

Okay. 75. And also, I think in just talking with you, you were mentioning too about some of the deaths that happened just by the Israelis towards the Palestinians that never hit the news. So do you mind sharing just in Palestine where you I'm sorry, in the West Bank, where you were quite a bit in the last year, do you have a number of people? I think you might have mentioned it earlier.

In the last year, I heard someone I don't have this very accurately, but I heard someone say maybe close to 300. But in the last two weeks since the war started in Gaza, I saw I forget it was last I think it was last night, I saw 81 have died here in the West Bank.

I wasn't able to find very good news on this, which is strange because normally there's a news article that talks about whatever happened, but there has been no articles about this. And I just happened to see that the number said 81 have died in the West Bank since two weeks ago. So I'm not sure on all the cases, but most of them are

how do I say this?

Most of them are either from some sort of operation that the Israeli military did. They're looking for someone living in a certain village, and so they'll send a bunch of guys in to arrest them, and they'll get in a firefight with a handful of Arab people.

So that's one situation. The other one is sometimes the young I don't know, the youth guys. Say Shabab here, but yeah, they're like 15 to 25. Generally, they might start throwing stones at a military checkpoint that's closed off normal access for the Arab people to go in and out.

But they might start throwing stones at them, and then here in the West Bank, the military will often respond with live fire. In Jerusalem, if that happens, usually it's rubber bullets, and they'll disperse the crowd in other ways. But in the West Bank, it's live fire.

So those are the two cases generally of why these people how these people probably were killed, basically, out of the hopelessness of their situation. I'm not condoning what they're doing, but out of the hope this is their view. Out of the hopelessness of their situation, they're trying to do something to defend themselves. And yeah, they're definitely the weaker power here.

Yeah. Maybe we'll come back to that and talk a little bit more about some of the hopelessness, especially those living over in Gaza as well, and how that contributes to people becoming quite violent. But let's take a little bit of a turn here. So as our listeners would have known here, the ones who have seen our advertisement, we said that we were going to have a Palestinian Arab Christian on with you, a brother that you work with.

So let's talk about the Christians there. Maybe talk about Elijah a little bit and who he is and his mentality towards all this. And also then about this very small Arab Christians and some of the things they're facing and some of the things they're doing. So go ahead and tell us about that.

So Elijah is originally from Gaza. It's an amazing story about his leaving. I won't do justice to it.

Yeah. Maybe I have to figure out a time to have him on to talk about just that sometime. It might make for a good episode. But basically, his coworker was killed by Hamas. And so the organization that he was working for there pulled all of their staff out of Gaza at that time, about 15 years ago.

16 years ago, maybe. I kind of forget. Something in that timeframe. But he has some family yet in Gaza, specifically one brother and then more extended family beyond that. And so his brother has been he is safe now.

I talked to him this morning, and he was doing fine. It's been pretty tense there this morning. That's part of the reason why he chose not to get on the call. He said he just didn't feel like he was personally at a good place right now.

There's so much both emotion and

yeah, with what happened here a couple of days ago, he just didn't feel like he could do it. So two things. A couple of days ago, there was you may have let me clear this up first. There was a bombing.

It was said it was a bombing that happened at a hospital. This is back at the beginning part of this week.

Hamas claimed that it was Israel. Israel showed pretty good proof that it was a failed rocket, actually. And I think I read 30% of the rockets Hamas sends up land within Gaza. They don't get outside of the Gaza envelope. So you have that on top of Israel bombing as well.

So I'm not talking about that one, the bombing at the hospital there. This is a totally separate issue.

There was a building next to the Orthodox Church. And you can find all these details on many news sites. The building next to the Orthodox Church, I believe, is the one that was targeted. And there was 400 to 500 people staying there at the Orthodox Church because they have left their homes.

I did find out that some of the Christian families that are there at the church, their homes were destroyed. They were in an apartment building, and they had no idea. They didn't have connections to whatever it was that Israel was thinking, "This is a Hamas base," or, "This is stuff stored here," whatever the reason it got bombed was. They don't have connections to that. They didn't know anything about it. They're just renting this apartment, and they get a phone call that says, "Your place is going to be bombed in 10 minutes," and out they go.

And so I know of three families at least that were their house is gone.

And yeah, 500 people at the church. So the building next door gets bombed, damages some of the church. I think I saw two different numbers. I saw 16, and then I saw 18 later. People from the church there died in that particular bombing.

And 6 of the 18 were children of Elijah's cousin or his wife's cousin. So they're not his nieces and nephews, but whatever that would be related to him exactly, but family yet. So 6 of the 18 were children, according to his report and the report he received. So yeah, finding that a little difficult. And then this morning, he got word from his brother that there was a prank call to the Catholic Church. I may have said his brother was at the Orthodox Church earlier.

And if I did, I said that wrong. I'm sorry. Elijah's brother is at the Catholic Church with 600 people, I think he told me this morning, that have fled their homes and are hoping that they'll be safe there at the church.

Excuse me. And so there was a prank call to the Catholic Church this morning that it was going to be bombed by Israel, which sent everything into a flurry there for about an hour. He said things were pretty tense, but I don't know how they discovered later that it was a excuse me, that it was a prank. But yeah, I also saw reports that Hamas is pressuring people to stay in the hospitals and the churches and not allowing them to leave because they have yeah, with their ideology, they don't mind the death of other people and using them as human shields and those kinds of things. And so if they keep them there and then somehow one of those places gets bombed, then it looks bad on Israel and international news.

So it's a very highly politically charged atmosphere as well in Gaza.

I would say that the Christians are I heard that prior to this war, the general consensus is there was about 800 Christians there in Gaza. And that is specifically the number that would have Christian in their ID or not, as we would say, believers. Many of them would be traditional Christians, either Orthodox or Catholic. But yeah, the percentage of believing believers is I'm not 100% sure on that percentage.

They're in Gaza, I would say it's closer to probably 5% of the Christians of the 800.

That's my understanding anyway from Elijah, but yeah. So they're facing a lot they're facing a lot right now. They don't have anywhere to go. The three church four churches that are in Gaza are all in Gaza City. The Orthodox, the Catholic, there's a Baptist church, and an Anglican church. The Anglican church is not operating. There aren't any Anglican people there anymore. But the other three, yeah, would be divided up with that 800 people for their attendances.

So Stephen, you're saying there's approximately 800 Christians in Gaza. Is that what you're saying? Yep. Yep. 800 Christians of 2.4 million people. Only 800. And this is registered. I will say this yet. I know that there have been conversions from the predominant religion of that area, but oftentimes they are not connected into the I don't know what the right term for it is, but they're not connected into the local church communities for various reasons. Security on their own part and yeah.

Sure. That's probably not something I want to go too far down that train discussing, but when I say 800 Christians, I'm specifically referring to those that are registered as being in the Christian population. But there are many more believers, I'm sure, based on testimonies I've heard, but. Sure.

So wow. So our brothers and sisters there are under incredible pressure facing the lion on so many angles. I can't imagine what it's like. And so Elijah, obviously, is feeling quite under pressure as well and deeply sad, and I'm sure.

And you mentioned that there were about six of his relatives were killed in that bombing. Is that what you said? Yep. Well, be sure you tell Elijah that our hearts break for him and his family and for the Christians there in that part of the world. And just yeah, I mean, so you have 800 Christians, and only a small part of those are really, truly wanting to follow Christ. And Elijah would be one of those. And as you have interacted with this brother, especially the last two weeks here and then, of course, two years, how have you seen him relate to these such incredibly unfair things?

Yeah. So specifically, we were discussing the war the other day. And I asked him how he sees this or how does he deal with this.

Because as Christians, we're called to love our enemies. We're called to love our neighbors ourselves. In this case, I heard it said already. In this case, it's two in one. His neighbor is his enemy in many ways. And so how does that work out for him? And as we talked, I was blessed by what he said.

He's Palestinian. And the whole issue of the land and all of that aside, the Palestinian people are very marginalized with how they're dealt with here in Israel. And he says that's one side. The other side is he could never support what Hamas did on Saturday morning. And obviously, neither would I. None of us would I don't think any of us on this call would condone that.

And so we wanted to make that very clear that there are hurts on both sides. But for him, he said, "I can't take a side." He said, as he was thinking about this, it came to him. He said, "When I think I should pull this verse up, but I'll do my best to quote it here. The angel of the Lord came. Joshua left the camp. The angel of the Lord came near. And Joshua says, 'Are you for us or for our enemies?'" And I think it calls it the angel of the Lord. I might have that terminology wrong. But probably Jesus making himself known in the Old Testament probably is what that figure was.

Says, "Neither." But as I really should pull that up. Unless somebody else can finish quoting that for me. "Neither, but come in the name of the Lord." But as the commander of the

Yeah, I think you're paraphrasing it well. Yeah. It's bugging me that I can't think of how to actually say it. Basically, though, he says, "My place as a Christian is on neither side of this. Even though I'm Palestinian and would love to see a land that's Palestinian land and the people not being marginalized the way they are, my battle isn't on either side of this."

Wow. Amazing. That's a true kingdom Christian there.

It's so easy for us, no matter your eschatological view on the land of Israel here and whatever. It's very easy for us to just soak up the news that we're getting and somehow not see even either side, really, not to see either side, the other as human, but remembering that we're all created in God's image.

All men are created in God's image.

There's people on both sides of this fight, and one side is considerably stronger than the other.

So as you have lived there and kind of soaked in the realities on the ground, an American coming there, kind of your life being influenced by the West, how has that changed you at all, Stephen?

Yeah. Actually,

I don't know. I'm learning something about judging that I never saw before. So judging, often, when it's used throughout the New Testament, it's just talking about in many ways, it can be brought down to deciding between this or that, between

right or wrong, I mean. But the thing that I'm seeing is that many times, before, I would have been free to sort of judge in a matter that I'm not even connected to. And for example, before coming here, reading about the different wars that were fought in the last 15 years here with Gaza.

I don't remember all the years right offhand. 2021, 2018, 2014 were the last three prior to this one. I think there was two more in there before 2005. Or since 2005, I think there were two more in there. I could very easily somehow I just tended to identify more on the Israeli side and, "Yeah, well, they need to deal with these terrorists. And if we stop lobbing rockets out of Gaza, they'd stop whatever." But actually, it goes much deeper. It goes much deeper than that. After being here, it's I don't know. I'm not sure what word I want to use because I have to be a little bit careful.

People in the West Bank do not have freedom of movement many times even within the West Bank, which is supposed to have been their land.

And that's bad, but Gaza was that much worse. There's a reason most people refer to it as the largest open-air prison. It's like 6 miles by 20 miles. And Egypt or Israel, it's very difficult to get permits to travel out of either.

So there's that oppression of that sort often done in the name of security for the state of Israel. But after being here, recognizing that, yeah, there's very much an aggressor in this situation.

For the Christians here, most of them, they're even in the West Bank. Most of them, they say they don't have any hope here. Most hope they have is that they could figure out some way to get relocated outside of the country to Europe or to the States or Canada or get their children to study abroad so that hopefully they could get a job abroad and then maybe later the parents could come and that kind of thing.

The Christians just have zero hope because they are not most of them, I would say the majority of them, even the traditional ones, would not be of the fighting.

I can't think of the word I'm looking for, but most of them would not be for taking up arms against Israel. And so here they're stuck. What do they do?

So the picture I just now I was thinking back of your question. So the picture for me has changed a lot of the situation.

The orphaned and the widowed, you read the verse in James there, "Pure and undefiled religion is this." And yeah, I'm seeing that in many ways in a little different light than I would have ever really considered it before.

Yeah. Well, thank you for sharing this. Thank you for helping us see that part of the world through your eyes. And that's really, really helpful for us here. And to think too just this understanding that there's Christian brothers and sisters who in many ways feel rejected by their brothers and sisters in other parts of the world and also are facing the incredible anger of the Muslim people around them for following Christ.

And of course, you have the Jewish side too where that comes in as well. So they're in a very, very difficult place. And I was just reading this morning a letter from the Arab churches that recently was put up. And one of the things that came through is just this hope they have in Christ. The hope that they have, "We find courage and solidarity we receive from the crucified Christ, and we find hope in the empty tomb."

And this letter is just full of these brothers and sisters just identifying with the sufferings of Christ. And I just thought of the words here in Acts chapter 5. At the end of that, the apostles had been pulled in, and they were beaten by the Sanhedrin.

And they went out, and it said, "And they were commanded not to speak in the name of Jesus." And they went. And it says that they were rejoicing. They were counted worthy to suffer shame for his name. And daily in the temple and in every house, they did not cease teaching and preaching that Jesus is the Christ.

And so, wow, may these brothers and sisters receive power from on high. And may you know how to minister to people like Elijah and be there for them. So I might add, if you have a second, I might add one more little plug for Elijah there.