Zionism: The Messy Story of the Biblical State of Israel

End-of-the-World prophecies and global foreign policy often involve Zion. But what is it, and how do skeptics compassionately and correctly approach the persecution of and propaganda by today's Nation of Israel?



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Episode Transcript

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There is simply no way to take a shallow dive
into Zionism, the Nation of Israel, the beginnings of the
Nation of Israel. I mean, its history is so vast,
it is so complicated, it is so crazy that a
single podcast simply is not going to do it justice.
And I'm not an expert on the Israeli people. I'm

(01:19):
just a guy who, probably like you, has been playing
ketch up trying to get a bearing on what the
hell has been going on in the Middle East and
what were the precursors for that. Now, I got a
couple of interesting interviews on the way, I'm going to
be speaking with Casey Malone. She is an ex vangelical.
She used to be a Christian Zionist, a Biblical Zionist,

(01:41):
and she came out she's an activist. I actually have
a longer form conversation with her on the Horizon in December.
That's a whole different story about deconstruction. But she had
a lot to say about Zionism, and she does a
lot of activism speaking about it. Then I've got a guy,
brand Burlison. He used to work for the Israel League
government to do public relations, for lack of a better word,

(02:04):
he calls it a psyop in the United States to
try to sell Americans on a blind support of the
Nation of Israel. And he had a whole bunch of
different tactics that were being used to do that. We
are going to hear from him. That's going to be
in the last segment of the broadcast. But right here,

(02:24):
right now, because I have to give it a shot.
Here is a basic premer as best as I can
understand it, for the Nation of Israel. By the way,
if you're wondering about why it's called zion, it is
actually of Old English, Greek, and Hebrew origin. It is
derived from the ancient Canaanite hill fortress in Jerusalem called

(02:47):
the City of David, so it's referred to as Sion
SiO N. There's a tzio Ntsiyon. There are roughly seventy
names for Jerusalem, and the Hebrew Zion is one of them. Okay,
we start way back in about one thousand BCE. This

(03:09):
is when the first temple is built in Jerusalem under
the reign of David and Solomon according to the Christian Bible,
so that's roughly a millennium before the alleged life and
death of Jesus Christ. The Jewish temple built in Jerusalem.
But three hundred years after that, the Assyrian Empire comes
in and they force a resettlement. The Jews are essentially

(03:33):
expelled and stripped of all their power. That's seven twenty
two BCE. Just over one hundred years after that, King
nebekin Nezar, the king of Babylon, goes into Judah. He
destroys the capital of Jerusalem and expels even more Jews
from their homeland. The temple is destroyed. Now this is
the holiest site in Jerusalem. It is destroyed totally during

(03:56):
that siege. Fifty years after that, there's a Persian conquest
of Babylon. Remember King nebekin azar A Babylon went in
and he totally just wiped out Jerusalem. While the Persians
defeat Babylon in five thirty eight BCE, and then they
returned the Jews to Jerusalem under the leadership of Ezra

(04:17):
and Nehemiah. And again I have to say I'm leaning
into the biblical narrative for the nation of Israel. The
Second Temple is constructed in five point fifteen BCE, but
the Temple itself remains kind of a flashpoint for all
kinds of conflict, and this is where the holiday of
Hanukah comes from. Just about two hundred years before the

(04:40):
appearance of Jesus Christ, the Syrian king and Tayakis Epiphanes
went in and he desecrated and hellenized the Temple of Jerusalem,
which means that Epiphanies went in and he imposed Greek
language and customs and culture in this Jewish area, and
under the sword he made a whole lot of Jewish

(05:01):
practices and traditions illegal. But even though the Jews were
outnumbered at that time, they teamed up with the Maccabees,
and they fought back. They routed the Syrians decisively. They
re sanctified the temple, and they re established all of
these Jewish practices and traditions that had been out lawed.

(05:23):
And that's pushback, that revolt, rebellion victory over the Syrian
king provides the foundation for today's holiday of Hanukkah seventy CE.
This is barely into the New millennium. This is supposedly
the time of Christ. The Romans conquered Judea. They went
in and destroyed the Second Temple. They exiled many of

(05:46):
the Jews, but a whole lot of Jews continue to
live under Roman occupation in the land of Israel. Rabbinic
Judaism is formed around that time and it flourishes for
about three hundred years six thirty eight CE. About seven
hundred years into the new millennium, there is a Muslim

(06:07):
conquest of Jerusalem and the establishment of Muslim rule in
the region, and this begins the tug of war between
the Jews and the Muslims. But the Muslims treated Jews
like second class citizens. They called them dimi. Now the
word demi in Arabic means protection, but This was not

(06:27):
a protection of the Jewish people. This was subjugation. Eleven
hundred CE the First Crusade and the capture of Jerusalem
by Christian forces, and they come in and they persecute
and expel the Jews from the city. Fifteen seventeen saw
the Ottoman conquest of Jerusalem, many of the Chosen People

(06:48):
living in that region under the imperial rule of the Ottomans.
It was in seventeen ninety one that France granted citizenship
to Jews, and many historians say that this precedent France
granting citizenship to Jews provided the first few threads in
the larger fabric of Zionism. The establishment of a Jewish

(07:11):
State eighteen eighty two saw the first modern wave of
Jewish repatriation, the Hebrew language revived and modernized by Jews
living in the region. A more formal push to restore
Jews to an autonomous rule in the homeland of Israel
began in eighteen ninety seven. The first Zionist Congress was

(07:34):
established in Basel, Switzerland. Nineteen seventeen the Balfour Declaration, which
supported the establishment of a quote national home for the
Jewish people. This was a declaration that was offered up
by the British government. There is a cultural renaissance for
the Jewish people in the nineteen twenties and nineteen thirties.

(07:55):
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem was established in nineteen twenty five,
and during this entire time we continued to see that
tug of war, the resentment, often even hatred between the
Arab States and the Jewish people. The UN in nineteen
forty seven recommended to partition two separate states, the Jewish

(08:16):
State and the Arab States. The city of Jerusalem would
remain under international administration. The Jewish leaders said, okay, we
like the idea of this partition. The Arab States and
Palestinians rejected it. Nineteen forty eight saw the official establishment
of the State of Israel, a declaration of Israel's independence,

(08:41):
and the subsequent Arab Israeli War. It was a war
of independence for the Jews. Many in Palestine described it
as the Nakba, which translates to catastrophe in Arabic. There's
so much resentment over this establishment of Israel on what
many Palestinians believed was their territory. That Arab nations expelled

(09:05):
eight hundred and fifty thousand Jews from their homes in
Arab countries, and the vast majority of those Jews who
had been kicked out they emigrated to the Nation of Israel,
where their descendants live. Even today, they are known as
the Mizrahi Jews. Nineteen sixty four, sixteen years after the

(09:25):
establishment of the Nation of Israel, during an Arab League
summit in Cairo, Egypt, the PLO, the Palestinian Liberation Organization
was formed. This is an organization representing Palestine's aspiration to
go in destroy Israel and establish a Palestinian state. June

(09:46):
of nineteen sixty seven saw the Sixth Day War. Israel
gained control of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip,
the Sinaite Peninsula, and the Golan Heights. This is a
battle fought against the a Arab nations of Egypt, Syria
and Jordan. September of nineteen sixty seven, three months after

(10:06):
the Sixth Day War, the Arab League Summit in Sudan
ends with the signing of something called the Khartoum Resolution.
The Arabs will not recognize Israel, they will not negotiate
with Israel, and there will be no peace with Israel.
Nineteen seventy three, Egypt and Syria launch a surprise attack

(10:27):
on Israel during Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the
Jewish year. Nineteen seventy nine, the history making Camp David Accords.
This is where Israel and Egypt signed a peace treaty.
This led to Israel withdrawing from the Sinai Peninsula. There
was a period of tentative peace between two former enemies.

(10:49):
Then comes the First Lebanon War in nineteen eighty two,
of Palestinian uprising against the Israeli forces of the West
Bank and Gaza nineteen eighty seven, another series of tentative
treaties in nineteen ninety three. In nineteen ninety four, more
violence and unrest. In two thousand and three, the violence
of that conflict said to set the stage for the

(11:11):
rise of Hamas in Gaza. Israel pulls out of the
Gaza Strip in two thousand and five. It dismantles its
settlements and all of its military installations. There's another Lebanon
War in two thousand and six. In that same period,
Hamas takes control of the Gaza Strip, and of course,
the conflict between Israel and Hamas continues and even amplifies today.

(11:34):
And then October seventh, twenty twenty three, thousands of Hamas
terrorists infiltrated Israel and brutally staged an attack during a
large music festival in southern Israel. More than twelve hundred
people killed, an additional two hundred and fifty kidnapped. Hostages
remain in Hamas captivity even now, and against that extremely

(11:58):
simplified primer, we see Zionism the support of a Jewish
homeland for a number of reasons. And I'm going to
ask both of my special guests about their take on
the definition of Zionism. It is a messy, messy situation.

Speaker 3 (12:16):
You know.

Speaker 2 (12:16):
What I found interesting in my cursory research on the
subject was that there are many Jews who are opposed
to an establishment of an Israeli state. They oppose nationalism.
Many people say that the state of Israel will be
established upon the arrival of the Messiah. So when the
Messiah shows up, that's when Israel becomes formally established. To

(12:40):
do it now would be putting the cart before the horse.
Of course, there's a whole lot of anti Semitism involved
by many who oppose an Israeli state because they just
oppose the Jews. And there's one last angle I find
interesting before I get to my interviews. Here a shield
that many people are using to excuse anything and everything

(13:02):
that the state of Israel, the nation of Israel does.
If you hold up a hand and you say, well,
I disagree, Maybe I disagree with the establishment of an
Israeli nation given its history. Maybe I want to criticize
net Yahoo and the genocide in Gaza. One of the
defenses is you are an anti Semite, a bigot, and

(13:23):
you are in opposition to the will of the Almighty. Well,
that ties in perfectly to the conversation I'm about to
have with a former Christian Zionist. Her name is Casey Malone,
and I'm going to chat with her next Okay, next up,

(13:50):
I want to talk to Casey Malone. She is an
exvangelical and she runs the Casey Malone YouTube page. Okay,
so you are a local, I'll call you an activist.
That'd be a word.

Speaker 4 (14:03):
What do you do, Yeah, activism.

Speaker 2 (14:06):
I suppose coming out of a fundy faith.

Speaker 4 (14:08):
Coming out of a fundy faith and.

Speaker 2 (14:10):
You were a god is establishing Israel as zion in
advance of his return. Is that right?

Speaker 4 (14:19):
Yes, I was raised as a fundamentalist, which means a
literal interpretation of the Bible, and in my upbringing in
the megachurch I went to. That meant we took the
Book of Revelation seriously. And there is a lot of
Armageddon conversation, which of course results in essentially a stance
on global policy based on our religion growing up.

Speaker 2 (14:41):
From your perspective defined Zionism.

Speaker 4 (14:45):
So I spend a little bit more time and energy
talking specifically about Christian Zionism. But Zionism on its own
is the establishment of the land of Palestine slash Israel,
specifically for people of Jewish descent. For Christian Zionism. The
way in which I was raised, this is based on
the interpretation of the.

Speaker 2 (15:06):
Bible, Zion being established gotch chosen people a sovereign nation,
which what is immune from I mean, I look at
net and Yahoo and I think he can say and
do whatever he wants. Because hashtag zion is that what
you're seeing.

Speaker 4 (15:22):
There's a lot of nuance here. But there are a
lot of different kinds of motivations for Zionism. There are
secular slash political motivations outside of Christianity itself. But yes,
for Christian Zionism. Really the point of Christian Zionism is
actually not in solidarity with Jewish people at all. Really,

(15:44):
it is to establish the land of Israel, to rebuild
the Temple in Jerusalem, which was very relevant when Trump
moved I believe, the embassy to Jerusalem in twenty eighteen.
Evangelical Christians saw that as a fulfillment of biblical prophecy.
If I was still in that environment, I'm sure I
would have heard all about it like that, you know,
at the time in twenty eighteen. But the Christian Church

(16:07):
views all of that happening in the Middle East, again,
not in solidarity with any group of people, but in
the resulting fulfillment of Biblical end time prophecy, because all
of those things need to happen in order for Jesus
to return. That's their actual motivation.

Speaker 2 (16:22):
So this is apocalypse thinking, This is like bring the
in the destruction of this material world and we all
go to heaven. Stuff.

Speaker 4 (16:31):
Yes, So the term is eschatological, which is kind of
a term about studying the end times, and I mean
really baked into Christian theology itself. Is this idea of
looking toward and hoping for and being excited about what's
next after this life, and there's kind of that's why
a lot of people refer to Christianity as a death cult,

(16:52):
because you're not going to get essentially any goodness or
fulfillment until you die and go to heaven. And what
that looks like on a grander scale is Jesus is
going to return and then everything's going to be okay.
So there's this anxiety about a lot of real world
problems suffering exists on this planet. Everyone, including Christians, have
it hard under certain systems that don't put people over profit, right,

(17:14):
But what that can be manipulated into is this belief
system that it is very not just believing in hoping
for the end times, but resulting in the voting habits
of actively bringing it about. In my evangelical upbringing, there
was like an aspect of celebration whenever there was conflict
in the Middle East, right, because it was always always

(17:35):
not just in Sunday school, but in Bible class every
day where I was going to school celebrated as a well,
this is God's plan finally coming about.

Speaker 2 (17:43):
Crush the evil Arab because they are in violation of
God's good word. That kind of thing, yes, kind of.

Speaker 4 (17:50):
I often talk about how the word Zionism was only
in the forefront of the media I consumed or the
conversations I was having twice in my life. The first
time was when I was an actual child in middle school,
high school, being told to be a Zionist without question,
being told that being a Zionist is biblical, that's what
God wants. And then the second time is more recently,

(18:12):
when as an adult and after deconstructing I've kind of
done my own self education on what Zionism actually means.
We're seeing it in the media more, et cetera. But
in that first time period, whenever I was being told
to be a Zionist, I actually talk about how the
Palestinians and Arabs were not even mentioned. Not only were
they not mentioned, as you know, the false accusation of

(18:33):
them being acute the aggressors, I should say, but they
just weren't even mentioned. There were no Palestinians. This was
just the land of Israel gifted to the Jewish people.

Speaker 3 (18:41):
That was it.

Speaker 2 (18:42):
I have to ask this question. We're just chatting. I'm
not going to hold you anything. We're not scholars, we're
not PhDs on the subject. We can't read minds. Okay,
I've already done the asked a risk on this question.
You think Netanyahu was not glad about October seventh, but
I mean it kind of ostensibly gave him permission to

(19:03):
just pull the trigger and do whatever he wanted me
to commit genocide in Gaza. Do you think there's a
culture of people who were like, Okay, fine, now we
have our excuse. It's on.

Speaker 4 (19:14):
I think it's very clear there are trails, there's even
trails of money connecting NETANYAHUO with evangelical networks in the
United States, and so in large part, he's got consent
of evangelicals to do pretty much whatever he wants because
he's fulfilling their theological and times prophecy of establishing the

(19:36):
land of Israel, specifically for the Jewish people. As far
as October seventh goes, a part of me almost like
wishes I was still in the evangelical circles to know
how it was being framed, because I don't know, but
I imagine to your point that it was essentially a
go ahead on behalf of Natanyahu's part with the backing
I imagine of this entire evangelical voting and monetary base.

Speaker 2 (19:58):
Bumber stickers, billboards, church marquees. We support Israel. I support Israel,
which is a blanket statement. Essentially, it's reductive thinking. Whatever
they do, however they do it, I support Israel. It's
almost like America is the greatest country, my country, right
or wrong? It's very binary. Did your faith, I know

(20:19):
you came out of evangelicalism. Did your faith promote binary thinking?

Speaker 4 (20:23):
Pretty much exclusively? I mean down to the core of
believers versus non believers, down to the core of essentially
even our thoughts were either influenced by God or the devil. Right,
it's all just good or evil, black and white, yes
or no?

Speaker 2 (20:38):
And what do Americans get wrong? This is such a
big question, but you can give me a few examples.
What are we getting wrong about the situation in the
Middle East?

Speaker 4 (20:49):
I think the efforts of stabilizing an area of the
world after we destabilized it, or had at least a
very significant role in decent stabilizing it is backwards and
essentially ridiculous. And I think a lot of people like
to think that our military can go in and just

(21:09):
bring peace and or democracy to these peoples who frankly
deserve to establish their own sense of peace and democracy.
But I don't know, maybe can't do that when we
keep going in via our own military or through the
funding of Israel's military, to bring about conflict, sometimes intentionally
for the sake of conflict, sometimes for paragraphs, sometimes for

(21:31):
the resources. But again it goes back to I very
consistently say that the religion of Christianity in the United
States is the mechanism through which all of this consent
is manufactured. Because it is framed as in the name
of God.

Speaker 2 (21:45):
It's like a rush limbaughism. Let's go and Americanize the
rest of the world because we've got the secret sauce exactly.
We know what greatness looks like. We're doing them a
favor by coming over and planting flags and teaching everybody
else how to be American.

Speaker 4 (22:00):
Yeah, that's worked well so many times. We should just
keep trying to do it, trying to do it over
and over.

Speaker 3 (22:05):
That'll be great.

Speaker 2 (22:07):
What do you think of Donald Trump? We know he does.
He's not a Christian. We know that the only God
he worships is himself. He's not a Zionist. In the
biblical sense. What do you think motivates him to do
what he does? To tie in with net Yahoo? I mean,
is he pandering to the American Project twenty twenty five

(22:27):
evangelicals because they provide him power. I mean, we know
he thinks mega pastors and the evangelist and those people
are idiots. I see it all as a power grab
and it's all optics. But I don't know. I want
another perspective.

Speaker 4 (22:41):
No, I think you're right on the money. I think
him coming into the power that he holds right now
is probably the most indicative example of how the Christian
base in the United States, specifically the evangelicals, can be
motivated to vote certain ways, and how it actually doesn't
matter what that person in power actually believes. Because it's

(23:01):
interesting because we'll see, like more progressive Christians kind of say, well,
he's not a true Christian, right, that's a great No,
true scotsman, I'm sure that's super convenient for your worldview. Okay,
but you know they'll say this about him, and then
but we had the question to ask in response, is okay, well,
why is he able to use the Christian base? You
say he's not a real Christian Why is he able
to claim Christianity and use the evangelical Christian base to

(23:25):
vote in his favor. Why did he get into power
and a predominantly Christian nation is really the question that
we have to ask ourselves.

Speaker 2 (23:32):
I was hardcore, but I know in my bones I
would have never fallen for Trump. When you so, I
remember going after even the televangelists, you know, like I
grew up. Oh really, I grew up in the oral
Roberts culture. My parents loved him. I thought that guy's
full of crap, and I remember there were some other people.
I really feel like I might have. I was a

(23:54):
Christian nationalist. I held this, but I would have seen
Trump and thought, oh, come on, do you think you
would have fallen.

Speaker 4 (23:59):
For I think I drank enough kool aid. I was
in the home of megachurch pastors. I think I drank
enough kool aid. I probably would have.

Speaker 2 (24:05):
You would have bought into the He is the brilliant businessman, savior,
God's proxy who is rescuing America from them evil woke
lib infidel types.

Speaker 4 (24:16):
Yeah, pretty much. Well, I think a lot of it
is also just like the privilege that comes with being
a white woman in America. I didn't really look closely
at any of these details, you know, like at any
of the fine print. It's just like, oh, the church
said vote this way. Okay, Well I'm going to go
to church. You know, who knows what I would have
where I would have gone. I mean fair yeah saying
you and I might have been at.

Speaker 2 (24:36):
The same kool aid tra fit the time. Yeah, yeah,
maybe I'm just giving myself too much credit. Okay. So
when it comes to in Times theology and relation to Israel,
how dangerous are things right now? I mean, you are watching,
we are watching the militarization are in times philosophy and theology.

(24:56):
People want the end of the freaking world.

Speaker 4 (25:00):
They do, and that radicalization is only increasing. There are
plenty of studies that show the correlation between political instability
and increased religious extremism, and that is evident by the
rise in evangelical power in the United States right now,
which kind of makes no sense, but that's the fact.
So what happens is as this intensity and anxiety about

(25:23):
the end of the world and all of these very
real anxieties, whether or not they want to believe in
climate change, but at the very least, you know, scarcity
of resources, things like that. Those are real issues with
a population of eight billion people, but it's getting transmuted
into this end time's prophecy of oh so we have
to make sure Israel is established.

Speaker 3 (25:41):
Right.

Speaker 4 (25:41):
What I would say to that is that I still
think it's important to recognize that we compared to three
years ago, compared to October seventh, the main Zietgeist is
a lot more aware of the actual plight of the Palestinians,
and we are coming into more awareness of these systems
that are not serving people and valuing profit, and we
are becoming more connected with others, and there are more

(26:04):
causes for hope. It's certainly important. I mean, it's kind
of going in tandem, right, This hopeful kind of resistance
mindset is rising, but then so is the radicalization.

Speaker 2 (26:14):
Including many of the Israeli people who cannot stand Benjamin
Nutt and Yagor protesting right.

Speaker 4 (26:21):
Well said yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (26:22):
I remember, we used to believe climate change and whatever, resources, deforestation, pollution, whatever,
it's all a resource. God gave dominion to Adam. He's
going to show up anyway. Jesus will return and sweep up.
So who cares if we ruin the planet. I mean,
we didn't phrase it that way, but you know what

(26:42):
I'm talking.

Speaker 4 (26:43):
About, Yeah, yeah, yeah, I was raised with that exact mentality.
What I've seen recently is a lot of like Christian
content creators are instead saying, well, actually, it's not about dominion.
God gave us stewardship over the land, right, and they're
trying to make it a little bit nicer, a nicer
theology instead of dominion. Those are the two kind of
offshoots of Christian's relations to the climate. But stewardship still

(27:05):
puts humans outside of the environment, and it still is
a hierarchy of it's humans over the environment, right. Stewards
are taking care of the environment because God told us to,
and not this recognition that we are of the environment,
and not this kind of more fluid ecosystem of relationships
between us and all of nature that I think is

(27:27):
still missing from this concept of stewardship.

Speaker 2 (27:29):
We could go on and on on a variety of subjects,
but do you talk about Zionism and more depth on
your channel?

Speaker 4 (27:36):
I sure do. Yeah, I have a three part series.

Speaker 2 (27:38):
Actually, how do people find you?

Speaker 4 (27:40):
You can find me on YouTube. It's at KC Malone
kys m Elo and E or the k C Malone
Show podcast.

Speaker 2 (27:48):
I will link to your channel in the description box.
Thank you so much for talking to me.

Speaker 5 (27:53):
Thank you.

Speaker 2 (27:55):
My next guest wrote these words on the ninth of
September twenty twenty in an article titled I helped Israel
propagandize American Christians at the very beginning, he says, Sun
Sioux wrote, all warfare is based on deception. You've heard
many stories about the Israeli government deceiving and manipulating US officials,

(28:19):
steering our country towards funding and even fighting their wars.
Let me tell you one more. Israel exploits the religious
beliefs of American Christians, fostering a certain flavor of fanaticism
to empower a doomsday cult in a twisted effort to
serve the interests of this increasingly genocidal apartheid state. I

(28:43):
know this because I was a central, useful idiot in
this psiah. The name of the gentleman who wrote this
is Brandt Burlisson, and I'm going to speak to him next.

(29:05):
A hot button issue here in the United States and
all around the world is, of course, Israel. It's a
thick subject and a lot of people wink out it's
too much, or you know, they've already sort of settled
on a binary opinion it's all nothing. And yet the
world so often does not look like that, And so

(29:25):
I wanted to have a conversation with someone who has
sort of seen behind the curtain and has a perspective
that may help all of us to form or maybe
evolve our opinions. Huge thanks out to Brand Burlisson for
joining me. Brand, good to see you, Great to see you.
Tell me about your background, What is it that you

(29:45):
have You've done that sort of gives you some equity
in this conversation.

Speaker 5 (29:50):
Starting in twenty sixteen, I was hired as the Strategic
Outreach director for the Consulate Journal of Israel to the
Southwest United States here in Houston, Texas. So we covered
six states, Texas, New Mexico, Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Kansas.
And my title, you know, like I said, was Strategic

(30:10):
Outreach Director, but really what it was was I was
the Christian, Zionism and Interfaith director for the Consulate. And
the Consulate is about, you know, in a country like
as big as the United States, is essentially like a
miniature embassy, so the Israeli taxpayer paid my salary. I
had a dot gov dot isl email address. But I'm

(30:31):
an American, so I would describe this essentially as I
kind of became a propagandist and was exploiting people's religious
beliefs as part of a religious based psyop to get
them to adopt a uncritical support for the Israeli government
based on theology, and to push their elected officials to

(30:55):
adopt such a view as well.

Speaker 2 (30:57):
Okay, well, there's a lot to unpack, so let's go
back to fine Zionism from your perspective.

Speaker 5 (31:04):
That where it means a lot of different things to
a lot of different people, ranging from everything to you
think Israel has the right to exist, to being essentially
a fanatic for Israel, or thinking that Israel has the
right to, you know, brutalize other individuals. And I want
to say Israel I mean the government in this case.
One of the thought processes or framing of that word

(31:27):
that I think is the best to use is that
Zionism is kind of a scaffolding for a building that's
already been built. Essentially, like at the end of World
War Two, you had a lot of kind of nationalists,
you know, anti colonial movements and countries that were trying
to seek new independence, one of which was Israel. And
so that is kind of what the Zionist movement was.

(31:49):
So once Israel gains its independance in nineteen forty eight,
I'm kind of the opinion that that word isn't necessarily
the most useful anymore, but a lot of times in
contemporary discourse, Zionism is getting used. This is, say, someone
who is a pro Israel person.

Speaker 2 (32:05):
When I hear Zionism, though I tend to think in
terms of biblical Zionism.

Speaker 5 (32:10):
So in particularly with Christian Zionism, that is definitely the case. So,
you know, going back to nineteen forty eight, a lot
of Christians that were kind of of a more fundamentalist
sort of mindset saw the establishment of a re establishment
of Israel as a kind of signifier that we're we're
one step closer to the end times because we know

(32:31):
in Revelation that Israel exists. And then you know, they
see when Israel it takes control of Jerusalem in the
sixty seven more. Oh, now we're one step closer again
because we know that they control Jerusalem and that's where
the Messiah comes back in revelation. And then so now
I feel the next shoot a drop is that there'll

(32:52):
be some sort of an event where the Alaksa Mosque
is destroyed and the Third Temple is rebuilt, and then
that case it becomes imminent in these people's eyes. And
I think that's particularly startling because you know, essentially these
kind of biblical prophecies become self fulfilling because people are
trying to make them happen, as opposed to just watching

(33:13):
them passively play out.

Speaker 2 (33:15):
Am I hearing many want the end of the world.

Speaker 5 (33:18):
Yeah, it is not at all stretched to say that
these people are literally rooting for armageddon on the side
of Christian Zionism. And then there's many on the actors
in the Israeli government who aren't religious themselves, they're pretty sickulars,
but are willing to take advantage and exploit this theological
belief system because they see it as a strategic advancement

(33:41):
for Israel's interests. And then there's other people actors in
the Israeli government who are themselves fanatical, coming from like
more orthodox Judaism, and they will work with these folks
because they see it as well, we want them Assida
to come the first time. So it's really and sometimes
this is explicitly said in some of the organizations that

(34:03):
I was working with a networking life.

Speaker 2 (34:05):
It's like Christian nationalism. Catherine Stewart's written about the power worshippers.
There are true Zealots and there are people who understand
the usefulness of weaponizing the religion for power, influence, money,
et cetera. So you were, for lack of a better word,
a regional pr person for Israel in the United States.

(34:28):
You said the word siop. I can't let that go.

Speaker 3 (34:31):
What do you mean, Yeah, I mean it's a psychological operation.

Speaker 5 (34:35):
So I feel, you know, we could pull up the
fact definition of it, but it's pretty fitting term. I'm
utilizing the belief system that people have and exploiting that
in order to get them to change their behavior and
orient it in a way that it is beneficial to
a foreign government or that they see as beneficial. I
would contend that it's actually not in Israel's long term interest.

(34:57):
I think it's actually pretty startling. I think it's playing
with fire in a lot of ways. But you know,
with that being said, that's very much what I was doing,
and I was the first person to hold this job.
So I built this.

Speaker 3 (35:09):
All out from scratch.

Speaker 5 (35:10):
I built an enormous database of all these Christian media organizations, individuals,
megachurch pastors, all of it, even Catholic church like we.
It went far beyond the adventure local church. And you know,
you're right to mention Christian nationalism and that because a
lot of this was very much tied up with that,
and especially now, especially in this last year, so you've

(35:31):
seen a real divide in the Christian nationalist movement between
Christian nationalists who deify Israel and Christian nationalists who demonize
as reel and I mean that quite literally. So you have,
you know, this theological based support, and you have this
theological based anti Semitism, and they're very much visibly coming

(35:52):
to a head right now. And you see that in
the divide between the Tucker Carlson's of the world and
some of the Douglas Wilson's or John Hagen's of the world.

Speaker 2 (36:03):
All right, take me there. You call someone who is
a Christian, or you reach out in some way, you
invoke God's chosen people, you quote from the Bible. You
are influencing them what kind of language do you use?
All right, let's do a situational.

Speaker 5 (36:20):
So that would very wildly depending on which kind of
Christian I'm talking to, or sometimes it was even other
faith groups, because eventually we I reached out way beyond
just Christian churches as well.

Speaker 2 (36:33):
Now, how does that include Muslims because I know so
Israel and Islam, Yeah, saying yeah.

Speaker 5 (36:41):
So there was this very much this mixed bag where eventually,
especially in the third kind of consult general I worked under,
we started doing more and more outreach to liberal Christian organizations,
Muslim groups, other minority face you know, Hindus, everything, and
a lot of that was kind of a damage control
sort of turd polishing, I.

Speaker 3 (37:01):
Would call it.

Speaker 5 (37:02):
Move that was often completely separated from the more traditional
fundamentals Christian Zionism thing that we were pushing. So there
was kind of these two faces and two hats I
would wear, where I would put on a completely different
mask talking to one person and then talking to another.
But to answer your original question. So like when I'm
meeting with more of a fundamentalist type, usually those people

(37:25):
are already excited to meet with me, I would let
them do most of the talking. I would try to
get them to come up with the idea to do
an event together on their own instead of me suggesting it.
I would utilize that like so usually these people were
explicit and saying I view it as a biblical commandment
from God to support the Jewish people because they're His

(37:48):
chosen people, and they interpret that as the contemporary Israeli government.

Speaker 3 (37:53):
This goes all the.

Speaker 5 (37:54):
Way up to people like Mike Huckabee, who is a
former pastor and our current ambassador to Israel, and he
is explicit and this is his approach to how he
views this. What little of it is grounded an actual
like US strategic policy, and it is getting distorted through
a theological lens. So I would use versus like Genesis

(38:15):
twelve three.

Speaker 3 (38:16):
I got a ton of mileage out of that. I
would mention that everyone.

Speaker 5 (38:19):
That's the verse that says I will bless those who
bush you and curse those who curse you. You even
saw like Ted Kruz when he did that recent interview
with Tucker Carlson, referenced that verse and saying, this is
why we need to support this government. And it's always
unquestionably like there's not really any thing with it. Even
when it clashes really clearly with a lot of other

(38:41):
policy priorities. For a lot of these people, when they're
talking about, but we want to cut the foreign age
budget to zero, we don't think we should be doing
it except for the four billion dollars plus a year
that we give to Israel, like that obviously needs to
keep going because we just stay on the right side
of God. Then that's sort of their approach. So I
would use versus like that. And then to contrast that,
when I would reach out to more liberal or even

(39:01):
like affirming churches, I would not focus on scripture so much,
and I would talk about how well, Israel's the only
place in the Middle East where it's safe to be gay.
These are the churches that have you know, rainbow flags
and everything. And then but when I talk to the
conservative churches, I just don't mention that all, which is
really really gross. So I started this job as a
liberal Christian pretending to be a conservative Christian all the time,

(39:24):
and then by twenty twenty, just seeing all this so
often play out, I mean, this just broke me in
my faith and that it just completely destroyed it, and
I still was doing so then I was an atheist
pretending to be a liberal Christian, pretinning to be a
conservative Christian, whine about my own views, Forty hours a
week writing scripture or up speeches that were given by diplomats,

(39:48):
doing prayer campaigns, pretending to pray. Sometimes I delivered speeches
at churches and I'm saying stuff that I don't believe
on behalf of the cause, that I don't really agree
with for a page.

Speaker 3 (40:00):
And it was actually.

Speaker 5 (40:02):
Pretty sinister and evil and gross to kind of exploit
this sense and people that they, you know, they were
looking for place to belong, a sense of community, a
sense of meaning in their lives, and that's being used
and exploited to advance a political project of a foreign government.

Speaker 2 (40:22):
Do you support israel It's right to exist?

Speaker 5 (40:26):
Yeah, I mean if that's the basic question, Do I
think Israel should exist or has the right to exist?
They shouldn't be like alliolated nears. Of course, I know many,
many Israelis who are fantastic people. I met them, I
worked with them, and then I know some who aren't.
It's no different than the United States in that regard.
Like there's eight million people in Israel. No matter what

(40:48):
your opinion their political situation or the Israeli Tacitian conflict.
You're likely to find millions of Israelis who vehemently agree
and disagree with whatever your position is. It is an
incredibly practious society. You saw that before October seventh, but
the judicial forms and the massive protests that were taking
place against them, and that kind of took a back

(41:10):
seat when the conflict started.

Speaker 2 (41:12):
But yes, my challenge comes in when now I come
from a culture. I come from a family that had
pro Israel stickers on, and what this was was a
thought stopper. So whatever Israel was doing, whatever Net in
Yahoo might do, that's okay. I mean, he's got's proxy.
They are part of the biblical narrative. Therefore, if they

(41:33):
want to go and commit genocide in Gaza, well, you know,
sometimes you got to break a few eggs to make
the omelet. Is there a rift in Israel over Net
and Yahoo.

Speaker 5 (41:45):
Yeah, there's been a lot of protests, Like I said,
before the war and after the war. So for people
who might not have been playing his close attention to
Israel politics. Before the war, the Net and Yahoo government
was actually launching a series of judicial reforms that were
essentially meant to end judicial review in Israel. So a
simple majority and the kanesse At, Israel's parliament, could have

(42:08):
just completely ignored any decision that the courts made in
Israel about the constitutionality of any law, which essentially makes
the judiciary pointless. So there was massive protests against this.
It's a serious backsiding of democracy and checks and balances
in that country. And I don't say that from any
superiority here. We have plenty of that going on here,

(42:31):
and it's also alarming. I say that in a sense
of solidarity with Israelis who care about the deeply concerned
with the direction of their government needed to say. Once
the complex started, all of that took a back seat,
and I haven't heard hardly anyone talk about those proposed
reforms since then. And then since the war started, you

(42:51):
had many, many Israelis protesting it, and many who were
supportive of it, even to a fanatical and genocidal level.
I can give you some examples of rideric I've heard
on that, But you also had, like you have families
of Israeli hostages, people who were taken a hostage by Hamas,
who were deeply critical of the Netanyahu government's prosecution of

(43:15):
the war and thinking that, well, these air strikes that
you're doing are likely to get our family members killed.
And I think that that was a completely valid concern
for these people to have.

Speaker 2 (43:27):
Let me take a short break.

Speaker 3 (43:28):
I'll be right back.

Speaker 2 (43:29):
We're going to continue this conversation about what brand called
a siop involving Israel in the United States. We'll get
more next talking here with Brent Berlison, who used to

(43:50):
be a i'll call it a pr guy for the
nation of Israel. Did you work for both Israel and
the United States?

Speaker 5 (44:00):
Just one little surreal time to think about. I would
pay my taxes, my government would send a portion of
that money to the Israeli government, and then the Israeli
government would pay my salary, and then I would pay
my taxes, and it would just go round and round
and round. So I was very much in this whirlwind

(44:20):
of political violence and theology. I'm not the good guy
in this story. I'm coming here to tell y'all. Coming
to the conclusion that gods aren't running in the world
means that there really has to be some human accountability
and moral agency here. And I want to give people
a warning to hey, if you live in this country,

(44:42):
your country's foreign policy visa VI, this region of the
world is being filtered through a theological way.

Speaker 2 (44:49):
It's terrifying.

Speaker 3 (44:51):
And if you don't live in.

Speaker 5 (44:52):
This country, then the biggest superpower in the world's foreign
policy is being filtered to this, but should be equally
terrifying for you. It's not just an American issue.

Speaker 2 (45:02):
All right, Well you don't have to answer, but I'll
bet you do. Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Nett and Yahoo,
I use the word genocide. Would you use the word
genocide seek guilty of genocide?

Speaker 3 (45:13):
I would use that word.

Speaker 5 (45:15):
And I think if you look at the legal definition
of the intent to destroy and hollow him part of
people group, Yeah, it's that definition.

Speaker 2 (45:25):
And I have to this Christmas for him if I may.
This is like he got the excuse he thought he needed.

Speaker 5 (45:32):
Yeah, And I think it especially changed one thing from me.
Like I started this conflict, and I've seen a lot
of the raw footage from October, some of the tech.
It was somewhat radicalizing for me. I definitely went to
a headspace that I look back now with a lot
of regret, and I wanted to be this Israel that

(45:53):
was ethical, that was trying to fight.

Speaker 3 (45:56):
This just works.

Speaker 5 (45:57):
I do think there was a just reason to go
to war. However, I think that Israel's behavior and conduct
and that has veered wildly into a place that was
cartoonishly and nakedly evil. Starting in March. I think it
was when they were saying no more a gets in
that was a complete change of the game for me,

(46:17):
because like someone can make an argument if they want
to about the legal nature of Okay, a militant organization
has hijacked civilian infrastructure for militaristic purposes, then yeah, technically
the legal burden for that getting targeted is on the
group that did that. However, I don't not see many

(46:40):
people who are conducting US who seem very torn up
at all about that targeting a b I could grant
them everything they're saying about morality and collateral damage and war,
which isn't inherently just a humanizing phrase, but just put
that aside. They's to be left standing there having to
defend deliberate starvation campaign and that is unquestionably a war crime,

(47:05):
like not letting formulated for babies like this has gotten insane.

Speaker 2 (47:11):
I'm using the word cartoonishly evil in a sentence later on,
I'm going to borrow that from you brand just yeah,
because I live in a country right now. I'm just
surrounded by things that are cartoonishly evil. And I agree.
No one's saying that Israel should never responded strongly after
the kidnapping and the rape and the murder in the
Horrors of October the seventh. I'm not trying to say

(47:33):
that no response was justifying. The only reason I say
that is not because I think you understand. Because there
are people who will drive by in the comments section
and be like, oh, Set thinks they should have rolled over,
or he doesn't think that. You know, Israel has a
legitimate right to defend itself, and nuance is hard in
a binary thinking world. How did you finally stop lying

(47:56):
on stage and in person about Israel? You say you
were going through it, you were a wreck. You knew
you were telling things that weren't true. You obviously stopped
and busted out what's that look like?

Speaker 5 (48:10):
I mean that was a year's long process. Even before
becoming an atheist, I always thought it was weird. This
was not like the kind of Christianity that I was
brought up and I was raising a pretty you know,
moderate to progressive Christian circles in the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship.
So this was a new world for me. So I
had been looking for jobs within one month after started

(48:32):
working there. When I took the job, I didn't know
much at all about Christian Zionism. I thought I was
mostly going to be like promoting tourism to holy sites,
and I thought, oh, that seems pretty innoculous. And this
was my first real job, and this field that I'd
been wanting to break into for a long time. And
I look back at that now and just like, I
was very foolish to think this so over time.

Speaker 2 (48:55):
You know, brand hang on, I'm sorry. Was it a
bait and switch? Did they groom you and say, oh,
you're going to come in and do surface stuff, and
all of a sudden they've got you doing hardline.

Speaker 3 (49:05):
Pr No, I don't.

Speaker 5 (49:06):
That's not the right term for it, and I don't
want to It wasn't so much of bait and switch
as it just wasn't really said. So I remember when
I applied for the job. For example, I actually first
applied to be an executive's assistant, and I didn't even
know which consul I was applying for until I showed
up there, and then I didn't get that job. But

(49:27):
during that interview, the Consul general at the time asked
me just randomly, oh, what did your parents do when
you were growing up? I think he was just making conversation,
and I mentioned, well, my dad was a pastor. So
he then proceeded to go, oh, so you probably know
a little more about the Christian world and the different
denominations than most people. And I said, yeah, you know,
probably more than most. And he said, well, we might

(49:51):
have this other position opening up that would be more
of an interfaith position. Would you be interested in doing
that if we did? And at the time, you know,
like I said, I have massive student loan debt, I
want to get a master's degree in international affairs that
I hadn't been using. And so I said yes kind
of without thinking, and then got that call later and
did it. And I think, if I had to guess,

(50:13):
I think the console General at the time thought, Okay,
here's the guy with background.

Speaker 3 (50:19):
Than I are.

Speaker 5 (50:20):
And I don't think he was into this pushing the
Christian Zionis thing. I don't think he was comfortable with it.
But I think the ministry probably told him you have
to fill this position, and I think he goes, Okay,
So here's someone that knows that world. Here's someone that
speaks Christianese, and he's not insane. He is not rooting
for armageddon, clearly, so he's probably the least bad choice

(50:42):
I can go with. No one ever said we want
you to run a siop, but it was like, we
want you to harness all this energy in the Christian
Zionist movement, get it organized. We want to having us
going to advance. We want you meeting with people, we
want you networking. And then all the feedback I ever
got when I was writing remarks for speeches of communications,

(51:02):
it was never tone it down on the religious stuff.
It was always add more scripture, add more of this,
like that's what we want. So it wasn't explicitly like
no one goes, we want you to go lie and
to see people, but it was also I mean, that
was kind of what we knew we were doing.

Speaker 2 (51:20):
So one day, did you just say screw this and quit?
Is that what happened?

Speaker 5 (51:25):
Uh?

Speaker 3 (51:25):
No?

Speaker 5 (51:26):
So okay, so I became an atheist and eventually in
twenty twenty just after constantly being exposed to these questions
and working in this environment where I was just like, well,
you can all be right, and I'm seeing how easy
is to manipulate people with religion because I'm doing it.
Like I didn't look behind the curtain. I was the

(51:46):
wizard behind the curtain. So I started just writing this
journal as a kind of cathartic experience about everything I
was dealing with and thinking about. And over time that
became like essentially a book, Like I have a four
hundred page book graph now, and I just kept collecting
like little clip its of oh, here's what happened, Here's

(52:07):
what this person said, here's this video, here's this email,
here's all my database. And I had just been like
sending that stuff to my email for a long time
and kind of writing all this. And then I got
very nervous about that after once the war started, especially
because I thought, oh, what if this gets discovered. I'm
not sure exactly how that plays out.

Speaker 2 (52:27):
I don't know if I can just leave spionage. Yeah,
the government targets you, and I mean, and.

Speaker 5 (52:34):
I don't know, maybe that was paranoid, but anyways, Like
so I became no longer functional, like I really really
came to hate myself. It wasn't like I didn't just
feel like I didn't recognize the person in the mirror.
I feel like I despised this person. I lost like
twenty five pounds because it was difficult to eat at

(52:55):
work when the starvation campaign was happening. My hand would
just sort of tremble on my way to work. I
broke down in the bathroom like several times and just
kind of cried over it. I felt very nervous, like
there was multiple bomb threats at the consulate when I
was there. There were we had to cancel events because
of bomb threats. The FBI arrested a guy named Anasayid

(53:17):
who had pledged allegiance to ISIS and was planning to
attack the consulate. There was those embassy workers that got killed,
so there was that aspect of it too. So I
talked it out with my family and everything. I was
just like, I can't do this anymore.

Speaker 3 (53:30):
I have to leave. So that morning I showed up.

Speaker 5 (53:34):
I went back and deleted every single email I'd ever
sent to myself. I made sure I was logged out
of all my accounts to where it wouldn't automatically log
into my email or Google driver or whatever. And then
I went and told my boss, and I didn't only
lied by omission, like I just said, I am too
frightened to do the job.

Speaker 3 (53:53):
I can't do this anymore.

Speaker 5 (53:56):
And that was a really emotional little whirld on the experience,
just because they were very sympathetic to that, and I
knew I was also kind of lying to them, and
how I really felt very much different than how I
was pretending to feel at work, which you know, makes
you feel slimy and you feel really guilty and everything,

(54:16):
and because you are guilty or I was guilty. And
then I remember just walking out of the door for
the last time, knowing that was going to be the
last time I was ever in there, and just feeling
an enormous rush of relief and just thinking, oh, I
should have done it so sooner, and like it wasn't Tallata.
I loved to really really started to process and understand

(54:37):
what kind of a toll this had taken on my psyche.
And now I'm standing here and I want to I
don't want to stay placed at heal. I want to
enter this like arena of ideas and people need to
know that this is what's happening. And it's there's this
taboo about talking about this religious aspect of the conflict.

(54:59):
I think because as it either frightens people or it
hurts their feelings, or they think you're being bigoted for
calling out bad ideas on any.

Speaker 3 (55:07):
Side of this.

Speaker 5 (55:08):
And people need to take this serioside of one and
it's not just the Israel Palestinian conflict and international affairs
didn't even totally make sense to me until I stopped
believing in supernatural forces governing the universe.

Speaker 3 (55:21):
And when you accept.

Speaker 5 (55:23):
That we live in a world with no gods, dick
and anything. Yeah, it's all about what we do and
how we protect each other's rights or don't or violate them.

Speaker 2 (55:34):
What do we do now?

Speaker 3 (55:35):
You know?

Speaker 2 (55:36):
Is there a resource where people can learn about what
you're doing? Or is there something on the broader stage
that people should be doing. What do you think?

Speaker 5 (55:44):
I would encourage people to at least think critically about this,
like says one of the things I love so much
about like you and your show, And you know you
said a million times you are not the thinking atheist.
The thinking atheist is a call to think critically about
why we believe what we believe, and is it responsible
and is it rational too?

Speaker 3 (56:05):
And that's what I would encourage people to do.

Speaker 5 (56:08):
And a lot of times when we talk about this
in the atheist discourse world, I think it understandably revolves
around separation of church and state in this country. And
I'm here to highlight the foreign policy aspect of this,
coming from someone who was there on the inside and
did it and also has a I do have an
educational background into it, but I think it's more important

(56:30):
to know, Hey, this is what it looks like from
the inside. If someone wants to read more about what
I've written. I've written a few articles for the Libertarian Institute.
I'm not an actually libertarian, but they were interested.

Speaker 2 (56:41):
Glad you got in front of that. I'm glad you
got in front of it. Will you say the word
libertarian and all of a sudden people start startling like wolves?

Speaker 5 (56:48):
So yeah, I mean, at this point in our politics,
all sorts of words where it's libertarian, zionism, left right.

Speaker 2 (56:54):
Like you saw an outlet, you saw an outlet where
you could go and share the ideas and it happened
to be a libertarian magazine. Is that what I'm hearing.

Speaker 5 (57:02):
Yeah, if you just googled my name, I'm sure it'll
come up. I think I've written five so far that
are out there. But yeah, I think it's also you know,
when you vote, find out if your elected officials are
being influenced by this kind of theological based thinking or
if they actually are taking a sober assessment of what's

(57:23):
in your own us interest when they're making their decisions.

Speaker 2 (57:27):
A four hundred page manuscript that may one day become
a book, well, I'll keep my radar open for that,
my friend. Thanks for giving us a behind the scenes
look at a very complicated issue and what is ultimately
a human rights issue. Thanks again, brother, Thank you all right.
This has been a brief, kind of messy and very

(57:50):
imperfect conversation about some very serious events. Thanks for sticking
with me this far. I hope you found it compelling.
I will see you back here next week. I'm going
to be talking to a guy named Scott Latta who
did a two year investigation of the American Mega Church
and he wrote a book about it. He's going to

(58:11):
join me to talk about his journey next week. I'll
see you then.

Speaker 1 (58:15):
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