Transcription
So, there are 195 countries on God's green earth, but only one Jewish state. Yet somehow, this tiny country smaller than New Jersey, a tiny pip squeak in the middle of the Middle East, receives more intention, more attention than nations 10, 20, sometimes 50 times its size. And and literally everything is zoomed in on Israel right now. It's it's kind of an obsession. And the question I'm asking is why?
Why are people marching in cities all around the world and yelling about Israel and they can't even find Israel on a map? Why are universities obsessed with Israel? Why are churches being divided over Israel? And man, I saw it this week. Why does Israel seem to trigger reactions that no other nation triggers? And perhaps the most important question, why does hostility towards the Jewish people, towards everybody Jewish, keep on reinventing itself again and again and again in every generation?
Pharaoh had one reason. Haman in in in the story of Esther had another reason. Rome had another reason. Medieval Europe had another reason. Nazi Germany had another reason. And now Hamas has another reason. Crazy students on campuses all over the world have their reasons. The slogans change, the flags change, the ideologies change, the accusations change. Yet somehow the target remains remarkably consistent because tonight we're going to talk about Zionism. We're going to talk about anti-Zionism. We're going to talk about anti-semitism. We're going to talk about anti-Jewish hatred. We're going to examine the different flavors of the hostility towards the Jewish people, there's different flavors to this poison.
Before we're finished, I want to suggest something that a lot of people don't really get because above the politics and beyond the politics and the borders and the headlines, there's something deeper taking place. What if the conflict that we're talking about is not really about land? And what if it's not about the settlements, right? And what if it's not about the oil, the ethnicity, the nationalism, or even the geopolitics? What if underneath all of these things is a spiritual battle? The battle against God's people, the battle against God's promise, the battle against God's land, but more than anything, the battle against God's purpose. And it's really, I think, at the core of what we're talking about. And if that's true, then to understand the spiritual dimension may be the key to understanding everything else.
Psalm 83 verse 4 says, "Come, let us cut them off from being a nation." The nation meaning Israel, "Let us cut them off from being a nation that the name of Israel may be no more in remembrance." And and whether you're looking at Pharaoh or you're looking at Haman or you're looking at Antiochus or you're looking at Rome or you're looking at medieval Europe or you're looking at Nazi Germany, it is all the same. And the Iranian regime has plugged into that. The flags change, the uniforms change, but the accusations stay the same. And one question keeps on appearing throughout history. Why does this small people, such a small people, 15 million, generate such a disproportionate amount of obsession, attention, hostility, downright evil because if you don't understand these five flavors, you don't understand Lebanon, you don't understand, you don't understand Iran, you don't understand Gaza, you don't understand the Muslim problem that's happening in Europe.
So this is David Tal. This is the Balagan Connection. Please do me a favor. Please subscribe. Subscribe so we know that this is going out to people. Share some of this with people. I'm an American but originally from Israel, grew up in Israel. I'm an officer in in the Israeli IDF. And more important than anything, I am a Jewish follower of Jesus. So, we're going to tie all of that together as we go along.
Let's start off with the beginning. Zionism. Wow. It has become a bad word. It's become a problematic. It might be one of the most misunderstood words in in the modern depending on who you ask. Zionism either is the source of all evil in the Middle East or the fulfillment of a 2,000-year-old dream, prophecy. Before we can decide whether Zionism is good or bad, we need to answer a more unique question. What is Zionism?
Because Zionism is not a political party like the Likud or like the Labor Party. Zionism is not Netanyahu, okay? It's not a particular government in Israel. It's not even a particular policy. Zionism, and listen closely, Zionism is the belief that the Jewish people have the same rights as any other people in the world. The Jewish people have a right to live as a nation. Let me say that again. To live as a nation in their ancestral homeland. That is it. That is what Zionism is. That is what it means. So you can strip away all the slogans. You can strip away all the politics. You can strip away all the propaganda because what remains is the word Zion that comes from one of the hills in Jerusalem. Jerusalem is a hilly place. Mount Moriah, the temple where the temple stood. On one side of Mount Moriah is the Mount of Olives. On the other side of Mount Moriah is Mount Zion. So Mount Zion becomes a name for a part of Jerusalem. Later on becomes a name for all of Jerusalem and later on becomes a name for all of Israel. They're longing to return to their homeland for almost 2,000 years, okay, is called Zionism. Basically, the idea is that Jews should live in Zion. And for 2,000 years, Jews have been scattered across the world saying every Passover, every generation in every continent, next year in Jerusalem, next year in Zion. Jews never forgot the land and the connection never disappeared.
I've been a tour guide in Israel for about uh I'm going to say close to 20 years and I've taken thousands of Christians through the land. I've stood with them on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem. I've stood with them on the Sea of Galilee. Uh we've kind of walked through the Judean wilderness. And one of the things that I often tell people is that you cannot understand the Bible if you remove it from the land of the Bible. Abraham wasn't called to a continent and he wasn't called to a city. Abraham was called to a land. Go to the land that I will show you. Moses led the people to a land that was promised. David ruled a land and Jesus ministered and talked to the people in a land. The Bible is rooted in real places occupied by real people throughout real history.
I grew up in Israel. I served in the IDF. I raised my family here. I walked through the battlefields. I buried friends. I've guided visitors throughout its history. And for me, Zionism is simply the belief that I belong in this land and that is the core of it. Now, you might agree with Zionism, you might not agree with Zionism. I mean, a lot of people have a lot of different opinions, especially now, but at least now we're talking about the same thing. You can argue that this is not my land. The Bible isn't relevant to this. But the minute we define Zionism as racism, colonialism, apartheid, or some other slogan, we've stopped discussing what Zionism actually is, and we're starting to make it into a into a caricature, which brings us to our second term.
If Zionism is a belief that the Jewish people have a right to their homeland in Israel, then what exactly is anti-Zionism? And is anti-Zionism the same thing as anti-semitism? And that's where the conversation gets a little bit more complicated. Let's go into it. So, what is anti-Zionism? The answer is pretty simple. Anti-Zionism is the opposition to the belief that the Jewish people have a right to the land. It is the belief that Jewish people do not possess the connection to the land, do not possess their national self-determination in the land that we call the land of Israel. That is anti-Zionism. You disassociate the people from the land.
And before we go any further, I want to clear up one of the biggest balagans in this entire conversation. Criticizing Israel is not anti-Zionism. Let me say that again. Criticizing Israel doesn't mean that you're disassociating Israel from the land. You can criticize Israel as much as you want. I criticize Israel. I criticize the government. I criticize the politicians. I criticize military decisions. I criticize some of the things in our courts. We criticize everything. And anybody who knows anything about the Jews knows that we've been criticizing since day one, since we left Egypt. And frankly, nobody criticizes Israel more than we do. We call that democracy. We call that being Jewish. We call that being stiff-necked. We call that citizenship. So, you can disagree with Netanyahu. You can disagree with the settlements. You can disagree with how Israel carries out military operations. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't. You can disagree about foreign policy. I definitely do. You can disagree about almost anything an Israeli government does. That does not make you anti-Zionist. Just like criticizing what America does or criticizing what President Trump does doesn't make you anti-American.
Anti-Zionism begins when the discussion goes from "I disagree with what Israel is doing" to "Israel should not exist." It's a very different conversation. We're no longer talking about politics. We're no longer talking about policies. We're no longer talking about actions. We're talking about existence. And that is the difference. Think about it this way. There are nearly 200 nations represented by the United Nations. Japan is self-determined. I mean, nobody's arguing. That's normal. Greek self-determination is considered normal. Egyptian self-determination is considered normal. Jordanian self-determination is considered normal. And even this Palestinian self-determination is considered normal. Yet somehow, for some reason, the Jewish self-determination in its ancestral homeland is treated as uniquely illegitimate. And that's the question that anti-Zionism forces us to confront. And this is where many people begin to begin feel uncomfortable because they discover that they're not actually arguing about policy. They're not talking about what the government did or didn't do. They're arguing about whether the world's only Jewish state, only one Jewish state in the whole wide world should continue to exist. That's not a border dispute. That's not an argument about settlements. That's a debate about the legitimacy of an entire of an entire nation. And and that I think is the core of what we call anti-Zionism.
Now, some of the anti-Zionists will tell you, "I don't hate Jews." And many of them really don't hate Jews. Some are motivated by politics. Some are motivated by ideology. Some have this universal belief that rejects all nationalism. You know, nation shouldn't be a nation. Some have some peculiar understanding about history. Not everyone who decides he becomes anti-Zionist, okay, wakes on the up in the morning hating Jews. But here's where the things become a little bit more balagan. Because if the only Jewish state is the one state that should not exist, is being judged by standards that no other nation is expected to meet. If the world's only Jewish state becomes the focus of a level of obsession that far exceeds its size or its power or its influence, then eventually we have to ask ourself a difficult question and that is why this state? Why is it always this one? Why is it always this people, this nation, this community, this religion? And that's what brings us to our next question, and that is anti-semitism.
Because while anti-Zionism and anti-semitism are not identical, the line between them is often much thinner than many people realize. And at its simplest level, anti-semitism is a hatred of the Jews. It has become a generic term for hatred of the Jews. You don't call somebody who hates Arabs an anti-semite. Okay? And anti-semitism is not just a prejudgment. It is one of the oldest hatreds in human history. It's written in the Bible. But think about it. The Jewish people make up less than a quarter of 1% of the world's population. Yet for thousands of years, they have occupied a a crazy place in the imagination of kings, dictators, ideologues, revolutionaries, religious movements, and uh pink-haired wackos. And why why have so many people spent so much time thinking about such a small people?
In in Egypt, the Jews were accused of becoming too numerous. In Persia, Haman, okay, portrayed them as disloyal and dangerous. Does that sound familiar? In parts of medieval Europe, they were accused of poisoning the wells and and and controlling the banking system. Uh they were accused of causing plagues and accused of killing children. Does that sound familiar? In the 19th century, they were accused of controlling the finances. We've been there. In the 20th century, they were accused of polluting the race. They were dirty. They were a dirty racial contamination. And and today, we are mostly accused of controlling the government, controlling the media, controlling foreign policy, controlling global events. Different centuries, different accusations, but always the same target. And that's one of the strange things about anti-semitism.
Jews have been hated for being poor and Jews have been hated for being rich. Jews have been hated for being weak and Jews have been hated for being strong. Jews have been hated for remaining separate. I mean being a different people and Jews are hated for assimilating. We are hated for having uh no state and now we're hated for having a state. The contradiction itself tells us something about what this really is. The stated reason that we're talking about is often not the real reason.
Israeli, I've watched something unfold over the years that is totally fascinated. People who agree on absolutely nothing else can agree on one thing. Their hatred, their opposition, their their their disdain for the Jews. And the only thing they have in in common is their opposition to the Jewish state and the Jewish people. The far right has one explanation for this. The far left has another explanation for this. The Islamic movements have this explanation. The conspiracy theories have another one. But somehow they always arrive at the same place. Anti-semitism is an obsession. The Jews become an explanation, a reason, an excuse for every problem. Economic problems, political problems, social media problems, okay? Uh cultural problems, international problems, the Jews become the universal villain.
And here's where I think Christians especially need to pay close attention because if anti-semitism is merely political, it should have disappeared a long time ago. It hasn't. It hasn't disappeared. Empires have come. Empires have gone. Kingdoms have risen. Kingdoms have fallen. Philosophies, communism, capitalism. Yet, anti-semitism keeps on reinventing itself. Changes clothes. It learns new languages. It adopts new slogans. But somehow the hatred of the Jews still survives. And that raises a deep question. Is anti-semitism simply a human issue? Is it something just that people connect to or is it something deeper? Is there a spiritual dimension that helps explain why this hatred keeps reappearing throughout history again and again again?
Because when we step back and look at the bigger picture, we discover that anti-semitism is only one expression of a wider larger phenomenon that I call anti-Jewish hatred. I want to widen the lens a little bit and kind of go into this a little bit deeper. Anti-semitism is one form of something larger, something older, something that has worn many different masks throughout history. You see, not everybody who hates Jews hates them for the same reason. In fact, a lot of the people who hate Jews actually hate each other. They disagree on everything. Uh these people, they disagree on religion, they disagree on politics, they disagree on economics, they disagree on culture. They're going to disagree on almost anything. Yet somehow they always come back to the same place.
The far right has its version. The Jews are accused of controlling the banks and controlling governments and replacing populations and corrupting society and running secret conspiracy and organizations. The far-left has its version. Jews are prefer are uh portrayed as privileged as colonial oppressive powerful and the conflict is really sometimes kind of boiled down to one simple story polarizing condition oppressor and oppressed colonizer and colonized powerful and powerless. And because Israel is viewed as successful many automatically place it in the role of the villain. Radical Islamic movements have their version. It's not merely an oppression to Israel. It's not merely a an argument about the territory. It's a religious struggle. In their worldview, Jewish sovereignty in what they consider an Islamic land is unacceptable. It's unacceptable for religious reasons and for pride reasons. They're fighting an ideological and often a theological war.
But there's another category that a lot of people don't like to kind of discuss. How about Jewish anti-Jewish hatred? Jews who hate Jews or Jews who hate what Israel does or Jews who hate what uh Jews do. And Jewish voices that reject the Jewish identity, Jewish voices that reject Jewish nationhood. Now, that's not new. The Bible is full of Jewish people who do the wrong thing. The Bible is full of internal conflict. I mean, go back to Exodus. The prophets had to deal with it. Moses had to deal with it. The kings had to deal with it. Internal division has always existed among the Jewish people. This is nothing new. And the opposition of the Jewish state is the only thing that holds all of this together.
So for us as Christians, there's an important lesson here. If you only look at the politics, none of this makes sense. If you only look at the economics, none of this makes sense. If you only look at the history, none of this makes sense because the same hostility keeps on resurfacing, keeps on coming up on different continents, in different centuries, in different cultures, in different political systems. But the pattern is still there. That is to tie the Bible into all of this. Because ultimately the question is not whether Israel has enemies. Every nation has enemies. The deeper question is why does Israel sit in such a unique place in human history? Why does Jerusalem occupy such a unique place in world affairs? Why does the Bible place such extraordinary emphasis on Israel, Jerusalem, the people? And to answer that, we have to leave the politics, leave the geopolitics, leave the military, leave the economics, and open up our Bibles.
And I want to go into what we call biblical Zionism. Biblical Zionism is not a political movement. Biblical Zionism is a theological movement. It become starts with a simple question. Has God finished with Israel? Everything flows from that question. Because if God is finished with Israel, then Israel is just another country, another flag, another government, another people, nothing more. But if God has not finished with Israel, then the story becomes a very different story.
Biblical Zionism begins with a covenant. Genesis 12. And God calls Abraham and says, "Get thee out of thy country and go unto a land that I will show thee." There's two things that are connected to this. A people, Abraham's descendants, and a land. And from the very beginning of the biblical story, God has connected these two things. Not just a people, not just a land, a people in a land. That is the core issue. Two chapters later, God formalizes that covenant, puts a stamp on it. He says, "Unto thy seed, I will give this land." God does not merely promise descendants. He promises a homeland. He promises Abraham boundaries, geography, a place where these promises will unfold. And the rest of the Old Testament continues to reinforce this pattern. The Exodus was not merely about people leaving Egypt. It was about people entering the promised land. Joshua crushed the Jordan into the promised land. David ruled in the land. Again and again, the Bible connects the people and the land together.
And then we come to one of the most I think clear prophetic passages in Ezekiel 36. God says this very clear. "For I will take you from among the the nations, the heathens, and I will gather you out of all the countries and I will bring you to your own land." Listen to the sequence. He's gathering from all the nations and returning to the land. The promise is both national and geographic. Jeremiah makes the point God ties the existence of Israel to the fixed order of creation itself to the to the whole arrangement the sun the moon and the stars as long as they endure God says Israel remains a nation before him that's amazing.
Let's go to the New Testament. The question becomes, did God replace Israel or does God still have a future for Israel? Paul answers that question very clearly in Romans 11. "God cast away his people." And Paul's answer is immediately, "God forbid." Think about that. He writes these words after the death and resurrection of Jesus, after the Pentecost. And he still speaks of God's continuing faithfulness to Israel. Paul says that God does not change his mind. He does not revoke his promises. He does not abandon his covenants. What God promises, God fulfills.
Now, that doesn't mean that biblical Zionism uh connects uh to a perfect Israel. Israel is not perfect. Never has been, is not now, and probably never will be. Our politicians are not perfect. Our government is not perfect. And the Bible never claims that God's promise is connected to the people being perfect. Biblical Zionism does not mean worshiping Israel. We worship God. We are saved by Jesus. We don't worship nations. We don't worship flags. We don't worship governments. We don't worship leaders. God alone deserves worship. Biblical Zionism actually means believing that God keeps his promises. If God promised to Abraham something, he keeps it. If God promised something to Isaac, he keeps it. If God promised Jacob or David or Israel something, he keeps it. Because ultimately God's faithfulness is what is in the story here, not Israel.
And this brings us back to where we started. Why does Israel attract so much attention? Why does Jerusalem sit at the center of so much controversy? Why does the hostility against the Jewish people keep reinventing itself generation after generation? Because from a biblical perspective, the issue was never political. It was never territorial. It was never ethnic. It was never economic. Even what the enemies, even the Palestinians and the Arabs are saying, it's not about the territory. It's about the existence of the Jewish people. And you need to look behind the visible conflict. Look behind the headlines and look at the spiritual battle that is going on. Behind the arguments over borders stands a larger argument over God's promise, God's purpose, God's people and God's land.
This is David Tal. This is the Balagan connection. Uh and if you do want to be a part of God's people and and support God's people and ministries in the land, uh connect to Gishon Springs. Gishon Springs is a ministry that I am a part of that was created by Jeff and Kieran Johnson from Calvary Chapel Downey. And they are supporting things that are happening now in the land that God gave his people and actually mostly oriented to sharing the gospel in Israel, helping organizations, Christian organizations in Israel and supporting things that we believe should be supporting in Israel like widows and PTSD dogs and things like that. So if you want to connect to that, join us at githonspr.com. This is David Tal. This is a Balagan connection. And before I forget, like, subscribe, uh link, share. That helps us get the word out as much as possible. Hope to see you soon.