Chris Katulka: Thank you for joining us for The Friends of Israel Today. I'm your host and teacher, Chris Katulka. Now, before we get started, would you do me a favor? Would you go to our website, foiradio.org? There you can actually listen to over nine years worth of biblical content that we teach on Israel and the Jewish people. And we also have amazing interviews with insightful guests. And so again, you can do all of that and so much more by going to foiradio.org.

Now, today is one of my favorite episodes. They're called Israel My Glory in Depth episodes. Do you know about Israel My Glory? Israel My Glory is The Friends of Israel's award-winning Christian magazine that's been published since 1942 teaching biblical truth about Israel and the Jewish people. We want to make sure that you get a copy of Israel My Glory if you've never subscribed before.

So we'll have information on how you can sign up and get a year free subscription, but you just got to hang on for one moment before we get you that information. So today, we're actually going to be flipping the tables here. Steve Conover, our executive producer will be interviewing me about an article that I recently wrote for our most recent edition of Israel My Glory called Modern Israel 101: An Introduction to the History of the Jewish State. But before we get to that, let's get to the news. The International Criminal Court intends to issue arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on charges of crimes against humanity for Israel's conduct in the Gaza War.

The ICC will also issue warrants for Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar, Ismail Haniyeh, and Mohammed Deif. Well, here's my take. Israel is at war with a terrorist agency bent on the genocide of the Jewish people and the International Criminal Court whose roots go back to the trials against Nazis after the Holocaust is giving moral equivalency between Hamas leaders and elected Israeli officials.

Israel has led one of the most targeted wars in modern history against terrorists who hide among the innocent. Really, the ICC should be ashamed of itself.

Steve Conover: Chris, so great to be together for this edition of Israel My Glory in Depth.

Chris Katulka: I know, I'm excited.

Steve Conover: Yeah, great.

Chris Katulka: We're turning the tables here.

Steve Conover: That's right. I've been looking forward to it. So when we think of the Arab-Israeli conflict, it's often looked at as a complex situation and in some ways it is, but you say it's simple in some ways to grasp. How do you come to that conclusion?

Chris Katulka: It's simple because it boils down to one concept and that's that Israel is a Jewish state. And that's the difficult thing to understand is a lot of times we try to look at the complexity of the Middle East conflict, Israel being at the center of it as a political thing. But if you look what's going on, I've seen it more since 1947, not so much in 1948 when Israel was founded, not so much as an issue of just politics. It's an issue of the fact that Jewish people have sovereignty over the land that God promised them way back in Genesis chapter 12.

And so really I think the simplicity of it is that it boils down to an issue that many of the Arab countries and Muslim countries surrounding Israel have more of an antisemitism problem than they do just in Israel. Problem Israel is the outworking, in my opinion, of Jewish control and sovereignty over the land. And even though it's a democracy... Israel is a democracy. It has Jewish people that live there. It has Muslim people that are Israelis. It has Christians that are Israelis. It has various minorities that are Israeli. That doesn't matter. What matters is that the Knesset, the people who govern Israel and have sovereignty over the land are Jewish.

And this is where I think a lot of the complexity can be boiled down to simply there are Jews in the land, and if you go back to 1947, 1948, and you go to 1967, it often came down to simply there are Jewish people in the land and if we get rid of the Jewish people, then we can have Muslim control over the land again. So I really think it's just very simple and it boils down to that. The statistics are very interesting when you look at how Muslim countries surrounding Israel, their statistics on antisemitism.

Egypt might have peace with Israel, but when you go to main street Egypt, there's still that underlying antisemitism, the hatred of the Jewish people that's there. The same thing in Jordan. The same thing in some of the countries that might have peace with Israel through the Abraham Accords. There are these statistics that still just show there's kind of this animosity toward the Jewish people. So that's where I think the complexity boils down to the simplicity.

Steve Conover: Yeah. It's really helpful to think about when you distill it, how simple the problem really is. Where it does get complex is when we think of some of the players and their names. So Israel is bordered by Egypt, as you said, and Jordan, Syria. But we're hearing about Hezbollah, we're hearing about Hamas, we're hearing about Iran, which doesn't border Israel. How do we understand the connection between Iran, and Hezbollah, and Hamas?

Chris Katulka: Hamas and Hezbollah have a passion, and that passion is to eradicate the state of Israel, but in order to fulfill your mission, you have to have funding, you have to have money. And so when you think about these players that are surrounding Israel, Hezbollah to the north, Gaza in the south, they all have a passion and again the passion is the same. It's that simplicity that I was talking about. But they need money and they need guidance, and they need infrastructure, and they need those things in order to make it happen.

A lot of that infrastructure, a lot of that financial backing come from the Ayatollahs in Iran. I am not saying that it's all Iranian people. I think many Iranians are peace loving individuals who want probably more of a liberal democracy than a dictatorship run by an Ayatollah. However, the government right now that is running the show and is running the Islamic guard out of Iran is the Ayatollahs, and they are the ones who are religiously moving to fund Hamas, to fund Hezbollah to attack Israel.

So yes, you have these big countries, Lebanon and Syria, Jordan and Egypt. They're not the issue anymore like going back to 1967. Today it's terrorism and Hamas, and Hezbollah are the proxies of Iran.

Steve Conover: So if we were to walk through each of these names that we hear in the news, we have Hamas, we have Hezbollah, and then we have the Palestinian Authority. Let's start with Hamas. What's their history?

Chris Katulka: Yeah, Hamas comes from the mid 1980s. They come and branch out of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. And again, Hamas is an acronym for basically an Islamic resistance. And what their goal was as a party, they were a political party was founded in their charter from 1988, which you can read online. They're not trying to hide it at all, and it's extremely antisemitic and extremely anti-Israel. I think we might talk more about that in a moment, but Hamas is born out of, again, that resistance movement against Israel. And even the resistance against the Palestinians who you might consider the more moderate Palestinians.

They are a party and they were trying to raise awareness among the Palestinians that were in the West Bank, that were in Gaza, that there is a different way of looking at how we're going to relate with Israel instead of shaking hands with Israel or making deals or whatever the case might be, Hamas is here to stand in complete defiance against the state of Israel. So you can either go with Yasser Arafat and what he's doing or you can come with us and you'll see that play out later on for Hamas when the Palestinians hold their very first election.

It's very fascinating because Yasser Arafat, for many, many years, it was called the Palestinian Liberation Organization. They were the essential government. They were the ones overseeing the Palestinian people. After the death of Yasser Arafat, his successor moved up and his name was Mahmoud Abbas. He still is president of the Palestinian people, but as Israel was giving Gaza to the Palestinians, all of a sudden the world was pushing for the Palestinians to have their very first free and fair elections.

Well, the world was surprised because in 2006 when they had those elections, they were hoping the moderates, the world. The western world was looking saying, "Look at Palestinians, they're voting." And then all of a sudden as they were voting, they were expecting them to vote for the more moderate Palestinian leader. And what they ended up, the Palestinians in both the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip voted for was Hamas. They wanted to see resistance against Israel.

And even to this very day, Hamas pulls very high among the Palestinian people, which is very fascinating. They do not like the government that's in the West Bank at all, which is Mahmoud Abbas. And so there's this tension. Hamas is a party. They're a party that rules the Palestinian people and they're the ones that should be fixing roads and creating infrastructure and finding opportunities for new jobs and education and health and things of that nature when really that funds that are coming in are not going towards that.

They've been for many, many years, for the past 15 years, for the past 15 years, they've been going to rocket launching and sending terrorism into Israel. So that's really the picture of what Hamas is and how they've been acting for many years.

Steve Conover: You mentioned the PLO and their beginnings. And I really look at what they did as clever marketing in many ways because until that time, they were looking at the Palestinian areas as becoming part of a larger Muslim community and it feels like it dawned on them that if we could say we need statehood instead of becoming part of a larger community, that's when they started to gain the world's sympathy that they needed a state as well. But we touched on the charter, the Hamas charter, and you mentioned in your article specific language that they use that's problematic in that charter. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Chris Katulka: Yeah. I can't quote it, but I can tell you that in the charter, it does pull verses from the Hadith, which is a religious book of the Muslim people. And that in the Hadith day it mentions the fact that there would be Jewish people that would be killed. It's not even the fact that they just want to see Israel disappear. These are verses that exist prior to the founding of the state of Israel in 1948. These go back hundreds of years and very antisemitic.

They look down on Jewish people and it even calls for their death. It calls for Israel's to be annihilated, the state of Israel. All of this is baked into the charter, which again, like I said, they're saying the quiet parts out loud. They've been very vocal about it. They don't hide it. That's the amazing thing. That's the reason why when Western nations kind of tip their hat a little bit to Hamas in some way.

I'm not saying they support them, but when they give them an inch, it's amazing because what they want to do to Israel and the Jewish people is the same as what the Germans wanted to do. It's a holocaust that they want. They want the Jewish people gone. It's baked into their charter. And so when they say things like that, they're saying the quiet parts out loud. It's right there for you to go online and read for yourself. And so that's what drives them as a party. Every party political party has an agenda. Their agenda is ultimately to take over the land of Israel, and that's what drives them, and that's what people support them for.

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Steve Conover: Now, if we could talk a little bit about the Hezbollah. How are they different from the Hamas?

Chris Katulka: Hezbollah's existence goes back a couple years prior to Hamas. As 1979 rolls around and the Islamic Revolution takes place in Iran. That's a big seismic shift in Iran. It goes from more of a liberal mentality, a way of life. Women have freedoms, men have freedoms. They weren't bound by Sharia law in any way or Iranian law that's connected to the Quran. But then all of a sudden, the Ayatollahs takeover in 1979 and they begin controlling everything. And then what they want to do is begin to... The revolution wasn't enough for Iran. They want to begin to spread their ideology into the areas of the Middle East that were cracking where they could see opportunity.

And Lebanon was a perfect place for that. There was already a lot of civil strife and tension in Lebanon. Israel was involved in 1982. The Lebanese Christians were connected with Israel and against some of the uprisings that were going on in Lebanon. And this provided an opportunity for Hezbollah to come in through Iran. Iran was the one funding it. And over time, Hezbollah has really embedded itself into Lebanese culture, and they are primarily along the southern border of Lebanon and Israel, but they've embedded themselves so much that they've kind of found their way into politics in Lebanon as well.

Today, fast forward many years, today Lebanon, because of Hezbollah and Lebanon, Hezbollah has amassed more than a hundred thousand rockets along the border of Israel in the northern border and has become a serious problem. Even today, after October 7th, there was the concern that Hezbollah might join Hamas in its war against Israel. Again, all of these things being controlled from Tehran and Iran, and so there is that connection there.

Fortunately, they didn't do anything. However, there's still that anticipation from the Israeli government and the Israeli people that Hezbollah because they have the same similar mentality, the same similar desires to get rid of Israel, that eventually they will enter into a war. And so Israel I know is prepared for that on the northern border. But again, the same exact mentality. What Iran wanted to do was spread its ideology throughout the Middle East.

The Middle East has been cracking. Lebanon was cracking in the '80s and falling apart. There were instability. There's no stability in Syria right now either with its civil war. And so again, what happens is Iran looks for those voids of power in order to influence themselves like Iraq as well. And so Lebanon in the early '80s is where they kind of ingratiated themselves into their culture and into their politic, all of it, because it's right there in the border with Israel as well.

Steve Conover: That's really helpful. Now, there's one more player in all this that it can be confusing. We talked about Hezbollah, we talked about Hamas, we talked about the connections to Iran. We also have the Palestinian Authority. How do they fit into all this?

Chris Katulka: Yeah, the Palestinian Authority is an interesting one because they are actually the government of the Palestinian people, and they have on, again, off again relationships with Israel where they'll talk about certain things because there is security collaboration, financial collaboration, because the Palestinian people use the shekel. They use the currency that's in Israel. So there are levels of communication with the Palestinian authority, but especially in the past few years, not so much at all.

But the Palestinian Authority was born ultimately out of its beginning in the Oslo peace agreements, in the Oslo Peace Accords, which started to segment out areas of the West Bank, which is called Judea Samaria. That's what the Jewish people call it in Israel. That's what I like calling it. It's Biblical, Judea Samaria. Sections of the West Bank were given over for complete autonomy to the Palestinian people, Ramallah, Bethlehem, Jericho, just to name a few.

Maybe you've heard of those as you turn the news on or whatever. Those are controlled by the Palestinian people, complete Palestinian control, governed by the Palestinian Authority. They have a government, but it's basically just a dictatorship right now because they had not held elections since 2006. There's really no plans to hold elections, again, because every time they do polling, what they find is that Hamas has a large stake in those numbers that come in. And I think there's a concern. There should be a concern. You don't want Hamas in the West Bank.

And so right now, Mahmoud Abbas has been the president, what seems to be going on for 18 years or something of that nature. He's been around for a very, very long time. The Palestinian Authority are the ones who oversee the Palestinian people and their territories that they control. They're not a state yet. They're not a state. That's what the western world wants to see, a two-state solution.

You hear that often from Western powers, but they're not a state yet. But the territories that they have are governed by the Palestinian Authority so that when a dignitary does come to the Palestinian people, their representative is Mahmoud Abbas. That's the one that they'll talk to, the president, and he represents the Palestinian people even though the statistics have shown over and over again that most Palestinians do not like their leadership at all.

Steve Conover: So we started this with the simplicity of the reasons why there is a never ending struggle for Israel. And then we were able to get insight into the different players. But I don't want to leave us with the struggle. I want to talk a little bit about where there is hope for Israel. So why do we have reason to be hopeful when we look at all that's going on in the Middle East today.

Chris Katulka: In the shortsighted view, just what's right in front of us, I don't see any hope for peace in the near future, especially between the Palestinians and the Israelis. October 7th created a lot of mess, especially when you hear those Western countries crying out for a two-state solution. They're almost tone deaf to the reality of what the Israelis are dealing with. So right in the face of what you're seeing close up is lacks a lot of hope. There doesn't seem to be a light at the end of the tunnel. But that's where having faith in the Lord Jesus comes into play and grounding yourself in God's Word.

And when you ground yourself in God's Word, you see God's faithfulness. And God's faithfulness is that through his people and the land that he gave to them, God would bless every family of the earth. And yes, that includes Arabs, that includes us over here in the West. Every family, everybody that bears the image of God can be blessed by the Jewish Messiah. And that Jewish Messiah is Jesus. And we do believe that that Jewish Messiah is returning to earth.

It's interesting because Jesus says as he's standing and looking out over Jerusalem in Luke, he says, "If only you knew the peace that I could bring to you," as the Jewish people are rejecting him, as Israel is rejecting him, "If only you knew the peace that I could bring and that would come ultimately." He understood that his presence in Jerusalem ruling as the King of Israel would bring a spiritual blessing to all the families of the earth. And I think that's where the hope is. The hope is that as we pray for the peace of Jerusalem, we're praying for a hope that's coming when the Prince of Peace comes, and that's what our anticipation is, and our eyes are fixed on as we wait.

Steve Conover: That's really beautiful because as dark as it is, we know that we can have a confident hope in God's word and what he'll do,

Chris Katulka: 100%.

Steve Conover: Thank you, Chris.

Chris Katulka: Thank you.

Chris Katulka: Thanks for joining us today on this episode of The Friends of Israel Today. Now, next week, we're going to start a three-week study on the glory of God from both the Old Testament and the New Testament. Specifically, we'll be looking at Nadab and Abihu and their abuse of the glory of God. So you'll want to come back next week to hear all about that. Today's program was produced by Tom Gallione, engineered by Bob Beebe, and edited by Jeremy Strong who also composes and performs our theme music. And our executive producer is Steve Conover. I'm your host and teacher, Chris Katulka. Our mailing address is FOI Radio, PO Box 914, Bellmawr, New Jersey, 08099. Again, that's FOI Radio, PO Box 914, Bellmawr, New Jersey, 08099.

Our web address is foiradio.org. Again, that's foiradio.org, or you can call our listener line at 888-343-6940. Again, that's 888-343-6940. Hey, give us a call. The Friends of Israel Today is a production of the Friends of Israel Gospel Ministry. We are a worldwide evangelical ministry, proclaiming biblical truth about Israel and the Messiah while bringing physical and spiritual comfort to the Jewish people.