Hello and welcome to UK column Viewers and listeners.
Thank you very much for joining me today.
And I have a very special guest, gentlemen, that I had the
pleasure of talking to a few evenings ago that was a little
off the record and get to know each other a little bit better
discussion. And I'm delighted to say that's
led to the fact that I can bring my guest on today.
And my guest is Reverend Doctor Stephen Sizer.
And we're going to be talking about the subject of Christian
Zionism. And I'm going to say to the
audience that I am, I have particularly been looking
forward to this discussion because there's somebody I
consider myself to be a Christian.
I have never claimed to know a huge amount about Scripture.
I know there are many people that are great, are much better
read than I am. However, in recent months, we've
seen some really quite extraordinary reactions from our
audience, particularly from people who will tell us that
they're Christians, that the present upheaval in the Middle
East has clearly caused a lot of people to be not only anxious,
but in some ways quite, quite motivated with events taking
place in the Middle East. And I was stunned to be told on
more than one occasion that I could not criticize Israel.
I couldn't criticize any of the military operations.
I couldn't criticize the death and destruction because Israel
was taking that action. And as a Christian, I could not
criticize Israel. Now, I'd never encountered this,
this particular, I'd never encountered this particular
response from Christians before. I was quite puzzled about it.
I reflected on it a great deal and I'm very pleased to say that
today I'm going to get the opportunity to learn from
Reverend Doctor Stephen Sizer and his research and I am
looking forward to learning a great deal from him.
Now I'm just going to say before I bring him on screen that he he
is he was formerly where are we? He was formerly vicar of
Christchurch, Virginia Water in Surrey for 20 years until his
retirement in 2017. And as we're going to hear in a
minute, due to his research and work, he ultimately was censored
by the church. More on that in due course.
But on a positive note, I want to say that he's heavily
involved, still heavily involved in lots of organisations.
So he's founder and director of the Peacemaker Trust
Conviviancia Alliance. He's chair of that organization.
He's chair of the Israel Israeli Committee against House
Demolitions, bishops, chaplains, the Right Reverend Ria Abu El
Asal, the retired Anglican Bishop in Jerusalem.
And there's a great deal more. So I'm going to say.
Stephen, welcome to UK column. It's a delight to be with you,
Brian. Thank you for inviting me.
Well, as I, as I've already said, thank you for being here.
I've really set the scene. Stephen and I, I talked to you
about this when we spoke privately on the phone because I
I can say that I found some of the pushback from our audience
when we've tried to report some of what I regard as horrors in
the Middle East. I've found the pushback from
some members of the Christian audience to be quite
extraordinary. I am happy to say that I've
found some of them to be unbelievably cold and callous in
their response, but what I learnt very quickly was, was
that they felt justified in behaving in this way due to
their beliefs and or interpretations of scripture
which led them to believe that effectively as Christians we
couldn't criticize Israel. Now you've been studying
Christian Zionism for a long time.
I know you're very learned on this and you've produced a lot
of papers, but I wonder whether you can give us a little
overview about that subject, Christian Zionism, its origins,
goals and influence. This is clearly a very important
ideology, particularly as we see the Middle East events in 2024.
I'd be pleased to. I mean, Christian Zionism is
Christian support for Zionism. Basically, Zionism is the
historic conviction among some Jewish people that they need,
would desire to be restored to the land that they'd lived in
thousands of years ago, Palestine.
So it gave rise to the Zionist movement in the 1880s onwards
among Jewish emigres in Eastern Europe, Russia who were
suffering from the pogroms and really developed in the 20th
century. But what most people don't
realise is that Zionism as a political conviction was
undergirded and preceded by a Christian movement.
Although the word Zionism wasn't coined until the 1880s, prior to
that the the terminology was restoration or restorationism,
restoring the Jews to Palestine. And this was a a Christian
conviction that really began in the 1810s, eighteen 20s,
particularly in the light of the conflict that had gone on for
hundreds of years between Britain and France trying to
control the Middle East within our two empires.
And so Christian Zionism preceded Jewish Zionism by at
least 50 years, facilitated Jewish Zionism, because you have
to remember that without the dominant Christian powers in
Europe, Zionism as a political aspiration would have been about
as successful as the as the the Kurdish desire for independence
and sovereignty over their land or the Armenians.
So it was preceded by Christian Zionism, was facilitated by
Christian Zionists like Alfour, Lord Shaftesbury and others in
the 19th century, early 20th and today is dominated by
Christians. So when you use the word Zionism
today, it's synonymous with supremacism, with racism, with
ethnic cleansing, with genocide. It's a colonial set, a settler
colonial project. But 9 out of 10 Zionists in the
world are Christians. You know, there are, I don't
know, 6-8 million Zionist Jews, but there are at least 200
million self confessing Christian Zionists.
So it's predominantly a Christian heresy.
Any form of Christian nationalism is a heresy.
And when you add to that settler colonialism and supremacism the
other we use superior to others, then it becomes a a very toxic
almost cultic belief system. Thank you for that.
If I, if I come back here, this is this is in reading your
books. And maybe this is a good place
to introduce them to the audience because my knowledge
for, for the interview today is going to be based on this.
We'll bring back up, I'll hold the book up and then we'll bring
it up on screen. So this is Christian Zionism.
That's a pretty thick book that you've written.
Our viewers can see that a little bit better.
And the second one that I've been reading is Zions Christian
Soldiers, which is slimmer. And you kindly told me when we
were speaking that this this smaller version was designed to
almost be a summary of your earlier work to make the subject
easier for people. I'll let you comment.
Just just wanted to answer that. But when I was reading this big
book, I'm not entirely finished, but I'm about 90% through, I was
absolutely fascinated to read this history about the start of
the Zionist movement buried within Christianity.
You've mentioned Balfour, and of course there are many other big
names that the average Christian in the West would associate with
the Zionist movement. But without getting too deep
into the history, I was fascinated to see when you were
talking about an organization in London working with then famous
lay preachers to help instill this belief system.
Can you tell us a little bit more about that, that slightly
earlier history? Yes, I mean you find individual
Christian leaders convinced that the scriptures mandated to the
return of the Jews to Palestine and spoke about it in their
commentaries and so on. But as a movement it began in
the 18/18/09 approximately with what became known as the London
Jews Society. And it was a group of Christians
convinced for humanitarian reasons that they cared for
Jewish people who were suffering in the East End of London and
other areas of Britain, but particularly in Europe from they
were fleeing persecution. And therefore there was a desire
to show Christian compassion to refugees, emigrates.
But alongside that was the conviction that the Jews remain
God's chosen people, were destined to control much of the
Middle East from Egypt to Iraq, and that it was the destiny of
the Church to help facilitate that movement.
Alongside that, it kind of coincided with Britain's desire
to expand its empire, defeat the French and and control the trade
routes to Africa and India which pass through Palestine.
It's the bridge between Europe, Asia and Africa.
So this, this conviction of, I would call it manifest destiny.
Britain's manifest destiny was to help the Jews back to the
land of Palestine so that they would assist Britain to further
its colonial interests. It's exactly what the US is
doing in the Middle East today. The US is in the Middle East
because it wants Israel as a compliant partner to control the
Arab states, secure the oil and maintain US supremacy,
particularly in that part of the world.
So it it was a coalition, if you like, or a confluence of two
rivers, one political, one religious, naive and misguided,
which led to numerous organisations that were
dedicated to helping the Jews back to the land of Palestine.
If I remember by reading correctly from from from your
book that these these earlier individuals and organisations,
it seems to me that they operated more or less
autonomously in the beginning. They then began to link up with
other like minded groups. But it was only later that
particular individuals in this Christian movement, and we are
particularly talking within the UK and then late later you you
stress that it the big expansion in America.
But these individuals were largely acting autonomously all
within small like minded groups. But then one of two people
seemed to be able to leap the divide and get political
interest. And then when that political
interest inside the UK began to grow, this is where the movement
as a whole really began to to gain strength and power.
That's correct. What I neglected to emphasize
was that at the beginning of the 19th century, you see the rise
of millennialism, a particular, I call it PMT premillennial
tension, the idea that the crisis returning, the end of the
world is coming. You know, you had the
Revolutionary War in in America. You know, Britain was seen as
the Antichrist. Then you had the French and the
British. Napoleon, for example, Napoleon
Bonaparte was the first world ruler in 2000 years to promise
the Jews a homeland because he needed the Jewish bankers to
back his war against the British.
Britain needed the same bankers to back them against the French.
So there was a there was a lot of speculation about the return
of Christ, the end of the world, the early 19th century.
It gave rise to the Mormons, the Jehovah Witnesses, the 7th Day
Adventists, and many of the millennial cults.
And This is why it became so popular.
You know, people were reading their newspaper in the one hand
about war in this part of the world, and they were reading
their Bible the way they were guided to read it and putting
the two together thinking that they they were the final
generation. That's how it became
popularized. The individuals that that stand
out for me were John Nelson Darby, who founded the Brethren.
He developed a, a way of reading the Bible.
You know, you have the Old Testament, a New Testament, you
have the Hebrew Scriptures and Christian and, and, and the
coming of crisis in the middle of the two.
Well, he kind of did the same thing on every page of the
Bible. Either this passage was about
the Jews. This passage was about the
Church and anything in the Scriptures that had not been
fulfilled literally, like the rebuilding of Ezekiel's temple
or Jerusalem under Jewish sovereignty.
If things had not taken place literally, he put them into the
future. So you stacked up all of these
prophecies that had to come true before Christ returned.
And again, this helped fuel expectation among naive,
ignorant, illiterate Christians. DL Moody was one of the popular
evangelists in the States convinced of this theology.
And then Cyrus Scofield people may not have heard of put these
ideas alongside the text of Scripture and it became known as
the Scofield Reference Bible. And it became the most popular
study Bible in in, in the world in by the 1950s, nineteen 60s.
And what it really did was it made the notes equal to the
Scriptures, you know, to save time reading the Bible, all you
ought to do is read a few notes to understand, as they saw it,
how to read the Bible. This is how it became popular.
And in the 20th century, the movement was dominated by what
we would call radio evangelists or television evangelists,
people sitting at home, you know, in their rural settings in
the States, listening to the television or listening to the
radio to get their religious, religious beliefs.
If you like many of the most influential Christian leaders in
America today, Benny Hinn, Rodney Howard Browne, John
Hagee, you know, these individuals have have have an
audience of millions of people on a weekly basis through radio,
through television. And, and they are pushing this
line that Israel is central to God's purposes in our
generation. The sad thing is it has, has so
little biblical basis at all. You mentioned my two books that
the the first one, Christian Zionism Road Map to Armageddon
was really an attempt to understand the movement as a
whole. So we looked at the history of
the movement, its theology and its political agenda, because
its political agenda is where it gets scary, seriously scary.
So that was my thesis, my PhD thesis.
The second book, Zion's Christian Soldiers is it's not
really a summary of the earlier book, it's it's a re an attempt
to read the Bible again and deconstruct Christian Zionism.
It's like AI call it like a hot air balloon.
How many pins do you need to burst a balloon?
Well, I'll give you 7, anyone will do.
So the book has got 7 chapters and each of them is like a pin
that bursts the balloon of hot air, which is all that Christian
Zionism is. So it's an attempt to inoculate
Christians from this Celtic heretical theology.
I want to move deeper into this question of about how people
interpret the Bible. Before we do that, I think this
would be a good place to be saying to our audience that as a
result of your work, deep research, historical research,
huge amount of of biblical research, this has cost you a
lot. This has cost you your career
within the church. And just just before I was
settling down for the interview, I was just looking at a couple
of headlines that were in the press back in 2023.
And of course the BBC was was in there with a big headline.
It says a Church of England priest who shared quote
virulently. Apologies that anti-Semitic UN
quote material has been barred from ministry for 12 years.
And a pretty brutal article about you.
No bones about it. You're an anti Semite.
You've been barred from working in the church for 12 years.
I think it was. And yeah, you're a thoroughly
nasty person. There were other reports as
well. Obviously the main newspapers
picked it up. I think the Times or the
Telegraph was was was another one.
But just tell the audience how this attack came about and how
you've you've been forced to try and defend yourself.
You've done proper PhD research into this subject, but that's
cost you your career and caused you to be censored by the
church. How did that happen?
Well, I liken it to football. And you know, if you're watching
a football match, if, if a player cannot win the ball and
the opponent is about to score a goal, what do they do?
They try and bring the opponent down.
They foul the opponent. They go for the legs rather than
the ball. And so I'm not the only one.
Many others have addressed the whole subject for Zionism,
critiqued it theologically, tried to challenge Christians to
recognize it's a heresy. And and the standard, standard
operating procedure, if you like, of Zionists is to allege
anti-Semitism. You must hate Jews.
You must, you must be prejudice toward Jews if you criticize
Israel. Again, this is a misnomer.
It's untrue, you know, criticizing a state for racism
isn't anti-Semitic. It isn't racist in itself.
I abhor all forms of racism, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia.
You know, it's, it's, it's, it's sinful, it's evil.
And we must repudiate any theology, any political system
that denigrates one people group because of their colour, their
religion, their race, whatever. But it began for me about 20
years ago. A group of Zionist Christians
who did not like the way I was challenging their theology began
to write anonymous articles about me.
And then they set up a website, Seismic Shock Play on my name,
and they were writing stuff virtually every day, criticizing
me for visits I was making to the Middle East in Christian
ministry terms, reaching out to Muslims, reaching out to to
groups in in Palestine, calling for basic human rights for
Palestinians, for example. And, and then they began to try
and isolate me from organisations I was working
with. And, and, and that led to a
first complaint against me in the Church of England about 12
years ago that was dismissed by my Bishop.
He said, just sit down with these people and, and find a way
forward conciliation, which is what we did.
We agreed a form of words and I promised to get my website and
documents fact checked. And they agreed that they would
come to me if they had a problem rather than going to the press,
which is the way they stand. You know, their standard
operating procedure is to do that.
And and then they made a second complaint against me about five
years ago, which is the one you're referring to, alleging
anti-Semitism. They, they gave 12 examples
where they thought I had was demonstrating anti-Semitic
behaviour. People I'd met with, all of the
sources were second hand. Some of them were anonymous
which would be inadmissible in a court of law, but in the
ecclesiastical court you'd get away with anything.
The the the final conclusion was, and this was a statement
from my barrister, Christian barrister.
He said the central message arising from the tribunal is
that the well documented accusations of repeated
anti-Semitic behaviour have made over more than a decade have
been dismissed. That was factually correct.
Only one allegation of anti-Semitism has been found to
have substance and that was dealt with quickly and
effectively nine years earlier at the time by the Bishop of
Guildford, which the Board of Deputies accepted at the time.
So again, this was double jeopardy.
And that one incident, what it was, was I'd posted an article
on Facebook for three days about 911, and it was called Israel
Did it 911. And I'd only put it up there to
promote discussion. I didn't agree with the article.
I don't believe Israel was behind 911 but that was deemed
anti-Semitic, you know, 15. I apologised for having posted
it on my website on my Facebook for three days, took it down
straight away and and it was done and dusted, but it was
regurgitated if you like in this, in this more recent
complaint. But most important of all, and
this is really where no one has been able to challenge me on, my
barrister said it is significant that not one word or statement
from Doctor Sizer has been shown to be anti-Semitic.
There are none. And then the expert witness on
anti-Semitism at my tribunal, Professor Anthony Lerman, who's
a world leading expert on anti-Semitism, he was disgusted
at the outcome of the tribunal. He said this, this and he's
Jewish. This disgraceful miscarriage of
justice against someone who has never uttered a word of hate
against the Jews will be a permanent stain on the Church of
England and the Board of Deputies.
So basically I was given a 12 year suspension, although I'm
already retired. So it's a suspension from being
able to take services in an Anglican church on the basis of
three things they found me guilty of.
One was this article which I posted for three days nine years
earlier and had been dealt with. Another was I'd met with a
leader, an Islamic leader who was linked to Hezbollah in
southern Lebanon. And at that occasion I'd I'd
pleaded with him to release the Israeli captives.
And the third was an interview I had in Australia that had gone
out in the UK around midnight, so no one was listening to it.
And they said I was not sufficiently contrite over
things I'd said in on a previous occasion.
So it was incredibly subjective. They were clutching at straws.
But it's, it's it having got my head, any other clergyman is
going to think twice. David Miller, you may know, was
an academic from Bristol University.
He was censured and lost his job.
They've got 1 academic, they've done the same with other
political leaders, Jeremy Corbyn for example, you know, you take,
you get the head of a political leader, an academic, a clergyman
and everyone else stays quiet. So in a sense it's a form of.
How can I put it? Censorship.
Exactly. It's censorship, but irony is
that when you feel free sorry, when you know they took away the
one thing I didn't need, you know, I don't particularly want
to do services at 8 O clock in the morning in country parishes
on a cold, cold winter's morning.
You know, there's nothing they could take away from me that I
care about. And it's actually free to me to
be more active in campaigning for human rights for Jews as
well as Muslims as well as Christians, particularly in the
Middle East. Yes, I I've used the word
censorship, but I think that's exactly what it is.
We're seeing more and more censorship coming in academia.
And in fact, over recent weeks, one of our valued
correspondents, Diane Rasmussen Mcaddy has has come under this
form of attack herself because she's dared to speak out on
range of subjects on the UK column.
But the university is now absolutely going for her with
charges which could result in her losing her job.
So we're seeing this happen across the board.
But in this case, you were faced with it particularly because of
your, your work and your efforts in, in relation to Christianity
and and Israel. If we come back to the to the
Bible and I'll again qualify by saying that when, when I started
to get interested in the Bible myself, I, I can remember a
friend saying to me, but The thing is, Brian, you need to
understand which Bible you are reading.
And it had never occurred to me before that comments that I had
to be careful about what what biblical version I was reading.
And for a lot of reasons, I suppose, I've stayed focused on
the King James. But I'm aware and that there are
errors in the King James Bible. These are acknowledged.
It's a shame we haven't got Alex Thompson and other friends and
correspondents here because he he's does a lot of work in
relation to biblical translations.
But we have to accept that whatever Bible we have is going
to have some actual mistakes in translation.
We'll call those foundational mistakes, but we then also get
into the arena that we have different versions of the Bible,
as you've described with Schofield, where a whole spin is
woven into the biblical text itself.
By taking historic text as in King James, and making it in a
more readable modern form, the choice of words and phrases can
drastically alter the meaning that was originally attended in
the scriptures. So I had to learn all this
myself. I'm sure many people will be
saying that shows your ignorance Brian, but I'm happy to take
that that comments. But at least I did pick up on
it. But what I have been shocked at
is the attacks coming in from the Christian community to the
UK column for daring to say what we think that Israel is wrong in
prosecuting the war in the Middle East in the way it is is
people are absolutely locked into the belief system created
by their interpretation of the scriptures and it's it's black
and white. They won't shift.
They won't. I even said in response to one
particularly unpleasant e-mail, are you saying to me that if
Jesus Christ was stood with you watching the slaughter and
carnage unfold in Gaza, he would be saying it's OK because the
Israelis are doing it? And of course, I didn't get a
response to that, that e-mail. But I've had to really be quite
strong in responding to some people because their comments
have been horrible. So my question to you is, what's
your explanation for the reason that people seem to become so
deeply locked into scripture? They seem to forget the key
messages of of love your God, love one another, and love your
enemies. This seems to be a pretty simple
and understandable message in the Bible.
But a lot of Christians, the deeper they get into their
interpretation, the more happy they seem.
We can explain it in a number of ways without without denigrating
individual's belief system necessarily.
Bertram Russell once said most people would rather die than
think, and most people do. And if we apply that, my
observation as a pastor over 35 years, 40 years, is that it is
easier to take our belief systems prepackaged than to
think it through for ourselves. It's like you go shopping and
increasingly you can buy meals prepared for you.
So all you ought to do is buy your, buy your shepherd's pie
and stick it straight in the oven and eat it rather than buy
the raw materials, prepare it, cook it.
And it's normally much healthier than the, the, you know, the
packaged meals. So in many ways, people's
theology, their belief system is packaged for them, either
because they've read a book or because they believe what the
pastor says. And what one of the most
dangerous things we can do as Christians is believe what we're
told rather than reading the Bible for ourselves and allowing
God's Spirit to help us to understand it.
So books like commentaries and even my books are there to help
understanding might not replace it.
And so the people you've described who've been hostile
towards UK column, I interpret that as a kind of a brittleness.
And you know, when something is brittle, it may be, it may be
made of iron, it may be very hard, but it's brittle.
And if it's brittle, it's weak. Many people's theology is very
brittle and they get defensive when you challenge it because
they haven't thought it through for themselves.
You're taking their baby away from them.
You know it's, you know, it's the umbilical cord, you know
they get threatened. So it's a sign of immaturity,
it's a sign of brittleness. If people cannot engage.
It's ironic, you know, you would think that Zionists would be
queuing up to debate me. They don't.
They don't want to debate me. You have to ask why.
Can I qualify that? When you say Zionists, do you
mean Christian Zionists? Yes, because the majority of
Zionists are Christians. The overwhelming majority. 9 out
of 10 Zionists and the other Christians not Jews.
You know ironically most of the people who defended me at my my
tribunal were Jews. Jews who are anti Zionists, who
realise that that Christianity in its settler colonial form in
the Middle East is not a friend of the Jewish people.
But to go back to theology people, Christians, many, many
Christians don't read the Bible for themselves.
They'll read a simple book that will, you know that will, will
suggest that the end of the world is coming.
Jesus is coming back and these things have got to take place
before he comes back. So my question is, was the
coming of Jesus the fulfillment of the Old Testament promises
God made to the Jews, or the postponement?
Fulfillment or postponement? And for many Christian Zionists,
the coming of Jesus is Plan B because Israel is Plan A Israel
is central to God's purposes. The fundamental mistake they
make is to draw a line from Genesis to today and say Israel
as Israel as Israel as Israel, Jews, Jews, Jews, Jews.
When, when it's a total nonsense.
The the Hebrew Scriptures themselves talk about the Jewish
people not as an ethnic group descended from Abraham, but as
the people of God made-up of many nationalities.
We've got to, we've got to deconstruct the way we use the
words. So Israel, again, Zionists like
to think Israel is Israel is Israel, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob,
Joseph, 12 tribes of Israel. Israel today is the descendants
of the 12 tribes of Israel. Therefore, they inherit the
promises God made to Abraham. It's not what the Bible says.
You know, the Bible insists that the promises God made to Abraham
are fulfilled through Jesus, not through Israel.
The Bible emphasizes that the people of God in the Old
Testament was inclusive of all nations, just as the church
today is inclusive of all nations.
You know, occasionally you walk into a church today and they're
all white, they're all middle class, you know, they're all
retired. And you have to think they do
not reflect the community within which that church exists.
They are not the church. They're a small part of the
church. So I'll just give you a couple
of examples. This is what I mean by bursting
the balloon. Let me just give you one
example. Zionists insist that the
promises God made to Abraham apply to Israel exclusively
today. It's not what the Bible says.
I'll give you one example. Just one verse is enough to
burst the balloon. In the New Testament, in Paul's
letter to the Galatians, Paul was a rabbi.
He was a Jew. He wrote this.
The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed.
Scripture does not say and to seeds meaning many people, but
to your seed many one person who is Christ.
If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed and heirs
according to the promise, meaning people who believe in
Jesus inherit the promises God made to Abraham.
Not a secular state of people in Israel today.
Another helpful way to understand this, Brian, is if I
ought to have two cups here. If, if, if this is Sprite, you
know, clear Sprite, Sprite as a drink.
It's, it's a clear liquid. And this is Coke.
This is Coke. The Zionists like to claim that
they have exclusive claims on the promises of the Bible, about
identity, about land. But what happens if you sorry,
this is brown. This is clear.
What happens if you add Coke to Sprite?
It changes the colour. You can't go back to Sprite once
you've added Coke. So in the same way, ethnic
purity is, is not something that the Scriptures teach.
Let me give you one example of that one verse again.
Esther 8, verse 17 in every province and in every city to
which the edict of the king came, there was joy and Glandus
among the Jews feasting and celebrating.
That's the feast of Purim when they celebrate their deliverance
from their enemies in the time of Esther.
But then verse 17 says, and many people of other nationalities
became Jews. Now what does that mean?
It means that many other nationalities, other ethnic
groups, other colours, other races became Jews, IEA mixing of
the ethnic communities, just as you and I.
If we did our DNA, we would find that we're 5% Spanish, 10%
Italian, 3% Viking, whatever. Everyone is of mixed race.
So the idea that the Jews today are the inheritors of the
promises God made to Israel in the Old Testament is nonsense
because the Jews of the time of Esther, certainly the time of
Christ and today were made-up of many nationalities.
So it's acceptance within the people of God is on the basis of
faith, not race. Faith, not race.
To get the the difference, Zionists think it's on racial
grounds. The Scriptures teach it's on the
basis of faith, trust in the one true God, and all who trust in
Him are welcomed into the people of God.
I think excellent explanation. I enjoyed that very much.
As you were talking through that in my head is is all of the
various views on on what we're dealing with when we talk about
the mid Middle East and the problems around.
We've got Israel which which can be regarded as as the nation
state, it can be regarded as the wider name for the Jewish
community. Then we have we have Zionist.
We have Zionism itself. You correct me if I've got this
wrong. Where we're we're talking about,
I think under. I have thought until now that
Zionism, we are more talking about God's Kingdom in relation
to the people that that involves.
We've got political Zionism or Zionist Israel, which is a
political concept. It's not a, it's not even a
biblical concept. It's something completely
different. And yet we have Christians today
that don't even think about trying to pull these various
descriptors apart. They just fixate on the fact
that Israel is Zionism, is the political state, and we must
support that political state, otherwise we are.
As somebody said, Brian, if you criticise Israel, you'll go to
hell. It's total nonsense, you know,
criticising a state is not synonymous with racism.
You know, you, you, you rightly through, you know, identify
these 3/3 concepts. They are very different.
Not all Jews are Zionists and and only half of all Jews in the
world identify with Israel or live in Israel.
Most Zionists in the world are Christians, not Jews.
And Israel is a secular state made-up of Muslims, Christians
and Jews. So they are not synonymous.
And that's the problem. Zionism conflates the three, and
people like the Board of Deputies here in Britain like to
conflate them. And the the Israeli leadership
emphasizes that all Jews around the world are Israelis, that
Israel is a Jewish state. So they want to, they want to
conflate these because it's then very convenient that criticism
of Israel is deemed as anti-Semitism, criticism of
Jews. So, you know, we should respect
Judaism as a religion. We should protect Jewish people
from racism. But we can oppose Israel as a
settler colonial system that's practicing apartheid, and we can
call for boycotts, divestments and sanctions as a way of
bringing it to its senses. You know, at the end of the day,
Israel's got to decide it's going to share the land or is it
going to share citizenship? 2 states means sharing the land.
The one state means sharing citizenship.
But it won't do either. It won't give up the occupied
territories. It won't give equal rights to
Palestinians. And therefore it is an apartheid
state. And that's why we must oppose it
implacably. With that at the back in our
minds, I I want to say that as part of my journey to understand
more about what was actually happening around Israel and
trouble in the Middle East, I have made over recent months
quite a big effort to try and have some dialogue with Jewish
people. And probably one of the first
things that I did together with Mike Robinson, who who I work
with obviously very closely with the UK column, is we took
ourselves up to London for the first very big Palestine pro
Palestine demonstration. And we decided that the best way
to deal with reporting was to split up and to take ourselves
in through a crowd of thousands and thousands of people with
very, a very different look to them.
Because there were young people in small groups.
There were some, there were family groups, there were groups
of older people. There were also groups of young
men. And I say that because some of
them looked, I'm going to say pretty tough.
We decided we'd split up and we'd walk in through that big
crowd and we'd talk to people. And I took some recorded
interviews. And I have to say that everybody
I met, but they were a little bit fascinated as to who I was,
but they responded to me very well.
And I got some very, very nice little audio clips about why
they were there and what their concerns were.
But where I'm coming to is that when we got into the middle of
that pro Palestine crowd, I was very surprised to see a little
group of people together under a big banner which said Jews for
Peace. And I was intrigued.
I went up to them and asked them a little bit about who they were
and they one man was kind enough to say that he would give me a
little interview. But of course one of the things
I said is here you are as Jews in the middle of this huge
crowd. How are you finding people?
Are you not frightened? And the instant reply was that
people around us have been utterly lovely.
And it was my, you know, again, people can criticize and say,
well, you're very naive, Brian, but this was my my first
personal experience of being with both Jews and Palestinians
or, or Arabs, what whatever the exact nature of that big crowd
was Muslims. And here were Jewish people who
were there calling for peace in the Middle East and completely
relaxed about being in the midst of that type of of crowd.
And following on from that, that's when I tried to engage
with other people in the Jewish community to see what their
opinions were, were not only about the war in the Middle
East, but also how they felt about the Zionist state of
Israel. Were they happy with their own
government? But what I discovered was that
although people would speak to me off the record, they didn't
want to speak to me on the record.
And this wasn't this wasn't as a result of their concerns over
the style of UK column reporting or perhaps their perception that
we were against Israel. They wouldn't talk because they
were clearly frightened of their own government.
And I was, I was really stunned to, to learn the extent of this.
And before I hand over to you, I'll just add one other bit.
I, I eventually watched a really fascinating interview between
two rabbis in America. 1 was an American.
One was actually British about to become a naturalized
American, but they were talking about the fact that they
considered themselves to be American citizens.
And they were being faced with agents of the Israeli state
coming to America, coming into the schools where they operated
and telling young Jewish teenagers that they weren't
really American. Israel was there not only as
their home, but that the Israeli Defence Forces were there to
protect them as Jews. And, and I was just fascinated
in the conversation that these two rabbis were really outraged
that Israel should have the affront, the state of Israel
should have the affront to come into America in order to recruit
people away from their accepted identity of being American as as
their nationality and and Jewish in their faith.
Grateful for your thoughts. If we just deal with that first
one, assimilation is the greatest threat to Zionism and
racial purity. There was a series of adverts
around Israel a couple of years back.
You know, if you lose a cat or a dog, you put a picture of the
cat or dog on a post and you stick it on the lampposts in, in
some countries, when children have gone missing, I've seen
them in the States, children have gone missing, they've got
involved in drugs or they're, they're just not.
You'll find posters on the on the lampposts of, of young
people with their name missing. Well, in Israel, there was a
political campaign recently, a few years ago where they put
anonymous pictures of, of young people on it missing.
But they weren't missing. They had married gentiles, They
had assimilated. They were willing to live in
America, in Britain. And that's the greatest threat
to Zionism because Zionism needs racial purity and it needs to
maximize the number of Jews who live in Israel, minimize the
number of Palestinians living in Israel, because that's the
demographic time bomb. We've got the same in Northern
Ireland. You know, with, with, with
Catholics now a majority in Northern Ireland.
It's inevitable that Northern Ireland will will be united with
era with Ireland at some point in the future.
That kind of demographic time bomb is what's troublesome to to
many Zionists. I've been on a number of those
demos. I'm going to one the the one on
the 30th of November. And I I'm because I'm chair of
the Israeli Committee against House demolitions, which is an
Israeli organization. I'm not Jewish, but they welcome
non Jews to to assist. We are part of what's known as
the Jewish bloc and there are at least 10 Jewish organisations in
the UK that participate in these demonstrations and they are
given pride of place at the front of the March.
And it's a very moving occasion when the the Jewish bloc is
welcomed into the March. You've got a Jewish Voice for
Peace, Jewish Network for Palestine, the Israeli Committee
Against House Demolitions. Those are three.
Matura Carter is an ultra Orthodox Jewish organization
that's anti Zionist. So there are many, many anti
Zionist Jews who participate in these demonstrations because
they know that what Zionism is doing in Palestine is leading to
anti-Semitism. Is, you know, is, is
exacerbating tensions with, with Muslims and with Christians and
other ethnic groups. So I would encourage you and
encourage listeners to come along and engage with our Jewish
friends who are anti Zionists and listen to them and
understand why they are so vociferous in opposing Israeli
genocide in Gaza, the expansion into Lebanon and Syria and so
on. The Greater Israel embraces
their aspiration is to expand Israel into much of the Middle
East today. Yes, now again, my learning
process was at one stage came across this sort of division
within Israel itself because I I didn't realise the extent of
unhappiness amongst particularly Orthodox Jews to the political
policies of the Israeli Zionist state.
And it was only following this through that I came to
understand some of the horrific violence which the state of
Israel had unleashed on its own people who dared challenge its
policies. And I can't remember the
individual's name, but an Orthodox Jew who who put up a
YouTube video talking about his experiences that that the moment
he was speaking out about the government in in Israel itself,
he was hounded and followed and threatened and unpleasant things
happened. But eventually he was allowed to
leave the country. That's an interesting statement.
He was allowed to leave the country.
He went to live in Holland, where he continued his
activities and eventually he he had a raid on his flat in
Holland by individuals he strongly believes were connected
to the Israeli state and Mossad and horrific physical violence.
And when I read this, I thought, my goodness, you've got so much
to learn about what's actually happening inside the Israeli
state itself. But of course, although Western
media doesn't show it, there are now increasing clips,
particularly on social media or the wider Internet showing
protests against Netanyahu or the Israeli government or indeed
religious groups, Jewish religious groups within Israel
who were challenging the policies.
And clearly some of them do not seem, do not want to serve in
the Israeli Defence Forces. And protests where Jews are
clearly saying, well, what we're doing is not Jewish because thou
shalt not kill. I remember this being said very
clearly by an Orthodox Jew in one one of the video clips.
So we're onto a particular thing there because if we have Jew
members of the Jewish community recognising their own teachings
or saying thou shalt not kill, and certainly Christians should
understand this message, we should be agreeing over the need
to stop the violence in the Middle East, shouldn't we?
Very definitely, very definitely, yes.
Within within Jewish society, Israeli society, you have a
spectrum of Jewish perspectives. You have the most most Jews in
Israel are secular. Within the religious community
you have the anti Zionist Jews. They tend to be the ultra
orthodox because they believe only the Messiah, only God can
bring in the Kingdom, the king Kingdom requires a king and
therefore they will not participate in a secular state.
And they're clearly a threat and that's why the far right within
the government wants to force them to serve in the army.
But then you do have religious Zionists and they are
particularly prevalent among the settlements, the illegal Jews
only settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories where
much of the violence occurs. They are driven by a, a
religious conviction of supremacism.
They are the chosen people. They have a right to the land.
And the Palestinians are the Philistines.
They are the, the, the, the inferior races that must be
exterminated. So you've got these tensions
within Israeli society exacerbated by interference, if
you like, or influence from from particularly from the United
States and their Christian Christian backers, if you like,
who, who see the Jews as part of their, their view of the future.
Gershon Gorenburg is a Jewish academic.
He wrote a book called the the end of days.
He said the problem for us Jews is that we're act 3 in your four
act play, meaning come, you know, the, the war of
Armageddon. We Jews get exterminated and new
Christians end up, you know, being the winners.
So there is some cynicism among some Jews as to why Christians
are so supportive of Israel. It's partly eulogizing,
romanticizing the Jewish people, which is not healthy.
But it's also in some sense it's driven by anti-Semitism, wanting
to get rid of the Jews from Britain and America because we
want, we want the land for ourselves.
It's a Christian nation. The Jews can go and live in
Palestine. So there's a, a range of and a
mixture of convictions that that leads to the complexity of what
we see in the in the Middle East today.
Having said all of that, it is crystal clear and simple that
what we're witnessing is apartheid, genocide and ethnic
cleansing. And we must oppose it.
We must find peaceful, nonviolent ways to resist it and
challenge our own governments and big business who are
benefiting from at what's happening in Palestine today.
Absolutely agree with that. What else comes into my mind
though, is that we will call ourselves the ordinary people
are faced with a political elite elite who are openly declaring
their support for Zionist Israel.
They're openly saying that if if members of the population stray
too far away from what they consider acceptable criticism,
we're being anti-Semitic and and you're likely to get a visit
from the police. We so we've we've got it's now
Kier Starmer's government. But this was the same under
David Cameron, who said publicly that his belief in Israel was,
quote, unshakable. And I said at the time, the
problem with this is that no man can have two masters
deliberately using that quote. And if, if his belief in Israel
was unshakeable, it meant that the United Kingdom came second
in his mind to Israel itself. And in addition to that, we have
to, I think we, we have to consider the fact that we've got
these very powerful lobbying groups in UK, Friends of Israel
for both the Conservatives and the Labour Party.
And these are immensely powerful lobbying groups who seem to be
able to direct our elected government to their cause over
and above anything we might think is is right and proper,
such as peace in the Middle East.
How do we deal with these immensely powerful Jewish backed
lobbying groups? They're at work here in UK and
also the. Particularly in the US more so
maybe. I think we have to be clear in
our convictions as to what's right and what's wrong.
Apartheid is wrong. Treating people as inferior
because of their colour, ethnic group is wrong.
It's always wrong and therefore we must remain firm in our
convictions and face the consequences.
You know, the first time I was accused of being anti-Semitic,
it was like I'd had the words, you know, 666 tattooed on my
forehead. You know, it felt incredibly
embarrassing, incredibly upsetting.
But the more times you're accused of something you know
isn't true and something your Jewish friends say is not true,
the less impact it has on you, the more you know it it wears
off. And I think we've got to have
those convictions as to what we think is right, what we think is
wrong, and be consistent and live them out and refuse to play
the game, refuse to be silent or motivated by fear.
You said, you know, some folk on that demo were unwilling to go
on the record. It's fear and fear paralyses.
Fear paralyses 9 out of 10 Things that we're afraid of
never happen anyway. I, I, you know, we need to be
proactive. Boycott Israeli goods, boycott
companies profiting from the occupation in the West Bank, the
settlements, you know, people like McDonald's, Coca-Cola
companies that are selling products into the settlements
are profiting from them. We need to boycott them, but it
must be done in non violent ways.
I'll just give you one example. We saw last weekend the the Tel
Aviv football team, Maccabee and the violence we saw in in
Amsterdam at the weekend. It was the Israeli newspapers
flagged up before the football match that Mossad agents would
be there to protect Israeli footballers, football
supporters. The the initial press coverage
covered the fact that the day before the football match
Israeli football fans ran riot. Were were were making anti
Muslim statements, anti Palestinian statements, were
were attacking individuals. When, when, after the football
match, you see the, the, the Western media cutting those
stories out and majoring on that the small number of Israeli
citizens who were injured in the, in the aftermath.
This coming weekend, the same football team is playing in
Paris. And the, the, the, the news
media is already broadcasting the fact that at least one
Israeli politician on the far right is going to be speaking in
Paris before the football match. So we expect, sadly, there to be
violence. So I suppose what I'm saying is
we need to be proactive, we need to be clear on our convictions
and to stick to our convictions and not allow those who
criticise us to intimidate or silence us.
OK, thank you for that. Well, this, this one comes into
my head and of course it's an appropriate time to ask the
question. It's difficult 1 So we'll see,
see how you get on. But of course, we are about to
have Donald Trump as as the next president of the United States.
And certainly in his campaigning, his election
campaigning, he has shown that he is absolutely committed to
support for Israel. And I'm, I'm going to say
everything that I see. And what I've interpreted is
that means military support to enable Israel to continue their
war. And in addition, so, so, so
President Trump comes in against the backdrop of this hugely
powerful Israeli Zionist lobby, even be it Christian Zionist
lobby in America. How would you, what would you
have to say to the American, the genuine American Christians?
I'm choosing my words very carefully here.
How? How do we get genuine Christian
people to see through the smoke and mirrors as to what's going
on? Well, if I was speaking to
Christian Prince in America, it would be to say, sadly, you're
going to reap what you sow. They elected Donald Trump and
they will have to take the responsibility for the
consequences. Donald Trump actually subscribes
to what I'll call transactionalism.
He sees everything in terms of business deals, not ethics, not
right and wrong, not morals. So ironically, we may find that
Trump is not the greatest friend of Israel.
He will view what's happening in the Middle East in terms of
business deals, in terms of profit, and he will put America
first. He's already indicated to
Netanyahu that he wants Israel out of Gaza before his
inauguration in January. So I don't, although he has
demonstrated total support for Israel, as every US politician
has to, to survive. And he has in, you know, in his
time recognized the annexation of the Syrian Golan Heights,
recognized the annexation of Jerusalem, moved the US embassy
to Jerusalem. He has done everything Netanyahu
wants him to. But then again, Biden has as
well. So of the two, Trump is the wild
card. He will make decisions that will
not conform to necessarily to what is in Israel's best
interests. So we have to wait and see.
But I know that our own Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, has been
in France with Macron to discuss how they are going to handle
Donald Trump. Netanyahu is very good at
smoothing feathers and he will be nurturing, nurturing.
Trump's pride is vanity, is ego, in the hope that the US will
continue to supply Israel with the weapons it needs to continue
its wars in Gaza and Lebanon, Syria and elsewhere.
But whether Trump will will fulfil Netanyahu's expectations
is another matter. It's been fascinating so far and
my goodness, there's a lot more I could ask you, but a general
comment on Christianity is under huge pressure in the United
United Kingdom, and indeed in the West.
It might, it might be on a much better base in in African
countries, but it's clear to me that that Christianity is under
attack and people's belief in the Scriptures, their belief in
a loving God is definitely under attack.
Some, some years ago. I'll just bring this this on
screen. I don't know whether I mentioned
it to you the other night, but I started to read this book.
It's called False Dawn, the United Religions Initiative,
Globalism and the quest for A1 world religion written by a man
called Lee Penn. It's very detailed.
It's got a lot of footnotes, but in the book what he's describing
is, is the weakening down of Christianity, the blending
together of of a number of different faiths in order to
create a mixture which is which is going to be acceptable to A1
world global political system. Sorry, that's a bit of a
mouthful, but it's fascinating book.
Essentially it's explaining some of the breakdown that we see in
in Christian faith, be it here in UK or, or in other Western
countries or the US. You've obviously been a member
of the Church of England, Correct me if I'm wrong, but but
congregations have fallen, there's a falling away of faith.
What do you think has has caused this and what would you like to
see happen to to get people re engaged with a positive
spirituality? I think my observation would be
to go back to Jesus Christ and the early church and acknowledge
that Jesus told his 12 disciples.
Most of them were fishermen. They have been illiterate.
They were artisans. They were the skill were their
hands. They had basic knowledge of of
of how to fish. One was a tax collector.
A couple were revolutionaries, zealots.
He told them to go into all the world and make disciples of all
nations. There were 12 and the church
today is a consequence of their obedience to that call.
All of them apart from John, the Apostle John, all of them died
as martyrs. Significant proportion of the
early church were martyred under the Roman Empire who saw
Christians as atheists because they didn't believe in the gods,
the Roman gods. So I, I, I don't have any
anxiety over the future of the church or it's it's viability,
because the true church, the Church of Jesus Christ is alive
and well and growing. You, you've alluded to the fact
that it's, it's growing in other countries, perhaps faster than
it is in Britain. The churches that accept the
Bible as the word of God, who teach the Scriptures faithfully,
who share the good news of Jesus with those who wish to hear are
growing in the UK. Those churches are growing.
It doesn't matter what the denomination is, the established
churches, the churches that are major on doing things right and
doing the right things that major on formalism, liturgies
and services and so on, they may be in decline.
And therefore the temptation, as you've said with that book, to
find a commonality with other religions leads to a dilution of
our convictions, leads to a dumbing down on on what we are
taught to believe in scripture. So I've got no illusions it's
going to happen. It is happening.
It's happening in every generation.
And those who are faithful to Jesus and seek to follow him
will be persecuted. He promised that.
Blessed are you. And when you are persecuted
because they did the same to me. So we should expect opposition
as as Christians, but we should be gentle and respectful of
others. We, you know, people don't care
how much you know, until then, how much you care.
And so the first step in sharing our faith is to show by our
words and our deeds that we care for people who are particularly
in need, who are vulnerable. So yeah, the church may be in
the formal church, the established churches may be in
decline, but the Church of Jesus Christ is growing.
Stephen, thank. Thank you very, very much for
that. It's been an absolutely
fascinating journey through what I know is an incredibly deep
subject to see that with the depth of depth of your own work.
But we've ended on AI think a very positive note there.
And I just hope that this this interview will stimulate some of
our Christian viewers, whether they're members of the UK column
or or that they're going to hear this in a detached environment
worldwide. But this will stimulate them to
think in greater detail about what this whole issue of the
trouble in the Middle East and Christian Zionism is.
And ultimately, let's get the violence stopped as soon as
possible. This seems to me to be the key
message. Thank you.
Thank you, Brian. Just to give a plug, I want to
read the books. You've alluded to my books.
You can access them freely from my website, stephensalsa.com.
Just go on the top menu and look under books and you can access
the books in various languages. Lots of articles, resources like
the one I alluded to about the seven biblical answers.
And if people want to know more about myself or the challenges
I've faced, they can go to click under friends and they'll be
able to read what friends have actually said about me.
And some of those who've supported me, even bishops and
archbishops who supported me through my trials and
tribulations. I was on the phone today to
Bishop Rhea in Jerusalem, who's been a I'm one of his chaplains,
and he's always been very supportive.
So, yeah, if I want to know more, stephensizer.com, look
under the books or look under the other resources.
They're all freely available. And find out more about this
conviction, this belief system, and how we can easily
deconstruct it. Thank you very much, Brian.
Yep, Stephen, thank you. We'll ensure that all that
detail is in the show notes, which will be in the video.
So I'm going to say thank you very, very much indeed for
joining me.