The Mick & Pat Show: Exploring the Cultural, Political, and Religious Complexities of Israel and Palestine

All right, all right, all right, and that senior Michaelis make a list.

Sir Michaelis, saint Nicholas, saint Nicholas.

Well, it's been a minute. It's been like a month it has, it feels weird.

Did it feel weird for you to not have a? Or were you just so busy it didn't. You didn't really notice the laps and like commitment on Mondays.

Both, and it's one of those weird time warpy things where, when you think about it, I command. It's been a long time, but at the same time it went by fast, where my schedule was up by 6, 6, 30, hit it hard all day long, head on the pillow one o'clock one thirty am every night for 14 days. So just a how about you.

Talk about that how about you? Just like break down to the Ken right now why we haven't had a make it Pat show for the last couple weeks while we've been dropping our series.

Yeah, so we. Hopefully you've been enjoying the fatherhood podcast, father of Origin. I've got a lot of positive feedback from it. I don't know about you, but I've heard a lot of good, positive feedback and kind of good stuff too, because I think that when we obviously I think the whole world needs to hear what we have to say when we sit down here, just the two of us and do the make it Pat show, but when, when we also take the time to intentionally plan out a series, invite guests on and talk about an important topic, I think that we are not only just a giving, talking about something that's of interest to people, but also is actually like meeting a need of people and it's hyper relatable for people. So when we do that, it I think it's going to get good, you know good feedback and it's going to be something that people feel like it's worth their time to sit down and consume, and so my wife cried.

She cried in episode three with Wayne like actually cried while I was driving, you know, looked over and heard it's, there's some, there's some heavy stuff in there, she's gone to every in every episode, your episode. When I was interviewing you she got she told me I wasn't there with her but she told me she got pretty emotional, just really yeah, hearing about your story with my stories, your dad and you know your dad's with your grandfather and stuff. So yeah, I think that which is a huge positive, I think like if women can hear a story about boys and their fathers and feel like they're getting something positive out of it. I think that's like. Hopefully we're touching hearts of young men.

Yeah, I agree, and by the time people hear this, our final episode will be out. But I just got done editing it and we're putting it out. I'm excited for people to listen to our fifth and final one on there and hear what they think about it, because it'll be a good wrap up to the series with just some strong stories, and it's our longest podcast to date, but for sure I like what 45 minutes, yeah, somewhere in there, and but I think that we it's good and full of all sorts of different little golden nuggets for people to draw from, and so I've been out of. So I was out of town for first, you were out of town for a week and a half. Yeah, but I wasn't like sacrificing, I was on vacation, right right, but but you were, so you were going to be gone for a week and a half and then I was going to be gone for two weeks. So we had a lot of time to fill of the podcast and so far we filled it without missing a beat. So that's good. But so we, I busted but to get those fatherhood episodes edited and queued up so that while I was gone they could just roll out. And where I was was I had the opportunity to take a group of 16 college student, college aged people and young adults, some of you out of college, to Israel and Palestine. And we went and we I showed them what we call the Holy Land.

And so, yes, Sir Nicholas, was it specifically a it? And here's the thing. I know the answer to this, but I just want for like for a cast. Yeah. Was it specifically a like a Christian heritage, historical tour and guide trip? Or was it more of a tourist? Maybe not tourist, but like experience the culture, everything of Israel, palestine trip? You know what I mean? A lot of people, I think, when they hear Israel trip, they immediately think like Christians going to do their pilgrimage, right.

Right. So what we do? Back up a little bit when I, 10 years ago, I got my first chance to travel to this part of the world. My background my college education background is in Middle Eastern Arabic studies, and so I studied some language, but it is more so than that. I studied poly Psi, ancient history, modern history, current events of the Middle East, and I got a chance to travel over to Israel, palestine, jordan in 2013, and the way I saw it when I went over there was like a college kid couch surfing around, and so I got a really unique experience in the way that I got to see that place. Most people who go there typically are in there over 35 and even older, going on a church trip type thing, where it is a trip to go see these sites where all these Bible stories are and where they happened. But in my first trip over there, while I got to go see all those things, I got to meet and be with the people who live there today. I got to sleep on their couch and hear about their job and hear what they do, hear their struggles, and I got to go see that part of the world in a way that majority of people who go to or there don't get to see it. And so at the same time that I was there, my dad also started traveling to that part of the world. He had started a little bit sooner on some business stuff, but he also started to build personal relationships with people over there as well, and so fast forward to 10 years later. Now, what we like to do is we like to take people there and show them all the classic things that you think you'd like to go see as a believer. We go see the sites, we go see the places where Jesus walks, the places where all these Old Testament stories are, and we go see all that part. But there's a lot more to it in the way that we travel there as well. And so if you ever hear in the news, something comes up about Israel, something comes out about Palestine, gaza, this area of the world, very quickly you see all the Facebook, twitter, instagram posts. It's usually pretty easy to know what what person is going to say about it. Your standard in quotation marks highly educated, bleeding heart college kid is going to throw up the free Palestine flag right. And then your, also in quotation marks Christian evangelical grandma is going to throw up the Israeli flag with I stand with Israel like middle fingers and guns, yeah, right.

So like such, I think the biggest thing I think about when I think about boomers and or when I think about like Israel, palestine relations or commentary, is just how staunchly aggressive, like sometimes I think boomers are more patriotic about protecting Israel than they are America, like I feel like I've just seen that and that is definitely like a bias view, because I feel like I've seen that from like the older Christians who are friends of my grandparents and stuff like that and so yeah, but like such a they're pretty serious about it.

Pro is real Right, you know for sure. And one thing that we don't understand about that is that like boomers and then greatest, you know, baby boomers and then greatest generation before them, like they were around when the new state of Israel was formed.

Yeah, right, that's what I think about. Yeah, you know, it's like they. My grandparents grew up at a point of time in their life where they were being told the greatest threat to humanity has just been dealt with before you came around on the scene, or right when you were born, and we had to step in for these people who now we've made a nation for right and we have to protect them because they're they're in their infancy. If we, if we want to back up our, if we want to back up our word, if we want to be honorable and have good integrity, be responsible, be courageous, then we got to defend, like this nation is, stand by their side. So I think a lot of whether you want to call it indoctrination or propaganda, or if you just want to call it like red-blooded patriotism, for what people sacrifice their lives over to help install. I just think a lot of people of that generation who were too young to understand World War II but became old enough to understand what happened when they were kids and they were growing up while Israel has. You know, there was like my grandparents were teenagers when Israel was in its teenage years.

Right, like Israel, is 75 years old. Yeah, that's nuts, I think I don't think a lot of people get that Right as it's in its current iteration. And so, yeah, there's this for Americans. We in American Christians we tie that in a very specific way to two things. On an ancient front, as lots of Christians tie it to, just Father Abraham had many sons, many sons had Father Abraham and God promised him a promised land, and so that's the there's that piece, and there's also there's truth in that piece, undoubtedly. But also that's our kind of the end of our understanding of it in a lot of cases of our classic Sunday school upbringing. And then the secondary piece would be that we very strongly tie it to World War II, holocaust and the Jewish people getting a second, not getting another chance at, you know, reviving their people, their nation and in the place where it was, where it kind of quote-unquote began. And so that is where a lot of those people stand right and they're not entirely wrong about it. Like there is one, there's biblical truths around around Israel and promised land and a place for the Jewish people. And then there's also the reality of this place has been warred over and occupied over for years and years and years back and forth in a lot of complex ways, and it's just in its newest iteration of what some might call an occupation and what some might call a homecoming. And there's truth to both those things. Even during Christ's time it was occupied. It was occupied by Rome. Rome had control of it, right.

I think a lot of the politicization, politicization, politicization is that a word? Even politicalization, sure, whatever. I think a lot of that surrounds the dichotomy of perspectives regarding Israel being an abuser versus Israel defending itself, because I think I've heard very compelling arguments that Israel has abused their kind of get out of jail free card by being so protected by the US. But I've also have seen and witnessed and watched and listened to thousands of hours Well, I'll say hundreds of hours, I don't want to be, I don't want to exaggerate hundreds of hours of Israel being abused. Right, you know what I mean. And like defending itself and taking actions that like I can't disagree with because I'm like you were targeted simply because you're a nation of Jews. I'm not Jewish, but damn, if you're just targeted for being a nation of XYZ or whatever. You have a right, I think, to take drastic measures to defend yourself. Right, more drastic than I think a lot of other nations experience, because, like, I can't think of another nation that is like pretty much characterized globally as a nation of a specific demographic Right. You know what I mean.

Yeah, like.

Israel, even though I get there's Muslims and Christians and atheists I'm sure there's a lot of atheists in Israel, right, I've seen a lot of interviews on the ground in Israel non-believers, and such Israel is still predominantly viewed as a Jewish nation.

Right, and you can be an atheist and be a Jew, you know you can be an atheist. You can be a Muslim and a Jew, like genealogically right, you know, racially there's yeah, so that's where they have maintained this bloodline nationalism whatever word you would put to it for a long time, which is incredibly unique to the history of mankind and I think, in a lot of ways, as far as there are other groups out there that have maintained things for a long time, but not a group that has been displaced over and over again and come back together throughout a 6000 year history of of times like it, there's a lot to be said for how special that is. So with this part of the world, it is incredibly complex, it is incredibly delicate in some ways and, at the same time, incredibly resilient, and so you have what I said before about you can kind of, in America, you know, you could just classify who's going to say what on their Instagram post pretty easily. Majority of those people haven't done any of the work to understand the problem. They on both sides. They've just hitched their wagon to the thing they're doing.

And I feel like I've met maybe three people in my life, you being one of them, who have had you being one of them, and then the Passover church being another one of them who have had a robust perspective.

And because here's the deal, I've traveled there not many, many times compared to a lot of people, but I've traveled there more than most. And so what was this? Fourth, fifth time? This was my somewhere in there, six or seventh time, and each time I've been there I've spent around 15 days on average, sometimes more, sometimes less, so the and each time I've left I come away with different perspectives, and it's a. It's a refining process, for sure, because here's the interesting thing about this part of the world and specifically the city of Jerusalem, and specifically a seven to 10 acre little plot of ground in Jerusalem the three Western faiths for those of you who don't know, it doesn't make sense to call these Western faiths to some of us, but that's what they're referred to is Christianity, judaism and Islam, the three big Western faiths. They all place immense value on this piece of land, whether just historically, all the way over to actual sacred. They hold very sacred spots for specific places in these. In America we kind of don't understand this. Maybe a Texan would understand talking about, like the Alamo we're pretty young though. Right and we're pretty young, but we also don't have the same like. We're pretty fluid or theoretical in our beliefs or even for like a Western Christian or a Western anybody like for a Jew, there is a they believe God has, they believe in an omnipotence and an all powerfulness of God, but at the same time they believe that there is a place where, like his glory was and could be again, a specific location. And so and same and Muslims put a very strong spiritual locations on things, and Christians do it too.

Mormons put a lot of emphasis on Mormon locations in America. Right like this, that's probably the most like protective American group you could think of is Mormons, because they believe there's genuine sites of historical value of the presence of God in America.

Right, and if you could take it back a little further, to like Native Americans, like the Black Hills, this was a sacred place. It wasn't just a spot where we could mine some rocks out of and have good resource as a progressive person. It's no, this is a sacred location, and so what's unique about this part of the world is we've have three huge religions that have all three shaped the world as we know it over the last 6,000 years. You could talk about all the major wars fought around it, but you could also talk about the major educational institutions, the hospitals, like I said, the schools, the all the good things too that have come from all three of these groups like that have built society, as well as the major bloodlust too. But there is a. It goes without saying that these three religions have shaped the world as we know it, and so to boil all of that down to a 10 acre plot of land being a very important place to all of them I talk about it this way it's like it's just thick there. It's like if you could take a giant pot of soup and you render it down. Think about like old Italian grandma lady who makes her like pasta soup and it takes like four days to make it right, like it's got to render it down and get all this stuff comes out of it, and by the time the stuff that's sitting at the bottom is just intense and thick and full.

Just wait till you get to bear season two, bro yeah.

And so that rue, or if you're a Louisiana, if we got any Cajun listeners that rue that you got to stir for 30 minutes and without stopping, and render down into this intense, thick, flavorful thing. That's how I see the Holy Land. And so this place is. So many things have hinged on it, so many events have occurred there that are whether you have a person of faith or not. So many events have occurred there, much less if you are a person of faith. Huge, major events have occurred there, and so to go walk in this place is very special, very incredible. But then, as a believer in Christ, what's interesting about this place is that it's no different as far as your relationship with God goes to the rest of the world, and depending on what you believe, I'd say, because it's so, depending on there's some Orthodox Christianity that puts very heavy things on specific locations and specific rocks and things too, but Generally speaking, the at the moment Christ said it's finished, the current was torn. If you believe that the Holy Spirit came and is a Dwelling within us, dwelling within you, then at that moment All these rocks kind of lost a little bit of their power. So I say that because lots of people hear about my travels over there and my experiences over there and my chance to get to be in this place, and I think they see it in a way that's like Like I've gotten to go on a pilgrimage to a holy site and I call it the holy land, but I don't believe that this spot is any more holy than the ground under someone's feet who walks with Christ, right so, and there's like there's, honestly, there's a lifetime of learning to break down some of the things I'll say and some of these concepts and some of these parts. So understand that I'm giving you a I'm about to hand out like a platter of full of things that you kind of have to Start to learn how to digest, right? Um, but when we travel there, we really focus on being people who are we're not pro-Israel, we're not pro-Palestine, we're pro-people and we're pro believers in Christ, because I don't think Jesus would treat the Palestinians any different than he would treat Jews, you know right, exactly. And so just because you have the name Israel on the map doesn't mean the people who are governing you are um. Let me say it this way God is. The name of God has been abused throughout all of time by man and their institutions, and specifically in their governments. So there are genuine people seeking God. They're genuine Jews seeking God, they're genuine Christians seeking God, they're genuine Muslims seeking God, seeking peace, seeking deeper understanding, seeking um a higher power. And there are also people who are Jews, who use um the name of God as a tool to move themselves forward. There are Christians who use the name of God as a tool to move themselves forward. There's there are Muslims who use God to as a tool to move themselves forward in their position, in their power, and so we have to be discerning as we navigate our lives, generally speaking, um, as well as if we navigate into this place called the holy land. You have to be a discerning individual, um, who seeks out God's heart, and One thing I really love about this place, too, is that you know Western Christians, the understanding of who God is can also really get kind of tilled up. I call this place the tilling field because Lots of people think they'll go on this quote-unquote pilgrimage and come back having all these experiences and all these things and awakenings and they will be, you know, leveled up Christians. They will have evolved the next part of their faith, um. But honestly, if you engage it properly on your first time there, yes, I hope you'll have encounters with Christ throughout, just like you can have them on your back deck drinking coffee, and these places do um, cultivate um and make very real who Christ was. But you come back from this just tilled up soil. There's not nothing grown yet. Now you've. You've gone and experienced all these different people, all these different cultures and, for a Christian, you've experienced A bunch of different Christians too and the way that a bunch of different Christians worship God in a way that's different from you. And so I hope you come back in your Western beliefs and constructs um, tilled up, ready for deeper understanding, ready for, ready for experiences, christ, ready for all those things you thought you would have. But Um, because now you're good soil, ready for things to come up in. And so what I got to do the last two weeks was take a couple college students over there and show them this place that's highly complex, full of all kinds of people converging into one location, all with different thoughts and histories and beliefs, and get to show them Not only these ancient places, these cities that are 10,000 years old and with 6,000 year histories and In and out of war and different things, but also show them the local people who currently live there today who are specifically believers in Christ. We get to go and see the people who are In the town where Jesus walked and grew up, doing like youth group nights with kids there trying to tell them about Jesus too. Um, because While it's a very unique spot in the world, it's also just like the rest of the world, with people trying to put food on the table, people with big life problems and everyday life problems who are trying to figure this thing out. And so when we go over there, we encounter this place, um, in a way that, like I said, is we're pro people and we try to introduce the people we bring to um to To an intensely complex area so they can start unfolding it and opening it up, because your first time over there you're not gonna come back with An arrival and you never will in life with anything. It may maybe reach an arrival, but that's what we do and we go on these tours. So, um, yeah, it was an awesome time, it was a fun time and, um, it's funny because I feel responsible when I take these kids over there to like deliver, um, deliver kind of all the things I just said I expect you to not encounter, like I want to deliver intense encounters with Christ, of these things. But um, also, like I was saying, when I just hold out a platter of things for you to try from, that's really what it is, it's I, I just hold it out there for you to experience and you have to Take what you can digest and maybe come back around again another time to Encounter it with a more developed palette, you know yeah, sounds awesome and it sounds like a very I feel like we're all in transparent experience.

Um, I can imagine that it's very honest Demonstration of the culture. Um, what are, like some of the things that you usually try to expose people to Like when you're bringing them over there, like you know you're not, are you taking them to like the heritage sites? Are you trying to expose them more to like the current? Um, I mean, you you mentioned just like everyday life over there and I kind of wonder like what, what, what is the? What is the method for Not dictating, but the method for how to help, yeah, helping them understand like what, what is happening there and what is the? What is the current like? I don't know, I don't want to say political, but the current Uh Events or the current culture that is is real.

Yeah, yeah. So we try to give a An experience that is um, all encapsulating in a lot of ways, with all these things so like, as an example, um, we do go to, we do go to the heritage sites. We go see the sea of galley, where Jesus walked on the water, where he did his ministry. We go see this places where Old city of Jerusalem, where you know, where he was crucified, where he um, where he did miracles, where he went to the temple, um, we're all those, all your bible stories, you know, and things. We go to those places and we talk about them while we're there and we see them. But while we're there also, like Here'd be, like a micro exam, example, something we this last trip, what I got to do while we were there, we went to a town called in the bible, ephraim. Modern day it's called Taipei and in that little tiny town, um, there is uh, christian families there and it's in palestine. Um, ephraim in the bible is where Old testament wise Gideon, uh, where it talks about him's, him's looking out Over the jordan and seeing the enemy's campfires and him realizing how screwed he was if he didn't have god with him Because there was 30 000 men on the other side. Um, modern day, you can look across there and see the lights of him on jordan and this, uh, vibrant city over there. Um, when jesus went to Ephraim, he that's when he went to Ephraim Before he was crucified he fled, he fled Jerusalem and he went up there and he rested and sought refuge for three days Before he came out of the wilderness to do his final work on the cross. Um, and so some major stories happen in this tiny town. Um, for modern day aspect, there are people living there who are christians, who aren't allowed to travel because they're Palestinians without proper permits. Without proper permits and things, they can't conduct business freely, they can't leave the country easily, they get stopped at checkpoints, they could get harassed and these things right. And so those people are there in this town where crazy things have happened over time. They're dealing with modern political issues, and the one family there started a brewery, and so we had a worship night in their brew pub, so like to bring it so on a hill where a guy from the Old Testament stood and trusted the Lord, where Jesus went into the wilderness and sought refuge before he went back down for his final days on earth as a man and then when those things at the same time is in the same place where those things happened. We got to do a worship night with college students where a local kid who likes to, he loves to play music and do worship songs he came and played his guitar and we stood around and sang worship songs in a brew pub in Palestine. So we that's just an example of how we try to tie together the whole thing in the same way too, because it's very easy to be just fully sympathetic around Palestinians plight and oppression, at the same time there are messianic Jewish people, there are people who follow Christ in Israel, who have ministries, people there. So we want to, we go meet them and we spend time with them in Jerusalem, where they are also conducting church services and having hope for the future, hope for peace in the whole region and stuff. And so we're in these places where so much has happened, but we're also getting to be engaged with it, with the here and now and the modern things that are going on in those places. So that's kind of how we packaged this whole thing, to just hand over the whole deal.

So, yeah, that's cool. I think it's important to expose people to both sides of, like, the day-to-day Palestinian experience and the day-to-day Israeli experience, just because it's so removed. Often when we're here in America and we know, like Israel's an ally, palestine's not, there's so much political turmoil over or political narrative over, like, what you should be for and what you should not be for. And to pull the veil back and show like I mean, like people in Palestine are people, I think is incredibly valuable. People in Palestine are having just a sincere worship as the people in Israel, as the people in America, if not maybe even more so. Like I remember that, like when I was in Norway working with asylum seekers and refugees, people who had fled their countries and had seen people die on the journey and being in Norway, which is a very high level of atheism or agnosticism, and then you experience people from these cultures that are often criminalized, you know, are often demonized, and you see, like that they are people that live in those cultures who worship God just as much as you do, who are just as Christian as you are, if not more, serious about their faith, because their faith is what has carried them through such brutal circumstances Like. I think seeing that like definitely has an insane amount of value to humanizing and understanding the, the human condition in these places and that, like Israel is not. Israel is not right just because it's Israel, palestinians not wrong because it's Palestine. It's way more complex than that and unfortunately, all these politics have divided things up into compartmentalization of who's right, who's wrong. There's a lot of innocent people Christian, muslim, jew who get lumped in Right Because, I'll be honest with you, I've had experiences with that, experiences with native people from Israel who were very much in the mindset that they were right because they were just from Israel or because of that like cultural background, of ancestry in Israel, and a lot of people who I don't think I've ever met anyone from Palestine but like other parts of, like the world that are pretty demonized, that are usually like well, these people are less than are wrong.

Right.

Because they're from these wicked countries. And when you realize like this is a man, woman, child who cries out in their heart for for God, it changes the perspective a lot, of being so black and white to being way more gray. There's a lot of people here who are normal people that are essentially getting labeled, and the label is pretty detrimental, I think, to a lot of progression in the way we treat one another. And I think that's like something I've always heard and I've heard about. You know other trips you've done to Israel and the pastor of our church has gone with you and I know he speaks very highly of the experience and he speaks very highly of his experience encountering people in Palestine and all that I think has. Really, as someone who hasn't gone, I feel like it's feel like what you have done and like these trips you've done have really provided a lot of perspective and challenge to this label of good and bad, right and wrong, black and white, and has really demonstrated that, like these, there are people in both camps Right, that are right and wrong. There are people in both camps that are just like you and I who are seeking Christ, and there are people in both camps who are using the name of God as a tool to advance an agenda and it's like the value in that, as a you know, none of this has any value to anyone who's not religious. I feel, like you know, almost like, and like. I'm just, you know, trying to be honest with, like those of who might be listeners who aren't religious is, like you can pretty much abstain from the labels here because you don't believe in anything that any of these people believe, and you could probably lump them all as being wrong and wrongly motivated. But for those of us who identify with a religion, a faith, the value in this reveals that like, okay, like, okay, like how do you hypothetical, right, you're a Muslim, how do you grapple with a Muslim in Palestine and a Muslim in Israel? Which one's right, which one's wrong? Right, you know, like it's like, if you're a Christian, same thing right. And I feel like for Christianity, because it's such a real Christianity, not political sized Christianity, but real Christianity is very much like I feel like honest about, like it doesn't matter what nation you call from, it doesn't matter you're American or Norwegian and someone from Israel or someone from I don't know another counter Middle East country, right, like, what matters is that your identity is a believer in Christ, and that's like kind of how we measure, kind of kind of, kind of, kind of, kind of kind of.

L. The demographic that we do travel with over there lots of times too, is like I take lots of evangelical Christians over there, right, and so, regardless of their age lots of people I take over there their understanding of the area is Father Abraham had many sons. This place was promised to these people, and so I'm trying to break down their understanding of what Christ's plan was for the world by saying don't just support Israel just because they have that name under them. Look at all these other people, right. And so I'm showing them the other side of what they've seen, and so that's the side I stand up a lot of times, but at the same time, something that, like now, something that also lots of people have to understand too, on the your bleeding heart, free Palestine people, there's a lot for them to understand too about, like the sovereignty of Israel as a nation. If you want to talk from a political standpoint and modern history standpoint, there's a lot to talk about as well, and then, if you want to talk as a believer standpoint, to like progressive, liberal Christian, there's a lot to talk about there too, about God's plan for Israel and the Jewish people. But, and so just because I'm basically what I'm saying is there's. It's very easy for us to sometimes just stand up the Palestinian people and not stand up the Jewish people, who are there earnestly, and it's funny too, just from my, to take religion out of it and just to throw some straight up like just modern current status there. This might be a hard concept for some to understand, but I was speaking to a Palestinian, palestinian, israeli, so let me explain what that means. Yeah, because that's confusing, right. So, please. So this guy, his family, is Arab, palestinian, muslim, right, but he grew up in Jerusalem, which is in Israel, so he grew up in this way it so quickly devolves for people. They're like I don't understand the clear, concrete borders here. But so this guy, if you took his family back 120 years ago, they lived in the same location, but they are Palestinians. A lot of stuff happened since then and now they live in Israel, but they didn't move the border moved but they grew up in, but he grew up in what is a modern, more Western civilization or civilized type of place these buzzwords that get sociologists all bent out of shape. But the I was talking with him and we went into Palestine and so he was talking about Palestinians who live in Palestine and he was pointing out a lot of the stuff there and kind of the way people acted there and the poverty there and the people who lived there. And this is a whole big conversation. There's a whole lot to talk about, about all this. But this guy was trying to say, as someone who ethnically is one of them but grew up in a different place, he was just saying he was like. He was like this place will never. These people want to have the whole country back, but honestly, people like me don't want them to have it back, because look at their place, look at how they treat their streets and their sidewalks and their stuff and look at how they live. If they had it back, they would ruin this country in like 10 months and we could go into the like who had it back. Palestine If Palestinian had the whole place If Palestine, if the government of Palestine had it back. So this guy's ethnically Palestinian but has all the benefits of living in Israel. He's like if they had it back they would just ruin it so quickly. And there's things to be said about people who've lived in systematic oppression, systematic poverty, all this stuff. There's a whole lot of stuff there. But just to not let Palestine off the hook completely because there are, from an Israeli's perspective, they're going like we're not the ones who are like every year after Ramadan shooting rockets, shooting rockets over into just randomly at places. Now there are Israeli kill squads and kidnap squads. You could take people too. So there's it's funny, there's this. You have to be a gray person to span this whole thing and to just come into this with an completely open mind of what's going on here. But there are, from an Israeli perspective, they're like we have to. The way we've set this country up is really awesome and really prosperous. Greatest medical devices in history are coming out of this place, greatest scientific inventions coming out of this place, some insane shit and like if these people could get on board with this and, just like another buzzword, assimilate it could be pretty dang good for everybody right. So there's like. They're kind of like can you get with the program here?

Yeah, you know, I'll get where you're saying it.

And so there's this like that's how even a guy who is ethnically Palestinian speaks about Palestine. And so there is. There's just so much to unpack in this area and there's just lots of individuals, like I said, trying to put food on the table on both sides of it and lots of individuals on both sides trying to make peace in the area and the. It's just a very complex place. And so something I also say to like your bleeding heart liberal in America who's, like you know, has the free Palestine stuff, I'm just like listen, if you want to post that stuff on Facebook, like and act like you're all in. Like why haven't you given up your cushy home to a native American? family, because it is kind of the same. It's the same thing. It's just a couple years apart, a few short years apart. And then there's a whole other big conversation here around, like imperialism and conquering and basically that used to be the way the world worked and now it's out of vogue, so like and so these are. Every topic I've brought up is like a two semester long college course, to like unpack and I live. I personally live in this like world of ambiguity and grayness, because I know absolutisms. Some people would call that just a like, a spineless person, or some people might call it a wise person. I don't know. But the so we, I try to give both these messages to both sides. You know, like the person who posts the, you know I stand at the Israel thing. I want to show them the Palestinian Christian who's taking kids of special needs to a summer camp and telling them about Jesus and for the bleeding heart liberal American who says free Palestine. I also want to show them like, look at this nation that's been built, or look at these people who are working towards peace and look at this, these the prosperity that they could have. And do you pull the spec out of your, do you pull the log out of your own eye around, like our own social justice. Like have you ever even been to a reservation here? You know, like before you, before you cast stones in this direction to understand the complexities of the human condition. And so it's a. I try to pack all of that into a 14 day trip, you know, or really a 10 day trip in country, and just I kind of hand everybody like a like if you've ever been fishing and the, the line just is so tangled up, it's just screwed and you really have to cut it. Basically that's what I hand to people. I'm like here you go, here's what you've now like uncovered for yourself, and you don't. It's not a line you can cut, you have to untangle it. You know, like here's what you get to have now.

I do. I do have a couple of things I want to ask, just primarily to try to help American audiences get a perspective of relevance to the greater world, and a lot of this is backed by my like. A lot of these questions come from my own experience in other countries you know, particularly in Europe, but like I, you know, grew up my whole life in America and going to Mexico and Canada, and then I went to Europe on mission trips and I genuinely, with every ounce of my being, believe that a lot of the stuff that we make we make important in America excuse me such as like rights for LGBTQ, community Racism, women's rights, equal rights in the workplace for everyone, I genuinely believe a lot of those are amplified to an insane amount when an American goes and talks to someone who's very comfortable in their culture and particularly like, I think about like when I was in Norway and how many Norwegians at the time when I was in Norway, trump had just come into office, and the amount of Americans who sorry, not the amount of Americans the amount of Europeans who thought like, because Trump was in office, america was far more racist, far more bigoted, far more isolationist, anti immigration, anti LGBTQ, all of these ideas about what America was. And then I would be there with them in Europe and I would see that, like they were comfortable in Europe, you know, norwegians, comfortable being Norwegians in Norway oh my gosh, dude, the racism, the racism was way more than anything I've ever heard or experienced in America oh yeah, amongst a lot of immigrants from other, you know, countries in the Middle East and Africa, the idea of women's rights and rights for LGBTQ was very different and way more openly, like they were way more comfortable being honest about their opinions than I think. A lot of people in America think the world is right, like a lot of people in America look to Europe and think like that's the model for progressive rights. And you get there and it's way like it's way different when you talk to them and they're like, yeah, racism is bad, but these fucking Saudis, dude, they're fucking ruining our country. Right, we should kick them out and it's just like what, like what are you? did you say all that? And one like one statement, you know it's so like I kind of wondering, like in your experience, like you know, being over there, like I get like we release is often under a lot of screenization of like political correctness and progressivism, but like when you think about how we talk about all these agendas in America and things that need to change versus what you see this part of the world is at still and the way they talk about these things, like, what are the conversations you've heard, maybe not just on this trip, but like just in times, about, like you know, examples that you can think of that show that, like, america is probably not as far behind as a lot of bleeding hearts think it is.

Right, right. So I'll have two responses to that. Israel's a really weird one because there's a lot of progressivism in Israel.

That's also not progressive Right Like. I've seen interviews with Israelis who are like religion is a curse. Religion is bad. We shouldn't formulate laws or opinions around religion. Also, gays are awful.

Right, you know what I mean. It's just like these sorts of where do you get off, right? That sort of via, that sort of our American understanding of freedom is just like no holds barred right, and like free for all. And so that's the funny thing about this part of the world, specifically Israel, is I was on the, I was in one part of Israel, so, yeah, I'll tell you, I walked to one part. So, on foot I went to one part where I, where we went to a nightclub area with homosexuals freely expressing their love for one another, right, with youths dancing, you know dancing, yeah, dancing in a very, you know, sexually aggressive state to rowdy dirty dance music, right? So a little side note in that group I saw three ARs and a hot chick with a pistol, all right, so? So let me tear down all your constructs here, right? So that was going on.

I'm a big proponent of gays get guns, like everyone get guns and hot chicks with pistols, right yeah, so?

so there was, there was. I walked to that from where I had been staying, Walked there, nightclub homosexual activity, people with big black, scary death rifles at the nightclub music place. In a 20 minute walk I could also be at a spot where women had to have their heads covered, both Jews and Muslims and Christians. Where religious freedom is only good for your group, where the nightclub people don't want anything to do with religion, where, also in the other spot, where this little patch of ground has been fought over for, depending on how you look at it, 2000 to 3000 to 4000 years for religious and resource purposes. So you have, we don't. Americans don't even have a paradigm for that, Right yeah.

And so there's, there's I can't think of a single place in America where we have a piece of turf we've fought over for the last 30 years. Right, you know what I mean? Right. And now there's going to be a lot of people be like well, I did fight over that. I went out and I protested, right, and sometimes I got tear gas and sometimes the other protest group got mean and we all fought each other, right, and it's like no, no, no, no.

No, we're talking. We're talking like rowdy, Gunning each other down, yeah, like rowdy, bad, bad stuff. So the so. Anyway, it's just funny to have this in a this tiny little area where you could experience all that at one time and so, and then you move further out to like a coast, Mediterranean, coastal city in Israel, where it is very like, you know, western, very western, it's just like you know, people are like it's that very western vibe, like feels like you're in downtown of somewhere in America of you know, do what you want, dress what you want, believe what you want, you know, I don't care. And so you have that and all those things together, and then you also have you can go to other places where people are just completely like go 10 miles east of there and there's, regardless of all the topics we think are important, let's just get down to like your color of your skin, meaning where you, where you came from, they hate each other.

Yeah, is it always in your experience over there religiously backed, because that was that was a thing like that was shocking to me when I was in Europe like in. Germany and Norway, Denmark. There was no religion about it. It was literally like you're brown from the Middle East, You're a scourge on our country and you're you're ruining our culture, You're not assimilating, you need to get with the program, you need to get out and like I was and it never would. No one ever had any religious backing of it right. It was purely like political and cultural.

It depends on the people. It's kind of like it's funny While I say that about walking to one place where you feel totally comfortable in other places feels very weird. Honestly, in our town you could do the same thing like be in the university bar where everything's fine and then, like you know, maybe head out to the cornfields, to a bar out there, and it's not the same vibe, you know so. At the same time, you know it's not that different in that aspect either. But some people use religion and some people don't for their purposes in that sense, and there is something we don't understand in America too, even as someone who is religious, like we don't understand, like religious fervor and zealousness for your faith being like bro, like even, even a spot where we went, it was like completely inappropriate for us for men to be wearing shorts. You know like we legitimately offended this person to their core.

That happened to me because we were wearing shorts. Like I had a cultural experience like that in Mexico, where I we realized very quickly that like it was inappropriate for men and women to be wearing anything other than pants.

Right, right, and so, like you would think, like it's. You would think it's kind of standard to be like, oh, if a female has cleavage, that's out of bounds in this traditional area, sure, but then to be like a dude, like it's freaking hot, wearing shorts, isn't appropriate. It's like what are you talking about? You know what I mean. And so there's that going on too, and something that we don't have a concept for either. I like to talk about this, to just talk about how thin skinned Americans are and how much we want. One, how beautiful our nation is, but two, how far we've fallen from some. Some things, too would be in Israel, generally speaking, on your. For easy way to explain, it would be like on your driver's license in America. Imagine if you had to have one of three labels on it. It had to say Jew, christian or Muslim on your government ID. You have to fit in one of those categories, pretty much yeah, and that it's it's. I'm explaining it in simple terms, but imagine that being like what you actually have to have on your government issued ID.

Yeah, I think I think too, like, if you think about it just like, I think a more relevant example of what that would look like in America is like conservative, independent, Democrat, right or, you know, gay, straight and undecided you know right. Like it like, because the idea is like yeah, I should be proud of what I am. But then you think about like what if people in positions of authority who aren't what I am can see that clearly on my identity and use it against me?

Yeah.

And like we don't worry about that in the US, like there's nothing on our IDs that say like anything other than racial skin color, like anything beyond physical, physical appearance yeah, there's nothing that you can be discriminated against on your ID. Right Can you imagine like the pressure you would feel.

If your ID said like this guy voted for Trump, you know, you're like.

oh my god, you're like you imagine like the feeling like you show your ID and you're, you know you're in a place where, like, even the law enforcement is not aligned to you politically, and then that law enforcement can quickly see from your ID like and just make a judgment, deciding like how they're going to treat you and they decide who you are, yeah. Based on that.

They decide who you are on that and so anyways, that's crazy, like in that sense where in Israel's a rather free I don't know Israel proper as an Israeli citizen is a rather progressive and free place to live, but compared to the rest of the world. But at the same time, like what the whole point of really saying all that is is just to tell Americans what the hell are you complaining about?

Yeah, no what is your issue?

What is your? What's really oppressing you? Yeah, what's really like. You know what's really making your life so bad? No kidding, you know, that's the part for me where it's like you go see these parts of the world too and just to know that, like I think anybody who's who travels to other countries, and not just here's the deal If you travel to Copenhagen and smoke weed on the sidewalk at a bar and you're like, wow, this is the best place ever. Also, like, ask that guy what he thinks about black people. Okay, so, don't just be like oh, this is everywhere. Should be like Copenhagen you know, like they've got free weed and health care. Or like don't travel to Mexico to a resort and be like this is how it is, like so it's smoke weed in Mexico. Yeah, so it's like anyone who's actually you know get fentanyl right down in the lungs. But for anybody who's actually traveled the world and actually seen places in this world and then come back to America, there's no way that you can't be like wow, we live in a really good place.

We maybe even you don't want to assign morality to it, but you can say, like we live in a place where I can do whatever I want.

Right, exactly, exactly.

Like with like I can do whatever I want, and well beyond what the majority of the world can experience Exactly.

And yeah, okay, if you live in a claustrophobic, tight city, listen, I don't know your experience in America. If you live in some of these, some of these places, no, I don't know your plight in Portland. You know, I don't know, I'm sorry that it, I don't know that, whatever, that you can't afford another tattoo or something on a food stand. Like, I'm sorry Portlanders, but no, but like you know, honestly I don't know the plight of people who live in the ghettos and certain places of America, but at the same time, like the country's a whole, I'm just always go like, listen, you don't understand what you have, yeah, and so it's a, it's a. That's also a piece of what I get to expose to people who come over there with me.

So yeah, and then that it is like kind of a, I think like just being transparent, to like it is a little bit of a. I mean, it is a privilege to go, to be able to go abroad and realize how good you have it, right? You know, like there's, I think, a lot of Americans that I know that have not excuse me they've never left America, right, because they've never been able to afford to do so, right.

I didn't. In my own privilege-ness I knew a kid I'm not calling it white privilege-ness either, because this kid I knew was white too, but in my I've had a privileged life and I could acknowledge that I met a kid in my high school who on his senior trip he went on a senior trip like a road trip to California and he cried at the ocean yeah, he'd never seen the ocean in his whole life. I've seen the ocean my whole life and I've never lived near it. Yeah, you know. Like here's another micro example I smelled a pineapple yesterday and that olfactory sense shot me right to my time on the beach in Hawaii.

Oh.

You know, like, and I was like, I was like man. I've lived a pretty fortunate existence, got a good life so far. When I smell a fresh pineapple, it shoots me to my time in Hawaii. That's pretty awesome, yeah. And so there is that piece, too, where there is the fact of like in order to know how fortunate you are, you have to be really fortunate. So that's a good point, yeah. But at the same time, I think it holds fairly true, and so I was thinking about that yesterday, even about that pineapple Got to hold my attention. That's funny.

I don't really actually want to really soil this with anything else. Really, I don't want to change topics or anything like that, because I think this is really great and insightful and I definitely feel like I'm walking away with a better understanding of just kind of like what you're able to do and experience, your being able to provide others, and I hope other people are kind of reflecting on, perhaps what they can do to really expose themselves to like uncomfortable reality of like it's so easy to be only thinking of the reality that we perceive here in America and make a judgment about the whole world in America and our current society and wherever we live, whatever state, whatever town, and I just hope that people hear this and they realize like there is a lot they can do to expose themselves to things that will radically shake up that perception and, like expose them to things that will really make them reevaluate, perhaps what the priorities are and what they should be fighting for and marching in streets for in America, right, because like don't get me wrong like I think of anything you know and like we've made a good amount of jokes about the whole Bud Light thing, but I think of anything like seeing videos, about like going to different, like videos about people at country concerts and the way people talk about, like, transgender people at those places. I'm like, yeah, there's definitely still quite a bit of like hate and bigotry and bias against people in America. Like that is still a thing you know and like I know friends who are people of color who definitely have had negative experiences in certain places in the US and like and like I understand that exist. I also understand that in like some people are going to hate this. It's way less than many other places in the world. It's way less than many other countries we compare ourselves to and want to make America turn into. And I think like a lot of people need to be exposed to that. Like a lot of people don't understand that when you go to Germany you talk about Black people, germany is going to think, oh yeah, black Germans. You mentioned the word Africans and it's a whole different conversation, right, and like it really demonstrates like hate and bigotry, racism. You know what some people who out there are listening to Germans might be upset by that, but saying what it is, you know from my exposure, my experience in Europe. You mentioned the word, you know Middle Eastern's, and like there's a whole lot of hate and a whole lot of bias around that and that terminology and I don't think that exists nearly as much in America as we think it does versus a lot of the other places we idealize. So I hope people listen to this and they challenge themselves to go out and kind of expose themselves to the rest of the world, kind of expose themselves, have those conversations, to talk to people in other cultures about what's going on, about their opinions, about their beliefs, and then to come back and kind of assess, like okay, seeing where the rest of the world's at, what is the priority here in America?

Yeah, because you know and whoever you are, whatever you believe, there is a lot for your mind to be open to always. But then if you call yourself a follower of Christ, there's a higher burden for that in your life. So, like that's where I'm, like you know the yeah everybody. You need to open your mind to stuff and actually open your mind, not just call yourself open-minded, meaning you go by whatever your heartstrings pull on. But then also, if you call yourself a believer in Christ, if you call yourself someone who follows Jesus, then you have to dig into all these things, every side of it, more than everybody else. There's a burden of responsibility on you to uncover and understand, seek understanding more than everybody else around you, and not just, you know, pigeonhole yourself in some viewpoint. Now, it's okay to root yourself in truths, but don't pigeonhole yourself in a viewpoint, because if you read the Bible again and just read the red letters, read what Jesus said, like, you'll see a lot of those pigeonhole viewpoints get turned on their head you know, and he roots himself in truth, he roots himself in justice, he roots himself in goodness and he also turns most of your constructs you have right on their head.

Yeah, Amen, yeah, I'll be honest. I'm not that wise man. Most of my constructs are based in faulty human thinking.

Me too, just working on it a little bit at a time.

Yeah Well, hey, can. I hope that you enjoyed this episode. Pat and I are happy to be back. It's great to be back and kind of picking up where we left off. If you have any questions for us, feel free to let us know, write us in. You can always reach us, whether it be through email or reviews, whatever it is, and we hope that this has been profitable to you, that you can kind of take what we've discussed and reflect on your own life and your own circumstances and your own culture, own beliefs, and assess them. But with that, pat, anything you have, Until next time, folks, till next time.