"Moral MONSTERS!" War and Religion Debate With Rev Franklin Graham & Wesley Huff

I was taught from the Bible, those who bless Israel will be blessed and those who curse Israel will be cursed. And from my perspective, I want to be on the blessing side of things. It's a conflict that's been going on for a long time. I think people are trying to justify it with religion. I believe you will hear from heaven, and that voice is far more important than mine or anyone else. The annihilation of Israel is certainly part...

of the Mullah doctrines. And we have a doctrine to defend ourselves. Has the entire world lost its mind? Is war ever morally justified? Not the Second World War. No question it was morally justified. The heavy reality of war. that I don't think we should ever speak lightly of. As Jesus himself said, those who live by the sword will die by the sword.

A bit of the tensions and debate over US support for Israel's war with Iran, many public figures have invoked religion. As the first bomb struck Tehran last week, it was Pray for Israel trending on social media, bolstered by scores of the lawmakers who... Mike Huckabee, the US ambassador to Israel, told the president that God's voice should make the decision on US intervention. Many influential critics of the war have invoked Christianity in the opposite direction.

Others, of course, blame religion for the very fact there's conflict in the Middle East at all. Well, to put some kind of sense around all this, I'm glad to say the Reverend Franklin Graham, president of Samaritan's Purse and the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, is with me in London in the studio. Welcome to you.

Thank you, Piers. First time I think I've had you here in the studio in London. First time. How are you? Doing very well. I'm here in the city to preach at the Excel Centre on Saturday night. Yeah. So I always love preaching in London. And you were saying, very interestingly, just before we went on air, there's been a spike in church going in the UK. In the last five years, there's approximately 2 million more people in church on Sunday. And most of it is, a lot of it is young people.

And I think what's happened here is as young people looking for God and they want to know how their sins can be forgiven, how they can have a relationship with God. Of course, Jesus Christ came to take our sins and He died and shed His blood on the cross for our sins. but on the third day God raised him to life. You know, if a person repents, turns from their sins, and by faith accepts Jesus Christ, God will forgive your sins and Christ will come into your heart, into your life and change you.

And that's what young people are looking for. They're looking for a change, and they're finding that in Christ. Huge numbers. Very interesting. Is that happening in America? It is, but not quite those numbers, but we're seeing this on college campuses. There's young people, again, searching for God.

And they're being baptized. They baptize them in ponds and rivers at the school or in the back of a pickup truck. They fill it up with water and baptize them right there. It's incredible. Do you still pray for forgiveness for your sins? I have to ask God to forgive me every day. Are you still sinning is really my point. Of course, absolutely. We all sin. I can't imagine you do any seriously bad sinning, do you? You know, Jesus, you know...

put it to the thought, you know, that if you look at a woman with lust in your heart, it's the same as though you have committed adultery. And so yes, we all sin, but we ask for forgiveness. And if we put our faith and trust in Christ, we don't have to worry that we're going to be judged by God. He'll forgive us. What was the last sin you committed? Oh, let's see. Probably last, maybe even today, I saw, I think it was a Maserati.

I thought, well, I'd love to have that car. You see, that's coveting. You can't do that either. Is that a sin? Coveting? To want to drive a Maserati? I'd be in terrible trouble by this criteria. Let's turn to more serious things. A lot going on in the world. Yes. I was really struck knowing that you were going to come in by Mike Huckabees. He's obviously the US ambassador to Israel now, former governor, and he texted Donald Trump.

about the importance of listening to God's voice. Yes. I just want to read some of this for those who didn't see it. Mr President, he texted, God spared you in Butler, Pennsylvania to be the most consequential president in a century, maybe ever. The decision... on your shoulders I would not want to be made by anybody else you have many voices speaking to you sir but there's only one voice that matters

his voice. I am your appointed servant in this land and am available to you, but I do not try to get in your presence often because I trust your instincts. No president in my lifetime has been in a position like yours, not since Truman in 1945. Don't reach out to persuade you.

only to encourage you. I believe you will hear from heaven, and that voice is far more important than mine or anyone else's. You sent me to Israel to be your eyes, ears, and voice, and to make sure our flag flies above our embassy. My job is to be the last one to leave. I will not abandon this post. Our flag will not come down. You did not seek this moment. This moment sought you. It is my honour to serve you, Mike Huckabee. Now, you then responded to this because Donald Trump posted this.

He said, I agree with every word. Pray for Ambassador Huckabee as he serves in Israel during his difficult days and pray for President Trump and that all our leaders will listen to God's voice, the one that matters, which is, you know, I would have expected you to respond in that way. What was really fascinating is this follows Trump surviving an assassination attempt. And you and I talked, I think, after that, and we both talked to the president about how it really...

reinforced his faith in God. He genuinely believes that God had a will for him not to be killed that day. And he's expressed that to me privately. He's done that to you, I know. So there's that part of this. flying around in terms of the context of what Huckabee said, but also a misreference to Nazis' Truman in 1945, which was a really stark line in this text, I thought, because, of course, it was Truman that had to make the big call about the use of...

nuclear weapons. So talk to me about this. When you first read the Huckabee text, what did you feel about it? I thought it was excellent. I thought it was so well written, Piers. To pray for the president and not to try. A lot of people do want to whisper into his ear and try to guide him and move him this direction or that direction. And I appreciate the fact that Ambassador Huckabee.

Doesn't want to do that, but just wants to encourage him and to listen for God's voice. And he has the confidence that the president's going to do that. And I do, too. I've seen a lot of people. whisper in his ear but at the end of the day he pretty much does what he feels he's going to do and he really i think he does want to do god's will and if you feel he's much more religious since the shooting because

I certainly got that feeling from him that he just believed he'd been given a second chance and this was God's will and that since then he'd been praying a lot more. I believe that and I encouraged him before the election. And I said, Mr. President, you could lose this thing. And my advice to you is when you get up in the morning, just roll out of bed onto your knees and ask God for help. Just help me today. That's a prayer.

Help me today, and that's all. And so I've encouraged him to... Does he still do that, do you think? I think so. Do you know? Does he tell you? Well, I mean, I've reminded him several times, and he has told me. He said he was doing it, so... Every day Donald Trump drops to his knees. I don't know if he's doing this every day. Right. But that was my encouragement for him to do it every day. And how important it is to ask for God's wisdom.

I keep calling him Governor Huckabee, but Ambassador Huckabee. He alluded to this, the decisions that he has to make.

I wouldn't want that job for anything in the world. And we need to pray that God does give him wisdom. Iran is a huge issue. And Iran, they've said that they want to wipe Israel off the face of the earth. Is it a religious war? You know, when I read... Ambassador Huckabee's text.

It looked like he was viewing this through the prism of potentially religious conflict. You can't deny the fact that religion is a part of this. It's not a part on the Israeli side, but Iran... Is it not, though? Because a number of the Israeli cabinet... now. They do constantly invoke the Bible and religion and so on. I think there's some of the cabinets that do, but it's a secular nation. It really is.

Like the United States, we're a secular country. We're not a religious country, even though there's a lot of people who worship God. I believe for Iran, they are a state that is... I believe, wanting to, in Shia religion, to be able to wipe Israel off the face of the earth. And they have tried to do this through Hamas, the greatest slaughter of Jews since...

since the Second World War came on. I've had people sit in that chair on the Palestinian side who've taken great umbrage when I've said that Hamas wanted to kill Jews for being Jewish. They said they wanted to kill Israelis because they blamed them for the occupation. In other words, they were trying to remove the ethnicity and religion of the targets and making it more about the fact that they believe they've been...

the victims of an illegal occupation, and that's what the attacks were about. I just don't accept that. I think there was clear, and there has been from the rhetoric of Hamas, they clearly want to kill Jews for being Jewish. That's what I believe, Piers. And Israel, they're not wanting to kill Muslims. They're wanting to defend themselves. They want to live in peace. They don't want this war. They want to be able to have their land that goes back.

4,000 years, and they want to live there peacefully. So I appreciate the fact that Israel has restrained themselves in many ways. They have asked for these hostages to come home. time and time again. And Hamas has refused to do it, and Israel has forced to go back to war. And they continue.

to try to humiliate these hostages that are still left, the handful that are still there. We need to pray, Piers, that this is a dangerous period of time in our history. And you think the fighting with Iran, we look at what's happening in the Ukraine, Russia. and the war with Gaza, Hamas. You take these changes now in Syria. I don't know where that's going to go. As a man of faith, obviously, one of the most famous people of faith in the world.

Is war ever morally justified? I believe so, absolutely. I think the Second World War, no question, was morally justified. Enough about nine to five. What about the most important bit, the five to nine? It should be the most comfortable part of your day. And today's sponsor can help. Cozy Earth's bamboo sheets are temperature regulating and designed to wick away both heat and moisture so you can...

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Many people think what's happening in Gaza now, I'm one of them, has gone way beyond a proportionate response, that the civilian deaths that are ratcheting up every day with no apparent end to this. At what point does that go from being a moral self-defence to something else? I blame Hamas, which is controlled by Iran, so you have to go back to Iran. Iran is responsible for Hamas. Hamas controls...

The people in Gaza, if they had a free election day, you think they'd have voted for Hamas? No way. They don't want Hamas, but Hamas has the guns. And so all of this destruction is for 60, what, two or three hostages that are... better left. All this bombing and destruction and killing is for those people. If it would let them go, it would stop tomorrow. But do you think it would? Because we're now hearing rhetoric from people like the finance minister Smodridge, which sounds very genocidal.

that they're talking about cleansing the Palestinians out of Gaza. I mean, that's ethnic cleansing. Well... Is that morally justified? No, no, I don't believe in that at all. But I believe that Gaza is going to... not be a place you can live. When you think of the bomb and the ordinance that has not exploded that is there, it's going to be so dangerous to live there.

and to try to build. They've got to come up with something. I don't know how it's going to be. But there are countries that if they would be willing to take... the people from Gaza, give them the land and give them a place to work and live and have a brand new life, and that could happen. What Trump was, I shouldn't call him Trump, President Trump, what he was saying...

There's a little bit of truth to this, that it would take a long time to clean Gaza up, but they could clean it up and they could come back at some point. But it needs to come back under not Iranian control like it is today. We've got a new Pope. He's American. Have you met the new Pope? Haven't met him yet. Look forward to it. Yeah. Are you planning to see him? Pardon? Are you planning to see him? I have no plans right now, but I look forward to it. Are you pleased as finally an American Pope?

Well, I'm not Catholic, so... No, I am, so I'm pretty pleased, actually. Well, I think it's interesting. It'll do with a British one, but I'll take American first. No, he's certainly an interesting man, and he's got a lot of experiences. I think you met the last Pope, Francis. I did, yes. What was that like when you were with him? I appreciate the fact of his focus on the poor. When I was with him, this was just before the elections, and he asked me...

He said, Reverend Graham, we don't understand American politics. Which would be better for America, Kamala Harris or Donald Trump? I said, Donald Trump. He was kind of surprised. Why? I said, because he supports people of faith. Kamala Harris does not. And he looked at me and he kind of nodded his head. You know, he understood that.

President Trump does care about faith, whether you're Jewish, whether you're a Christian, whether you're a Muslim, whatever. He wants people of faith to be treated with respect. I was with him at the United Nations in 2019 when he spoke. to the UN about faiths, defending people of faith. And I appreciate that about Donald Trump. He cares. He really does. And then he, I think he's trying to live out his faith.

And I really do believe he believes in God. I know that he believes God spared his life. Yeah, I know he does. He's told me that. Yeah. It's great to see you. Your show's on Saturday. Is it sold out? Can people still get tickets? We can still get in, yes. So it's the XL. XL, and that starts at 6 p.m. on Saturday, which I believe is the 21st. Well, good luck with it. Good to see you. Thank you, Peter. Thank you very much. Good to see you, sir.

Well, joining me on the panel now is Jason Whitlock, the host of Fearless with Jason Whitlock, Ishai Fleischer, who's the spokesman for the Jewish community of Hebron, the Palestinian-American journalist and commentator Omar Bader. Well, welcome to all of you. Jason, let me just start with you. Are we seeing a religious war here on multi fronts in the Middle East? No, I don't think it's a religious war. I think it's a war between man, fallen man, and...

you know, it's a conflict that's been going on for a long time. I think people are trying to justify it with religion. And I found it interesting what... Pastor Franklin, or Graham, I'm sorry, was saying, and Mike Huckabee's email. Text message, you know, telling Trump to hear from God. And the only thing I would like for those guys that have access to President Trump is the only way he's going to hear from God is if he opens a Bible and reads the book. That is the word that is.

the voice of God. That's where you can find it. And I'd ask him to start in Matthew 28 and realize that we have a... Great Commission, and that has nothing to do with making war. That has to do with making disciples of all nations and spreading the word. And so those of us that are believers, it's great to tell President Trump to pray.

And listen for the voice of God. But we also need to tell him where the source is. And the source of the voice of God is in that Bible. And, you know, I'm a supporter of President Trump. But if he wants to know what to do in these times, he needs to be reading that book. Were you concerned, as I was, by the reference to Truman in 1945 in that? Very concerned.

Because it can only mean one thing that he's getting at, which is that Truman had to take the monumental decision to deploy nuclear weapons in World War II. Yeah. I obviously wasn't alive in 1945, but my understanding of history is, you know, Truman kind of an installed puppet, not the most competent person and dropped a nuclear weapon on Japan that, you know.

There are people that, was that over the top? Was that way too much? Was that necessary? Was that one of the most evil acts America's done? You can debate that. But yeah, referencing Truman in that is the thing that kind of raised my eyebrow. Aishin Fleischer, I think you think there is a role here, clearly, for religion and history. Is that part of the motivation for what Israel is doing in terms of trying to recalibrate the Middle East?

Well, we have a religious commandment to defend ourselves and to survive. The Jewish people are persecuted a lot, and therefore we have a religious obligation to survive. And we have survived for 3,500 years. through that commandment. We also have a religious history in the land of Israel, and definitely one could see

the ingathering of the Jewish people to the land of Israel, the revival of the Hebrew language, the revival of our economy, the revival of the Third Commonwealth, since we had two previous commonwealths in Jerusalem and in Israel. You could see that as a religious thing. There are many religious texts that will tell you that there. will be an ingathering. With regarding to Iran, we have no religious doctrine to fight with Iran.

We have a religious doctrine to defend ourselves. And Iran does have a religious doctrine to, I should say, not Iran, but the Iranian Mullah regime, because I think there are millions of Iranians that are pro-Israel that want to be liberated by... what I call now the liberation nation, which is Israel. They want to see the end of that Mullah regime. The Mullah regime has got a clock running in Tehran for the destruction of Israel. I remember Ahmadinejad.

former president, he used to, he had a podium that he would speak from. It said, a world without Zionism. So the annihilation of Israel is certainly part of the Mullah doctrines. And we have a doctrine to defend ourselves. and make sure that we continue to survive. And I think that's really what's happening here.

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Make the next move, not the IRS. You know, it's interesting, Omar, because I interviewed Ahmadinejad when he was president of Iran in New York for CNN, and I pressed him on exactly that point about him... reportedly saying he wanted to wipe Israel off the face of the man. And he said to me what he meant by that, and I think Isha touched on it.

He talked specifically about wanting to get rid of the Zionist regime. He said he wasn't talking about the whole of Israel. People didn't really believe him, but that was certainly the clarification he put to me. There is a sense, I think, from the people who are more sympathetic to Iran that they have been singled out here as the really bad people in the Middle East and therefore must get particularly rough treatment.

What is your view of the validity of what Israel is doing here? To set the scene for it, Piers, let me just quickly put two countries up on the board, Iran and Israel, and just go through a very quick list. Which country has nuclear weapons and refuses to allow international inspectors to look at their nuclear program? Israel. Which country is expanding its territory by illegally occupying neighbors in Palestine, Lebanon, Syria? Israel.

Which country's leaders are wanted by the International Criminal Court? Israel. Which country is currently committing genocide by starving and killing tens of thousands of children? Israel. And look at who started this war between Israel and Iran. Israel did. So to look at this entire list and to try to concoct some mechanism by which you're claiming that Israel is defending itself by doing all this.

Has the entire world lost its mind? There's one thing you're missing out. Hang on, hang on. You're missing out a pretty key component of all this, which is who has been funding both financially and with weaponry.

the Houthis, Hamas, Hezbollah, for many, many years, all of which have then used those weapons to attack Israel. And that's a key... The key argument Israel puts up is that... Iran has been the octopus, if you like, with all these tentacles to terror all over the region, all of them wedded to the same philosophy of getting rid of Israel.

A country that is minding its own business and being peaceful and reasonable can take legitimate issue with whether other countries are fighting militant groups that don't like them. Then you have a grievance. But when you are a country that is founded at the expense of another people by destroying Palestinian society.

driving out hundreds of thousands of Palestinians out of their homes and destroying hundreds of Palestinian towns and villages. And it's not good enough for you. You're still engaging in this war of conquest, illegally expanding settlements in the West Bank.

occupying and obliterating Gaza for the past several months to say nothing of everything they've done before, you are not in a defensive posture. You are an occupying power. And yes, Iran is trying to expand its region and its influence in the region. by arming groups that are fighting against Israel because they know that the entire region is infuriated with the way Israel is behaving. It is behaving like a country that is above the rules and above the law. They get to do whatever they want.

And just to simplify this on a personal level, Piers, you accept that your government has weapons that you personally are not allowed to have because the relationship between you and your government is one in which they rule and you are a subject in a sense.

And Israel is insisting on that dynamic with the region. They get to have nuclear weapons. They get to do whatever they want. But if Iran ever builds... a peaceful nuclear program that they might one day think they might turn into a military program of some sort, then Israel has the right to preemptively go and invade.

Israel's telling the region, we rule you, we own you, we make the rules, and people in the region don't like it and are resisting. But do you view any of the activities of Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis as terrorism, or do you view it all as resistance?

International law is very, very clear that you can only target militants. You can't target civilians. So, yes, these groups have engaged in legitimate resistance when they've attacked the Israeli military. And they've also engaged in war crimes or acts of terrorism when they've attacked civilians. And do you accept then, do you accept that Iran has been supplying them all, all three groups with both financial support and weaponry?

You can't look at that in isolation. Yes, of course they've been supplying them with weapons. Okay, but Omar, then I put it to you that you're putting a very one-sided framing of all this because the reality is, by your own admission, Iran has been... supplying, endorsing, helping, supporting three different terror groups who commit regular acts of terrorism.

Some of it you might talk away as resistance, but you've conceded a lot of it is just terrorism. So if you're Israel and you've got these three groups all using acts of terrorism against you... Why the hell shouldn't you do something to defend yourself? If I'm Israel and I want to defend itself, I would stop engaging in the mass terrorism.

that the Israeli government is engaged in, you stop behaving like the biggest terrorist organization in the neighborhood, and then you are in a position to defend yourself. The problem is that Israel, once again, is not in a defensive posture. You can't claim...

to have an objection to terrorism when you yourself are engaging in the largest terrorism in the entire region. And to have, again, every single day for the past several days, for the past, what, a year and a half now, closing in on two years.

Every day there is a massacre of civilians and children who are being starved in Gaza, who are only looking for food. That's a country that wants to defend itself from terrorism. The entire thing is absurd. And the idea that there's any religious basis that anybody is, you know.

Whatever. People are free to believe whatever they want to believe. But there is elementary morality at the heart of every faith and any faith that suggests that Israel gets to do what it's doing and invoking that maybe Israel should nuke Iran or whatever else.

These are moral monsters and religious lunatics. Those are the only people who can support what Israel is currently doing and encouraging even more escalation. All right, Jason Whitlock, this morality line, you know, I've been... very supportive of Israel's right to defend itself after the horrendous terror attacks of October the 7th, but recently I've been much more critical.

of what I've seen as the starvation blockade, no other way of calling it, the genocidal language coming out of some of the Israeli cabinet ministers like Smodrich and Ben Gavir, the fact there's no apparent end. plan for any of this, other than if we take them at their word, it involves removing all Palestinians from Gaza, the expansion of settlements in the West Bank and so on, which are...

by most people's definition, illegal. They've carried on aggressively expanding, notwithstanding the war itself raging away. Where is the moral line here for you? Well... I don't know if I'm in position to judge the moral line. It's a very complicated issue. Where I do stand on this as a Christian and as an American is I don't want to be involved.

You have two sides arguing, hey, terrorist actions are coming from Israel. Terrorist actions are being financed by Iran. And the people on the Iran side and Hamas side are saying America. is funding Israel's terrorist acts against the people in Gaza and Palestinians. And so what I would like to see America do is remove itself from that. become more isolationist in an area where there has been so much conflict, years and years and years of conflict, so many allegations on both sides.

I get why there's so much animus towards America, because just like Israel was saying, hey, Iran is financing these terrorist acts. Iran is saying America is financing Israel's terrorist acts. I'd like to be removed from that. We have a lot of problems here in America that we need to solve. I don't think we can solve the problems in the Middle East. We've been trying to do it for a long time and failing, and we've been financing a lot.

of regime changes and a lot of wars that end up impacting American young men and women, and things aren't getting better here in America. So I want to be... more America first, more isolationist, and just let you guys settle that. I'm not smart enough to settle that.

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All of them come with free shipping and a 99-day trial. For a limited time, get 10% off at Ridge by using code PEERS, P-I-E-R-S, at checkout. Just head to ridge.com and use code PEERS. After you purchase, they will ask you where you heard about them. So please support our show and tell them I sent you. Okay, Ishai, the one question that has been resolutely...

not answered very well by people on the Israeli side, is why is it that Israel can be so concerned about everybody else's ability to have nuclear weapons in the Middle East? And yet itself, everybody knows Israel has a large nuclear defence armoury, but they never admit it. No government has admitted it. And they don't lay themselves open to any of the normal... checks and balances that go with being a nuclear power. Why is Israel given this extraordinary pass on nuclear weapons?

I've never seen the Israeli nuclear armament, so I can't say for sure. But just like you, that's what we've heard all these years. And I think that if Israel indeed does have nuclear weapons, it's probably because we are responsible. We are responsible.

country in the region that is the power broker, that is the defender, that is the responsible grown-up around there. And if you give nuclear arms to the Jews and the Israelis, that's one thing. And if you give it to the Iranian regime, which, you know, murders its own people.

in the streets every day, which has a whole suppression police, which funds terrorism, as you noted earlier. Like, these guys are going to use it in a bad way. So I think it's very simple. But do you think Israel is behaving... The difference between Israel and the jihadist Iranian regime. Yeah, but I would say, do you think that...

anything that Israel is currently doing in Gaza can be described as responsible? Well, we had to destroy the Hamas organization. And, you know, Pierce, on many of your shows, which I watch, you talk a lot about... genocidal language. You talk a lot about the, you ask, you know, you grill people on the numbers. And I wanted to ask you, where's your responsibility as a journalist to ask?

The most basic question, which is, why isn't the world allowing for refugees, right? In Ukraine, Russia, there are 4.25 million refugees. spread all over Europe. In the Syrian civil conflict, there are 6.8 million refugees. They're in Turkey. They're in Europe. When you have a war conflict, you try to save people, noncombatants. You help them move out of the way.

And nobody is allowing Egypt, an Arab country bordering Gaza, is not allowing Arabs to come in there to be refugees just to save their lives. Could it be that the reason that some of these players don't want the most natural thing, which is refugees, which is, by the way, part of international law? International law says the starting point for international protection is the admission of people fleeing persecution and violence to a territory where they could seek asylum and find safety.

Where is that? Where's the call for that? That's the most obvious and basic thing. So if you don't have a call for that, then... The people that are left there are collateral damage. They're getting hurt. And then people like you are like, what? There's like almost a genocide over there. Yeah. Help them get out of the way.

Help him get out of harm's way. My response to that would be that it's pretty clear from what people like Smodrich are saying, they don't want any Palestinians coming back. They don't believe in a refugee program. They believe in... ethnic cleansing. They want all Palestinians out of the Gaza Strip irrevocably. I'm asking you. I'm asking you, Pierce. Forget Smutrich. Don't you have these people to survive? I happen to agree...

I happen to agree with you that the neighbouring Arab countries could be doing more. I don't dispute that for a moment. They block Arabs from going in. But I also understand... why many Palestinians and many Arabs look at the situation and hear what people like Smodry say and think that there is a bigger picture plan going on here, which is for ultimately Israel to take complete control of Gaza. and to take complete control of the West Bank.

Piers, can I just demonstrate real quick? Hang on, Omar, we'll come to you. I just want Isha to respond to that. I'll answer this quickly. The answer is like this. We don't have a war with... Arabs. We don't have a war with Palestinians. We don't have a war with Islam. We have a war with jihadism. It happens to be that a lot of people in Gaza are pro-Hamas. We saw all the videos. We know that. And so jihadists got to leave. They can't be inside our country and they can't be on our border.

They can't threaten us. That's who we're dealing with. I asked you a question about refugees to help save more people. That's what I want to see. I think that's what most Israelis want to see. And one last comment. Omar's point about the Iranian people... uh suffering at the hands of israel well that's not what the videos show

The videos all over TikTok and Telegram is of Iranians celebrating and calling for the end of the regime and thanking Israel and being on the side of destroying the oppressive regime that rules them. I mean, to deny that and to make it look like... Omar's...

version is the only version out there is just a laughable joke. You could just see it on all over the social media. We see that the Iranian people want the end of that regime. They want Israel to bomb those nuclear installations to be have a safe Israel. I was in Florida buying a suit.

Iranian lady who was working there, she like saw that I was Jewish and Israeli. She's like, I love Israel. I want to help you. I explained to her what I do in this world. She's like, let me help you pick out a suit. You've got to save our people. She says the boys that are protesters, they get taken. down into dungeons and their eyes get gouged out by this regime. Save us.

OK, that's the lie that Omar is putting out there as though there's two sides, Israel and Iran. No, there's millions of Iranians that are with Israel. There are millions of Arabs all over the world that are with Israel and want to see the end of jihadism. OK, Omar, final word to you.

Sure. First, on the refugee issue. I mean, yes, absolutely. Unfortunately for Ishai, he can pretend he's concerned about them, but he can't turn on Israeli television without every politician and commentator salivating at the idea of driving Palestinians out. So there's obviously a plot to ethnically cleansed Palestinians. And he's here just being coined, disingenuous. And if he were serious, if he were actually concerned about the refugees in Gaza and getting them to safety.

Why doesn't Israel take them? They could very easily open their borders and let refugees from Gaza into Israel. He doesn't do that. He wants somebody else to do it. because he's trying to get rid of Palestinians who live in that area. So that's the just utterly ridiculous proposition that he's putting forward and how easily it is to demonstrate.

how full of crap he is on this point. And finally, on the issue of Iran, note that, of course, there's going to be some pockets of Iranians who are celebrating. There are clueless people that you can find in any society who are willing to applaud whatever foreign invasion of their country they want.

Israel is killing Iranian civilians by the hundreds. It's what Iranians are watching in the destruction that is happening in Tehran. There's a rallying around the flag, even though many Iranians don't like their government, but when they see it, their country. under attack by a foreign regional power that is genocidal, that is racist, that is an apartheid regime, and acts with impunity, that has the exact opposite effect, where there's going to be now even more.

support for the government to respond forcefully. So it's having the opposite effect of what Isha is pretending, despite whatever three Iranian friends he has who are willing to applaud whatever he's doing. And Omar, you don't think that Iran and its leadership will be intimidated by... Trump's threats, and you've linked that to their Shia theology. Explain that. Sure. One of the biggest religious holidays for Shia Muslims is commemorating the killing of Hussein.

in which they recount his story in which he was put between the choice of either accepting a confrontation that he definitely cannot win or a humiliating surrender. And you see on that day every single year. Literally millions of Shias around the world chanting in unison, we would never accept a humiliating surrender. That is the slogan. And then Trump, who I think is probably being played by Netanyahu, pretending that this is a way to force the Iranian government to negotiate.

putting out a call demanding an unconditional surrender from Iran, that once again has the exact opposite effect. It's going to trigger the sense of resilience and defiance within Iranians who are going to insist on resisting and fighting back. I think that's Netanyahu's plot. He's pretending as if this is a way to bring Iran back to the negotiations. But he knows that this is only going to push Iran towards further confrontation. And he is trying to drag.

the United States directly into this war because Israel knows it cannot win this war without direct U.S. participation. You know, I read an interesting piece in a... newspaper today about the parallels between the Assad regime in Syria, which obviously had many years of civil war, but last December it all very, very, very quickly led to Assad leaving the country.

So when it happened, it happened very fast, and it was driven by an uprising amongst the Syrian people. You know, you could see a situation. An extra scenario here, Omar, I think, where if enough Iranian people take exception to what has been done in their names, that the...

regime, you know, since 79 in Iran has been going pretty much the same length of time as the Assad family ruled in Syria. It wouldn't surprise me if you saw a similar kind of scenario that we saw in December in Syria happen to the leadership. I think those are very, very different situations.

belonged to a religious minority in the country. They were fairly unpopular. They were very brutal. And frankly, they were helped to stay in power by regional support, not authentically through the population. Now, there's no denying that the Iranian government has a bad human rights. record, and the country is divided in terms of support for them, but they are not as fragile as the Syrian government.

deep roots in the country and they have significant support in addition to that significant opposition. So it's a very, very different situation. OK, I've got to leave it there. But thank you all very much indeed to my panel. I appreciate it. Let's speak now to the biblical scholar and historian, Wesley Huff. Wesley, good to have you back on Uncensored.

A lot of people theorising that there is a religious component to everything that is going on currently in the Middle East. Do you think that? Yeah, well, let me right off the bat say that my area is not geopolitics. And so I can't speak to whether any one particular nation or group right now has fulfilled some sort of criteria for just war in the very recent past.

I think, for others to say. But what I can speak to, Pierce, are the ways that the Bible and Christian heritage that I share in have considered this very complicated topic over the centuries, because it would be somewhat foolhardy to forget that.

the heavy reality of war that I don't think we should ever speak lightly of. You know, as Jesus himself said, those who live by the sword will die by the sword. So we see... throughout Christian scripture in places like Ephesians chapter 6 and 2 Corinthians 10, the topic of waging war with preaching.

And words and persuasion rather than weapons. And so I think we should aim to persuade people if we can. But the reality of broken humanity that even, you know, the conversations that we've all been having, you personally have been having even just now. that not all people can be persuaded. And so theory and philosophizing about what should happen in an ideal world often get muddy when the rubber hits the road of this beautiful yet broken world that we live in.

I know that you don't, you're not a pacifist, but it's interesting where the moral line is for people in terms of when war is justified. You know, sometimes you could look at a conflict like... World War II. And you can say, well, clearly the Nazis represented an existential threat to the world and had to be defeated. So therefore, waging war against them was a necessity and morally justified. But a lot of other...

conflicts, including what is happening in the Middle East, many would argue, are much more complicated, much more nuanced, much more historical in terms of their complexity. How do we work out what is moral? in that kind of scenario yeah it's a very important question uh just war theory is a theory that portrayed uh well let me say right off the bat actually just war is not

holy war. And I think that's important right off the bat, Pierce, because jihad and just war are concepts that are completely in different universes. The idea of just war that we kind of tease out, especially when we're talking about very complicated geopolitical issues like we're discussing this morning.

come from these ideas in the late third and early fourth centuries where soldiers would come to Christian clergy and intellectuals seeking advice regarding their careers. So we have records of Roman tribunes writing to people like St. Augustine.

asking whether it's possible to provide state security in a vaguely Christian way. And so we had these records of individuals like Augustine writing, you know, a seminal work, City of God, right after the sacking of Rome by the Visigoths in August 24th of 14. 10 AD. And he doesn't write to make sense of the violence viewed, but to point out that no earthly realm, not even a Christian empire, could be an...

eternal city, which was what Rome was thought of. You know, for a long time, it was referred to as the eternal city. And Augustine points out that the only city... that will ever be eternal is in the hereafter and when things are made new. And so until then, in this fallen in-between time, there is some necessity for state.

to enforce and restrain evil for the sake of good. You know, you threaten my neighbor, I have to intervene, Augustine says. You're not being moved by persuasion, and so I must force you to stop. But Augustine is clear when he talks about just war that it's never holy.

And certainly not happy, even in victory. So war should only ever be done in kind of the Christian tradition that large portion of the West stands in, in defense of innocent people and for the idea of trying to, not for the idea of trying to. wipe out people off the face of the earth or some sort of private interest, that's evil. And that victories, celebration should even come with tears and remorse.

Really interesting. I had a debate the other day with a pro-Palestinian guest who was arguing that Hamas had not targeted people based on their religion, i.e. being Jewish or their ethnicity. but on the fact that they objected to what they saw as an illegal occupation of Gaza and so on. And that was what inspired it. It wasn't a religious... war in the sense that you just explained. I mean, do you think there's validity to that or is that nonsense?

I mean, it's complicated when you factor in Islam and the fact that it is far more of a politico-religious... You know, it's very different in the inception of Islam in the 7th century than the inception of Christianity. And even when we look at certain instances of... you know, atrocities done in the name of Christianity throughout history. Something, you know, maybe the Crusades are coming to mind for certain peoples.

The Christian worldview makes the atrocities within the crusade problematic. So what do you call the crusades conducted under the banner? of Muhammad. Well, you call it business as usual. He was a warlord. And so to fight in his legacy is expected, but to do so under the banner of the cross. should seem ironic because Christ died for his enemies. And Christianity makes sense of our justifiably cringe mentality when we see some of these problematic situations throughout.

history where people are trying to invoke Christianity or religion in those ways. But it is complicated. These are multivalent issues that encompass all sorts of factors. Fascinating. Wesley Huff, great to have you back. Thank you very much. Very good to be here. Thank you.

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