[00:00:00] Lani Lanchester: Welcome everybody to Learning to Listen to Palestine. I’m so glad you guys are here. Today, we are going to be looking deeper into my quest in learning to listen to Palestine, and what it took to change me from a Christian Zionist into somebody who has learned to listen to Palestinians, and to love my neighbor as myself.
[00:00:21] Lani Lanchester: I just want to let you guys all know that I have written this book, Learning to Listen to Palestine: A Personal Quest. I encourage you to get this book to learn more about my travels, and how I’ve learned about Palestine. In the back of the book, there is a lot of sources of the research that I have done as I have investigated the things that I have been learning about. So today, we’re going to go a little bit into a different area of my learning, and what has changed my thinking.
[00:00:53] Lani Lanchester: The last time we did this one-on-one, I told you about how I went to [00:01:00] Israel, and to Palestine, and to Jordan, and I talked to people, and I got to meet people one on one. And listening to their stories just changed my thinking, it opened me up and it gave me a lot of questions, a lot of things that I had to investigate and learn more about.
[00:01:17] Lani Lanchester: But there was one incident in particular, we’re going to talk about today that was just me and God. And this was just outside of Jerusalem, and upon the Mount of Olives, I had an encounter with God that changed my thinking. As I was learning to listen to Palestinians, I was questioning the things that I thought I knew about Zionism.
[00:01:41] Lani Lanchester: But at this point was when I knew God was not a Zionist, and that this thinking was completely wrong. So, I’m going to tell you more about that as we get into today. So this is the Mount of Olives, which is just outside of the old city of Jerusalem. [00:02:00] And it’s quite tall, it’s quite a hike, and I hiked up this thing to all of these churches.
[00:02:04] Lani Lanchester: But there was one church in particular, there it is, so this is Pater Noster. And when I got up here, and I sat there and I rested and I prayed and I thought. I had an epiphany that completely changed my understanding of God’s relationship with Israel. But we’ll get to that in a minute. First I want to tell you where I began, as a Christian Zionist.
[00:02:29] Lani Lanchester: When I was young, I grew up with Zionism in my home. Zionism was believed in my home and in my church to be a modern miracle. God rebirth the nation of Israel, and this was an amazing thing. However, once I started traveling through Israel and Palestine, and hearing the Palestinian stories, and researching about the Nakba, something didn’t seem right.
[00:02:53] Lani Lanchester: When I was a teenager, I was just getting involved in politics. I looked at all the political parties and I [00:03:00] thought, I’m a Democrat. Because God must be a Democrat, he likes to take care of people and he wants to take care of people’s needs. And so I thought, God must be a Democrat, so I would be a Democrat.
[00:03:12] Lani Lanchester: I was for a few years, and after a few years of studying what the Democrats believed, and watching the way parties behaved, I thought, no, God’s not a Democrat. So then I thought, he must be a Republican. I went through many years of being a Republican and studying the Republican politics and the politicians. And after a while I realized, no, God’s not a Republican.
[00:03:41] Lani Lanchester: So after a while I thought, God must be a Zionist because I was raised with Zionism. So I figured, that’s it, I’m a Zionist. This brings in an interesting thought. Because we’ve always seen Zionism as theology about our faith, but here it definitely has a political [00:04:00] bent, and it fits very nicely into my thinking here.
[00:04:03] Lani Lanchester: And I said, I was a Zionist because I believed God was a Zionist, God favored Israel. And as I said that one time, I heard God say to me, Am I really a Zionist? And I went, what? I thought so. And so for years of watching Zionism, I started realizing that something was wrong, but I didn’t know what. I really just didn’t know what.
[00:04:26] Lani Lanchester: So I’m a scientist, and in science, I always teach my students that coming up with the right answer isn’t near as important as coming up with good questions. My first question is, what is Zionism? And so for many years I studied Zionism, many people are familiar with the term but aren’t clear about its true meaning or historical context.
[00:04:48] Lani Lanchester: Zionism actually originated in the 1800s, and has evolved significantly over time. There are various forms of Zionism, including Judaic religious Zionism, [00:05:00] Secular Zionism, and Christian Zionism. The focus today is on modern-day Zionism. And this seems to be the driving force in what is happening in our politics today, what is Zionism? And this modern-day Zionism, how is it affecting and impacting our global events?
[00:05:21] Lani Lanchester: At the heart of Zionism is a belief that Jews have a God-given right to the land of Israel. This has become a controversial topic, especially in light of the conflicts that are going on right now. So here’s some questions, what does modern Zionism look like? And if we look into it, we find out, first of all, 82% of American Evangelical Christians are Zionist. But only 40% of American Jews are Zionist.
[00:05:50] Lani Lanchester: Okay, so that’s a surprising thing to see. What else does Zionism look like? We need to come up with more questions. So I came up with a few, and you guys can come up [00:06:00] with your own questions. And this is important because if you come up with questions, this helps you to watch the news differently, to ask questions as you watch the news, or to look into social media differently.
[00:06:11] Lani Lanchester: To look for books, to look for other sources of information to answer your questions. Very important to ask questions. So, what is it that Evangelical Christians believe? I can’t answer this in just today, this is something you’re going to have to research and come up with your own questions.
[00:06:29] Lani Lanchester: Where do these beliefs come from? And why don’t American Jews believe in Zionism as strongly as American Christians? And this is interesting, and we’ll talk about this over the next few weeks as well. So here’s a question, again, what does modern Zionism look like? And I have a video for us to watch, and we’ll talk about this in just a moment after we watch it.
[00:06:53] Lani Lanchester: For those of you who can’t see it, I’ll tell you what’s about to happen. There is some American [00:07:00] activists, who are working with some Palestinian farmers. And the reason why they’re working with the Palestinian farmers is that the Palestinian farmers are being attacked by Israeli settlers.
[00:07:12] Lani Lanchester: When the Palestinians go to their land to take care of their trees, they are being attacked, and so you’ll watch this. And this time, the American activists are with them, hoping with the idea that the Israeli settlers won’t attack them with the Americans they’re present. So, let’s see what happens. Israeli settlers were captured on video attacking Palestinian farmers in the West Bank.
[00:07:38] Lani Lanchester: Foreign activists who were also attacked during the incident were accompanying the farmers as part of a campaign to protect Palestinians from such attacks. The settlers approached the group before hitting them with thick wooden sticks, said one of the activists, causing one of them to fall. Three of the activists and one farmer were taken to hospital with [00:08:00] injuries.
[00:08:02] Lani Lanchester: The Israel Defense Forces condemned the attack and told CNN that soldiers were sent to the scene and fired warning shots, prompting the attackers to flee. A similar incident happened the day before, where Israeli settlers attacked a Palestinian family with sticks. The attacks happened within a day of the ICJ ruling Israel’s presence in the West Bank as illegal.
[00:08:26] Lani Lanchester: Okay, so this is one thing that modern Zionism looks like. The family that is being attacked, they are not Hamas, they are not soldiers, they are not fighters, they are farmers. They are farmers who are going to their land to take care of the land, to provide a crop, to take care of their families.
[00:08:45] Lani Lanchester: And the day before, a family was attacked near their own home by these Israeli settlers. Additionally, you can see that we have some American activists who are with them. Why are the American activists with them? [00:09:00] Peacemakers, they’re trying to keep the peace. They weren’t there as agitators. They were there because they believed that their presence would keep these settlers from attacking these people.
[00:09:09] Lani Lanchester: And if you can see it, not everybody has seen this. If you’re just hearing this, what they’re being hit by are, they say sticks, but they are quite wide. They’re at least three-inch sticks. So they’re more like clubs, three to four-inch sticks around in diameter. And I saw some of the injuries on the Americans, some pictures, and they’re quite extensive. The bruising and the swelling on the face and the arms, it’s quite horrible. So, this is one picture of modern Zionism.
[00:09:45] Lani Lanchester: This next clip that I’m going to show you of modern Zionism comes from just outside of Bethlehem. These are Palestinian Israeli Christians. So, these are Christian Palestinians who have their Israeli citizenship. [00:10:00] So, they are on Israel land, they have had this land a long time back, and they have their farms and their homes there. And they are being forced off their land with the aid of the Israeli Defense Force, the IDF.
[00:10:15] Lani Lanchester: So, let’s watch this video. For us. They removed us from the land without any paper, without any rights, and here they are, military protecting those settled Israeli citizens, Israeli citizens.
[00:10:43] Lani Lanchester: So you can see, she’s holding her Israeli passport, she’s showing him that she is an Israeli citizen. They have no paperwork saying that they have rights to this land, they are just taking the land, and pushing them off, and the Israeli [00:11:00] Defense Force, the soldiers are there not to protect the people who own the land. But to protect the settlers who are stealing the land, with the help of the government.
[00:11:23] Lani Lanchester: Again, so that clip came from between Jerusalem and Bethlehem. Again, that’s modern Zionism, that’s what that looks like. All right, so again, keeping with the same theme, what does modern Zionism look like? Let’s go back to 1946, here’s a picture of Palestine. And if you can’t see it, I’ll describe what I’m seeing here. It is a picture of Palestine all in green, except for a few sprinkles, mostly along the coast and a little bit up of the northern border near Syria with some white, these are Jewish settlements.
[00:11:57] Lani Lanchester: These are lands that Jews had bought [00:12:00] between like 1880 to 1946. And the Jews had settled in these places and built Kibbutzes and villages and towns. The rest of all of this screen is settled with Palestinians who’ve owned this land for hundreds and sometimes thousands of years, their families have lived there all this time.
[00:12:24] Lani Lanchester: The next picture is the UN plan from 1947, and you can see in it that there is more white, and it is the plan that they would give control of this area in white to the Jews to form a government and have a Jewish country. The green is Palestine, Israel gets a little bit more than half of the land in this 1947 plan, even though the Palestinians did own all [00:13:00] of this other land.
[00:13:01] Lani Lanchester: But the idea was, that the Jews would be the governors of this area, that they would form their own government. And the Palestinians would form a government over the Palestinian areas. But what happened was, starting in 1947 and 1948, the Jews began to ethnically cleanse the area in white, and then they went beyond that as well.
[00:13:29] Lani Lanchester: Here we have 1949 to 1947, we can see a lot more land than was in the 1947 plan and created a Jewish state. The way they did this was called Ethnic cleansing. They would surround a village in a C shape with soldiers, and they would dynamite a few houses with people in them. And then they would pull all of the men out of a certain age, and they would kill some of them in front of the other villagers so that they would be terrorized, force them [00:14:00] out of the villages. So, 530 villages were Ethnically cleansed in this way.
[00:14:06] Lani Lanchester: There were also many murders, some entire villages were killed, and so there were massacres. There were at least a dozen massacres like that. And there were 750,000 people were forced off their land, and they became refugees. That is another picture of what modern Zionism looks like.
[00:14:26] Lani Lanchester: Then we get on here to 2012. So, after the Oslo Accords, the land has changed again. And you can see now just a sprinkling of green left. So, we started out with just a sprinkling of white, and now we have just a sprinkling of green left in the West Bank. And even though all of this in 1949 to 1967 should be considered Palestine and is considered Palestine.
[00:14:51] Lani Lanchester: The white that is in this area are illegal Israeli settlements. So this is Zionism, the Israeli [00:15:00] settlements come in and they take the land away from the Palestinians by force. And that was some of those videos we just saw. To learn more about this, you have to really investigate and look for it.
[00:15:12] Lani Lanchester: And once you look for it, you will see this quite plainly. There are many films about this, they’re available on Netflix and on Amazon Prime. They’re available on YouTube, where it shows people being forced off their land. And these are not Hamas, these are not Hezbollah, this is not Iran, these are farmers, these are families.
[00:15:33] Lani Lanchester: Here’s another thing that looks like. Zionism, as I investigated further, there’s a lot in Zionism. So Zionism is a lot like this barrel on three legs, there’s a lot in here, but it all stands on three pillars, and if any one of these pillars is gone, it doesn’t stand and everything falls out.
[00:15:53] Lani Lanchester: So, what are these three supports that modern Zionism stands on? The first one is Racism or [00:16:00] Nationalism. This is the idea that the Jews are more important, more valued than the Palestinians, or than other races. This can be seen in many places and it becomes quite clear. The Palestinians have been dehumanized.
[00:16:15] Lani Lanchester: What is happening to them right now in Gaza and the West Bank could not happen to them if they have not been dehumanized. So, that is one of the supports. Colonialism, we saw colonialism in that picture with the green and the white, that is a picture of colonialism. Where you’re taking land from one group, and another group is taking it over, and forcing people off the land.
[00:16:41] Lani Lanchester: They’re doing this by Ethnically cleansing, and they’re doing this by creating refugees. And the third one is Theology. And this is where we have our biggest questions, is theology. Is God a Zionist? Because if God is a Zionist, he also supports this Colonialism, [00:17:00] and he supports this Racism or Nationalism. So we have to think about this, what does this really mean, or am I looking at this wrong somehow?
[00:17:07] Lani Lanchester: So looking deeper into theology, we have to look into the Bible. What is the theological support of Zionism? And it comes back to these three verses, Genesis 12: 1 through 3, The Lord has said to Abram, go from your country, your people, and your father’s household to the land that I will show you.
[00:17:27] Lani Lanchester: I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you. I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you, I will curse. And all peoples on the earth will be blessed through you. So, these are the verses that I grew up with. I grew up believing that if I blessed Israel, I would be blessed. And if I cursed Israel, I would be cursed.
[00:17:52] Lani Lanchester: Now, looking at it as an adult, I look at this and go, that’s like making Israel into an idol. [00:18:00] That if I rub its tummy, I’m going to get, and if I knock it over, I’m going to get cursed. Is this right? So, I go over this in detail in my book, Learning to Listen to Palestine.
[00:18:10] Lani Lanchester: So, I encourage you to look deeper in this. I cover a lot of details on this all together here and give you a lot more resources to look into that. But I want to look at one phrase right here, and you will be a blessing. In my search in trying to understand the theology of Zionism, I came across a problem with the translation right here, and you will be a blessing.
[00:18:35] Lani Lanchester: This is actually an imperative, it’s a command, but it’s not written as a command here, and you will be a blessing. So if it’s said as a command, it would be a blessing. So, I have been studying the works of Yohanna Katanacho, he is a theologian from Nazareth. He is a Christian Palestinian, and he is an [00:19:00] amazing theologian.
[00:19:01] Lani Lanchester: But we should test his theology, right? So, let’s do that. This is the way he says that we should translate it. Leave your land, your kindred, and house of your father to the land that I will show you. Then I will make you into a great nation, bless you, and make your name great. Here’s the difference, be a blessing, so that I can bless those who bless you, curse those who curse you, and all the families of the earth can be blessed in you.
[00:19:26] Lani Lanchester: So, if we look at it that way, be a blessing so that I can bless those who bless you, it’s a conditional promise. It’s a conditional promise that if Israel is a blessing, then bless those who bless them, and curse those who curse them. And all families of the earth can be blessed through Israel.
[00:19:45] Lani Lanchester: I can take this right now and judge this one right here, are all families on the earth being blessed right now through Israel? We just saw two families that are not being blessed by Israel, and we know there are a lot more. There are 2.2 million [00:20:00] people in Gaza, who are without food, without water, their homes have been destroyed, there are diseases breaking out, Polio. We now have a Polio outbreak, now we know if Polio moves from there, all the families in the world are cursed.
[00:20:16] Lani Lanchester: There’s something wrong here already, but let’s look at this some more to see if this translation is correct. So, how do we test it? Let’s test it with other scriptures and see if it’s a conditional promise, or if it’s an unconditional promise. And we want to have at least two witnesses, because Jesus said, at the mouth of two witnesses, or at the mouth of three witnesses shall a matter be established. Actually, Moses also said this, and Jesus said this, and Paul said this. So, we want at least two witnesses or three.
[00:20:44] Lani Lanchester: So let’s start with Moses, in Deuteronomy 4: 1, he writes, here now, Oh Israel, the decrees and the laws I’m about to teach you, follow them so that you may live, and you may go in and take possession of the land of the [00:21:00] Lord, the God of your fathers is giving you. So, here we see a conditional promise. Now, Deuteronomy 16: 20. Again, this is Moses. Follow justice, and justice alone, so that you may live and possess the land. That the Lord, the God of your fathers is giving you. Again, it’s a conditional promise. The land will be theirs if they follow justice and justice alone.
[00:21:23] Lani Lanchester: We can also look through the history of the Old Testament. There are times where in Israel is being a blessing to nations, and God is blessing them. And he is seeing those who bless them at that time, and cursing those who curse them at that time. But sometimes, there are bad kings and bad things going on in Israel, and they lose the land, they go into exile.
[00:21:47] Lani Lanchester: So what is happening there? So, that sounds like a conditional promise there. Because otherwise, God was lying but it was a conditional promise. Now let’s look at Jesus. Jesus proclaimed that the meek [00:22:00] shall inherit the earth. The meek, not the strong, not the aggressive, harsh, tyrannical, will enter the land and inherit it. And finally, I’m going to get to that part, portion where God changed my thinking, and it was at this church called, Pater Noster.
[00:22:17] Lani Lanchester: Now, this church commemorates the place where Jesus taught his disciples how to pray. The Lord’s Prayer, look at these walls here, if you can see this. There are 172 plaques around this church, with the Lord’s prayer on them. It’s 172 times it’s written, but each time in a different language.
[00:22:40] Lani Lanchester: So, I walked through this church. After climbing this hill, I walked through this church, and I sat down, it was hot, and it was tired and it was December. But it was quite warm, especially after climbing that mountain. And I found the plaque that had the Lord’s prayer in English, and maybe it was climbing the mountain.
[00:22:59] Lani Lanchester: But [00:23:00] it had in my head how opposite this was from the Tower of Babel. So here is my journal, if you guys can see this. This is my journal from that day after climbing the Mount of Olives, and this is what I wrote. Here the church commemorates Jesus teaching and how to pray, and how this teaching has gone into all the world. Here, 170 languages are commemorated. In a sense, the damage of the Tower of Babel is undone here, in a prayer.
[00:23:31] Lani Lanchester: We all have the same Father. We all have the same hope, heaven. We are all of the same kingdom. We all have the same law. We all rely on God for our sustenance, for our needs. We are all sinners. We all need the guidance of our Father, the Good Shepherd, to navigate through this fallen world. But God’s kingdom, not all of these others, are eternal.
[00:23:57] Lani Lanchester: So now, with this prayer, we can look [00:24:00] again at Zionism, and those three pillars of Zionism. So again, if you guys don’t know what the Tower of Babel is, in the Bible, there is this point, I think it’s in Genesis 10, when all of the people gathered together and they say, come, let us build ourselves a city with a tower that reaches into the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves. Otherwise, we will be scattered over the whole face of the earth.
[00:24:25] Lani Lanchester: But, God disapproves of this, and he confuses their language. And suddenly, this is where all of the languages were born, where people couldn’t understand each other and people went their different ways who spoke different languages. And it’s interesting, because looking at this prayer, and thinking about this, we are all united in one prayer, even though there’s all of these languages.
[00:24:50] Lani Lanchester: And this is something that Jesus did and listen to the words and how it unites us, hallowed be thy name. So in the Tower of Babel, people were trying to make a name for themselves. [00:25:00] In our world, we’re trying to make a name for ourselves. The Americans, we think we’re better than everybody. And the Israelis, they think they’re better than everybody. Right now, we have the Olympics going on and everybody’s trying to make a name for themselves to win those gold medals for their country.
[00:25:15] Lani Lanchester: But here we elevate God’s name. This prayer, it’s God’s name that’s elevated and is important. Thy kingdom come, here, all nationalism is gone. As we pray this together amongst all of our languages around the world, we can all pray this together, and we have one kingdom and one father and one king, nationalism’s gone. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven, oh, and I love this one.
[00:25:43] Lani Lanchester: Because think about it, in heaven, we are not divided by races, we are not divided by skin colors, we’re not divided about you guys eat this and I eat that, by these culture differences. We are one people, we aren’t divided by these [00:26:00] silly things anymore. Give us this day our daily bread. So, as people are fighting over land and stuff and things like that, we have one provider, and that’s God.
[00:26:12] Lani Lanchester: So we don’t have to fight over our things anymore. With this prayer, we can trust in God to provide us with what we need for this day. And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us. We’re all sinners, but here’s the peace plan, that I forgive you and you forgive me in order to do that, we have to listen to each other. Because listening is the first step in loving, and so we need to learn to listen to each other so that we can hear each other’s needs, and hear each other’s requests and to forgive each other.
[00:26:45] Lani Lanchester: And this is a real clincher for me, and lead us not in temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. We do have an enemy, and it’s not each other. Our enemy is Satan. So, we should all be on the same side. And so we have to figure [00:27:00] out how to be on the same side. Now, Jesus didn’t teach us to pray this prayer in heaven, he taught us to pray this prayer right now. And if he taught us to pray this prayer right now, that means he’s not lying to us, it’s possible right now. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have taught us to pray this right now. He would have taught us to pray something useful.
[00:27:22] Lani Lanchester: This is useful, this is the peace plan, and this completely defeats Zionism. As I read this, sitting there, on that bench at Pater Noster Church, I realized that there is no nationalism, this defeats all nationalism. This is something to think about, and I know that we have so much more to investigate after this to understand Palestine.
[00:27:47] Lani Lanchester: And there’s so many topics, but this is a great place to start. There’s more to understand about Zionism, and what’s going on in the world, and what’s going on between Israel and Palestine. There’s so many more things to [00:28:00] understand. But this is the groundwork, this is where we start. So, if one thing I’d encourage you guys to do is pray this prayer every day, and think about these parts as you’re praying it every day.
[00:28:12] Lani Lanchester: I’ve been praying it every day this year, and it has changed my heart. It has changed my view of the world and it’s given me more trust in God. And if we trust in God, we’re not afraid. And we are more willing to listen and to love our neighbors. So I encourage you guys to get the book, Learning to Listen to Palestine and to learn to listen to your neighbors.
[00:28:33] Lani Lanchester: And the other book that I encourage you guys to check out is this book, by Yohanna Katanacho, it’s called The Land of Christ: A Palestinian’s Cry. Amazing theology in this book, and it’s beautifully done, and it will really open your eyes.
