Welcome to the Middle East report. Each week we connect you to the people, places, and the land of Israel, and we bring you the truth of what's happening in that region of the world. There's a lot of deception happening, a lot of lies from social media and from the news media. That's why we're here.
That's why the Middle East Report is here: to connect you to the truth of what's happening, all through a biblical perspective. Before I get to today's guest on this edition of the Middle East Report, I wanted to tell you about a very special event that's happening in Nashville, Tennessee on September eleventh and twelfth. It's called Gather the Nations. It's happening during the Feast of Trumpets.
And a lot of, Joshua, Aaron, Joshua Aaron is an incredible songwriter and vocalist, and he actually has lived in Israel for many, many years. He's actually back in the United States. He travels all over the world sharing his music ministry. But this is something that he felt the Lord wanted him to do.
And for nearly four years, they've gathered believers from around the world in Dallas, Orlando, Jerusalem, and most recently in Zurich, Switzerland. Well, the next Gather the Nations is coming up in Nashville, Tennessee. Each year has been powerful. It's been a beautiful time with other believers from around the world.
It is an opportunity for you to come and to gather with the nations. You're going to hear beautiful music. You're going to hear a celebration of the Jewish people and the land of Israel. You're going to be joined by musicians like Aaron Shust and Joshua Aaron and many, many others.
A lot of great speakers. There's even some incredible sessions that are going to be held, some teaching and educational sessions that will be held during Gather the Nations and Gather the Nations will be held in Nashville, Tennessee at Michael W. Smith's, the venue Rocketown in Nashville, Tennessee. I've been in that venue a few times.
It's absolutely beautiful—a beautiful space right there in the heart of Music City in Nashville, Tennessee. And I think you are going to be so blessed. If you want to find out more about this. It's really easy to get more details.
GatherTheNations.org. That's GatherTheNations.org. You can get more information about this very special event that's happening September eleventh and twelfth here this fall. It's going to be a wonderful gathering.
I encourage you to consider getting that on your calendar. And again, if you want to find out more, GatherTheNations.org. Hey, thanks for listening to the Middle East report. And now our special guest, Pesach Wolicki.
My dear friend is joining me here on American Family Radio on the Middle East report on Pesach. It's always good to get up with you. You and I have known each other for a long, long time. And I love what you do.
You live in the land of Israel. You work for an organization called Israel 365 Action. And maybe I'll have you tell me a little bit about that organization. You have your, hands on what's happening there in the Middle East when it comes to current events, all the political stuff that's happening there in the land of Israel as well.
And you are a guy who is definitely in touch. you put out these videos every single week on what's happening there, and you really break it down for everybody to understand. You're a rabbi. I didn't mention that, did I?
JOHN RILEY
You're a rabbi. I didn't mention that, did I?
PESACH WOLICKI
I am indeed, and I always love getting together with you.
JOHN RILEY
So hey, before we get into, what's happening there in the Middle East right now, because I think that's where we want to focus. Tell us about Israel 365 Action, what you guys do.
PESACH WOLICKI
Israel 365 Action is part of the Israel 365 family, as it were. Israel 365 has as its mission connecting Jews and Christians and connecting Jews and Christians through support for the land of Israel, the people of Israel. We have a website, Israel365News.com. And there's also a Bible study site where Christians who are interested in a Jewish perspective can, can study.
But Israel 365 Action was launched right after October 7 to be exactly what it sounds like. Action. And it's the advocacy arm of Israel 365. And that's where we empower our audience.
We empower those who are connected to Israel. 365 action. We'd like to think of it as a movement. Empower them with information to fight the information war, because one of the greatest challenges that the nation of Israel has, and really all Bible believing people have, is that the the information war against Israel has not gone as well as the military war has gone.
And Israel's been fighting this. And we know that there's a lot of lies out there. Israel 365 Action equips people with information, with arguments to defend Israel, but also keeps our our people abreast of what's going on politically and ways that we can get involved and the ways that we can move the ball forward and, and push different initiatives. For example, when there was a lot of talk towards the at the very end of the Biden administration, there were really talking about this whole two state solution thing and about how after Gaza, we need to create a Palestinian state.
And we launched a campaign called Keep God's Land, where we brought together hundreds of leading Christian political and public figures and Jewish leadership, and we formed a coalition. We had a big event in Washington, D.C., with elected officials to raise awareness about the centrality of Judea and Samaria. And we also educate Christians about the centrality of Judea and Samaria. A lot of Christians who are pro-Israel, they're, they're pro-Israel.
They wave the Israeli flag. They hear about a place called the West Bank, which is a nonsense term. It's actually an anti-Semitic term that was invented by the Jordanians in the 1950s to take away the Jewish character of Judea and Samaria. A lot of Christians don't know that about 75 to 80 percent of all the locations mentioned in the Bible are in Judea and Samaria.
So we decided to advocate and and educate both elected officials and Christian leadership about the importance of Judea and Samaria. That's an example. So is 365 action is a little bit more political. And I'll I'll say this, John, you mentioned in the intro to me in the middle after talking about everything I do and the political commentary and all this, you said, oh, yeah, and you're a rabbi.
I want to put this out there. You hear from a lot of pastors and a lot of rabbis that we have to separate faith and politics. And I say, absolutely not. If you separate faith and politics, you either don't take your faith that seriously or you don't take your politics that seriously, because politics is about how we order society, how we run the world.
And you know what? Faith is about how we order society and how we run the world. So anyone who who tells you, you hear a pastor say, I don't want to talk about politics from the pulpit. I don't want to mix politics and faith.
That's a coward. Politics and faith are two different aspects of the same thing. One is the implementation of the other, and therefore we go in the opposite direction. We specifically understand, especially when you're talking about Israel and things that relate to Israel politics. the Bible is full of politics.
Joseph was involved in politics. Moses was involved in politics. Abraham was involved in politics. Was King David not involved in politics?
Read the Bible. So that's what Israel 365 Action has a spiritual core to it. But we're very much activating and educating our audience to be involved on Israel's behalf. Rabbi Pesach Wolicki, joining us here on the Middle East report.
And a dear friend, he has done so much to bridge between Jew and Christian, as has Israel 365. And find out more about what they're doing. Israel365Action.com. Israel365Action.com.
Go to the website. You can find out more. Pesach. There's so many things that we can talk about because you're so knowledgeable on so many different things, on what's happening there in the land of Israel politically.
And of course, with the wars that you guys have been fighting, I want to focus in on Gaza right now. That might be a little bit, out of the view of a lot of people because, we talk a lot about Iran, but I'm really confused right now about what's happening in Gaza. I'll be honest with you. we got this board of peace. We have this committee, we got that committee.
Of course, Israel is still in like 53 percent of Gaza, which I think they should take all of Gaza. But that's a whole other program. So we have that. And then you've got these Hamas terrorists who are supposed to disarm because we're supposed to be on this, number two, part of this plan.
And they're not. There's still three hundred miles of tunnels or more underneath Gaza. They're not disarming. They're jumping out of the tunnels and still attacking, the Israeli soldiers.
What in the world is going on? And then I'm going to add this, and I'm going to be quiet here because there's a lot on my heart with what's going on there in Gaza. You have these troops that are coming into Israel because you have got eight, nine thousand troops from Indonesia that are going to be on your soil in Gaza and the potential of other countries coming to Gaza. You got Turkey, which is not a very friendly country toward Israel.
They house Hamas terrorists. They say terrible things about Israel. The leader there. You have all this going on, you guys, if this is allowed to happen, you're going to have the UN troops basically on your land there in Israel.
It's crazy. I don't know what's going on.
PESACH WOLICKI
John, if you're confused about what's going on in Gaza, what that actually means is that you understand the situation perfectly. You understand the situation perfectly, because anyone who would not be confused about what's going on in Gaza would mean that they are blinding themselves, either willfully or not to the reality there. I don't believe that in the history of everything I've ever seen in my life, there has ever been a greater disconnect, a greater gap between what is happening at the diplomatic level and what is actually happening on the ground. I don't think there's ever been a greater disconnect, this opening meeting of the Board of Peace with Jared Kushner, giving this speech about giving a better life to the Gazans.
And then this video they showed, which made it made it look like they're going to build Boca Raton. with, with beautiful gated communities and, and elevated subways and, and industry. It is complete fantasy. Let's understand the reality here, John. And again, your confusion means that you actually understand this international stabilization force that you're talking about is never going to enter Gaza.
Mark my words, it will never enter Gaza for a very simple reason. Hamas is not disarming. Not only are they not on the road to disarming, there is no game plan to disarm them. When the Trump twenty-point plan for Gaza was first announced, I immediately put out a video and I wrote about this in The Jerusalem Post.
I'm a columnist for The Jerusalem Post. I wrote about it there, and you watch my videos and we talk. And, I've been saying this repeatedly, The biggest hole in the plan is that it talks about the disarming of Hamas, both as a prerequisite for the whole rest of the plan to to be carried out, which it obviously is. No one's going to invest a cent.
There will be no rehabilitation of Gaza, no rebuilding of Gaza, no new civil life in Gaza. So long as Hamas is not disarmed and is not dislodged from being in control. But the problem with the plan is, and it says that in the plan right at the beginning, the problem with the plan is that as you read the plan, if you read it carefully, and at this point, I think I almost know it by heart. If you read the plan carefully, you see that it speaks about the disarming of Hamas as something that will happen.
Hamas will be disarmed. It says time out. How? Now the Hamas spokespeople have been saying repeatedly from the day the twenty-point plan was announced, and from the day it was signed.
They have been saying repeatedly that they've never agreed to disarm and that they don't plan to do so. President Trump insists that they did agree to me. What that means I don't think President Trump is lying. I think what that means is either either the Qataris and the Turks, speaking on behalf of Hamas, told President Trump, don't worry, they've agreed or they actually said they they agreed and they lied, I don't know, but Hamas has been insisting, both in English and in Arabic.
And that's significant because very often Muslim political figures will say one thing in the English language media and another thing in the Arabic language media, and relying on the fact that that Westerners do not pay attention to what is said in Arabic, which is a huge mistake, by the way. But they've been insisting they're not going to disarm. The twenty-point plan offers no solution. So, in the early days after the after the plan was announced, Maria Bartiromo on Fox asked President Trump, who's going to disarm Hamas?
And President Trump said, well, maybe the Israelis will do it. And then and then Secretary of State Rubio was in Israel a week later, and an Israeli reporter asked him, would America support Israel going in to disarm Hamas? And he said, no, because if Israel goes in to disarm Hamas, that means a resumption of the fighting. And that means there's no more cease fire.
And that means the whole plan fell apart. And then Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff were on sixty minutes, and they were asked about who's going to disarm Hamas, and they said the international stabilization force is going to disarm them. But the twenty-point plan says the international stabilization force comes in after the disarming of Hamas. And a couple days after that sixty minutes interview, King Abdullah of Jordan, who according to the plan is supposed to oversee the International stabilization force, was interviewed by the BBC and he was asked if the international stabilization force is going to disarm Hamas.
And he said, absolutely not. Now, these people are all right and they're all wrong because the plan doesn't say who's going to do it. So what do we have? What's the situation right now?
I said before, John, that there's I've never seen a greater disconnect between what's going on diplomatically and on the ground. Here's the situation on the ground. Israel controls 53 percent of the Gaza Strip. Behind that line, meaning on the Israeli side of that internal perimeter that Israel controls is is almost none of the population.
A very small amount of the population is on the Israeli side. The vast majority of Gazans are on the other side of that perimeter, which where Hamas is in full, full control, they've not been dislodged at all. They have weapons now. They haven't been able to build up their weapons.
So we shouldn't think that they're rearming or getting more weapons. That hasn't happened, but they are getting much, much stronger and they're rebuilding whatever they can rebuild that they can smuggle in. There's too much oversight right now into what goes in. So they can't actually bring in real weapons.
They can bring in building materials, they can bring in fuel, they can bring in things that they can use militarily, but not like weapons. But nevertheless, there are, I believe, 600 truckloads of humanitarian aid that are going into the Gaza Strip every single day, right into Hamas's hands. And that means that all of the food and all of the necessities that are needed by the people of Gaza, the only address for them to get them is from Hamas, and that means that Hamas is in full governing control of the Gaza Strip and making millions of dollars a day selling food and selling supplies to all the people of Gaza, not only selling, also deciding who gets it and who doesn't. it's like a big mafia situation. And therefore Hamas is control of the population in Gaza is only getting stronger by the day, and they're refusing to disarm and they won't disarm.
And they're killing anyone whose arrival, and they're not going to cooperate with the Americans. So here you have this board of peace with Jared Kushner and all these world leaders talking about how how we're going to the Hamas Gaza is going to have industry, and we're going to build homes and a new civil life and an education system that doesn't teach hate anymore and all these things. And you have a population. And by the way, here's an amazing thing, polling done on the people of Gaza by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, which is actually a very reliable polling agency based in Ramallah, and generally understood that their polling is pretty reliable, especially because they often put out polling that seems to be harmful to the Palestinians.
It's actually quite well respected. They've been polling the Palestinians every four or five months since October 7. They've done six polls since October 7. The last poll they did was in late October.
It was just after the twenty-point plan was announced. And in that poll, a lot of the questions they ask are the same questions in every poll. So which is great because then you can track the change. Support for Hamas has gone up since October 7.
Hamas's approval rating, according to the last poll, stood at 60 percent. No other group, no other political party or leader was over 35 percent. Hamas is more popular. I want this to sink in to your listeners.
Hamas is more popular now than on October than before October 7. These are people who are living in tents. They're being moved from place to place. Their houses are being destroyed.
They're they're supposedly being genocided. And one of the questions in the poll was, listen to this question they asked them. They asked the people of Gaza who are supposedly suffering and of course, should want a better life for themselves, as Jared Kushner tells us, what we call a better life, what Westerners who believe that material life is the goal of all human beings. We think that they want a better material life.
Here's the question they were asked. Fasten your seat belt, John. Are you in favor of Hamas laying down its weapons to end the war? Simple question.
If it will mean the end to the war. I think that was the exact wording. Think about the question now, before we give the answer. Are you in favor of Hamas laying down its weapons?
If it will mean that there's no more war? You would think that the answer that like, I don't know, one hundred percent of people. these people think of how they're living. Their homes have been destroyed. They've been displaced.
Sixty nine percent said, no, the people of Gaza. This isn't Hamas. When American diplomats and Western diplomats say that Hamas doesn't represent the people, or when they say that we need to liberate the people of Gaza from Hamas and give them a, so-called, better life. What are you talking about?
Westerners think, and this is right and left Republican, Democrat. It's the same mistake over and over again. Westerners believe that a prosperous life, what we consider a better quality of life, is something that is universal and that all people want, and that all people prioritize over their religious ideology. And even when coming from the Muslim world, they tell us plainly that that's not true.
It's so embedded in the mindset of Westerners that they don't really believe it. They actually think that if you give people color TVs and air conditioning and a decent job, that they will not be jihadists, and it's simply untrue. And this problem is also part of the reason why Islam is taking over the West, because Westerners think that Muslims who come to the West and have a better life will moderate their Islam because they have a better economic life and one has nothing to do with the other. It's suicidal.
So what you have now in Gaza, this is a long way of answering your question about your confusion in Gaza. Is that the reality on the ground is this technocratic body and this international stabilization force, and Indonesian soldiers and all these technocrats. They're not going into Gaza. They're sitting in Egypt.
No one's come in. No one's going to because Hamas isn't disarmed. There's not going to be any rebuilding or reconstruction as long as Hamas is there. The only way to dislodge Hamas is for Israel to go in and essentially resume the war, which will mean there's no more cease fire in Israel's conquering Gaza.
Hamas has to be brought to its knees and destroyed. And here's what's going to happen. The Turks and the Qataris are going to try to pull the wool over Israel's eyes, and it won't work. It might have worked back in the Oslo days, but it won't work.
What they're going to try to do is go in there and have some sort of performative, theatrical laying down of weapons, where Hamas gives a bunch of AK-47 seconds on camera to a bunch of Turks or Qataris or whoever else they have, or Palestinian Authority people, and they'll say, look, we've disarmed, but Israel's not going to be hoodwinked. Okay? Hamas has to be removed and has to be disarmed, and Israel's not going anywhere. There will be no withdrawal of Israeli troops until that happens.
And until any of that happens, there's not going. No, no foreign troops are going to move in because they don't want to disarm Hamas and they're not going to fight with Hamas. This whole Board of Peace thing with all of this foreign investment and all these plans is all there's an Israeli expression. It's all words in the air.
It's hot air. It's performative. It has nothing to do with the reality on the ground.
JOHN RILEY
As much as I love President Donald Trump and what he's done for Israel, I have to tell you, like a lot of people that I speak to Christians who follow, what's happening in Israel very, very concerned about what President Donald Trump is doing with this. I know his heart is right. he wants peace. We know that. But my.
My great fear is he really does not understand the dynamics. He wants love in the room. That's what President Trump wants. And that's great.
But you're not going to have love in the room from Hamas, who is sworn to, destroy every Jew in Israel to take over the entire country. And then you're not going to have love in the room when you have a people, as you said, that sixty nine, 70 percent of the the Gazans support Hamas and want them to remain in existence. So it's it's it's still very, very confusing. I was watching, like I said, I was watching this whole Board of Peace thing and they showed this video of what the future of Gaza could look like.
In the second half of the video, it started talking about Rafah and how this new Rafah is going to be this model city. And so I said to myself, you know what? And here's the attitude of Israelis. Israelis aren't upset about this.
They're like the attitude of Israelis is, hey, you want to give this a shot? You want to spend your money, you want to you want to try to create this, utopia, this new Gaza de-radicalized. Go for it. We know it's not going to work.
Go for it. Rafah.
PESACH WOLICKI
When you hear Rafah, Rafah is on the Israeli side of the yellow line. So what they're doing now, here's what I believe they're trying to do. If we look through the fog, they're trying to start the reconstruction of a of a so-called, better life for Gazans with civil services and a moderate education system. And without Hamas control, they're trying to start that by constructing housing and offering all of that on the Israeli side.
The problem is there's no one there. So when they build this housing complex of temporary housing that they're building, and they start offering schooling and medical services and, and job opportunities run by these technocrats with all the foreign investment on the Israeli side of the yellow line, Their hope is that Gazans will voluntarily cross over from the Hamas side to that side to have this better life. Let's say fifty thousand or one hundred thousand of them do what they're hoping for is to have more and more numbers of people coming over. Now, theoretically, if all Gazans voluntarily moved to the Israeli side, where things are under American and international control and the education system is not radicalized, and they're no longer under the thumb of Hamas or under the authority of Hamas, theoretically.
Yeah. Great. Because in order to remove Hamas, Hamas is not is a military organization and a governing organization. We need them to lose their control of the of of the people of Gaza.
So hypothetically, if that actually happens, lovely. But they already tried that once. You see earlier before this cease fire deal, when the when the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation was created, which was an American run initiative to, to offer humanitarian aid not coming from Hamas in areas controlled by Israel. The goal was to have the people of Gaza no longer dependent on Hamas, but they went right back to Hamas.
These people are supporters of Hamas. So again, just to sum up, John, the disconnect between the reality on the ground and what is being said diplomatically has never been greater. I hope you'll follow Rabbi Pesach. Wolicki.
You can do that. Israel365.com. His videos are there. It's on YouTube.
Shoulder to shoulder podcast. You can Google that. You can look for his podcast and subscribe to that as well. So check that out.
Israel 365 Action Rabbi Pesach Wolicki. He's got his hand and pulse on what's happening there in Israel. He loves the Christian evangelical community. he has been a huge bridge between Jew and Christians and the evangelical community for years and years and years. I've just got a few minutes left, and I really want to give you the opportunity to just speak to the audience that's listening right now that, they love the Jewish people.
They love the land of Israel. We're hearing about all this hard stuff. We know all the things that you guys have gone through and they're, they're thinking, well, I don't know what to do. I have no clue what I can do.
I'm so sorry that you guys are going through all of this. Speak to those that really love you guys. Love Israel, love the Bible in the land of Israel in terms of what to do because of the all the propaganda and all the lies and the way, the what I call the information war because of the way it is, you cannot rely on truth about Israel coming to you organically through your social media feed or through flipping channels on TV. You need to pursue it.
You need to seek out accurate information about the Middle East. And besides listening to John Riley on Middle East Report on American Family Radio, what you need to do is, is actually sign up for our newsletter. So when you go to Israel365.com, there will be a pop up right there on the front page. There will be a right on the front screen to put your name in and start getting the Israel 365 Action emails, and that will.
That will keep you informed. It'll also give you action items of little things you could do, an email you can send, or just talking points that you could have in your back pockets that when you're waiting in line at Starbucks and talking to someone, you know what to say. Okay, so that's one thing you can do. Another thing you can do is obviously to pray pray into what's going on in Israel.
But most importantly, strengthen your own family, your own faith life, and your community, because Israel's battle is the front line of the battle for biblical, biblically based civilization. People use the term Judeo-Christian. I prefer biblical because Judeo-Christian still is a hyphenated term that puts us as two separate entities. Biblical is what we truly share.
We're biblical people and the Red Green Alliance, the secular left and the Islamists. They both hate the Bible and those who believe it. So from their perspective, we're one group. And strengthen your own your own family's commitment to biblical faith.
Have a Sabbath. Take a day, a week where you devote it to God the way Charlie Kirk did. He turned his phone off. And strengthen your own biblical faith and the faith of those around you.
And that will make ultimately that that is the road to victory that we all seek.
JOHN RILEY
That's great advice, and I want to encourage you to do those things as you're listening. And Israel 365 Action. And the entire team does that. They help you to do that.
So check them out. Israel365Action.com. Rabbi Pesach Wolicki, thank you for joining us today here in the Middle East Report. I appreciate everything you do.
God bless you, John. Thanks for listening to the Middle East report. You can get a podcast of the show wherever you get your podcasts. We are on all the major podcast platforms out there.
Just search for the Middle East report and you'll find me. Or you can go to afr.net and you can reach out to me as well. Send me an email, [email protected]. That's the Middle East reports.
I'm John Reilly.
Welcome to the Middle East report. Each week we connect you to the people, places, and the land of Israel, and we bring you the truth of what's happening in that region of the world. There's a lot of deception happening, a lot of lies from social media and from the news media. That's why we're here.
That's why the Middle East Report is here: to connect you to the truth of what's happening, all through a biblical perspective. Before I get to today's guest on this edition of the Middle East Report, I wanted to tell you about a very special event that's happening in Nashville, Tennessee on September eleventh and twelfth. It's called Gather the Nations. It's happening during the Feast of Trumpets.
And a lot of, Joshua, Aaron, Joshua Aaron is an incredible songwriter and vocalist, and he actually has lived in Israel for many, many years. He's actually back in the United States. He travels all over the world sharing his music ministry. But this is something that he felt the Lord wanted him to do.
And for nearly four years, they've gathered believers from around the world in Dallas, Orlando, Jerusalem, and most recently in Zurich, Switzerland. Well, the next Gather the Nations is coming up in Nashville, Tennessee. Each year has been powerful. It's been a beautiful time with other believers from around the world.
It is an opportunity for you to come and to gather with the nations. You're going to hear beautiful music. You're going to hear a celebration of the Jewish people and the land of Israel. You're going to be joined by musicians like Aaron Shust and Joshua Aaron and many, many others.
A lot of great speakers. There's even some incredible sessions that are going to be held, some teaching and educational sessions that will be held during Gather the Nations and Gather the Nations will be held in Nashville, Tennessee at Michael W. Smith's, the venue Rocketown in Nashville, Tennessee. I've been in that venue a few times.
It's absolutely beautiful—a beautiful space right there in the heart of Music City in Nashville, Tennessee. And I think you are going to be so blessed. If you want to find out more about this. It's really easy to get more details.
GatherTheNations.org. That's GatherTheNations.org. You can get more information about this very special event that's happening September eleventh and twelfth here this fall. It's going to be a wonderful gathering.
I encourage you to consider getting that on your calendar. And again, if you want to find out more, GatherTheNations.org. Hey, thanks for listening to the Middle East report. And now our special guest, Pesach Wolicki.
My dear friend is joining me here on American Family Radio on the Middle East report on Pesach. It's always good to get up with you. You and I have known each other for a long, long time. And I love what you do.
You live in the land of Israel. You work for an organization called Israel 365 Action. And maybe I'll have you tell me a little bit about that organization. You have your, hands on what's happening there in the Middle East when it comes to current events, all the political stuff that's happening there in the land of Israel as well.
And you are a guy who is definitely in touch. you put out these videos every single week on what's happening there, and you really break it down for everybody to understand. You're a rabbi. I didn't mention that, did I?
JOHN RILEY
You're a rabbi. I didn't mention that, did I?
PESACH WOLICKI
I am indeed, and I always love getting together with you.
JOHN RILEY
So hey, before we get into, what's happening there in the Middle East right now, because I think that's where we want to focus. Tell us about Israel 365 Action, what you guys do.
PESACH WOLICKI
Israel 365 Action is part of the Israel 365 family, as it were. Israel 365 has as its mission connecting Jews and Christians and connecting Jews and Christians through support for the land of Israel, the people of Israel. We have a website, Israel365News.com. And there's also a Bible study site where Christians who are interested in a Jewish perspective can, can study.
But Israel 365 Action was launched right after October 7 to be exactly what it sounds like. Action. And it's the advocacy arm of Israel 365. And that's where we empower our audience.
We empower those who are connected to Israel. 365 action. We'd like to think of it as a movement. Empower them with information to fight the information war, because one of the greatest challenges that the nation of Israel has, and really all Bible believing people have, is that the the information war against Israel has not gone as well as the military war has gone.
And Israel's been fighting this. And we know that there's a lot of lies out there. Israel 365 Action equips people with information, with arguments to defend Israel, but also keeps our our people abreast of what's going on politically and ways that we can get involved and the ways that we can move the ball forward and, and push different initiatives. For example, when there was a lot of talk towards the at the very end of the Biden administration, there were really talking about this whole two state solution thing and about how after Gaza, we need to create a Palestinian state.
And we launched a campaign called Keep God's Land, where we brought together hundreds of leading Christian political and public figures and Jewish leadership, and we formed a coalition. We had a big event in Washington, D.C., with elected officials to raise awareness about the centrality of Judea and Samaria. And we also educate Christians about the centrality of Judea and Samaria. A lot of Christians who are pro-Israel, they're, they're pro-Israel.
They wave the Israeli flag. They hear about a place called the West Bank, which is a nonsense term. It's actually an anti-Semitic term that was invented by the Jordanians in the 1950s to take away the Jewish character of Judea and Samaria. A lot of Christians don't know that about 75 to 80 percent of all the locations mentioned in the Bible are in Judea and Samaria.
So we decided to advocate and and educate both elected officials and Christian leadership about the importance of Judea and Samaria. That's an example. So is 365 action is a little bit more political. And I'll I'll say this, John, you mentioned in the intro to me in the middle after talking about everything I do and the political commentary and all this, you said, oh, yeah, and you're a rabbi.
I want to put this out there. You hear from a lot of pastors and a lot of rabbis that we have to separate faith and politics. And I say, absolutely not. If you separate faith and politics, you either don't take your faith that seriously or you don't take your politics that seriously, because politics is about how we order society, how we run the world.
And you know what? Faith is about how we order society and how we run the world. So anyone who who tells you, you hear a pastor say, I don't want to talk about politics from the pulpit. I don't want to mix politics and faith.
That's a coward. Politics and faith are two different aspects of the same thing. One is the implementation of the other, and therefore we go in the opposite direction. We specifically understand, especially when you're talking about Israel and things that relate to Israel politics. the Bible is full of politics.
Joseph was involved in politics. Moses was involved in politics. Abraham was involved in politics. Was King David not involved in politics?
Read the Bible. So that's what Israel 365 Action has a spiritual core to it. But we're very much activating and educating our audience to be involved on Israel's behalf. Rabbi Pesach Wolicki, joining us here on the Middle East report.
And a dear friend, he has done so much to bridge between Jew and Christian, as has Israel 365. And find out more about what they're doing. Israel365Action.com. Israel365Action.com.
Go to the website. You can find out more. Pesach. There's so many things that we can talk about because you're so knowledgeable on so many different things, on what's happening there in the land of Israel politically.
And of course, with the wars that you guys have been fighting, I want to focus in on Gaza right now. That might be a little bit, out of the view of a lot of people because, we talk a lot about Iran, but I'm really confused right now about what's happening in Gaza. I'll be honest with you. we got this board of peace. We have this committee, we got that committee.
Of course, Israel is still in like 53 percent of Gaza, which I think they should take all of Gaza. But that's a whole other program. So we have that. And then you've got these Hamas terrorists who are supposed to disarm because we're supposed to be on this, number two, part of this plan.
And they're not. There's still three hundred miles of tunnels or more underneath Gaza. They're not disarming. They're jumping out of the tunnels and still attacking, the Israeli soldiers.
What in the world is going on? And then I'm going to add this, and I'm going to be quiet here because there's a lot on my heart with what's going on there in Gaza. You have these troops that are coming into Israel because you have got eight, nine thousand troops from Indonesia that are going to be on your soil in Gaza and the potential of other countries coming to Gaza. You got Turkey, which is not a very friendly country toward Israel.
They house Hamas terrorists. They say terrible things about Israel. The leader there. You have all this going on, you guys, if this is allowed to happen, you're going to have the UN troops basically on your land there in Israel.
It's crazy. I don't know what's going on.
PESACH WOLICKI
John, if you're confused about what's going on in Gaza, what that actually means is that you understand the situation perfectly. You understand the situation perfectly, because anyone who would not be confused about what's going on in Gaza would mean that they are blinding themselves, either willfully or not to the reality there. I don't believe that in the history of everything I've ever seen in my life, there has ever been a greater disconnect, a greater gap between what is happening at the diplomatic level and what is actually happening on the ground. I don't think there's ever been a greater disconnect, this opening meeting of the Board of Peace with Jared Kushner, giving this speech about giving a better life to the Gazans.
And then this video they showed, which made it made it look like they're going to build Boca Raton. with, with beautiful gated communities and, and elevated subways and, and industry. It is complete fantasy. Let's understand the reality here, John. And again, your confusion means that you actually understand this international stabilization force that you're talking about is never going to enter Gaza.
Mark my words, it will never enter Gaza for a very simple reason. Hamas is not disarming. Not only are they not on the road to disarming, there is no game plan to disarm them. When the Trump twenty-point plan for Gaza was first announced, I immediately put out a video and I wrote about this in The Jerusalem Post.
I'm a columnist for The Jerusalem Post. I wrote about it there, and you watch my videos and we talk. And, I've been saying this repeatedly, The biggest hole in the plan is that it talks about the disarming of Hamas, both as a prerequisite for the whole rest of the plan to to be carried out, which it obviously is. No one's going to invest a cent.
There will be no rehabilitation of Gaza, no rebuilding of Gaza, no new civil life in Gaza. So long as Hamas is not disarmed and is not dislodged from being in control. But the problem with the plan is, and it says that in the plan right at the beginning, the problem with the plan is that as you read the plan, if you read it carefully, and at this point, I think I almost know it by heart. If you read the plan carefully, you see that it speaks about the disarming of Hamas as something that will happen.
Hamas will be disarmed. It says time out. How? Now the Hamas spokespeople have been saying repeatedly from the day the twenty-point plan was announced, and from the day it was signed.
They have been saying repeatedly that they've never agreed to disarm and that they don't plan to do so. President Trump insists that they did agree to me. What that means I don't think President Trump is lying. I think what that means is either either the Qataris and the Turks, speaking on behalf of Hamas, told President Trump, don't worry, they've agreed or they actually said they they agreed and they lied, I don't know, but Hamas has been insisting, both in English and in Arabic.
And that's significant because very often Muslim political figures will say one thing in the English language media and another thing in the Arabic language media, and relying on the fact that that Westerners do not pay attention to what is said in Arabic, which is a huge mistake, by the way. But they've been insisting they're not going to disarm. The twenty-point plan offers no solution. So, in the early days after the after the plan was announced, Maria Bartiromo on Fox asked President Trump, who's going to disarm Hamas?
And President Trump said, well, maybe the Israelis will do it. And then and then Secretary of State Rubio was in Israel a week later, and an Israeli reporter asked him, would America support Israel going in to disarm Hamas? And he said, no, because if Israel goes in to disarm Hamas, that means a resumption of the fighting. And that means there's no more cease fire.
And that means the whole plan fell apart. And then Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff were on sixty minutes, and they were asked about who's going to disarm Hamas, and they said the international stabilization force is going to disarm them. But the twenty-point plan says the international stabilization force comes in after the disarming of Hamas. And a couple days after that sixty minutes interview, King Abdullah of Jordan, who according to the plan is supposed to oversee the International stabilization force, was interviewed by the BBC and he was asked if the international stabilization force is going to disarm Hamas.
And he said, absolutely not. Now, these people are all right and they're all wrong because the plan doesn't say who's going to do it. So what do we have? What's the situation right now?
I said before, John, that there's I've never seen a greater disconnect between what's going on diplomatically and on the ground. Here's the situation on the ground. Israel controls 53 percent of the Gaza Strip. Behind that line, meaning on the Israeli side of that internal perimeter that Israel controls is is almost none of the population.
A very small amount of the population is on the Israeli side. The vast majority of Gazans are on the other side of that perimeter, which where Hamas is in full, full control, they've not been dislodged at all. They have weapons now. They haven't been able to build up their weapons.
So we shouldn't think that they're rearming or getting more weapons. That hasn't happened, but they are getting much, much stronger and they're rebuilding whatever they can rebuild that they can smuggle in. There's too much oversight right now into what goes in. So they can't actually bring in real weapons.
They can bring in building materials, they can bring in fuel, they can bring in things that they can use militarily, but not like weapons. But nevertheless, there are, I believe, 600 truckloads of humanitarian aid that are going into the Gaza Strip every single day, right into Hamas's hands. And that means that all of the food and all of the necessities that are needed by the people of Gaza, the only address for them to get them is from Hamas, and that means that Hamas is in full governing control of the Gaza Strip and making millions of dollars a day selling food and selling supplies to all the people of Gaza, not only selling, also deciding who gets it and who doesn't. it's like a big mafia situation. And therefore Hamas is control of the population in Gaza is only getting stronger by the day, and they're refusing to disarm and they won't disarm.
And they're killing anyone whose arrival, and they're not going to cooperate with the Americans. So here you have this board of peace with Jared Kushner and all these world leaders talking about how how we're going to the Hamas Gaza is going to have industry, and we're going to build homes and a new civil life and an education system that doesn't teach hate anymore and all these things. And you have a population. And by the way, here's an amazing thing, polling done on the people of Gaza by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, which is actually a very reliable polling agency based in Ramallah, and generally understood that their polling is pretty reliable, especially because they often put out polling that seems to be harmful to the Palestinians.
It's actually quite well respected. They've been polling the Palestinians every four or five months since October 7. They've done six polls since October 7. The last poll they did was in late October.
It was just after the twenty-point plan was announced. And in that poll, a lot of the questions they ask are the same questions in every poll. So which is great because then you can track the change. Support for Hamas has gone up since October 7.
Hamas's approval rating, according to the last poll, stood at 60 percent. No other group, no other political party or leader was over 35 percent. Hamas is more popular. I want this to sink in to your listeners.
Hamas is more popular now than on October than before October 7. These are people who are living in tents. They're being moved from place to place. Their houses are being destroyed.
They're they're supposedly being genocided. And one of the questions in the poll was, listen to this question they asked them. They asked the people of Gaza who are supposedly suffering and of course, should want a better life for themselves, as Jared Kushner tells us, what we call a better life, what Westerners who believe that material life is the goal of all human beings. We think that they want a better material life.
Here's the question they were asked. Fasten your seat belt, John. Are you in favor of Hamas laying down its weapons to end the war? Simple question.
If it will mean the end to the war. I think that was the exact wording. Think about the question now, before we give the answer. Are you in favor of Hamas laying down its weapons?
If it will mean that there's no more war? You would think that the answer that like, I don't know, one hundred percent of people. these people think of how they're living. Their homes have been destroyed. They've been displaced.
Sixty nine percent said, no, the people of Gaza. This isn't Hamas. When American diplomats and Western diplomats say that Hamas doesn't represent the people, or when they say that we need to liberate the people of Gaza from Hamas and give them a, so-called, better life. What are you talking about?
Westerners think, and this is right and left Republican, Democrat. It's the same mistake over and over again. Westerners believe that a prosperous life, what we consider a better quality of life, is something that is universal and that all people want, and that all people prioritize over their religious ideology. And even when coming from the Muslim world, they tell us plainly that that's not true.
It's so embedded in the mindset of Westerners that they don't really believe it. They actually think that if you give people color TVs and air conditioning and a decent job, that they will not be jihadists, and it's simply untrue. And this problem is also part of the reason why Islam is taking over the West, because Westerners think that Muslims who come to the West and have a better life will moderate their Islam because they have a better economic life and one has nothing to do with the other. It's suicidal.
So what you have now in Gaza, this is a long way of answering your question about your confusion in Gaza. Is that the reality on the ground is this technocratic body and this international stabilization force, and Indonesian soldiers and all these technocrats. They're not going into Gaza. They're sitting in Egypt.
No one's come in. No one's going to because Hamas isn't disarmed. There's not going to be any rebuilding or reconstruction as long as Hamas is there. The only way to dislodge Hamas is for Israel to go in and essentially resume the war, which will mean there's no more cease fire in Israel's conquering Gaza.
Hamas has to be brought to its knees and destroyed. And here's what's going to happen. The Turks and the Qataris are going to try to pull the wool over Israel's eyes, and it won't work. It might have worked back in the Oslo days, but it won't work.
What they're going to try to do is go in there and have some sort of performative, theatrical laying down of weapons, where Hamas gives a bunch of AK-47 seconds on camera to a bunch of Turks or Qataris or whoever else they have, or Palestinian Authority people, and they'll say, look, we've disarmed, but Israel's not going to be hoodwinked. Okay? Hamas has to be removed and has to be disarmed, and Israel's not going anywhere. There will be no withdrawal of Israeli troops until that happens.
And until any of that happens, there's not going. No, no foreign troops are going to move in because they don't want to disarm Hamas and they're not going to fight with Hamas. This whole Board of Peace thing with all of this foreign investment and all these plans is all there's an Israeli expression. It's all words in the air.
It's hot air. It's performative. It has nothing to do with the reality on the ground.
JOHN RILEY
As much as I love President Donald Trump and what he's done for Israel, I have to tell you, like a lot of people that I speak to Christians who follow, what's happening in Israel very, very concerned about what President Donald Trump is doing with this. I know his heart is right. he wants peace. We know that. But my.
My great fear is he really does not understand the dynamics. He wants love in the room. That's what President Trump wants. And that's great.
But you're not going to have love in the room from Hamas, who is sworn to, destroy every Jew in Israel to take over the entire country. And then you're not going to have love in the room when you have a people, as you said, that sixty nine, 70 percent of the the Gazans support Hamas and want them to remain in existence. So it's it's it's still very, very confusing. I was watching, like I said, I was watching this whole Board of Peace thing and they showed this video of what the future of Gaza could look like.
In the second half of the video, it started talking about Rafah and how this new Rafah is going to be this model city. And so I said to myself, you know what? And here's the attitude of Israelis. Israelis aren't upset about this.
They're like the attitude of Israelis is, hey, you want to give this a shot? You want to spend your money, you want to you want to try to create this, utopia, this new Gaza de-radicalized. Go for it. We know it's not going to work.
Go for it. Rafah.
PESACH WOLICKI
When you hear Rafah, Rafah is on the Israeli side of the yellow line. So what they're doing now, here's what I believe they're trying to do. If we look through the fog, they're trying to start the reconstruction of a of a so-called, better life for Gazans with civil services and a moderate education system. And without Hamas control, they're trying to start that by constructing housing and offering all of that on the Israeli side.
The problem is there's no one there. So when they build this housing complex of temporary housing that they're building, and they start offering schooling and medical services and, and job opportunities run by these technocrats with all the foreign investment on the Israeli side of the yellow line, Their hope is that Gazans will voluntarily cross over from the Hamas side to that side to have this better life. Let's say fifty thousand or one hundred thousand of them do what they're hoping for is to have more and more numbers of people coming over. Now, theoretically, if all Gazans voluntarily moved to the Israeli side, where things are under American and international control and the education system is not radicalized, and they're no longer under the thumb of Hamas or under the authority of Hamas, theoretically.
Yeah. Great. Because in order to remove Hamas, Hamas is not is a military organization and a governing organization. We need them to lose their control of the of of the people of Gaza.
So hypothetically, if that actually happens, lovely. But they already tried that once. You see earlier before this cease fire deal, when the when the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation was created, which was an American run initiative to, to offer humanitarian aid not coming from Hamas in areas controlled by Israel. The goal was to have the people of Gaza no longer dependent on Hamas, but they went right back to Hamas.
These people are supporters of Hamas. So again, just to sum up, John, the disconnect between the reality on the ground and what is being said diplomatically has never been greater. I hope you'll follow Rabbi Pesach. Wolicki.
You can do that. Israel365.com. His videos are there. It's on YouTube.
Shoulder to shoulder podcast. You can Google that. You can look for his podcast and subscribe to that as well. So check that out.
Israel 365 Action Rabbi Pesach Wolicki. He's got his hand and pulse on what's happening there in Israel. He loves the Christian evangelical community. he has been a huge bridge between Jew and Christians and the evangelical community for years and years and years. I've just got a few minutes left, and I really want to give you the opportunity to just speak to the audience that's listening right now that, they love the Jewish people.
They love the land of Israel. We're hearing about all this hard stuff. We know all the things that you guys have gone through and they're, they're thinking, well, I don't know what to do. I have no clue what I can do.
I'm so sorry that you guys are going through all of this. Speak to those that really love you guys. Love Israel, love the Bible in the land of Israel in terms of what to do because of the all the propaganda and all the lies and the way, the what I call the information war because of the way it is, you cannot rely on truth about Israel coming to you organically through your social media feed or through flipping channels on TV. You need to pursue it.
You need to seek out accurate information about the Middle East. And besides listening to John Riley on Middle East Report on American Family Radio, what you need to do is, is actually sign up for our newsletter. So when you go to Israel365.com, there will be a pop up right there on the front page. There will be a right on the front screen to put your name in and start getting the Israel 365 Action emails, and that will.
That will keep you informed. It'll also give you action items of little things you could do, an email you can send, or just talking points that you could have in your back pockets that when you're waiting in line at Starbucks and talking to someone, you know what to say. Okay, so that's one thing you can do. Another thing you can do is obviously to pray pray into what's going on in Israel.
But most importantly, strengthen your own family, your own faith life, and your community, because Israel's battle is the front line of the battle for biblical, biblically based civilization. People use the term Judeo-Christian. I prefer biblical because Judeo-Christian still is a hyphenated term that puts us as two separate entities. Biblical is what we truly share.
We're biblical people and the Red Green Alliance, the secular left and the Islamists. They both hate the Bible and those who believe it. So from their perspective, we're one group. And strengthen your own your own family's commitment to biblical faith.
Have a Sabbath. Take a day, a week where you devote it to God the way Charlie Kirk did. He turned his phone off. And strengthen your own biblical faith and the faith of those around you.
And that will make ultimately that that is the road to victory that we all seek.
JOHN RILEY
That's great advice, and I want to encourage you to do those things as you're listening. And Israel 365 Action. And the entire team does that. They help you to do that.
So check them out. Israel365Action.com. Rabbi Pesach Wolicki, thank you for joining us today here in the Middle East Report. I appreciate everything you do.
God bless you, John. Thanks for listening to the Middle East report. You can get a podcast of the show wherever you get your podcasts. We are on all the major podcast platforms out there.
Just search for the Middle East report and you'll find me. Or you can go to afr.net and you can reach out to me as well. Send me an email, [email protected]. That's the Middle East reports.
I'm John Reilly.
John Riley speaks with Rabbi Pesach Wolicki of Israel 365 Action about the ongoing war in Gaza, the international plans for Gaza, Hamas, the information war surrounding Israel, and the challenges facing Israel and its supporters. Wolicki also explains how Christians can seek accurate information, pray for Israel, and strengthen their biblical faith and communities.
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