Rick Green: 0:02
Welcome to the intersection of faith and culture. It's WallBuilders. We're taking on the hot topics of the day from a biblical, historical and constitutional perspective. No hotter topic right now, guys, than what's happening in the Middle East with Israel. We're here with David and Tim Barton. David, America's premier historian and our founder at WallBuilders. Tim Barton, national speaker and pastor and president of WallBuilders, and I'm Rick Green, a former Texas legislator. We're going to jump right to it, guys. We got Rabbi Daniel Lapin going to be calling in here in a minute from Israel. We'll get a chance to get an update from him, but obviously very, very ugly. Yet. There's some good that's happening in the midst of all of it, but this is a pivotal moment for the nation of Israel.

David Barton: 0:52
Yeah, it's been something. Certainly the eyes of the world have been on for a good bit and we've been very blessed and that we have good intelligence connections in the American intelligence community as well as the Israeli intelligence community, and so we're getting really good updates, almost live time, I mean pretty quick after they happen. So we do have access to good information. But having someone like Rabbi Lapin on the ground as this is happening, I mean that's, you know, that's his birthright nation, that is who he is and what he's all about.

Tim Barton: 1:22
Well, and as we saw this unfold on Saturday, you know for all of us we were seeing updates on our phone as things were happening and we didn't know the extent of what was going on. And then, as as video started emerging instantly, we started calling some of our friends in Israel. We were messaging them hey, are you okay? What's going on? And already they were trying to process. But they knew something significant, something horrific was happening. They didn't know to what extent or what scale, and it ended up being far more than what most of them expected. It's not unusual that there's something coming out of Gaza, but for it to be on this level, the scale, and then the incursion to come that far into Israel seems so unlikely. And one of our friends kind of on the intelligence side had identified one of the big problems for Israel is that one of our and the reason I bring this up is one of our questions to them is how did Israel come into this intelligence failure? Normally they are so good at knowing when there are terrorists about to try to commit some act of terrorism, when they're going to go try to bomb some school, when something's going to happen. They're usually so good at intelligence. How? How do they miss this? And this is right, I mean, we're not blaming Israel for what happened, but we're assessing. How can we, how can we prevent this from happening again in the future?

David Barton: 2:40
Or it's just uncharacteristic for Israel.

Tim Barton: 2:43
We're so used to them being ahead of it. Very much so, and right, I mean, this is definitely something that is it's a much more appropriate question writes down the road from where we are, right now. The important thing is that Israel take care of business, that they're able to do what they need to do to defend their nation, to rescue the hostages, to stop the bad guys, and so it's a little bit different. But we were just curious, like how did this happen? Again, Israel is usually so good at this, and what he explained to us was that for the last couple of years, hamas has been saying that if we had money, then we could. We could write help, meet needs and provision. Because what you see from so much of the pro-Palestinian movement people that argue there needs to be a two state solution the arguments are that Israel has taken land and resources and money from the Palestinians and if Israel would just give them land, which they did with the Gaza Strip, that it with the West Bank, Israel didn't have to give that away and arguably, we think that's probably mistake in many levels what they did, but nonetheless they said hey, you guys control this area, but Israel, for the last two years, has been giving them money has been giving them resources because they were told that's all you need to do. Even the Biden administration was encouraging hey, just appease, right, just just get along, it's going to be fine. And they thought. Very now they know foolishly that this was what they needed to do to maintain stability, to maintain peace in the region. And what we have now seen over this last week is that Hamas, they're not interested in just having land, having resources, having money. What they are motivated by is killing the Jews, that they want to exterminate the Jews. It's not the first people group that's wanted to do this, but this is, this is becoming evident that this is part of their motivation. And it's not what the narrative that the mainstream media, that colleges and universities are telling their college students, what we are seeing, the graphic videos that Hamas themselves are releasing of what they are doing to individuals, what they're doing to children as they're kidnapping women, the grotesque evil that they are publicly displaying from their own websites, from their own videos they are taking and posting. It is very clear that this is not an oppressed people that's just wanting land and money. This is a very evil group committing incredibly horrific acts of evil.

David Barton: 5:07
You know, there Rudyard Kipling was a famous writer back in the 1800s Great Britain, and he has a number of kind of fables. They're animal stories, kind of like Esop's fables, and one of them dealt with the fact that wild animals are always wild and you can treat them like they're not. It's kind of like saying you know, I've got a pet rattlesnake and as long as I feed this snake it'll never bite me. And you're going to get bit one day. There's no question about it. And that's the way the Palestinians have been. They have a record, a long record of what they're going to do and how they do it and, if not, keeping their word and of being disingenuous and telling you one thing, getting ready to poke you in the eye with a sharp stick. And, I think, Israel the fact that they declared war this time. They have not declared war in 50 years. They've had war on terror, but they have not declared war in 50 years. They declared war this time and I think they intend to eliminate the problem here for a long time to come. I think they want peace for years ahead. Now the question is can they keep Hezbollah and others from jumping in on this? Can they keep it from becoming a regional conflict. But I think Israel right now is tired of that appeasement stuff and we tried it. It didn't work. We're going back to what we know works and that's just absolutely exterminating the enemy. So they have no will to attack at all and I think that's where they'll probably end up.

Rick Green: 6:20
Well, we'll get a direct report from On the Ground from our good friend Rabbi Daniel Lapin. Stay with us, folks, we'll be right back on WallBuilders.

Tim Barton: 6:39
This is Tim Barton from WallBuilders, with another moment from American History. In 1963, the United States Supreme Court decided that voluntary Bible reading could no longer be part of the school day. Founding father Benjamin Rush, known as the father of public schools under the Constitution, pointedly warned that the Bible should be read in schools and preference to all other books. He specifically warned that if America ever ceased promoting biblical principles in schools, then we would waste so much time and money in punishing crimes and take so little pains to prevent them. He was right. We now have 7 million Americans in prison on probation or on parole, and the United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world. Sadly, this was unnecessary, but is the result of no longer teaching the morals of the Bible in schools. For more information about the founding fathers views on the positive impact of the Bible in schools, go to WallBuilders.com.

Rick Green: 7:36
Welcome back to WallBuilders. Thanks for staying with us. Really honored to have Rabbi Daniel Lapin back with us, our very good friend Also. Please check out the website RabbiDanielLapincom. We'll have links today. He's in Israel tonight and so thankful, Rabbi, that we can chat with you and get an update. Obviously, we're praying for Israel. We'd like to know how to pray and just be wise about how to encourage the right things to be done here. But horrific, horrific things we're seeing here in the States, just on social media and from what limited amount of reporting we've been able to get. So thank you for taking time to update us. Yeah, of course, I just opened it up to you. Go ahead.

Daniel Lapin: 8:18
Well, you know, obviously the shock and horror was powerful. It is beginning to subside, people are starting to be into, to function. But I must tell you that on Sunday, the day after the attack was Saturday morning at dawn, sunday evening, susan and I walked into the normally most crowded part of Jerusalem. That is normally a bustling scene of restaurants and stores and hordes of people gathered around, and it was absolutely dark and deserted. It was the most eerie, creepy thing imaginable. People were just completely immobilized, shocked into almost a state of paralysis. And the reason is number one. Do you know how many Israeli civilians died 50 years ago during the Yom Kippur War? I don't. The answer is zero. Now, the single one. Israeli military doctrine has always been no war on Israeli territory, and that's why the 67 war had to be fought in the Thine Desert and on the Golan hype. But they do not tolerate the idea of a war being fought in Israeli towns and villages, because the haunting image of the Holocaust hangs heavily on everybody in Israel. And so everybody knows your people war, which was the closest that Israel had ever come to catastrophe. Now, the single civilian was killed and now, saturday, in one day, a thousand people are killed. Wow, and you've got to understand that if you do the arithmetic, you know seven million Jews here at 330 million Americans. You do the arithmetic a thousand Jews killed in Israel is the equivalent of about 35,000 Americans murdered in one day. Wow, 9 11 September, 11 2001 was just under 3,000 people.

Rick Green: 10:31
That's right, that's right.

Daniel Lapin: 10:32
Multiply that by 12.

Rick Green: 10:34
Yeah.

Daniel Lapin: 10:34
And you begin to have a little bit of a sense of the calamity that has struck and nobody can understand what happened. We can't and we still don't, and everybody says you know, let's just deal with the immediate crisis of dealing with hummus. Obviously, we're going to have to find out how it happened that villages that are 20 minute helicopter rides from military headquarters waited for nearly six hours for relief and rescue, in many cases too late. Wow, we don't know what happened, but that's where we are, wow.

Rick Green: 11:15
Yeah, and rabbi, I had not heard that part. I didn't realize that. So you're on Saturday when this happened and some of the it was six hours before they got any relief and help.

Daniel Lapin: 11:27
No, it's crazy because, other than North Korea border with South Korea, the most policed border in the world is the 45 miles of border fence that separates Gaza from Israel, and this is policed by drones, by cameras, by military patrol. It's doubly, triply, quadruply patrolled and watched and monitored 24-7. And somehow they reached it in 20 places. They drove big yellow bulldozers up to the fence and nothing happened. They went right the way through and they were left to their own murderous devices for five hours. Incomprehensible.

Rick Green: 12:16
Yeah, I'm honestly in shock, rabbi. I had no idea, first of all, that there was so little resistance and, secondly, that it would take that long. Yeah, what failure had to have taken place there? And not trying to shift blame or even focus, but that just boggles the mind.

Daniel Lapin: 12:35
I would think the baller I'm explaining, I'm kind of saying, why everyone is in shock yeah, yeah those of all the civilian fatalities is like it's unknown, unknown. And secondly, that and we're all haunted by the image of of terrified residents of these training leaders phoning on their cell phone saying we're being killed by arab terrorists. Where is the army? wow so the series is the important, but at the same time, let it be said that the political turmoil regarding these ladies to bring court, that is royal, the political landscape here for nine months, that's totally gone and there is an amazing unity in the country, uh, which is important because the political account women uh, jews with that was genocide, of course is the story of the book of ester and when modified, famously said to korea perhaps is for a time like this that you elevated to a royalty? Her response to him is okay, fine, I'll do it, and if I die, I'll die. First thing to do, gather together all the jews. And then she drew, she was and explained the hebe word there that she's saying look, as everyone knows that jews are uh ribbon with internal squabbles and arguments, there's no unity before you. We can expect all to save us. There has to be unity among his people and it could well be that, looking at this one of the political factors, it just could be that, uh, it may be the good lord had that, had enough of what's been going on all for the last nine months and something like this brought the country together with the unprecedented unity.

Rick Green: 14:22
If you wouldn't mind, rab, I give a little more background on that. What it, what? What do you mean by the nine months? What's been the uh, the dividing issue over there?

Daniel Lapin: 14:30
okay. So it's a lot like, uh, like America and uh, uh. To simply indicate my perception of what's been happening in America essentially uh, in America I'm over some point, only very slightly. You've got two tribes. You've got the tribe of people who fall. The last couple of generations have been highly educated in university. They've reached the highest level of economic power in America political power and cultural power and they go to you the best universities and they'd marry each other and they make a lot of money and then they send their children to the same universities and their children all marry each other. Well, several generations have gone by and you've ended up with this tribe of people. Uh, who and hillary clinton are part of that and obviously you know everyone else and uh and uh. At the same time you've got the rest of us in America and don't want to reach the presidency. Because we all heard him say I'm going to drain the swamp. Basically, what he was saying was I recognize that this elite group of Americans believe that their interest are better served by the bureaucratic structure that and by the democratic appointed representatives in congress. And so, little by little, power was moving away from capitol hill and to the bureaucratic structure of the washington swamp and uh, and that is the intensity of the struggle, the hatred that people have got, is because he literally threatened to take away the privilege of the tribe of the elite in America. That's right. You have coming very similar going on in Israel. And yet people in Israel, these reasons about nineteen eighty. The Israeli supreme court has been seeking ever more power. They have the power to undo any law passed by parliament. They also a self-perpetuating group. They appoint their own successes. It's like this, in fact, your little club of people who run the country. One tribe of Israelis believes that their interests are better served by a bureaucracy, and the supreme court includes. And the other tribe in Israel, of which I remember, is, uh, the people, if they look, we want to a democrat, we want to uh laws and accountability, to be in the hands of an elected parliament called the kinesis, and the way it has been sent the eighty six, the supreme court can overrule the parliament. So, uh, for for when? The time you have to achieve the prime ministership. Uh, along with the coalition that is always an inevitable part of Israeli government. Uh, one of his commitments was to dismantle the power of the Israeli supreme court and that the law and she exactly the same war against him as uh don't come to experience in the united states of America, very, very similar, very parallel. And Israel has been torn, even to the point you may not know this right, but uh, I'm sure many of our listeners will have heard that they were even military officers in the airport and the army in Israel who said that if the supreme court has its wings clipped, they will not show up for service again unprecedented, because the military is revealed in the state of Israel. And so to have military officers saying that we're not going to show up if, uh, if, we cannot continue running the country throughout bureaucratic structure and the supreme court, we're out of here. And uh, it is. This gives you an idea of the extent to which the country was torn apart by the internal squabbles.

Rick Green: 18:24
It's very, very interesting to me, rabbi. In fact I'd love to do a future program just on that. I don't know, if you know, we use the terminology. Actually, in the class that I interviewed you for Biblical Citizenship in Modern America we love having you in there, by the way, everybody does Thank you. But in that class I teach on the Constitution and I say we aren't ruled by the Constitution anymore, we're ruled by the Court's Constitution, because we've allowed the Court to overrule the lawmakers and overrule even the actual written Constitution. So much In America I had no idea that In America.

Daniel Lapin: 18:56
it's even worse, rick. It's worse than the Court, because it is a vast body of bureaucrats in the various agencies and organizations of the American government that make decisions when you cannot dig up a field because there is a stream of water that flows across it whenever it rains heavily. That's not your elected representative in Congress who ruled that. That is the nameless, unappointed, unelected bureaucrat who ruled that.

Rick Green: 19:25
Yeah, yep, exactly right. No, it's. I just had no idea that Israel was facing the same thing. We really are so similar as nations. That's wild. Yeah, we definitely need to do a future show on that. Yeah, rabbi, what would be the most important thing that America should be doing to help Israel right now?

Daniel Lapin: 19:45
Mainly stay out of the way. Yeah, you know, going back to 1956.

Rick Green: 19:51
Because we tend to put pressure in the wrong place.

Daniel Lapin: 19:54
Yes, the last thing that Israel wants to hear from America right now is that it's time for a ceasefire. No, it isn't. That's right, agreed, yeah. When stupid people say violence never solves anything, they're 100% wrong. Violence solves things every single time, one way or the other.

Rick Green: 20:12
Yeah, it would be like saying in fact, babylon B even had this headline. You know, japan calls for ceasefire day after bombing Pearl Harbor. You know, it's essentially the same, would be the same thing.

Daniel Lapin: 20:23
Yes, that's right. That's a great example. Of course, and you know the world says, oh, we must have a disproportionate response. Of course you have a disproportionate response. You do whatever you can to wipe out the enemy, otherwise you stand no chance. All you do is irritate him and they can come back for another round.

Rick Green: 20:42
That's what I was going to say. That's how you prevent it from happening again. You let him know yeah, I couldn't agree more. Yes, Go ahead.

Daniel Lapin: 20:49
No that's it. That's what I'm saying.

Rick Green: 20:52
Yeah, well, I think that's exactly. You know, because I'm already hearing. You know, of course, the Biden administration, if he shows up to work, is already saying you know, restraint, restraint, restraint for Israel, and you know all that will do is encourage them. Yes, that's right, exactly. I had heard One more question and I promised I wouldn't keep you that long. No, that's quite all right. The I had seen this morning. Well, the brutality of what we have seen has been pure savagery. In fact, I posted. You know, if you can't tell who the good guys and bad guys are, you're clueless. I mean, it's so obvious. But I had even heard this morning that the IDF discovered 40 babies beheaded. Is that true, or have you heard anything about that?

Daniel Lapin: 21:35
I haven't, but you know, as long as one remembers that this is a struggle up between Jews and Arabs, and it's not a struggle over land and it's a struggle between. This is a titanic struggle in the story of God's plan for human development. This is a struggle between civilization and barbarism. Yeah, and it's played out many times before. It played out at the gates of Vienna between Christian armies and the Muslim armies of the Ottoman Empire on September the 11th, 1673. And it's played out in the Battle of Lepanto in the Mediterranean. It's played out again and again. It played out in World War II. The struggle between civilization and barbarism is an ongoing struggle and nowhere is it more intangibly clear than in the struggle for the survival of the state of Israel.

Rick Green: 22:34
Amen. That's perfectly, perfectly put, Rabbi. I think we close it there. God bless you, sir. I look forward to you coming home safely. I'm actually glad that you and Susan are there right now, though I think it's for such a time as this, as you said. God bless you, sir. I look forward to talking to you soon.

Daniel Lapin: 22:50
Right, no, we want to wait here until Hamas has been obliterated.

Rick Green: 22:56
Amen, amen. Thank you again, rabbi. Alright, take care, my friend. God bless, thank you very much. Stay with us folks. We'll be right back with David and Tim Barney.

Tim Barton: 23:11
Hey guys, we want to let you know about a new resource we have at WB called the American Story. For so many years, people have asked us to do a history book to help tell more of the story that's just not known or not told today and, we would say, very providentially, in the midst of all of the new attacks coming out against America, whether it be from things like the 1619 project that say America is evil and everything in America was built off slavery, which is certainly not true or things like even the Black Lives Matter movement, the organization itself, not the statement Black Lives Matter, but the organization that says we're against everything that America was built on and this is part of the Marxist ideology. There's so many things attacking America. Well, is America worth defending? What is a true story of America? We actually have written and told that story, starting with Christopher Columbus, going roughly through Abraham Lincoln. We tell the story of America not as the story of a perfect nation or a perfect people, but the story of how God used these imperfect people and did great things through this nation. It's a story you want to check out. WallBuilderscom the American Story.

Rick Green: 24:13
We're back here on WallBuilders. Thanks for staying with us. Thanks to Rabbi Daniel Lapin. I really, really appreciate him taking time to call in. Guys, I know he had obviously a lot going on while he's over there, but literally left another meeting to be able to be with us. So very thankful for him. Only a couple of minutes left today. But, guys, what did you think about what the rabbi had to say?

David Barton: 24:32
He really made some really good points, not the least of which is their unity now among the people. There are so many factions in Israel normally, but now that they have been attacked, they have rallied together. They joined arms. This is really good for Israel. I love what he said. They do not tolerate the idea of Israel fighting a war in the cities and the villages. They've always had that as anathema. We don't do that, and that's what the enemy has done to them. Taken it to them what they've done with killing the children and the grotesque way in which they've done that. They have unified Israel in a way that would have been hard to do otherwise. As Rabbi was pointing out, even on something political, like whether elected officials should run the state or whether the Supreme Court should run the state, which sounds like what we were debating in America 10 years ago the people can't even come together on that, but they can come together on this. So it is significant that at this point they have pulled together. I think you're going to see a lot of things happen. Their intelligence now is going to come back online and be the forefront. They're not going to psychoanalyze their intelligence and say, hey, we knew this was coming, but we expected them to be good, because they told us they would be good. That's not going to happen this time. They're going to make military decisions and, as a result, it's going to be, I think, a good thing in the long term for Israel. It should give them a time of peace, away from the type of attrition that they've had over recent years.

Rick Green: 25:54
Well, we're certainly going to be talking more about it in the coming days and weeks. Don't think this is going to be a short term thing at all. We'll also be talking about the impact on America and reminding everyone listen. Our borders far more open, like the Rabbi said in the interview. Man, this is one of the most policed borders in the world, and look at what happened. Our borders have been wide open and millions have come across. So we've got to be more cognizant about these things, realize there is evil in the world and it's very important for us to make much better decisions. So be sure and tune in every day to listen to WallBuilders and get a biblical, historical and constitutional perspective on these very serious issues. Thanks so much for listening. You've been listening to WallBuilders.