You Tube Theology

This week’s Zoom call will be at our regular time: Friday at 1 PM. Our guest will be Munther Isaac (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munther_Isaac) , a Palestinian minister and theologian based in the West Bank. He gained international attention for his Christmas 2023 sermon, Christ in the Rubble (https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=854135726497249&ref=sharing) . We’ll talk about Palestinian life in the West Bank, Munther’s critique of Christian Zionism, his views of Hamas and his interview with Tucker Carlson. Please join us.

I also recorded a conversation with former US ambassador to Israel Daniel Shapiro, where we debated the reasons the Israeli-Palestinian “peace process” didn’t produce a Palestinian state, and whether a Jewish democracy is a contradiction in terms. We’ll send that conversation to subscribers this week as well.

Cited in Today’s Video

Sam Harris on (https://samharris.substack.com/p/why-i-wont-debate-critics-of-israel?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&triedRedirect=true) why he won’t debate critics of Israel.

B’Tselem on (https://www.btselem.org/demonstrations/military_order_101) Military Order 101.

Salam Fayyad’s exit interview (https://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/15/opinion/global/roger-cohen-The-Story-of-Palestinian-Prime-Minister-Salam-Fayyad-.html) with the New York Times.

Neve Gordon on (https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2023/december/on-human-shields) “human shields.”

Yoav Gallant’s statement (https://www.google.com/search?q=yoav+gallant+no+electricity+no+food&oq=yoav+gallant+no+elec&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUqBwgDEAAY7wUyBggAEEUYOTILCAEQABgWGB4YxwMyBwgCEAAY7wUyBwgDEAAY7wXSAQg2MzMxajBqNKgCALACAA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8) on October 9, 2023.

Things to Read

(Maybe this should be obvious, but I link to articles and videos I find provocative and significant, not necessarily ones I entirely agree with.)

In Jewish Currents (subscribe (https://secure.jewishcurrents.org/forms/subscribe) !), Josh Nathan-Kazis writes (https://jewishcurrents.org/a-pro-israel-litmus-test-backfires) about how the Israel Day Parade backfired.

In the New York Times, I argued (https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/07/opinion/iran-us-war-military-washington.html) that America will keep launching disastrous wars until the people who champion them are held to account.

Nikole Hannah-Jones on (https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/22/magazine/voting-rights-act-reconstruction-civil-rights-redistricting.html) the end of the civil rights era.

Israel’s new strategy (https://www.972mag.com/leaked-idf-propaganda-israel-intelligence/) for changing global opinion.

See you on Friday,

Peter

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:

So, there’s a guy named Sam Harris, been a pretty prominent political commentator in the U.S. for quite a few years. He really kind of specializes a lot in what he claims is the kind of thread of jihadism or Islamism to the West. And he’s also a supporter, a defender of the state of Israel.

And he wrote a post a couple days ago that’s been getting a lot of attention—I’ve seen it sent around a lot—about why he won’t debate critics of Israel. His argument is that he won’t debate critics of Israel because the things that he believes are so self-evidently true that it would be a waste of time to subject them to interchange with someone who holds a different point of view. And, because Sam Harris is a pretty kind of highbrow defender of Israel, I just think it’s worth looking at the statements that he considers to be self-evident statements of fact. And you can ask yourself whether, in fact, you think they are the case or not.

The first thing he claims is that you should understand the conflict in Israel-Palestine as a struggle between a free society, Israel, and jihadism. So, let’s take the first part of that equation: the idea that Israel is a free society. Sam Harris offers no evidence for this. He doesn’t quote any human rights organizations, he doesn’t quote any laws, anything, he just asserts it, ex cathedra: Israel is a free society.

Okay, well, imagine you’re reading that, you’re sitting there in the West Bank. The West Bank has been under Israeli control since 1967. You’re a Palestinian. You’ve lived your entire life without citizenship in the state in which you live. A government that has life and death control over you does not give you the right to vote. You live under military law, with a 99% prosecution rate, even though your Jewish neighbors enjoy full due process as Israeli citizens. You need military permission to travel, even though they can travel freely, and you’re also subject to something called Military Order 101, which says that you need military permission if you want to congregate with 10 or more people for a political purpose, even in a private home. Even in a private home, you can’t congregate for a political purpose with 10 or more people without military permission. This is what Sam Harris says, without any evidence, he describes as a free society. I suspect for that West Bank Palesti...