Matthew Kaemingk: So we have an exciting episode today. We’re talking about a controversial topic — Israel — but from a different perspective than we’ve approached it in other episodes. We want to talk about evangelicals and their relationship to Israel, how that is changing, perhaps, especially among young evangelicals. What is the future of evangelical support for Israel?
We have someone who I think is really excellent to talk to us about that. He is Robert Nicholson, who’s been an old friend. I’ve known him for many years. He’s also the former president of the Philos organization, which tries to engage positively in the Middle East and on questions relating to Israel. And I’ve been involved in some of Philos’ activities before.
Shadi Hamid: Actually, perhaps controversially, I went with Robert to Israel — and with a bunch of other people — on a research trip in 2019. We’ll get into some more of that later on in the conversation.
But maybe with that, Robert, could you just tell us — first of all, are you an evangelical? What does it mean for you to be an evangelical? And we’ll take it from there.
Robert Nicholson: Well, thank you for the question, and thank you for having me. It’s great to be here with you guys. And I remember that trip, Shadi. It was a wonderful trip, one of the best I’ve ever done. I have very good memories.
I am, in fact, an evangelical. I did not know I was an evangelical after coming to the Christian faith for some years. I attended a fairly small Baptist church in Syracuse, New York, and really didn’t think of myself as anything other than a Christian. And it was only in getting involved in the work that I went on to do related to Israel and the Middle East that I realized that the easiest way, the most shorthand way for me to explain myself to someone, was to say that I am an evangelical, even though nobody in the church I went to ever used that word. So sociologically, I am. It’s a very vague term. But I think of myself as a Christian who goes to a Baptist church — much simpler than that.
Usually, I think evangelicals — people use that term as a catch-all for various kinds of Protestants or offshoots of Protestantism who hold kind of a generic bundle of ideas that have to do with the way they read Scripture, the way they think about salvation, the way they think about authority. But it’s a huge and amorphous world in which many different parts don’t speak to the other parts.
Matthew Kaemingk: Yeah, I think that’s pretty well said, Robert. Well, we wanted to talk to you today about the shifting, changing, developing relationship between American evangelicals and Israel. There are news stories about how younger evangelicals are less enthusiastic in their support for Israel, or at least a subset of them are. And then there are also stories about divisions on the political right in America on the issue of Israel. Tucker Carlson is sort of one of those big voices who has been extremely critical of Israel. And a number of evangelical Christians consume Tucker Carlson’s content. And so I really wanted to bring you on here to help us think about those challenges.
And a little bit later on — maybe just a little bit more personally — I wonder if you might help me as a fellow evangelical who is quite conflicted about this conflict between Israel and Gaza. Shadi is a dear friend of mine, and he’s been pushing and pulling on me in a variety of ways. And so, on a more personal level, later on in the episode, I’d love to have you help me think about that.
But first off, can you talk to us just about the evolving relationship between American evangelicals and Israel? And maybe, for me — I grew up in the 1980s and early 90s, where American evangelicals were very passionate about Israel. I wonder if you might talk about what that relationship looked like in the 1980s and 90s, and then kind of talk to us about the shift that has occurred more lately. So could you start there — what did it sound and smell like in the 80s and 90s first?
Robert Nicholson: Well, I think evolution is the right word to use here. It has evolved, this thing that we all take for granted — evangelical support for Israel. You mentioned the 1980s. It’s actually not, in a political sense, much older than that. I think a lot of people think this is an old pillar of American politics, but it really wasn’t until the 70s and 80s that it became a thing.
Having said that, Matthew — you know this as well as anyone — there have been latent philo-Semitic and even what they called restorationist ideas within Protestantism going back to the 1500s. The idea that the Jewish people are still part of the story, that they are — yes, rejecters of Jesus — but nevertheless somehow still relevant and may in fact end up back in their land. You can find texts written in really old fonts that go back to really the Reformation period.
Matthew Kaemingk: Yeah, and just to interject — World War II. I come from a Dutch Calvinist or Dutch Reformed background, and during World War II, the Dutch Christians — many of them would hide the Jews. And particularly those who were from a Reformed background, because they saw the Jews as God’s covenanted people, and they had this sort of strong covenantal theology that you should protect the Jews when they’re being hunted — not simply because they’re human, but because in a very special way they are God’s people. And so that was sort of for the Dutch Calvinists — that’s why they had this affection for them.
Robert Nicholson: That’s right. That’s right. And Calvinists really have — in the earlier stages, the early centuries, let’s say, of proto-Christian Zionism — I think Calvinists were really on the leading edge compared to some other parts of Christendom. And it really — I mean, I’m going to not do this justice, but just to explain a bit of where that comes from — what I would say is that it stems from the way Protestants read and interpret Scripture, right? It’s not surprising that the people most inclined to read a book written by Jews about Jews and the God of Israel do in fact tend to have an affinity with that people and start to buy into that grand narrative. And I think that’s the reason why Protestants, compared to Catholics or Orthodox, tend to be much more on this bandwagon.
That was always there. And I think to the extent that many of the people who came to the United States of America were of that ilk — read the Bible in that way — they transferred many of those ideas to the New World. There was no Israel. There were virtually no Jews here for a very long time, a few. But those ideas were latent, and it’s the reason why I think Harry Truman, another Baptist, recognized the state of Israel within minutes in 1948. There’s just something in that kind of Christianity that is deeply connected, even if it’s hard to articulate.
Matthew Kaemingk: What about the dispensationalist strand of this — and their perspective? Because they had a distinct perspective on why we should support Israel as well. Can you tell our listeners what that was?
Robert Nicholson: So dispensationalism is a subset of a kind of Christian theology — Protestant theology — that became popular in the 1800s and more popular in the 1900s, especially after the state of Israel was founded. It’s essentially a philosophy of history. It is a way of thinking about the world and about time and about God’s redemptive plan that divides history into dispensations — sort of like chapters of a story, you could say.
And dispensationalists are well known for making big charts that show everything from creation to the end of time and all of the different things that happen along the way. Christianity is itself a philosophy of history, or it contains a number of them. Dispensationalists took it in their own unique direction. And one of the things they prioritized was the role of the Jews in that story — again, a continuing role, even after the rejection of Jesus — that saw the Jews at some point returning to their land, based on many, many scriptures, especially in the Old Testament, about that happening.
And so they, after 1948, saw a spike in interest. And again, after 1967, when the State of Israel took back Jerusalem. And it’s well known that in the late 60s, throughout the 70s, and into the 80s, that became very much part of, let’s say, American Protestant Christianity in a very general way.
Matthew Kaemingk: For the dispensationalists — in a sense, is it too crass to say something like, if we really support Israel, we can hasten history to move forward? Or what was their goal in supporting Israel? What was the dispensationalist argument for supporting Israel?
Robert Nicholson: Dispensationalists, I would say, see the state of Israel as proof that God is still working in history. It’s evidence in a way. It’s true that dispensationalists do tend to think about and talk about the end times more than even other Protestants. But it’s never been my sense that there was a concerted effort to hasten history, even among the most ardent dispensationalists. That’s said a lot — I haven’t really met anyone like that, who had a belief that history could be hastened.
Some people say, well, the dispensationalists, they have this vision where Jews go back to their land, and then that kind of leads to Armageddon, and the Jews get surrounded, and a bunch of them get killed, and Jesus comes back. You have different versions of this. But I always point out that dispensationalists are always trying to help Israel fight back. They want America to support Israel. So in a certain way, they’re kind of undermining their own case if they’re trying to beat back Israel’s enemies. I don’t think it was really — that’s not my view, that they were trying to hasten history.
Matthew Kaemingk: So let’s talk about the evolving nature of this now. So this sort of affection continues to be cultivated through the 1980s and 90s — this sense of God moving and God being with Israel and America. Then what starts — how do you see the evolving development of this?
Robert Nicholson: I think it continued to grow throughout the 80s and into the 90s, and I would say even into the 2000s. The changes began to come with the collapse of the Oslo Accords, with some of the things that happened in America after 9/11, and with the rise of media exposure to alternative points of view — all of it combined to slowly begin to erode some basis of support.
This is something that I’ve been talking about and writing about for quite a while. People are picking up on it now after October 7th and what’s happened since, but you could see the change happening 10 and even 20 years ago. Younger people were inheriting this line from their parents: God’s with the Jewish people, chosen people. You know, you don’t go against the Jews. God blesses those who bless Israel. And at a certain point — I would say it was in the first decade of this century — growing numbers of young evangelicals began to, especially after seeing things online, say, well, wait a minute, is that true? And what does that even mean, bless Israel? Does that mean supporting them in wars? Or is that just kind of praying for them?
It was problematized, I think, in that decade. And that kind of dovetailed with something that has nothing to do with evangelicals per se, which is the distaste for the Middle East in general — with what happened in the Iraq War, and later the pullout from Afghanistan. There was just a general sense that bad things are happening over there, we really don’t want to be involved in that, it doesn’t end well. And why are we doing this anyway? Is this actually in the national interest, or is this something that Israel’s putting us up to?
And I think that those feelings combined in a lot of people, especially as they’re seeing a Palestinian or an Arab point of view online, giving a counter-narrative, to make them say, well, okay, fine. I’m not anti-Jewish. Maybe I’m not even anti-Israel. But I don’t know that this whole political thing is really the Christian thing to do.
Shadi Hamid: On that point, I want to dig into that a little bit more. You hear this from a growing number of critics of Israel who are also Christian, where they say — post-October 7th — at a fundamental level, Israel is acting and has acted in a very unchristian way. If we look at how it’s prosecuted its war in Gaza, the war in Iran where it’s playing obviously a critical role alongside the U.S., its bombardment of Lebanon in ways that have led to considerable civilian suffering — in ways that have been, I think, shocking to a lot of people — all of that, I think, creates this kind of dilemma where, on one hand, you have a lot of these evangelicals who grew up with this idea that Israel should be supported, but then they see how Palestinian Christians are affected. They see that there are Christians in the Palestinian territories who have suffered under the Israeli occupation, for example.
And at some level, Christianity isn’t just about a philosophy of history. It’s also about how to conduct oneself, taking the example of Christ as an inspiration. And that means having greater sympathy for the oppressed, the destitute, the poor, the weak. And I think a lot of Christians are noticing that the poor, the weak, the destitute, the oppressed are Palestinian victims in this — at least, especially in recent years.
Can you say a little bit more about that tension and how you view Israel’s conduct? To what extent do you feel uncomfortable with how Israel has conducted itself? I’m actually curious to hear what you think, because we haven’t talked about this for, I think, two and a half years or so. So I actually don’t know where you’re at on this. But obviously my views are quite clear and you know them. So anyway — take that where you will.
Robert Nicholson: Sure. So yeah, let me just mention a couple of other things before I answer that. So I would say right now, Shadi, there are growing numbers of evangelicals who are seeing things on social media and are concerned by what they see — in Gaza, as you said, in Lebanon and these other places.
I think one of the interesting aspects of that is that whereas in the 70s and 80s and 90s, the perception among not even just American evangelicals, but Americans generally, was that Israel was the David and the Arab world or the Islamic world was the Goliath — that perception has been flipped. So when you meet a young Christian of any kind, you will find that they are very convinced that Israel is a thousand feet tall, that Israel is a global superpower. And that makes the images that they’re seeing that much more heinous in their mind. So Israel’s the bully who’s pushing people around in these different places, these poor defenseless people.
I do, though, want to mention two other things that I think play into this, and then I’ll come back, Shadi, to the second part of your question.
So one of the things that I think is also part of this — and you really have to zoom out — is that the things that made America so uniquely philo-Semitic or Hebraic in its approach to Christianity are also changing. Sociological indicators like the way they view Scripture — is it the word of God or is it something less than that? How often people go to church, church attendance. And the fact that even in the evangelical world, there has been a lot of evolution just in terms of the way they do Christianity. Evangelicalism in 2026 is not evangelicalism in 1996. It has nothing to do with Israel — it’s just the churn within that community that I think makes it less attached to the things that their parents and grandparents were attached to.
And then I think there’s this other thing, which is the meta thing. But I do think it’s relevant. I think that Americans in general feel like we are in a civilizational moment. Something’s changing. America feels less powerful. America seems to be losing more often, or at least not winning. And as often happens in societies that feel themselves to be in decline, people start to look around for reasons that explain that decline. Now, I don’t think everybody arrives at Israel as the reason for the decline, but I do think there’s a bigger thing happening in American society that is fuelling a kind of frustration and desperation and is making people see everything they’re consuming in media through a very different lens. It’s why everything seems so angsty. That’s the sense I have right now.
In reference to your question — how do I personally feel? I’m very pro-Israel and I’m unapologetic about that. My reasoning for it is maybe a little bit different. My entrée into this whole world is definitely different. My relationship with Israel, I think, is at a much more granular level than most evangelicals. So I don’t know that I’m representative.
So when I see what happened in the years since October 7th, I very much see a country responding to something it didn’t want to respond to. A population inside Israel that is bearing a tremendous burden in terms of people, families, psychological health. It’s really hard to put into words what I know, because I know so many Israelis and I’m there fairly often. It’s rarely reported about, but it’s a huge change inside Israel. And I’m very sympathetic to Israelis.
I could say more about the war and justifications and what’s happening in these different places. We could go there if you want. But suffice it to say I’m pro — but of course I share the view of, I think, many Israelis and even many Americans who are pro-Israel, which is that the war is much bigger, much uglier than anyone anticipated. And this current war in Iran, I think, is a good example of that. It’s pulled this conflict to yet another level.
I do worry that within Israel, the feeling of desperation, the feeling of being surrounded — the feeling that even, to play off of this conversation, even evangelicals in America, who Israelis don’t even understand that much, but they too are turning on us — I worry that that is fuelling some of the things that we’ve seen in the West Bank, with settlers and attacks on Palestinians. And I think that more and more Israelis are feeling that way as well, that something is breaking inside the country that is deeply worrisome and needs to be addressed directly.
So do I think Israel has committed genocide? No. Do I think Israel is trying to fix their situation through the use of military violence and bringing themselves to a place that they themselves don’t want to go? Yeah, I think — I mean, look, the military chief of staff, Eyal Zamir, just a few weeks ago gave a speech to a bunch of Israeli officials making this exact point. After images came out of Lebanon of soldiers smashing statues of Jesus and looting, he said, this is unacceptable. I’m not going to run an army of looters. And I share that view. I think something has snapped.
And I’m very sympathetic, so I think about it in a certain way. But from the outside, I can understand why people who don’t know Israelis — evangelicals at the top of the list, most of whom don’t know a single Israeli — would look at that and be like, these people are crazy, they just want to kill everybody. I know enough Israelis to know that that’s not the case. They don’t want this. They want it all to end. And so I push back when I hear people attributing things to Israelis that I know for a fact not to be true.
Matthew Kaemingk: So there are a variety of sort of practical, pragmatic, strategic reasons for someone’s support of Israel. But I wonder if you might talk with us just a little bit about perhaps some biblical or theological reasons that are compelling to you specifically. Theologically, is there a particular foundation for your support of Israel? As opposed to, say, Ukraine — you can be supportive of Ukraine, and it is different than Ukraine for me.
So let me preface by saying I often tell people I’m a Christian Zionist, but I’m also a Christian realist. And to me, any analysis of, let’s say, American support for X, Y, or Z that Israel wants or needs — it is a two-step analysis. So I’ll explain to you theologically how I think about it. But that doesn’t necessarily give me a direct line to pushing the button that releases the JDAMs. I think that’s a mistaken way to think about support for Israel.
It just so happens that I think the vast majority of the time, Israel’s interests and America’s national interest align. And so the analysis from the outside looks like a one-step analysis, but for me it’s always two steps. So I can say lots of things and feel lots of things about Israel and the Jewish people. But geopolitics — I’m very Niebuhrian in that sense, in the way that I think about power and the way that states work in the world. And that’s related to the way that I think about support for Israel.
I’m always a little bit off-balance when I have these conversations because I’m going to overstate a point to make a point. The state of Israel to me is not all that interesting theologically. I support the state of Israel because I support the Jewish people, not the other way around. I think a lot of people think about this whole topic in terms of the state of Israel — what Israel does, what its prime minister does, what its different governments do. And those are important questions. But for me, that’s not where it starts. It’s derivative. The state to me is important insofar as it protects, shelters, and helps enable the self-determination of the Jewish people. People first, I guess — maybe land second, and then the state.
Shadi Hamid: But Robert, isn’t there a danger of conflating the Jewish people with an imperfect government that may commit unjust or evil acts? Like, shouldn’t we be more careful to separate between — this is a problem that anti-Semites oftentimes make, that the Jewish people and what Israel does, the state of Israel, are basically the same thing, and that leads to a lot of problems. We should be able to say that someone should be able to support the Jewish people and have a deep respect and appreciation for the Jewish faith and Jewish peoplehood even, and then say that the state of Israel is a very different thing — it’s governed by a far-right extremist government that is completely out of control and has committed heinous acts.
Tell me a little bit more about how you think about the distinction, and the fact that you don’t seem to think that there is a distinction — that you kind of see them as being intertwined. How do you wrestle with that?
Matthew Kaemingk: So just, Robert, if I could give you a second to breathe, because we’re throwing a lot at you here. I wonder how you would feel, Shadi, about — if I were to say, I love the Navajo people, I have no problem with the Navajo people, but I do want to move them off their land, and I do have a problem with their tribal elders, but I still really love the Navajo people. For the Navajo people, they are deeply connected to their land. And so you can’t love a people and sort of disconnect them from their land. I was just thinking — I don’t know, Robert, if you think that’s at all helpful.
Robert Nicholson: Yes. Absolutely. That’s very much my view. I usually use the Irish as an example. I always say, I love the Irish. They’re amazing. But Ireland sucks. That shouldn’t even be there. What right do they have to exist?
Shadi Hamid: Okay, but hold up, because I don’t want the view to be attributed to me. Go for it.
There are some people in the pro-Palestine space who don’t want the state of Israel to exist. They would prefer a one-state solution, a bi-national solution where Jews and Arabs live in the same state as equal citizens. My issue with that is that it’s not realistic. And I’ve written about this, where I’ve said you can’t ask Israeli Jews to self-dissolve their own state. They wouldn’t agree to that, and that would be an unjust outcome to kind of force that on them. And I think there are still a lot of people who are pro-Palestine who would prefer a two-state solution.
I’m not asking for Israel to disappear. I’m asking for Israel to behave like a normal state that doesn’t oppress its neighbours and doesn’t occupy the West Bank and doesn’t commit settler violence against those people.
Robert Nicholson: Okay, respond to the first thing, Robert.
Yeah, well, I do want to affirm what you said, Shadi. It’s not one for one — Jewish people, state of Israel. Absolutely. I’m in New York. I could walk around and find Jews even in this neighbourhood who would say probably more critical things than you, Shadi, about Netanyahu and what’s happening in Israel.
However, there is only one Jewish state. That state was set up specifically to shelter the Jewish people from the persecution that they had experienced for many centuries — both from my people and your people, Christians and Muslims. And to that extent, and to the extent that the vast majority of American Jews in polling data express — I don’t know what the wording is in the polls, but they see Israel as important to their lives as Jews — I think the state of Israel is not unrelated to the existence of this very small and fairly scattered nation around the world.
And I think that many Jews have, to their own surprise, come around to that view. People who would have said what you just said on October 6, 2023, have over the course of the last few years been reminded of the fact that they are living in their societies — how can I say it? They’re being tolerated. But there’s no guarantee, if you’re an American Jew, that 50 years from now America will be a friendly place for you. So suddenly Israel, as much as you may loathe Bibi, suddenly seems much more important.
And I think that it would be a mistake for me both to say that Jews and Israel are the same thing, and also a mistake for me to say, Israel — I don’t need to support Israel if I care about Jews.
Matthew Kaemingk: Okay, so I want to jump in here and make sure I get a good answer to my question, because I understand that there are realist reasons to support Israel, but I’m still looking for that sort of biblical, theological foundation of your commitment to the state.
Robert Nicholson: Okay, well, I will tell you my views. And again, I’m not representative. I’m sorry — I said the state. I should have said the people, because I understand that it is your affection for the people of Israel that drives any affection for the state.
So biblically, theologically — your affection for the people of Israel. I believe as a Christian that there is a theological bond of brotherhood with the Jewish people. I do believe that Jews and Christians are in a unique way brothers, even in a theological sense. And interestingly, both Jews and Christians have used that metaphor for many centuries, even though for most of the time they didn’t like each other — and specifically the motif of Jacob and Esau. Both Jews and Christians, going back 2,000 years, have consistently used this image, even though they disagree who’s Jacob and who’s Esau, and who inherits the blessing of Abraham. And I could go off on a very long tangent here, Matthew. You’re luring me. You’re tempting me. I’m going to withhold from that.
But I would put it to you this way: there are many parts of the New Testament that could be read — even the words of Jesus himself — as a preemptive rebuke of the way Christians would very quickly, after his death, begin to disparage and eventually — once they obtained political power — oppress the Jewish people in the name of Christ. I think I could point to some of the parables. I could point to some of the things that Paul said. And I ask myself, reading the New Testament, if Jesus weeps over Jerusalem and over the Jewish people, if Paul calls them his kinsmen, his brothers, and he also weeps, and he also feels this burden for this people — who am I to say that all of this stuff was cancelled out? People seem pretty interested in this group of people. And I think that we as Christians, in our zeal, went much further than we were supposed to.
And I think — you know, I sometimes say that just as Christians would point to the fact that the Jews missed Jesus, I think at the last day there will be at least one thing that we Christians realized we missed, which was our brother right in front of us the whole time — the person who actually gave us Scripture, who gave us the whole tradition that we now celebrate.
And I come back to the image of the Good Samaritan. If that Samaritan felt drawn to help the Jew in the ditch, and Jesus gave that example to Jews — literally pointing out kind of their worst enemy, the person most against the Judaism of the Second Temple period — as an example of the person they should be especially interested in and especially open to, I think that we as Christians should feel the same way about Jews. To me, the Jew is the Samaritan. What the Samaritan was to the Jew, the Jew is to the Christian. And so I think there’s something — I could get very mystical here, I’m going to hold back — but I think there’s something very deep about history that draws me very much. I’m very shaped here by actually a Catholic philosopher named Jacques Maritain and a couple of other people who more or less presented these ideas long before me.
Shadi Hamid: Just as a little detour, since I’d be curious how you view Muslims in this broader worldview. Because obviously we’re all part of the Abrahamic tradition — there are important connections. But also I’ve really respected in your work, Robert, that you do try to talk to Arabs and Muslims. As part of our Israel trip many years ago, we did visit the West Bank. We met with Palestinians on the ground. And I think that was important to you, to make sure that we heard another perspective. And you do have Arab and Muslim perspectives that are part of a world you know, that you understand, that you try to engage with. And that’s why I feel comfortable talking to you about these issues. If it was like a hardcore Christian Zionist of a different kind of temperament, it would be harder for me to engage in dialogue with them. So I really appreciate that we can continue to have this back and forth over many years.
So, just not to put you too much on the spot, but yeah — how do you view Muslims and Islam, and how does that fit into your kind of broader cosmology?
Robert Nicholson: Oh, man. I know you both love Kuyper, and I’m looking at his book over on my shelf on Islam, which is one of my favourite books on the topic — Christian books on Islam.
Part of the family. Part of the family. Okay, maybe Jacob and Esau are brothers, but Ishmael is a close cousin, right? Or great uncle — I’m not sure how that works. But very much part of the same family. And I think there’s something equally deep and mysterious about Arabs and Muslims.
I’ve read a fair bit about this — different people’s views, Christian views, theological views on this. I’m sure Matthew has many thoughts. I can’t say that I’m as formed. I haven’t thought about it quite as much. But I think here, too, we’re not speaking about Ukraine or just another geopolitical issue. I think there is something very much that connects me to Muslims. And like Kuyper, there is something that I feel when I am in the Islamic world that is very hard to explain, but resonates very deep within me. And I don’t know if it goes back to the Semitic origins of Christianity, or if it’s the hospitality, or the culture, the different cultures. But there is something very, very powerful about it.
And I have to say — I’ve told this to a number of people — I am slightly jealous of Muslims in a real way. It’s the way they live their faith, even if they’re not necessarily religious. They still feel that connection. They still feel that sense of solidarity. And I think that we as Christians, who’ve long since lost our Near Eastern roots, have just been so cut off and alienated from that world. There’s just a lot that we could learn from Muslims. I think Islam preserved a lot of the things that should have been carried over into Christianity but were lost in the journey westward.
So I’ve spent a lot of time on the Jewish part of this. I think it’s important to reconcile with the Jews because there is, I think, something unique about that relationship. But to me, that’s not mutually exclusive of Muslims, which is what makes this Israeli-Palestinian conflict so crazy. So beyond geopolitics and realism and all of that, there’s something very deep about it. And it’s why I get so frustrated with the commentary surrounding it by almost anyone. It’s just much more important, much deeper — there’s much more at stake than people give it credit for.
You know, I hear Tucker Carlson just throwing nonsense into the world. And I look at this guy and I think he doesn’t get it. He doesn’t understand what’s really at stake here. He’s not thinking about it with any depth. It’s like, I want to protect American kids, and who cares about other people? Why are we dying over that? That’s not the conversation. There’s something about Jews, Christians, and Muslims that is unique, and something that we need to work out together. And I’m glad you guys are having conversations like this, because this is the kind of conversation that needs to happen, in my view.
Matthew Kaemingk: Yeah, that’s interesting. Honestly, Shadi, I think you got a warmer theology of Islam from Robert than you ever have from me. Maybe. In terms of the bond between Christians and Muslims there.
Okay, so I want to push you here, Robert, on actually the more practical political thing — Israel’s war on Gaza and its response to October 7th. At the very beginning of the episode, you talked about Americans seeing things on social media and being horrified by them. But it seems like it’s not just things on social media, but it is whole cities that are levelled, civilians and children who are dying. And I’m extremely concerned, if not horrified, by the sheer amount of civilian deaths in Gaza.
And when the United States went into Afghanistan and Iraq — and specifically in Iraq, in terms of urban warfare — American soldiers worked very hard to limit civilian deaths, to their own danger. They were very careful, relative to what I’ve seen with Gaza being flattened. And I guess I’m not sure what the question is, other than: how can Israel defend these flattened cities as a necessary way to conduct this war? It just seems quite indiscriminate compared to the warfare that I even saw in Iraq. But I’m very happy for you to push back on me here. This is a concern I’ve had for a while, and I don’t just think it’s because I’m seeing images on social media. I think this is really happening. These cities are being flattened. So yeah — help me think about this.
Robert Nicholson: Well, people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones, and I don’t know that America is really in the best position to be telling the world how excellent we are at minimizing civilian casualties. I think we’re probably not as stellar in that regard as we think we are.
Look, a lot of people have died in Gaza. Kids, mothers — we’ve all seen the images. No need to repeat it. It’s tragic. It’s more than tragic. I mean, if you’re a human being, you can’t look at images like the ones that we’ve seen and shrug. You can’t. Otherwise, you’re a monster.
If you ask Israelis how they would justify it, they would, first of all, say what others have said — and you guys have heard everything, but I’ll say it for the benefit of the listener who maybe hasn’t. I think there’s been proportionately fewer civilians who have died than one would have expected in a conflict like this — dense, urban, with an army hiding among civilian populations and under civilian buildings. You’ve seen the numbers, I’m sure, but people have actually compared the numbers and said, actually, America is worse in this regard. We thought we were good, but Israel did it better. I’m not in a position to weigh all of that out, but I do think it’s important to point that out.
You have to compare apples to apples. And if you compare urban combat against Muslim militants in this part of the world, lots of civilians end up dying because this is the way wars are fought there by these kinds of forces. I mean, you saw Mosul after that fight — what was left of Mosul? Not much. It’s a very ugly — it is the ugliest form of human combat there is. I think that just needs to be said.
Shadi Hamid: Okay, I’m quite confident I want to push back on that. So go ahead, Shadi. Obviously, I disagree with that characterization. I think there’s been a lot of writing and analysis comparing what Israel has done in Gaza to what the U.S. has done in various theatres. I mean, one piece that you’ve probably read, Robert — Phil Klay’s piece in The Atlantic where he did this particular comparison and came to the conclusion, based on the numbers, that Israel was just in a completely different universe when it came to civilian casualties and mitigation of civilian harm and so forth.
We don’t have to relitigate all that. We’re just going to have to probably agree to disagree. But what I would say is — why is there a need to defend Israel? You can be pro-Israel, Robert, and I respect that. I’m not trying to change you on that. That is something deeply held to you. But you can be pro-Israel and also be very critical of what Israel has done in a particular war, just like I can be pro-American and be extremely critical of the Iraq war, as I was. I mean, that was a key defining moment in my own political evolution.
It’s been frustrating to me to see pro-Israel friends of mine feel a need that just because they’re pro-Israel, it means they have to defend what Israel has actually done. I’m unclear on why that has to be the case. You could be just as critical as me — or maybe not as critical as me, but still pretty critical — of how Israel has actually conducted the war, but still call yourself pro-Israel and make that distinction, right?
Matthew Kaemingk: I mean, I also wonder — related to that, Shadi — you know, some younger evangelicals who have had their parents say we support Israel no matter what, given that either/or: well, if I have to be totally in support of Israel, then I can’t do this anymore. But if their parents had given them a more moderate form of affection for Israel that could have some space for critique, maybe some of those younger evangelicals would still be supportive of Israel.
Robert Nicholson: Yeah. Well, look, you can criticize Israel’s prosecution of this war or any war and still care about Israel. I would agree with that. I think for me, I just — this whole thing is so politicized and weaponized that I just haven’t been convinced. I’ll just say it like that. I’ve not been convinced that what people attribute to Israel is actually the case. And it bothers me that, especially after October 7th, everybody jumps right to Israel.
I don’t know how anybody could not be bothered by that. It’s as if Israel woke up one day and thought, you know what, let’s just go pummel Gaza. And for the heck of it, let’s do Lebanon too. This stuff does not happen in a vacuum. And I’ve seen enough, I’ve heard enough, I’ve been on the ground enough, I’ve been under Hamas rocket fire enough — I think most people just don’t know what’s going on over there. They don’t know what Israelis were responding to. And if they know, maybe they just don’t care.
I don’t know why this is always a one-sided conversation. I mean, one of the big eye-opening things of this post-October 7th world is in the other direction — it’s the Islamic world, it’s the Arab states. No leadership, virtually no criticism. They’re doing stuff behind the scenes and all that, but where’s the moral leadership on that side? We’ve got to get our stuff together, guys. Let’s have a big summit and try to figure out why we have all these radicals popping up all the time.
This is why I structured the trip that we did together, Shadi, the way that I structured it — because people tend not to look at the situation as a whole. That’s pro-Israel people and that’s critics of Israel people. They don’t know what it’s like on the ground. They don’t know what it’s like in that part of the world. They don’t know all of the endless peace talks and negotiations and offers on the table and all of the stuff that — they just see dead Palestinians and, Israel did it. And I’m — oh my goodness. Why is that happening?
And I just don’t — I turn around and I ask people, okay, so what would you have them do? Nobody wanted them in Gaza, so they left Gaza. Hamas waged wars every two years ever since. And then they go across the border and do all of these things. What are Israelis supposed to do, living in this part of the world? It’s a very heavy burden for these people to bear.
And so what happened was — let me just say one more thing. Israelis have bought into a military doctrine everybody now knows as “mowing the grass.” And the idea there is, look, you’re not going to defeat these people. They’re going to hate you today, they’re going to hate you tomorrow and the day after tomorrow. The best you can do is deprive them of the means to act on that hate and destroy you — which they will do if they get those means. And October 7th blew that theory apart.
And they came to the conclusion — I actually wrote something about this — that no longer is it enough just to build fences and keep the crazies out. We need to fix this. Something very uncharacteristic of Israelis. The only precedent was in Lebanon in the 1980s, where they thought, okay, we’ll invade Lebanon, we’ll install a new president, and then Lebanon will become pro-Israel, and then the other Arab — they had this whole master plan that blew up in their faces, literally. And the lesson Israelis took from Lebanon in the 1980s was: we are never doing that again. We’re never going to do nation building and all that stuff. We are just going to mow grass — targeted strikes, pinprick things that just kind of keep the barbarians at bay.
October 7th blew that apart. And so they went into Gaza. They went into Lebanon. They went into Syria. They did Iran. And Israelis will ask me that same question I ask other people: well, what do you think we should do? What was the proper response to October 7th?
Matthew Kaemingk: Was their goal to get rid of Hamas? And was that something that could be accomplished?
Robert Nicholson: Okay, great question. Yes, they did think they could destroy Hamas, or at the very least, destroy it enough. It is not realistic. I am of the view that it is impossible to fully destroy an enemy like that.
And I remember sitting with a very senior national security official. This was before Lebanon kicked off, before Nasrallah was killed and all of that. And he was telling me — I was asking him, all right, so where do we go from here? This was just when only Gaza was happening. And he told me right there, he said, well, we have to make sure that people are not on our borders who want to kill us. We’ve got to push it all back. And we’ve got to go into Lebanon, and we’ve got to go into Syria, and then we’ve got to do Iran.
And I was shocked. This was about a year after October 7th. And I looked around — we were in a café in Tel Aviv, and there are people having coffee, boyfriends, girlfriends. And I was like, are you — you think these people are ready for that? Do you think you can even do that? And he said, we don’t have a choice. There’s no option. What do we do? We have waited and waited and waited. We even — Bibi was even allowing money to Hamas, thinking that he could kind of placate them and keep them in their pen. And it didn’t work.
All right. So let’s put that question to Shadi. Shadi, what would you have Israel do?
Shadi Hamid: What would I have Israel do? I think very clearly there was a different way to conduct this war in a way that didn’t target civilians. I mean, Israeli officials have been very clear — including people in the cabinet — who talk about Palestinians as if they’re animals. That is a mainstream view on the far-right members of Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition. They don’t see Palestinians as human beings. Naturally, that’s going to affect how they conduct themselves in war.
Robert Nicholson: So, Shadi, you would have had them go to war, but you would have had them conduct themselves differently?
Shadi Hamid: Of course. Israel had a right to respond in some way to October 7th, and I said that very early on. That was a horrific day and Israel had to do something. They weren’t just going to shrug their shoulders and sit on their hands. But just because a military response is justified doesn’t mean that any military response is justified. And I think in the Christian tradition there’s something called just war. We have our own just war theory in the Islamic tradition.
I don’t think this is the way that — not that it’s my right to necessarily speak for what the Christian perspective would be — but I don’t think this is how Jesus Christ would wage war. I don’t think it’s how Christians who want to follow the Christian example would wage a war. And I don’t think it’s even in line with Jewish tradition.
What I think you have here is people who hate Palestinians, and they’ve said so — whether it’s Smotrich or Ben-Gvir or even people who are supposedly more moderate. I mean, you know this, Robert. This is where I would say Israelis have been traumatized, and I get it. But when you’re traumatized like that, your response is not going to be proportional. You’re going to want revenge. That is a human instinct. I don’t think it’s something particularly unique to Israelis. But I think that Israel has to be held to a certain standard because it is a democracy — well, people can debate whether it’s any longer a democracy, but I would say Israel proper itself is still somewhat democratic. And it’s also an ally of the U.S. and receives billions of dollars of military assistance. So we should ask something of our allies — to conduct themselves in a way that is in line with human rights and so forth.
And so I would just say that. We can have sympathy for where Israelis are coming from, but also say that they want revenge, and that means they’re not going to be acting in a way that is very respectful of Palestinian human rights. And if you look at how Palestinians are treated in prisons, for example — I mean, the Nick Kristof piece that everyone’s been talking about in The New York Times — there’s systematic torture. There are even allegations of sexual abuse. People can disagree on how many — we can get into that whole debate — but it seems that there is a kind of excess here, a kind of disregard for Palestinians, which animates Israelis. You hear things on Israeli media: wipe them out, there are no innocent civilians in Gaza, children — even stating that children could be future terrorists. These are the things that you hear on a regular basis coming from Israelis.
So that’s something that we have to be aware of — that the trauma is there, but the trauma leads to a desire for revenge that is fundamentally unchristian and contrary to basic human rights standards.
Robert Nicholson: I know there’s a lot there, but go ahead. Okay, Shadi, but so the bulk of that response was about what Israel is doing wrong. The question was really: what should Israel be doing? So that’s a list of things that you think Israel shouldn’t do, but what sorts of things should Israel do to secure itself?
Shadi Hamid: Well, I think the way for Israel to secure itself — first of all, I don’t think this war and what it’s done in Lebanon and the rest of the region — it’s turning the rest of the world against Israel. If Israel wants to stay secure in the long run, it has to actually be somewhat sensitive to how other people view it. Israel can’t just be a rogue state that does whatever it feels like.
So I think that even if you’re someone who cares deeply about Israel, you would look at this result and say, Israel is alienating everyone. It’s alienating its former allies. It’s alienating evangelicals. It’s alienating pro-Israel Americans. Is that going to be good for Israel in the long term? Probably not. It’s losing a generation of Americans.
But I think that the war could have ended well before the ceasefire. I mean, there’s been a lot of reporting in The New York Times and elsewhere that Israeli military officials determined sometime in 2024 that a lot of the aims had been met regarding degrading Hamas’s military capabilities. But Benjamin Netanyahu prolonged the war because he wanted to keep his far-right coalition intact. That’s not me saying that — that’s a pretty common view in mainstream reporting about this. Did the war have to continue for as long as it did, or could it have ended earlier, and we could have saved tens of thousands of Palestinian lives?
Matthew Kaemingk: Okay, okay. I am going to bring us back to our dear guest — who has had plenty of time to catch his breath — and bring us back to American evangelicals, because really, we are clearly the most important people to be talking about.
So we’ve talked about the past of American evangelicals, and we’ve talked about what’s happening now. And I want to pivot, Robert, to talking about what the future of American evangelical support for Israel is going to look like — or needs to look like. And Shadi brought up Palestinian Christians briefly earlier, but I feel like this might be another time to bring them up. Palestinian Christians and their witness through writing and speaking and traveling through the United States have had an impact on how American Christians think about these kinds of issues and have been transformative in many ways.
For those evangelicals who want to be friends of Israel, I wonder if there’s actually something to learn from the efforts of the Palestinian Christians on these kinds of things. But yeah, just more personally for you, Robert — as someone who’s committed himself to having positive Christian engagement in this region — what are your hopes, or what are your thoughts on what the future of American Christian engagement with Israel needs to look like or should look like?
Robert Nicholson: I think my biggest critique of pro-Israel Christians of any kind is that it’s never premised on any kind of real relationship. They may care about Israel, but don’t think that much or care that much about actual Jews — like actual, real human people. And I don’t expect regular Joes in America, evangelicals, to pick up and go over there and meet people. I understand it’s not exactly practical. But I’m often bothered by the fact that Christian support for Israel is pretty much the inverse of what I said mine is — which is that it starts with the state, and then the land is interesting, and then, oh yeah, there’s some people involved as well. I’m overstating it, but it’s one of the reasons why there’s no sympathy on the part of those who start to raise their eyebrow.
I think if I saw a Christian who critiqued, let’s say, Israel’s policies or Israel’s behaviour in this war in Gaza, and at the same time exhibited a genuine feeling — genuine, at the very least, empathy, if not sympathy — for their plight and why this happened and the bigger context of the whole project since 1881, and why so much of this is a reaction, a Jewish reaction to Arab rejection. That is what it is. Israel’s been Middle Easternized. Eventually, they got there with all these European ideas, and they realized, oh wait, that doesn’t work here. Nobody wants us here. They’re not going to make peace with us. Okay, so I guess we’ve got to just do what they do and just fight. Power beats power. That’s truly the story of Israel when it comes to war.
I think if I saw people who cared — if I saw Tucker who said, you know, I have a problem with the Gaza war, but man, I understand that Israelis are in this thing, and boy, there’s got to be a better way — that would, to me, change everything. I don’t see it. It’s almost never packaged that way. There’s never any interest in the people who are inside this country that people have all these feelings about — unless it’s Bibi, which everybody’s got feelings about.
So if I had to draw the picture of the future of Christian support for Israel — which I hate that phrase — it’d be Christian friendship with the Jewish people and, by extension, Israel. More empathy, more interest. When you just try to find out more about them, what’s going on — we talk about it all the time, it’s in our politics. Should we take the trouble to talk to them, ask them how they’re doing? I don’t see that. I see a lot of people with a lot of opinions. I see Palestinian Christians doing the speaker’s circuit and trying to rile people up for another kind of nationalism — Palestinian nationalism. Really, at the end of the day, that’s what most of that is. Not all of it, but most of it. And I just don’t see anybody kind of going the extra mile.
So if I only got that and didn’t get the political support, I think I’d be pretty happy. I think that’s much more important than U.S. policy on Israel.
I do think the elephant in the room here — and I’m almost ashamed for bringing it up because it’s said so often — is the extent to which there is no attempt on the part of the Palestinians to make peace with Israel. All of this is kind of a moot point. Israel will continue to feel surrounded, will continue to feel that it’s expected to make peace with people who pretty loudly say they don’t want peace — or peace on terms that mean essentially the end of Israel. And to that extent, Israelis will continue to feel like they have to fight, that the enemy understands no other language but power.
And by the way, all you need to do is walk down the street in the West Bank and talk to people, or turn on Arabic-language radio or television, and find that there’s plenty of people on the other side saying, wipe them all out. And Israelis hear all that.
So I would love to see a genuine, good-faith effort to figure out a way to begin making some kind of arrangement — I won’t even say peace, some kind of arrangement that will cool things down, give Palestinians space to begin figuring out what they even want. I don’t think they know what they want. And task some Palestinian leader — probably not one that we know of — to actually sit down with his Israeli counterpart and try to negotiate. That hasn’t happened in a really long time. And even when it happened, it ended in a big no.
So we can all have all these ideas about what Israelis should do and how they should conduct themselves. But we have to admit the fact that there is no other option that’s been left to them except violence. That’s my view. You may disagree with that view, but that’s my view. And that created this whole thing.
If you went to Israel in 1990 and polled people on their views of Palestinians, you would find a very, very small number of people who would say Palestinians are animals. That was a process, and I’ve seen that process over the course of my lifetime. Israelis were not that way. Now they’re the most that way I’ve ever seen.
October 7th was the grand slam home run. They kind of turned — the right-wing Israeli turns to his friend and says, see, that’s what I’m talking about. They’re never going to want you here. There’s no peace that’s coming. Got to do what you’ve got to do. And that’s the idea, that’s the attitude that they went into Gaza with. And there was revenge. All you need to do is listen to Israeli radio, pop songs. And you heard in those months after October 7th, this rage, this desire to even the score. You know, you come on our land, we’re going to come on your land.
Shadi Hamid: Shadi, I can see you want to talk now. No, but Robert — so you’re almost acknowledging what I brought up. You are pointing to the fact that Israelis, unfortunately, a lot of them have lost any kind of moral standard when it comes to looking at Palestinians and Arabs more broadly.
Robert Nicholson: I think — I wouldn’t say that. I would say that they have rid themselves of any illusions of ever trying to negotiate their way out of this thing.
Shadi Hamid: But that’s not good. It’s bare-knuckle fight. Can’t we just agree that that’s not good?
Robert Nicholson: That’s not good. But again, I just don’t know what to tell them in that moment. When they tell me that — it’s power versus power — I don’t have a good argument as to why they’re wrong. It’s not like there are negotiations in the offing.
Shadi Hamid: You shouldn’t become like your enemy. So as terrible as Hamas is — and Israelis obviously think that, and they have reasons to think that — that doesn’t mean they should replicate Hamas’s behaviour and become the mirror image of the very people that they hate.
Robert Nicholson: For sure. I think the same way about Americans also. That’s where you lose. When you lose who you are in an attempt to defend who you are, you will inevitably lose.
I agree with that, but I can’t express on this podcast the feeling of being surrounded, of being enclosed, of all the friends around the world — with very few exceptions — turning on you. It’s a very insular moment. It’s an inward-facing moment.
What you’re saying, Shadi, is real. There is a real change in Israel. I don’t think it’s permanent. And I think if you had somebody who stood up on the other side and said, let’s figure this out, I think you’d be shocked by the response that you would get in Israel. People do not want to fight.
Shadi Hamid: Several Arab regimes have already made peace with Israel. They haven’t been very pro-Palestinian — whether it’s Egypt or Jordan or the UAE or Saudi Arabia. I think the critique is those countries are actually pretty sympathetic to Israel and have even maybe been quietly rooting for Israel in different ways, whether it’s Israel’s war on Iran, dismantling Hamas, or whatever it might be. So this idea that Israel is surrounded by enemies, I think, has to be questioned. Not everyone is an enemy. I think Israel sees the world that way, but whether or not that reflects reality is a different question.
Yeah, I mean, this is actually a pretty conducive environment for Israel’s security needs. They don’t really have — who’s really opposing them at this point out of the Arab countries? There isn’t a lot of real opposition coming from Arab leaders to Israel. But I think we also have to question the narrative that Israel has been the peacemaker and Arabs have — I know this is just where we’ll disagree. You know, there’s an alternative narrative that Israel has been aggressive and expansionist and has not been a real partner for peace vis-à-vis the Palestinians. So I mean — but you know that there is a counter-narrative.
Matthew Kaemingk: All right, gentlemen. I’m going to call time here, and I want to have reasonable expectations for what we can accomplish here in a podcast — and peace in the Middle East is not it. So we’re not going to wrap up with our solutions here on this kind of issue.
And Robert, I do appreciate, as a fellow evangelical, your biblical and theological reflections. And I think I still am very much there — this sense of debt that I have to the Jewish people, this sense of connection and brotherhood that I have to them, and a sense that God will judge me in some sense for how I treat my Jewish brothers and sisters, and that that is in some way connected to the Jewish state and that land in some chastened and humble way. So yeah, my affection for Israel is still intact.
But I don’t think I can go with you in terms of your support for how this conflict has been prosecuted in Gaza. But I’m glad to hear that I can be a friend of Israel and be critical of the way Israel has behaved itself.
So I want to say thank you, first of all, for that, and for your willingness to handle Shadi and me as we pepper you with questions that are quite difficult.
Here’s actually where I want to end, which is on your friendship with Shadi and this trip that you all took. And what I want to ask the two of you to do — I’m not going to ask you guys to hold hands and sing together — but I do want you to reflect for a moment on what has sustained your relationship. I mean, you agreed to come on here with Shadi and you’ve clashed with Shadi multiple times in different conversations, but you keep coming back. So you’re not walking away. So there must be something about Shadi that makes you trust him and makes you willing to come and be honest.
And Shadi, I think the same for you — there’s probably something about that experience in Israel or the way that Robert leads these conversations that you appreciate. So I just wonder if we might close just with some reflections on what keeps the two of you coming to the table.
Because this podcast — we’re really not about the Israel-Gaza conflict. We’re about faith and democracy in general. And the thing Shadi and I are wrestling with a lot is that democracy requires coming to the table with people that you disagree with, in some ways deeply dislike or even fear. And so we’re very curious about where citizens get the capacity to keep coming back to the table.
So maybe, Robert, we start with you. What keeps you coming to the table with Shadi?
Robert Nicholson: Oh, great question.
I would say Shadi has a few qualities of people I tend to gravitate towards and respect, even if I don’t agree with them. There’s a kind of intellectual honesty about Shadi. He’s not afraid to say, I’m kind of still working something out. I have a gut feeling, but I’m going to talk it out with someone who disagrees with me and test my ideas and maybe even adopt ideas that come from someone else. You don’t see that, unfortunately, very much — especially people who approach with a certain kind of vibe, a good-faith vibe.
I’ve always gotten that from Shadi. He’s not asking me questions just with his fist balled up behind his back. He really wants to know. You know, somebody comes at me like, well, evangelicals and Israel — most of the time it’s somebody whose mind I will not change or even influence in the slightest. Shadi’s never been that way. When he asks the question, he really wants to know. And I think that’s unique.
I love the fact, Shadi, that also your investigations into Kuyper, your friendship with Matthew — you’re not afraid to kind of not fit in a box. You have a tribe, or several tribes. You don’t mind breaking ranks every now and then to see what else is out there. And it’s kind of an obvious thing, and it’s something that you might find in regular people you meet at the grocery store. But in this space — the world of ideas, or whatever we’re doing here — it’s very hard to find that.
So look, I take a lot of flack — I have in the past — for being friends with Shadi. Like, why are you talking to that guy? And I defend him. I have every time. You know, sometimes I’ll see what he writes and cringe a little bit. But I know that if I call him and say, you just made me cringe, he’ll be like, oh, okay, so tell me why. And I appreciate that. I really appreciate that.
Shadi Hamid: Thanks. Thanks for that.
Look, I think that this has been a test for me. I have trouble because I am admittedly emotional about Gaza. There’s a pre-October 7th Shadi and then there’s a post-October 7th Shadi. This has become a more important issue for me. I think it’s become more central to how I view the world. I think it’s had that effect on a lot of people on both sides. You just can’t look away, and it forces you to really — yeah, it forces you to kind of enter into uncomfortable territory.
Now, the question is — I think it’s tested my friendships with pro-Israel folks, including my close friends here in Washington, D.C. And the way that we’ve dealt with it is that we don’t actually talk about it. We’ve had to have a kind of policy of non-engagement, which is unfortunate, because I think in so much of my work I’ve always had this faith that there’s always something useful about engagement. But at some point you have to say, maybe it’s not useful, and maybe we just have to preserve the friendship.
The good thing about myself and Robert — I think I can still talk to him about this. I haven’t really come to the conclusion that it’s useless for me to talk to Robert about this. Why? Because I know that deep down, Robert is a good-faith interlocutor — that he does try to understand the Arab and Muslim perspective, even if he doesn’t share it, that he tries to engage with the pro-Palestine perspective, even though he doesn’t share it. And I think I’m not angry at Robert, despite my profound disagreements with him.
I can come out of this conversation and actually feel Robert’s still someone I want to hang out with, because I know I got some sense that you’re conflicted about certain issues. You do wrestle with what the right approach is. And at the end of the day, if you think someone else is a good person who’s trying to find the best way to be Christian or to be evangelical and to be in line with the Christian — I know that you want to do that, and that animates you. So as long as that’s the case, I think we’ll always be able to have these conversations.
Am I frustrated by Robert’s positions? Did it hurt me to hear some of the things that he said today? Yes. But that’s okay. And we should be able to kind of talk through that, even if it makes us uncomfortable. And so this has been challenging for me, just to kind of sum it up. This is not an easy conversation for me to have. And I almost wish that Robert had a different perspective. I wish that I could persuade him to have a different perspective. But at the end of the day, that’s probably not going to happen — but we can still be friends irrespective of that.
Matthew Kaemingk: Yeah, I appreciate that, guys. I really do. And thinking about this, Robert — the words, this feeling that we’re surrounded and there’s nothing else but violence — when human beings feel backed into a corner, feel that they don’t have any other options, they behave in ways they never planned to, they never hoped to, and that they’re not proud of.
And I think a big part of what Shadi and I are pursuing here are ways to avoid the fight-or-flight mentality. And I like to tell the story of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane — that it’s dark, there’s guys with clubs and torches and swords coming to arrest him. And the disciples do the fight-or-flight thing. Some of them want to fight and some of them want to run away. Everyone is using the logic of violence and the logic of power in that moment, except for one person. And one person reaches out and heals — not someone on his side, but heals someone on the other side, the side that’s come to bind him. And they don’t all sing “Kumbaya” that night together in the garden. The arrest still happens, and it’s a really costly act of healing that Jesus engages with.
In order for these conversations to happen, we do need people with real passion and real ideas to extend out and have these kinds of conversations. Robert, so I thank you, and I thank our listeners for hanging with us this long. If you haven’t thrown your phone across the room by something that Shadi said or Robert said — I mean, clearly everyone agrees with me, because I’m just a waffling, you know. Yeah, we’ll work on me some other time, Robert.
But I really do thank you so much for coming on and modelling this kind of engagement and for your leadership at Providence and Philos. And yeah, so thank you very much, Robert.
Shadi Hamid: Yeah, thank you, Robert. We really appreciate this. It’s been great to have you, really.
Robert Nicholson: No, I’m very glad to be here.
Matthew Kaemingk: All right, friends. We’ll see you later. Bye-bye.
