Focus on Israel

Laurie Cardoza-Moore: On our program today, you'll meet a man who was raised as a Muslim Palestinian. He was taught that Jews were his enemy. Then with a single and powerful revelation, his world was turned upside down.

Hello, I'm Laurie Cardoza-Moore, founder of Proclaiming Justice to the Nations, a nonprofit organization dedicated to educating and sharing the message of Christian biblical responsibility to the people and land of Israel in the face of a growing global antisemitism. Proclaiming Justice to the Nations was birthed to stop the silence, to wake up Christians and people of conscience to the realities of a world bent on destroying Israel and the Jewish people.

In the Middle East, Muslim children are taught that Jews are not even human, that they are monsters or animals that should be shunned and killed. Amazingly, some emerge from this darkness and learn the truth. While on a recent trip to Israel, I had the unique opportunity to meet a young Muslim man who discovered that he truly was his own worst enemy.

Mark Halawa was born into a secular Muslim family in Kuwait. His father owned a very successful construction business that provided a privileged life for him and his four siblings. In 1990, the first Gulf War struck Kuwait and changed his life. When he was 12 years old, his father's business was destroyed, and the family left Kuwait, moving first to Jordan and eventually immigrating to Canada. Although he was a secular Muslim, his father was rabidly anti-Israel and anti-Semitic.

Yet Mark had heard vague family rumors that his maternal grandmother was Jewish. While studying at the University of Western Ontario, he met a rabbi who explained that based on Jewish law, which determines religion through the mother, he was a Jew. He then began to explore his religious roots, which ultimately led him to Israel to study at a yeshiva.

His story is inspiring and his mission to bring peace between Muslims and Jews is heroic. He gave me a look into what it was like growing up in a Muslim country and being taught to hate all Jews and Israel.

Mark Halawa: My name is Mark Halawa. I was born and raised in Kuwait to a secular Muslim family. We called ourselves Palestinian. We had a Jordanian passport at the time, but we called ourselves a secular Muslim Palestinian family.

I lived in Kuwait like everybody else. All along, I knew that my grandmother was Jewish, but I did not know that that would make me a Jew later on, 26 years into my life. I'm going to tell you with everything that I went through and experienced in my life in Kuwait, I saw Kuwait as a great nation, a great country. I like Kuwaiti people, the generosity, the system, my school, my teachers, everybody else.

In school, there are a few types of incitement. To be honest, everywhere you turn your face, there is incitement. Incitement against Jews, Christians—this is the standard. Of course, it's against everybody else also that is not Muslim, like Hindus and Buddhists and whoever they want.

Yet back in my day, we went to school six days a week, and every day we'd have a Muslim class. It was not all incitement. Believe me, I learned a lot of wonderful stuff, like you should give charity and you should respect your family.

Yet the first verse of the Quran, which we all recited every single day, crossing our arms and saying it verse by verse—I know it by heart and I'll never forget it. "Give us the righteous path, the path that you have bestowed upon us, except those who went astray and those who got frowned upon."

The explanation right under it, and you'll see this in prints that are available in the United States of America: Those who went astray are the Christians, and those who got frowned upon are the Jews. So you automatically, day in and day out, whether thinking about it or not since you're a child, you think that those people are excluded, they're no good.

We had an Arabic language teacher. I never liked this guy very much, nothing personal, just an older guy we never connected with. The Arabic language teacher walks in. He turns the seat upside down or backwards and sits down and looks at us. He goes, "All right, today we're going to learn things differently." And he pulls in a map of the Middle East.

I remember that day clearly because that guy changed the way I used to think of this conflict, and I felt like I was plugged in, I understood the news. My dad never elaborated at home, but I kind of understood it now from this gentleman. He goes, "Look where the West, the Crusaders, and the Jews and the United Kingdom planted the Jews in the middle of the Arab and Muslim world after breaking the Ottoman Caliphate, or like you like to call it in English, the Ottoman Empire."

I'm not sure how Caliphate translates to Empire. He said they planted the Jews right there between the Eastern side of the Middle East, Asia, and the Western side, which is Africa, so there would never be another Islamic Caliphate established again. I'm looking at the visual. I heard the words, and it made absolute sense to me.

I had an Egyptian teacher also that would walk in and say, "If one bomb could kill five Jews, how many bombs would you need to kill 35 Jews?" I heard the question that justifies the idea of killing someone because they're different because in a text somewhere, it says those people are no good. They don't exist. And that education means that those people are not just regular infidels, they're really infidels, as in their property is yours, the women are yours, and their houses are yours.

First of all, just to go back to what I mentioned at the beginning, my father is an avid supporter of the Palestinian cause, if we could call it a cause. My dad was born in 1945 in a place called Beit She'an in Northern Israel, when the British Mandate of Palestine existed.

My dad was one of the first supporters of the PLO in Kuwait. Yasser Arafat, as you might know, lived in Kuwait and was also an engineer like my father. He re-established the PLO, and my father was one of the first 300 donors to give a portion of his salary to this gentleman, this charismatic, evil gentleman.

What was a trigger? There wasn't one specific trigger, but there were many. I'd like to mention this one simple one. When the Gulf War happened, we were on vacation. Then we had to go to Jordan because we had an apartment there. We went to our apartment in Jordan and took off the covers from the couches and the TV. Then I turned the TV on like any child would do. I was 13 years old in 1990.

I'm flipping channels. There were a couple of Jordanian channels and there was another channel with Sesame Street, and the characters were speaking a language that I was not familiar with. I thought it was Kurdish or Persian. It was close to Arabic but not Arabic. And I watched and listened, and it looked different, the characters looked different.

Then somebody says, "Shalom." And it was like a bomb fell on me. I was so scared and I wanted to turn the TV off. I discovered I was watching Israeli TV. Slowly, Israeli TV became one of our favorite TV channels at home. All of us, the whole family, including my dad and my mom, would watch only Israeli TV. They had great broadcasting.

What I liked more on Israeli TV than the normal shows, the Simpsons, and the movies, was commercials, Israeli commercials. I always liked commercials. In Israeli commercials, you would see Israelis. You're not seeing American actors. I'm looking at Israelis: moms and children, fathers, young kids acting and behaving and doing things that make them look happy and lovely and enjoying life.

Mothers are hugging their children. People are just laughing. Maybe they have to do that in front of the camera, I don't know, but it was just mesmerizing. What about the shape-shifting people? What about those evil infidels that are planning day in and day out to kill me? And we have to go defend? You always feel like you have to defend.

Now as a child, and I said this in the United Nations in 2017, a part of our education was to learn the types of jihad out there. And this kind of echoes in America. You see a lot of children behave in a certain way, like they are seeking their own version of jihad.

We were told there are three types of jihad. Jihad by the sword, for those who can, the strong ones. Jihad by the money, you go and sponsor a person to go to war. There were always sponsorship advertisements in the newspaper in Kuwait until not long ago. Sponsor a fighter to go to Afghanistan or Iraq or any of that stuff.

And also the last one, if you cannot do either, there is jihad by the heart or by the mouth, which is where you say things, you wish well to the jihadist or the fighters, and you wish ill against the enemies. So each one of us after our classroom, you think to yourself, "I wonder who in my classroom has a rich father who probably could sponsor? This guy is a big guy, he could go fight. I wonder what my kind of jihad is." Unfortunately, I see these trends today in the United States of America, especially on campuses.

Laurie Cardoza-Moore: From studying history, it's very clear that what starts with the Jews never ends only with the Jews. We must strongly stand against any anti-Semitic trends. For if not stopped, they'll cause harm to all of us and we'll witness the downfall of our Judeo-Christian Western culture.

Today, many people say there's no longer a need for a Jewish state, that Jews around the world no longer need a place of refuge. But anyone who has heard recent statistics about the worldwide rise in antisemitism would never make such a claim. The reality is that neo-Nazi groups and Nazi sympathizers are increasing around the world.

Surveys show that over one billion people in the world harbor anti-Semitic attitudes. Close to 50% believe that Jews have too much power in the business world, and two-thirds of the world's population has never heard of the Holocaust or believe the historical accounts of it are inaccurate.

Don't let yourself be manipulated by evil people with a wicked agenda. When the self-serving villains are in control, good people from all religions suffer. Muslims, Christians, and all people of conscience should stand proudly and show respect for a country that gives so much to the world in so many ways.

Do your part. Do your research and do what you can to make a difference because what happens in Israel does affect us all. This is not just a Jewish or just an Israeli problem. This is a problem for all humanity, for each and every one of us who believe in freedom and human rights. Learn more about what you can do at pjtn.org.

Mark Halawa: I went to university in Canada between 1999 to 2004. At my time, I was busy with activities as the usual student activities: studying, frat houses, and fraternities. But then I noticed there were people lobbying on campus calling themselves Palestinians, calling themselves pro-justice and freedom and human rights. None of them were Palestinian. I was the most Palestinian out of all of them.

They would just recruit and talk, and they'd catch those simpleton students and tell them a version of the story. I hear a common word: MSA, Muslim Student Association. Then I hear that the Muslim Student Association is working in coordination with an organization called CAIR in America. Learn about CAIR and look at the people on top of CAIR. The top guy is a Palestinian from Gaza.

I would like to call these people, first of all, Muslim Brotherhood groups. They're well-organized and known to be well-organized. These are very dedicated people, they're not people from the street. But they have a goal, and that goal goes beyond borders. That's why they were banned in every single Muslim country and Arab country.

The majority of Arab and Muslim countries, specifically the Gulf and the heart of the Arab world, have banned them. Egypt has banned them. You probably remember what the Muslim Brotherhood did in Egypt. In Jordan, they're not allowed to do any activities.

The Muslim Brotherhood is running Gaza today. Hamas is the military arm of the Muslim Brotherhood. In Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain, they're banned. But the Muslim Brotherhood, from what I understand, is running freely and collecting the most amount of funding in the United States of America. I hope people wake up to the fact that CAIR are not the representatives of Muslims or peaceful Muslims.

There's a lot of wonderful people that just want to assimilate, ran away from Middle Eastern woes and problems, and they just want to live. They just want to work and make a decent dollar and give a good education and food and shelter to their children. They don't want to see any of that in the Middle East. Now, if these families were successful in avoiding people like the MSA on campus or CAIR or ISNA that get involved and say we represent you, would their children avoid them? You never know.

The second generation is always looking to connect and have some sort of identity, a religious identity. Next thing you know, they go to a student club on campus or school and they're hooked. And you have people making up stories on campus about topics they don't know anything about.

In my school in Canada, in Toronto, I was a graduate student. I was not spending a lot of time on campus, but every now and then I would go and I'd see the problems and pro-Palestine and pro-Israel groups. I wanted to go and see what was going on because I heard a lot of people were ganging up on Jewish students and things were violent, with slashing tires and pushing people, intimidating and yelling at people, and swastikas in washrooms. This was in Toronto at York University.

So I went a few times and I saw this bunch of really nice kids, I don't know where they're from, I don't know if they're Jewish or Christian, just average good kids and they're trying to say, "No, but look, there were missiles fired and Israel responded," and they're citing United Nations resolutions.

And they were speaking to a girl. I'm looking at that girl, like, "Isn't that my neighbor from my building? She's pretending she's Palestinian." She had nice curly hair. I was like, "She's not Palestinian. One second, she's Afghani, her name is so-and-so."

Look, there's either funding for this from outside so that people create their own nonprofit and their own little world to push this, or some of them are associated with CAIR and ISNA openly. The Muslim Student Association is in every single campus, almost in every state in the United States of America.

Those are the same guys that would learn the violent version of the Quran. These guys are the Muslim Brotherhood. They don't joke around. Read their motto yourself. "Jihad is our way, martyrdom is our way"—that's their motto. And they are based in America.

When I first discovered Judaism and discovered that I grew up with hate and I wasted my life with hate and was consumed with all of this instead of being consumed with better stuff, I became resentful and hateful also, unfortunately. I fell into it. But then slowly, as I started opening my mind and eyes as I traveled and I saw different people, I realized people are different.

Organizations are the ones I would be scared of. Do know who these organizations are and who's funding them. BDS, one of the first paychecks that BDS received was from the wife of the previous emir of Qatar, and there are documents to prove this. There are people who are looking to create trouble, and they use these tools.

For example, this woman Linda Sarsour does. One of her cousins was detained in an ISIS cell in Saudi Arabia in 2016. She doesn't come from this intellectual world that we think she comes from, and she likes to just jump into each topic and give her own point of view, but she's a staunch Muslim Brotherhood supporter. Does she work with CAIR? Does she know CAIR? I'm not sure of the details. I know she likes Farrakhan also.

I unfortunately feel bad for the honest, decent Americans that feel for a cause. You know, that's the American value: I'm going to fight for you even if you live across the world. I learned that growing up from watching TV. And I look at America and think how amazing could that be and that you have the freedom to say such a thing. In the Middle East, you don't have much freedom. If you say the wrong thing about the wrong political factor, you'd be yanked from your house or somebody will knock on the door and tell you, "Hey, I'm watching."

But Americans, they have freedom. And instead of choosing their freedom to just be selfish and think of their own life only, they're going out to help others. That selflessness of America is really attractive and I give you my word, I cannot quantify who in the Middle East is so very pro-America, but the vast majority of youth, young people in the Middle East today, are first of all sick and tired of everything that they saw.

You and I also saw in the past few years all the terrorism and attacks and ISIS and all that stuff. People appreciate what America stands for. People pray for America. Please stay strong, please have our back, please go fight the bad people.

And there are those who are moving the scene in the Middle East in an evil way, trying to distract attention. Sometimes they create trouble in Libya, sometimes in Syria, and sometimes in Egypt. And they pump a lot of money into this and they have a lot of money gushing from the ground.

Actualize where you are. Wake up in the morning and look around you. Look at the people that open their hearts and their countries and trusted you. There's a lot of trust in North America. Just take advantage of that in a good way.

Distance yourselves from the bad guys that are trying to gather you under an umbrella of religion. Be doubtful. Why are these guys pushing that far? What's their agenda? Leave extremism behind. Remember that there are people here that are like family. The social fabric of America allows this kind of cohesion between people despite the religion.

Stay away from CAIR. Stay away from ISNA. These guys are just puppets that other governments are using to distract America and to divide America. You want a strong America. You want a vibrant America and stronger than ever in order to repel the evils of today. We live in a dangerous world and things are not exactly what we see.

I would advise parents to connect with their children and educate their children a little bit and make them be aware. And also the younger people, if they watch the show, I'd tell them when you go to university or school, of course, have friends. It enriches who you are to have a variety of friends around.

But be aware of those who push their agenda on you, those who go out of their way to invite you to events under organizations who want you to go to marches and start handing you signs and get you in. They want head count. Be aware of who these guys are.

Also, learn about your roots. Learn who you are. Connect with who you are in order to know which direction you're going to carry on in the future. I don't wish on anyone to go through any of the experiences I went through or the more radical ones.

Thank God my parents were secular. My dad did not like religion whatsoever. But the majority of people grow up in religious homes and their neighbors are religious and the other guys are religious and you don't distinguish who's who.

I thought of myself as wanting to share my experience with Arabic speakers. A lot of news and media and focus and NGOs are focused on English speakers around the world or even Europe, but not much on the Middle East except official news. So I created a nonprofit, I called it the Halawa Initiative, and I started making videos.

I must say I'm asking everybody that watches this not to be paranoid or scared of your next-door neighbor. People are like us, flesh and blood, and they just want the same things we want for our children most of the time.

Yet organizations that are known, proven, and banned by Arab countries such as the Muslim Brotherhood in any shape or form or name must be banned. And you have to lobby. You have to go out and make your part. In Hebrew, we called it Hishtadlut. Hishtadlut is making action.

You ask God and God controls the world, but at the same time, you have to make action. Hishtadlut is once you ask sincerely, it stands on two legs and it goes far. Go far, educate, speak to your Senator, tell him, "Hi, why is this organization preying after our children? Until when? How many more attacks are we going to have until we act or say something?" God bless America and I hope to hear only good news.

Laurie Cardoza-Moore: Mark Halawa is a brave man who speaks the truth, an unfortunate truth that we must all listen to if we want freedom to survive here and in Israel. I will continue to beat this drum as well and look for watchmen to join me in this battle.

Now that's our program for today. And I want you to know we appreciate your support. The time to take a stand is now. Be a leader in your community and in your church. One person can make a difference.

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