Out of Zion

Guest (Male): Welcome to the Israel Answers series, connecting Israel, the Bible, and you. Join Susan Michael as she explores timely issues and current events from a scriptural perspective to equip the Christian world with a balanced and biblical response. Be sure to subscribe for future episodes, which will ignite your faith and bring the Bible to light in your everyday world. Now, let’s join Susan with your Israel Answers.

Dr. Susan Michael: Welcome to the Out of Zion podcast, and I’m your host Dr. Susan Michael, and I am here with a new friend and colleague, Doron Keidar, who is a member of the Israeli Defense Forces Special Forces. So we’re going to talk today a little bit about his unique role there with the IDF and a few of the projects that he's working on.

So Doron, thank you for being with us today. And first, I’d really like you just to tell a little bit about your background, how you grew up, how you ended up in the Special Forces and that formed who you are.

Doron Keidar: Well, the short story of it is that my father was a World War II vet that fought in World War II. He became a US contractor in Israel and actually that’s how my family and I ended up in Israel. The rest of my family are from the United States. So we were born and raised in Israel. I grew up in northern Israel in the Upper Galilee bordering Lebanon, and I basically grew up under conflict.

I grew up unlike most Israelis, kind of like today the conflict is in Gaza and the surrounding Gaza envelope, but we were the Gaza envelope of the '70s, the '80s, the '90s with constant rocket attacks from Lebanon. And so that was my upbringing is being raised in conflict. It was my pursuit to end up in the Israeli Special Forces.

I started actually in the Southern Command in my service in 2003 and have been fighting in most of Israel’s wars since 2003, including the current war. In 2017 is actually when I transitioned into Special Forces. I got into a special mobility unit, and this is actually the game-changer in this current war, which we had lacking in 2006. So one of the important game-changers and strategies that was learned from the Second Lebanon War is what we actually got to contribute to this current war. And this is one of the biggest game-changers actually.

Dr. Susan Michael: Meaning the mobility?

Doron Keidar: The special mobility units, yeah. Simply put, in 2006 you had soldiers behind enemy lines for let's say three days and they're already losing water, food, their ammunition is depleting. Wounded soldiers behind enemy lines, they basically were in a standstill and in a very desperate and dire situation because the logistics of getting resupplies, getting soldiers out of harm's way and getting them to a medical evacuation from the hot zone was too dangerous and not possible because we weren't set up for that yet in the military.

So my commander was one of the leaders in standing up the response to that and creating special mobility teams that can do medical services, they can do resupply services, troop movements, etc. So that’s essentially what I ended up taking part of in 2017 and had the privilege of doing that active in this current war the past two years now.

Dr. Susan Michael: Now, you said your father was from the United States. And he wasn't Jewish?

Doron Keidar: No, so he was a Christian Zionist actually.

Dr. Susan Michael: And your mother?

Doron Keidar: My mother was Catholic actually.

Dr. Susan Michael: Israeli?

Doron Keidar: No, both sides of my parents came from Christian backgrounds. My dad was a lover of Zion, lover of Israel. My mom grew up in a Catholic home, not so much. So she came to Israel with my dad, agreed to go with him and it was really his love for Israel that drew them as a couple.

Dr. Susan Michael: So you were raised in a Christian home, you’re Israeli because you were born in Israel. Interesting.

So tell us a little bit about, you just talked about your fighting in the recent Gaza war, but you were able to really see with your eyes and understand that Israel was not committing genocide. But yet this is just such a common accusation against Israel that they're committing genocide. Can you kind of unpack that for us? Why are they being accused of that and what was really the situation?

Doron Keidar: So the sad reality is that many Christians around the world said never again concerning the Holocaust. We’ll never stand idly by when Jewish people come under attack by demonic forces, just to call it that in a broad stroke. I’m not going to name names of movements, organizations, Islamic terrorists, or the far right or whatever. It doesn't matter. It’s all demonic in my opinion, demonic forces coming against God’s chosen people.

And the church said we wouldn't do that again, especially the Protestants. And here we are in my lifetime, I thought I would never witness a repeat of history where the church has stood by silently. Many Christians actually condemned Israel when we retaliated against the terrorists and went to go get our hostages. Really, that was the mission. That was the main reason why myself and all the other soldiers were deployed, was to get our hostages number one.

Number two, restore peace and security for our country and disarm Hamas in the process of doing so so that we don't end up in a repeat of where the terrorists have that military capability to attack us like they did on October 7th. And I think what people don't understand is October 7th wasn't a Bunday attack. It wasn't a terror attack on a bunch of innocent people at a nature festival party. It was an invasion. We had 7,000 terrorists that invaded Israel from Gaza from multiple breaching points of the Gaza border into Israel, spreading murder, terror, and all sorts of evil.

Dr. Susan Michael: And half of them or what percentage were civilians that weren't trained?

Doron Keidar: About half were civilians, that’s right. Half of them were not trained, they didn't have a mission plan like the other terrorists did. They had names of people of where they lived, how many kids, do they have a dog, do they have a gun, etc. So very detailed missions that the Nukhba terrorists had and so on. But yeah, half of those about were just regular civilians of Gaza who carried out these murders and atrocities.

And so crazily enough, when we retaliated to this evil to defend ourselves, literally defend ourselves—I left my wife and kids at home defenseless to go fight on October 7th. So if the terrorists ended up at my house, I would have been one of those victims of October 7th, unfortunately, because I’m fighting to defend my country collectively. The reason why we got accused of war crimes is because that is the tactics of terrorists. And the sad truth is, like I said here earlier, that the church by and large has been silent or indifferent, contrary to what Bonhoeffer warned the church of.

And then many others who claim to be Christians use—and I mean let's be real, Tucker Carlson is not a real Christian just to use a name of one of the pundits who is claiming on the name of Christianity to oppose Israel and to condemn Israel. And I was at AmFest where he spoke and I heard him that night claiming that we committed war crimes. The very next morning I had an open mic with Generation Zion, by the way great organization that’s combating the misinformation war from the Christian world.

And they graciously gave me 30 minutes to be there to answer questions to anybody who came up to the mic and wanted to ask of war crimes or whatever. And I opened up saying Tucker Carlson last night lied and I’ll tell you why. So it’s not an attack against him and it’s not an attack against those who are taking this side. What it really is, it’s a battle for truth. And we need to be aware that what people have done is they have fallen for what’s known as Dawa.

Dawa is an Islamic tactic. Some of you have known of Taqiyya, you’ve heard you can be lied to in the name of Islam, but Dawa is actually the disinformation war. It’s the propaganda war that is basically the silent Jihad to be able to achieve their goals of the caliphate and domination. And so they're using useful idiots like Tucker and friends, and that’s what you’re becoming. You’re becoming a useful idiot of these terrorists who are feeding you misinformation.

You take it for granted because where do they get their information from? Because that’s the question people need to be asking. And really where it comes from is Qatar. Qatar are the number one funders of the disinformation war who fund and stood up Al Jazeera. So Al Jazeera is the main source of information that all news networks in the world, when reporting on the Middle East and specifically Israel, glean their information from. They don't get it from reporters on the ground in Israel.

I’ve seen the reporters, I’ve done security for many of the big names. I won't say who my clients were, but I’ve done executive protection for many years. And many of them have been my clients where I stand there next to them as they bold-face lie to their audience and giving disinformation because they're not in the field really. They're not gleaning the information for real, they're just regurgitating what Al Jazeera tells them. So that is why, because people can say, "Well Doron, you’re saying one thing but everyone else is saying the other thing, so why should we believe you?"

And yeah, it’s a hard leg to stand on so to speak because the whole weight of all the international news agencies are typically saying something completely different, but that’s the why. They're playing into Dawa, they're playing into the Islamic tactics and extremists. They're very well funded with the disinformation war, and that is why the world has been claiming that we’ve been committing war crimes when the truth and the reality is we are held to the Geneva code, land warfare laws that every military in the West is held to.

More than that, we have what’s known as the gun purity laws. And that’s what every soldier gets, it’s 10 bullet points of you can't use your weapon to exercise your will, you can't use your weapon to make people do, "You go over there, you do this." You’re not allowed to do that. The weapon is for defense. The weapon is to use against terrorists only when fired upon and so on. So we actually have a higher standard than actually the international community of the United States or Europe or England or any other countries that have been fighting in Afghanistan or Iraq.

Dr. Susan Michael: And all of this is in writing, so anyone who wants to research this or really find out, it’s very clear it’s a part of written policies of the IDF.

Doron Keidar: If you Google "The Spirit of the IDF," that’s where you have it in English. But we call it To'ar HaNeshek, so directly translated is gun purity laws, but it’s actually published by the IDF in English called "The Spirit of the IDF" and you can Google it. That’s right.

Dr. Susan Michael: You know, the other thing about the IDF is of course that say you have a soldier that violates the gun purity laws or you have a soldier that just one day just cracks and starts doing crazy things and maybe they beat a Palestinian or something. The difference is that Israel will investigate and will take action against that soldier if they’ve done something wrong, as opposed to the other side where it’s all about doing the wrong, it’s all about the attacking and violating. They have no code like that. And but yeah, Israel is not perfect, the IDF isn't perfect. Someone may make a mistake or someone may just lose it one day and do the wrong thing, but Israel will investigate and they’ll come up with charges against that soldier.

Doron Keidar: I’ll give you an example to that point. First of all yes, we do have soldiers that act out of conduct, they do wrong, and they do get the full ramifications of military tribunal etc., and they're very strict, extremely strict. And there have been soldiers that have been punished for not acting according to our code of conduct. 100%. And that happens. So I’m not going to whitewash and say the IDF is clean, we don't do wrong. No military has non-bad actors within a war especially. Because in war you’re put under extreme pressures and challenges that you’re not in everyday life, somebody cutting you off on the highway and you have road rage. We’re not talking about that.

I’ll give you an example. We had a terrorist that was under our custody that had been interrogated in the field and confessed to what they found on him. So they found on him a lock of hair of a young girl. And they pressed him, asked him, "What is this? Where did you get it? Why are you having it? Why are you carrying a lock of hair on you?" and so on. He finally confessed and said, "This is the hair of a young girl, a Jewish girl that he had raped and murdered and he kept as a memento."

Now mind you, we had seen the horrors of October 7th. We knew what they did to family members, friends of ours, people we knew personally. And you’re standing across this gentleman and you’re in the field. And I have a choice. I have a moral choice. Do I put him in the ground and chalk it up as a casualty of war, or do I act in godly conduct actually, right? Because to me at the end of the day as a God-fearer, God is watching everything we do. So I don't care what the government say, what my military says. I’m holding myself accountable to God’s watching me right now and my heart and how I act in this very challenging moment. And that’s just an example.

Or you’ll have some doctor at the hospital on post-October 7th, hours later, a terrorist is on their table and they know that this terrorist—because they got a text—"Your son was killed in the terror attack on October 7th just now." But they're at the hospital and they need to save lives, they can't check out and say, "Well, I need to go mourn." So they're operating. This was real reality, it happened. And they now have a terrorist on the operating table because we follow what’s known as triage even in the battlefield of a terror attack. The triage is if the terrorist is more mortally wounded and worse than the others, we have to treat them and prioritize them. That’s what the Israeli Magen David Adom, that’s what they have to prioritize. And those are real challenges that we face.

So all I’m saying is quit looking at headlines, quit looking at inflammatory language that some pundits are saying and realize there's real people with real challenges. I’m one of them. And I can tell you that we have been put up against some of the hardest moral, ethical, and psychological challenges that I can think of. Because again, I have friends who are in Special Forces in America, in Europe, in our Marines or Army. And I don't know anybody who’s been put up against such immense challenges. And they're telling me this and saying, "Brother, I feel so bad for what you guys had to face." So I’m just basing off of that and saying, listen, this is a huge challenge for Israel. And I believe that we have been acting rightly and in flying colors with all due respect to everybody’s criticism.

Dr. Susan Michael: Well, I want to ask about one other accusation. So Tucker Carlson also interviewed this former US military—you can clarify who he was—and he had been hired by a contractor to go and to help secure the sites where they were distributing aid, where the humanitarian aid fund was distributing aid. And he came back with the most awful accusations against Israeli soldiers that they were firing indiscriminately into the crowd and that they had killed this little hungry boy that he showed the picture of him. Tell us, what’s the truth?

Doron Keidar: Well, I’m glad you asked about Anthony Aguero is his name. He was a West Pointer, US military army, ended up finishing his service in the Green Berets. And unfortunately, this is one of those bad apples within the US military. And again, it doesn't look good having an Israeli soldier calling out an American soldier and in fact, I normally don't do that because I believe it’s important with our ties with the United States and Israel that we strengthen each other and we don't show each other’s dirty laundry so to speak. Because that’s counterproductive, right? Because I’ll find someone who did wrong in your military, you’ll find someone done wrong in my military. It’s counterproductive. It exists.

So we know that, and I know that there’ll be due justice to that individual. But in this case, it became a public issue when he went to the media and when he went and spread misinformation. So soldiers reached out to me from the IDF because I’m not a part of any of the security forces for the JHF food distribution sites that you mentioned that I’ve seen. I have seen them, I know I’m aware of them, we operated in vicinity of but not a part of that mission. But soldiers who were part of the mission gave me personal accounts and I cross-examined them just to be clear. I didn't just go, "Oh, you’re just some random guy." I cross-examined, "Where did you serve? What unit?" etc., and were able to go, "Okay, so you’re legit." So tell me about your experience, what you saw, what you witnessed. And then also knowing from operations I’ve been a part of and so on.

And they said look, he claimed that we fired into a crowd. Common sense: how much footage that we see of atrocities happening in Gaza that has gone viral? How hard would it have been for one of the Palestinians in the crowd that had been fired at, and knowing that they use misinformation as a tactic, how much more valuable would it be to capture footage of the IDF firing tank rounds into a crowd and just that carnage and the horror of those shots? It would have shook the world. "All eyes on Rafah," right? And that was based off of fictitious information, fabricated footage and so on of starving people and so on. How valuable would this be?

And nobody in the crowd filmed it? None of the propagandists, which I guarantee you they're there, they're always there to capture any mistake that we make and they didn't capture it on film? I found that to be very interesting. So we didn't have that. We have soldiers telling us that’s not what happened. And we got to through a fellow friend of mine whose name is Matthew Tardy. So this is all verified. You can go on his Twitter account and you can see the feed. He gave all the information because then he looked and did a deep dive on this. He’s a former Green Beret, this Matthew Tardy.

And as a Green Beret himself, he’s like, "Well, he’s part of my community, I got to fact-check this." And he was able to get to the bottom of the fact that he was lying about the GHF, he was lying about what he did there. And the young boy that he claimed they took a picture of and said, "This boy was shot and killed," then later Fox News were able to track him and say, "Here he is and his mother, and he’s alive and well." So you had so much disproving of this man, yet he still goes on interviews, he still gets platformed.

And you won't see me being platformed as the person who got insider account to disprove him or Matthew Tardy, who’s a fellow US military member and an actual I would say an actual Green Beret because a real Green Beret liberates the free, the oppressed, and fights for real causes and has a moral backbone. And it’s important that for myself and any military member, doesn't matter Special Forces or even a supportive anyone who’s in military and in uniform, you represent your country. That’s on your weight of your shoulders.

To lie to the public using your title or using your background to say, "Well because I’m this," that is a huge, huge, huge red flag for our community. Because United States and Israel have fought together against terror for years and we fight shoulder-to-shoulder to fight evil. And it is important that we fight this in a righteous way and not spread misinformation and hurt each other. That’s very important.

Dr. Susan Michael: Well, thank you for setting the record straight. I know that a lot of our listeners have heard these various things and it’s just hard for us to believe as American Christians that someone would just outright lie, but they do it all the time. And that’s what we have to come to understand in this situation—the lies. They're lies about Israel, they're just outright lies.

Doron Keidar: You know, some people are narcissists, so they just want air time, they want their name out there. Some people want money. So honestly I don't know, I don't know what the motive is, but what I can just tell you is that when you see somebody like we said that should be acting completely opposite and having a higher standard, plus being a West Pointer—my nephew by the way is a West Pointer and he finished his military service in the Pentagon. So I’m very proud. I’m a very proud patriot of America as I am a Zionist and Israeli. And so I can tell you from first-hand knowing what the standard is from my own family, it’s a shame that people for whatever reasons spread misinformation and it’s wrong.

Dr. Susan Michael: Well now Doron, you also have some projects that you’ve been working on, all in about getting out the truth and the right information. But share with us, you brought a couple things with you. Share with us what you’ve been a part of.

Doron Keidar: So I’ve been honored to be a part of a wonderful film project called *I Am Israel: The Mountain of the King*. We’ve been working on this for over five years together with David Kiern. He’s a Christian film director from here in Nashville locally. And we met each other years ago and I saw him in his first film called *I Am Israel*. And I approached him and I said, "Brother, I said that is so beautiful. You shared the beauty of Judea, Samaria, the biblical heartland, an area that is politically charged because of the media and what have you, and you showed it in a beautiful cinematic way and in a biblical way that basically shows this land the way God sees it."

And I said that was wonderful because you took something that could have been negative, you could have gotten into the landmines of these political issues or whatever, but you didn't. You just told the personal story of these Jews that are building God’s holy land and rebuilding it and restoring it and what God’s doing through these individuals and telling their personal story. So then I told him about why don't you do a film about the Temple Mount with that same spirit, with that same vantage point of how God sees this beautiful holy mountain, which God says, "This is the navel of the earth. This is where I will put my name forever."

Then we were able to collaborate and make a sequel of *I Am Israel* with the main focus being God’s mountain, Mount Zion in Jerusalem. And it’s a beautiful film. It’s in 4K, high definition, beautiful cinematography, never-seen-before footage of Israel in one of the most beautiful cinematic ways. We got John Rhys-Davies, he’s the narrator of the film. He’s known for the younger generation for *Lord of the Rings*, but he’s also for people like me he’s known from the *Indiana Jones* films. So we have this wonderful A-lister film actor that is narrating the film and we got an orchestra from here in Nashville, high-end music, everything is just top-notch.

Dr. Susan Michael: Well tell me, how can our audience find a copy of this? How can they buy it?

Doron Keidar: Well, this is what the cover looks like. It’s the more colorful cover from the two films and it’s called *I Am Israel: The Mountain of the King*. And if you go to iamisraelfilm.com or just Google "I Am Israel film," you will see this cover. And you can download it digitally, you can get a hard copy like this in DVD or Blu-ray. And yeah, it’s a wonderful experience. It’s for families, so it’s all ages, we did that on purpose. It’s adventurous, it’s exciting. It’s the journey that the Israelites did from Sinai through the land of Israel and we take you through all these biblical sites and take you to the journey to Mount Zion.

Dr. Susan Michael: Well, I look forward to seeing it myself. And as we bring this to a close, you have another resource here you’d like to share.

Doron Keidar: So another important resource for the information war that we have seen since October 7th—from the river to the sea, protest. So I have this book by Lars Enarson. He’s a world-renowned Bible teacher and I’ve had the privilege to get his book and to share this with many people because he has written the book to counter this Palestinian myth. Because there are no such thing as a Palestinian people or Palestinian land. There are Arabs and there are Jews and then all kinds of other people groups in the Middle East and specifically in Israel, whether it’s Druze and whatnot. And so what he does is he basically gets through the myth and exposes it through the historic backdrop of where did it come from, who propagated it, and—

Dr. Susan Michael: And how do we get a copy of this book?

Doron Keidar: Well, you just Google the name. You can Google the name, but you can also go to my website. All of these resources are there. Just Google my name, doronkeidar.com, and I made sure to have that all on one landing page so to speak and you can get links to where you can purchase those.

Dr. Susan Michael: Well, we’ll put that URL in today’s show notes. So we just want to thank you for more information on Doron and these two wonderful resources, we’ll put the links in today’s show notes. If your platform doesn't have show notes, please go to icejusa.org/shownotes and we will have these resources for you there. So Doron, thank you very much for joining us today. Thank you for listening in and God bless.

Hey, just give me one more minute. I want to offer you one of our free resources. We have wonderful resources in our show notes. And if you go to our website at icejusa.org/shownotes, you’ll find links for a number of our free offers. We have downloadables to help root you in Scripture, help you to understand the issues surrounding Israel, and the importance of Christian support for Israel. And don't forget please, follow us on Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn and stay connected. Thank you and God bless.

Guest (Male): We hope you have enjoyed this episode of Out of Zion with Susan Michael. Be sure to subscribe to Out of Zion now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, pray.com, Salem1Place, Salem Life Audio, and more. Out of Zion with Susan Michael is a production of ICEJ USA. All rights reserved.