Dr. James Dobson: Well, hello everyone. I'm James Dobson and you're listening to Family Talk, a listener supported ministry. In fact, thank you so much for being part of that support for James Dobson Family Institute.
Roger Marsh: Well, welcome to a special edition of Family Talk. I'm Roger Marsh. Look around in the culture, it is not hard to see that we are truly living in the last days. Matthew 24:6 reads, "You'll hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed." As Christians, we should not fear but should stand together and prepare for what is to come. With that said, today we'll be listening to an incredibly important conversation featuring our co-host Gary Bauer and special guest Michele Bachmann, regarding the recent attack in Israel by the Hamas terrorist group. The devastating effects that unfolded on October 7th have been the deadliest Israel has seen in over 50 years. With so much to get to today, let's join co-host Gary Bauer and special guest Michele Bachmann right now, right here, on Family Talk.
Gary Bauer: Welcome to a special edition of Family Talk. I'm Gary Bauer, the senior vice president of Public Policy here at the James Dobson Family Institute. I also host Defending Faith, Family and Freedom, a podcast we do here at JDFI. And I'm honored to serve alongside Dr. Dobson and the whole team.
Now, I said this was a special edition of Family Talk, but it's also a very heartbreaking edition. As you've probably have heard on the news, there was a surprise attack, it was actually a massacre, by Hamas terrorists on the Israeli people on October 7th. At the time that we're taping this show, 900 people are confirmed killed, thousands wounded. Hamas is holding, they claim, over 100 hostages, most of them civilians. This is an unprecedented event. We need to discuss it. You need to be up-to-date and understand the context of this event. Because in the weeks ahead there are going to be thousands of voices and you are going to be subjected to a blizzard of lies about Israel, about why this is happening, about the significance of it, what it means for Christians and Jews, what it means for Israel and the United States.
Helping me out with this conversation is our good friend Michele Bachmann. It would take a long time to introduce her to you, but I am sure most of you know her. She served in Congress, ably well. We miss her even today. She represented a district in Minnesota. She currently serves on the James Dobson Family Institute Board, and of course that would be a reason to have her on the show for that reason alone. But I don't know anybody in America, quite frankly, that has a greater love for and heart for the people of Israel and the Jewish people generally, than Michele Bachmann. She's the chairman of the Jerusalem Prayer Breakfast. What a thing to be heading up at a time like this as we all pray for the peace of Jerusalem.
Michele, I heard this news in the morning. My wife Carol had seen something on the news before I saw it and said, "Israel's under attack." And I thought, "Well, what else is new?" But then I realized in quick order that this was something in a whole different category. You and I talked a little earlier today, these Israelis were not only murdered, their bodies were desecrated. The casualties, overwhelmingly, are civilians. It's men, but also their wives, Israeli women, children, old people in nursing homes. Can you talk for us about how you reacted, what you thought when you heard this news and what does the nature of these murders, what does it say about the enemy that Israel and quite frankly all of us in the free world are facing?
Michele Bachmann: Gary, I think that you've laid the table beautifully to set this up. What this means is we saw a satanically inspired attack against God's chosen people and God's chosen land. Because Israel belongs to the Lord. It is His land. It's not available for division, it's not available for anyone to come in and make decisions about it because God made the decisions Himself. He set out the parameters. He said that, "This land," and He set out the parameters in Genesis 15:18, "Will be for My people." And he chose the man, Abraham, and He gave Abraham a covenant, an agreement. And so for all time the covenant is in effect until Jesus Christ returns again. The covenant is in effect. And so this was a satanically inspired attack that has come from the beginning of time by Satan himself, to destroy God's plan for the earth, for blessing, for salvation. And so this attack was on the Jewish people.
And this is probably, Gary, the clearest example of genocide because as you well stated, the facts are horrible. You mentioned where you were when you found out. On Saturday morning, I was in Paris, France, and I was at the airport and I was heading back to the United States. And I was on the plane and I got a call from a former IDF officer who had taken me on a tour of kibbutz Be'eri, Be'er Sheva. And when I was a 17-year-old girl, the first time I went to Israel, I went to Israel to live and work there on a kibbutz. And it was the first kibbutz that was attacked by these monsters, by Hamas, the foreign terrorist organization. We designate them here in the United States as a foreign terrorist organization. And they, at the crack of dawn, thousands took their rifles, and walked into a neighborhood.
Gary, think of any suburban neighborhood in America. That's what these people did. They walked into these neighborhoods and they busted down the doors and they took innocent civilians. So what was different about this, Gary, is that it wasn't one nation against another nation. It wasn't military against military. These were animals that went in for the express purpose of killing and drawing blood mercilessly, without any mercy, on the most vulnerable people you could imagine. So it's like, imagine, for our audience, you are in your home, the sun just came up and you have people knocking down your door and dragging your kids out of bed, your mother-in-law who slept over and they drag them out and randomly just kill them, shoot them, or in some cases, take hostages, no one knows, but completely merciless. That's what happened.
Gary Bauer: Michele, we've seen this so many times, the moral equivalence in the media between Israel and its enemies. When Israeli soldiers inevitably in battle will accidentally kill a civilian or when American soldiers are in battle and because of the fog of war end up harming a civilian, Israel and the United States, we agonize. We want to find out if a crime was committed. We hold our own troops responsible for even a single civilian death. Hamas did this and they bragged about the civilian deaths. They wanted the world to see. We talked a little bit earlier about there's videos all over social media of things that once you see them, you cannot unsee them.
Michele Bachmann: No, the IDF officer who had called me, Gary, sent me probably 12 or 13 videos that he had that the media weren't showing and they were so gruesome, I don't even want to describe them for people. But the point being, you're exactly right. This was the behavior of demons. It was demonically inspired. It came from the heart of Satan himself. You don't see this. This isn't warfare. This was terrorist, satanically inspired attacks on the Jewish people and probably the best example that I've seen truly of genocide, because the only reason they went in was to kill Jews. And these were innocent Jews, people who had unprovoked these people.
But it was a planned, it was a very well-planned, very well carried out attack. Air, land and sea as this audience has heard, but for what purpose? To kill innocent people and to inspire fear in the heart of the nation. Because it is maniacal to think that their goal would be that they're going to get all 8 million Israelis to leave the country. Because they keep shouting, "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free." In other words, we are going to completely shove every human in Israel and it's never going to happen. We're going to shove every human out and then we, the Arabs known as Palestinians, will come in and take over. That is not going to happen. So this is a maniacal fantasy that they hold on to that somehow Israel is an illegal occupier.
Israel is not an illegal occupier. God Himself signed the deeded to the Jewish people to the land. And if there's any indigenous people in Israel, it's the Jews. The capital has been Jerusalem for 3000 years. So they are not occupiers. They're the owners of this land. God owns it. And He said, "This is for Israel." So this is their land. There is no legal right to the land. It's simply a jealousy that goes back to the time of Ishmael and of Isaac. It goes back to that, and it's been a jealousy that has gone on since then.
Gary Bauer: Michele, it's interesting you would bring up the history. I mean there's a reason it's called Judea and Samaria. This is the homeland of the Jews, and Jerusalem was the capital of the Jewish people in that nation when Washington, D.C. was literally still a swamp, not just symbolically a swamp.
Michele Bachmann: Well, that's right. And also, Jerusalem was paid for. That also, the Jews bought Jerusalem, it was paid for. There is zero evidence anywhere that Israel is illegally on their own land. It is a fantasy. And so now the problem really is that we went from absolute carnage and brutality of a bloodbath against innocent civilians. And literally, Gary, within hours, the narrative changed and it became a war in the media. So it was a war of flesh and blood. Now it's a media war. And the media war is to advance lies in the media about Israel and the Jewish people.
Gary Bauer: No question about it. Michele, you know there's a lot of sentiment in America right now to sort of reluctant to get in more foreign entanglements. We're worried about our budget deficit and all the rest of it. And I know one of the things we both wanted to do today and that Dr. Dobson feels strongly about as well, is that Israel and the United States are the two pillars of Judeo-Christian civilization. It's not a one-way relationship. It's not that without us, Israel disappears. If Israel, if something terrible happened to Israel, we would be in trouble. We're joined at the heart. We share the same values. I get reporters all the time saying, "Gary, why does so many Christians support Israel?" And the simple answer, which you already alluded to is, "Well, when God speaks in a declarative sentence, 'He who blesses you, I will bless. And he who curses you, I will curse.' That's good enough for us, right?" I mean-
Michele Bachmann: That's right. That's the whole foundation. Genesis 12:3. It is a biblical admonition that we are to bless Israel.
Gary Bauer: Yes.
Michele Bachmann: And like you said, if we curse Israel, there's also a consequence that we will be cursed.
Gary Bauer: Yep. No question about it. The other thing that came to my mind on this relationship between us, I remember on our 9/11, I was shocked to see places in the world, including in the West Bank and in Gaza, people, we hadn't even buried our dead yet, and people were celebrating our pain. They were shooting guns in the air and handing candy out to their children. And I remember looking at Jerusalem where they lowered their flag and they wept with us, and they pledged their help in whatever came next. This is being described as Israel's 9/11. If you look at the country's relative size or comparison of the United States to Israel, we would've had to have suffered 25,000 dead on 9/11 to equal what they just suffered in this attack.
Michele Bachmann: It's a horrific thing. And when you talked about the relationship, it's very unique. The United States is the first country in the world that recognized Israel's right to exist 11 minutes after she declared herself a nation. That was a Democrat president, Harry Truman, who overrode his Secretary of State who said he would quit if Truman did it, but Truman did it. And you know why? Truman recognized Israel, because he remembered back when he went to his Baptist Sunday school and he remembered the maps on the wall in his Sunday school and there were maps of Israel. And he remembered what his mom said, that he needed to pray for Israel and be for Israel.
And so he stood up and he defied the State Department when he was president and his Secretary of State, and he recognized Israel. And we were the big dog on the block, the United States of America. It meant something when we recognized the Jewish state. That was a huge blessing. And America became blessed. We had some of our greatest growth in our economy after Harry Truman did that. The same with recognizing Israel's capital, which is Jerusalem. Donald Trump, a Republican president did that. So we were the first country in the world to recognize both the modern Jewish state of Israel in 1948, but also the capital of Israel by Donald Trump. In 2017, Donald Trump said he would recognize it, and he opened our embassy and had the formal recognition on June 6th on Israel's 70th birthday.
Gary Bauer: That's a powerful reminder, Michele. Every president, Democrat, and Republican had promised they would move the embassy to Israel when they ran for president, and none of them did it. They always came up with some reason supplied by the Defense Department or the State Department about why it shouldn't happen. And they tried to do the same thing with President Trump. Not only was the State Department leaning on him, our military leaders came over to the White House and said, "President Trump, if you move the embassy, we're going to be in a major war in the Middle East." No, it was the exact opposite. By showing strength, we made war less likely. It's the weakness that we're seeing out of Washington, DC that's making war and more suffering, more and more likely in the Middle East and elsewhere.
Michele Bachmann: Well, and that's why we have to get it right now. This is a horrific event that Israel is going through. It's not past tense, it's present tense. Israel is going through a terrible time right now. And for those who are calling on Israel to deescalate, and for those who are calling on Israel to just sit back and take it and don't worry about it, think if that was the United States. Think if somehow Canada overnight went berserk and dropped nuclear bombs on Milwaukee and Chicago. Would we stand back and say, "Well, I guess we better deescalate. We don't want to go after Canada." What we would do is we would go after the aggressor nation. Why? To protect the American people, so this would never happen again. That's all Israel is doing.
This is the greatest bloodbath since they became a nation. They need to take out this terror organization that is their next door neighbor. And so when the Prime Minister and the Israeli government decided to unite and to say, "We are going to end Hamas," they're not going in to kill civilians. Unlike what happened to Israel, Israel has no intention of killing innocent civilians. In fact, do you know what Israel does? Gary, I know you're aware of this.
Gary Bauer: Yes.
Michele Bachmann: Israel literally sends out text messages, emails, they send out radio waves, TV waves. They drop pamphlets on innocent people to tell them, "We're going to bomb this building at this time." Why? Because it may have a daycare sign on it, but it's actually the Hamas headquarters. It's actually where they keep their weaponry. So Israel has to go in and clean out these places where the war is made against them. So that's part of this media battle that you and I are talking about. We started our conversation talking about the lies that are out there.
And so that's why we need to have this conversation with people who love Israel. Dr. Dobson and Shirley Dobson have always loved Israel, because God loves Israel and Israel is God's idea. So that's why we are here. And Dr. Dobson wanted Gary and I to speak with our wonderful, beautiful audience today, to let you know what the truth is about what's happening in Israel and the fact that there is something that we can do. Psalms 122 calls on believers in verse 6 to, "Pray for peace in Jerusalem. May all who love this city prosper. O Jerusalem, may there be peace within your walls and prosperity in your palaces. For the sake of my family and friends, I will say, 'May you have peace.' For the sake of the house of the Lord our God, I will seek what is best for you, O Jerusalem."
And we are called on to bless, as Gary said, Genesis 12:3, to bless Israel so that we will be blessed and not curse Israel, otherwise we will be cursed. So we need to pray. We need to pray for the leadership in Israel to have the wisdom of God in their actions. We need to pray for these families who have suffered such severe catastrophic loss. We need to pray for the hostages, that they will be released and that God will perform miracles in their midst and that this can come to an end, and this evil terrorist organization, Hamas, would be extinguished once and for all. So that the sweet people that live in Gaza would get their mind back after being brainwashed since 2007.
I pray for the Arab people who have been brainwashed with a demonic level of hatred toward the Jewish people. I pray that they would be set free from this demonic inspired hatred. And so I pray, oh, Father over Israel, You are the God who neither slumbers nor sleeps. Would You hear the cry of our heart, even now, oh, Father. You say that your right arm will be the defender of Israel. So we ask you, oh, Jehovah-Magen, God, our shield, would You be the shield over Israel and protect them now, Father, in their time of distress. We stand with them and we agree with Your Holy Word.
Gary Bauer: Michele, that was a beautiful prayer. And with all the military might that Israel has, all the technological advantages that it has, it needs more than anything right now, prayers like that. And it needs the Christian people in the United States and around the world to stand with our Jewish brothers and sisters in this time of their need. Well, this was an important show, and again, I thank Michele. And I thank all of you listening to Family Talk on a day like this, when we're all trying to process the information, the horrible images. Be back with us on Family Talk, and we will continue to defend faith, family, and freedom.
Roger Marsh: Well that certainly was a beautiful prayer, indeed. Thank you so much for joining us today for this special edition of Dr. James Dobson's Family Talk featuring Gary Bauer, our co-host and his special guest, Michele Bachmann. They've been discussing Israel and the Hamas conflict in the Middle East.
You can stay up to date on this important issue and other crucial topics that we are facing in the world today when you read our weekly email from the Dobson Policy Center. It's written by Gary Bauer, who's our senior vice president of public policy here at the JDFI, and it's yours absolutely free. To get on our mailing list and sign up today, just visit drjamesdobson.org/public-policy. Then click on the signup button, fill out your email address and hit subscribe. It's that easy. And did I mention, it's free? Again, that's drjamesdobson.org/public-policy.
I'm Roger Marsh, and from all of us here at the JDFI, thank you for making us a part of your day, and be sure to join us again next time for another edition of Dr. James Dobson's Family Talk, the voice you trust for the family you love.
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