Alabama's Morning News with JT
Jonathan Feldstein of the Genesis 123 Foundation joins us live from Israel
5280 Exterior's James Hardy sighting is a low-maintenance sighting made primarily of cement that resists flame spread and repels wood-borne insects and woodpeckers. Through the month of July, you'll receive free, rigid foam installation with the purchase of whole-house sighting. That's installing additional insulation behind your sighting, or free, but only for the month of July. Call today for more details or visit 5280exterior's.com. 5280exterior's.com, a James Hardy preferred contractor, 5280 Exterior's, the altitude of quality. Welcome back to Alabama's Morning News, my name is John Mounts. I'm filling in for JT all this week. Well, we are nine months into a war with Hamas in Israel, and we're on the verge of a possible war, all at war with Hezbollah joining me now from the Genesis 123 Foundation is their president, Jonathan Felsing. Welcome to the show. Hey, John. Good morning from Israel. How are you? Doing great. Probably better than you are. So what's it like on the ground there? When I get that question, my heart races, because on the day-to-day life here, if you didn't know that there was a war going on, if you didn't know that this past week, on the 4th of July, we had over 200 rockets and drones fired at Israeli communities from Lebanon. And every day that's been happening since, you would think that everything is normal, but the problem is everything's not normal, and we're kind of waiting with baited breath to know if and when there's going to be an all-out war with Lebanon, with that with Lebanon, but with Hezbollah, which control Lebanon, and the ridiculous devastation that that will cause. And the Israeli people, they've lived with the specter of the possibility of war over their heads for many, many years. But as this intensifies, is there a renewed concern that this could be the big one? This could be the one that could lead to something much greater than it already has. Well, that's an excellent question. The leading to much greater, of course, involves Iran, because both Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza, and even yesterday, the Houthis from Yemen are all Iranian proxies. So we lived through the eerie night of April 13th and 14th when Iran fired over 200 cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, and drones at Israel. One landing not far from where I live, but most of them were shot down, and then there's of course the concern that Iran will, as much as we have escalation with Hezbollah, the Iran will escalate it further. But just by way of order of proportion, I mean, we, my family, to the best of our ability, and many Israelis, are kind of prepared for the inevitability of that war, both our kids having to fight in Lebanon. We have a mini, like, yard square solar panel to create electricity for us because the expectation is we'll be at without power for a number of days. That's hard-living on the top of a seven-story apartment building, and also we may have water interruptions. But the worst, of course, is that people are projecting as many as 500 casualties a day on the Israeli side for a number of weeks because Hezbollah has over 150,000 rocket missiles and an unknown number of drones that they've been using. And Jonathan, it is a problem that we here in Alabama, we have a hard time conceptualizing this because for us, if we are hungry, we go to the store. If we're thirsty, we open the tap. We don't question whether or not the lights will work when we turn them on. But these are all things you can't take for granted in your part of the world because all of these things could be jeopardized by what's going on and what is not like a situation where, "Okay, it's a bad weather day, but tomorrow will be better." This has been going on for nine months and there's really no end in sight, is it? There's no end in sight. There is talk. As we are speaking, maybe by maybe tomorrow or the next day, there might be some kind of interim solution which is being discussed, but the war that we're experiencing is a religious war against us by Islamic extremists, it's no longer simply an Arab-Israel conflict. And there's no way of defeating that other than defeating Islamic extremism. And the strange part of it is I'm American, I love America, I lived through lean years in America when gas was being rationed and other things like that, the Carter administration, you know, that were not great economic times and even two years ago when people couldn't get baby formula in many parts of the U.S. but the U.S. is prosperous, Israel's prosperous, we're a first world country. So this idea that we're going to potentially have no electricity for days and hundreds of casualties on a daily basis is more unnerving because of where we're standing, how much of a first world country we in fact are. Jonathan, what can we do by we, I mean, those of us back here in Alabama who are listening to you right now, what can we do to help you? Well, first of all, I always say that God's currency is prayer, so people should pray. People should pray for us, for our safety, for the well-being of our soldiers, for the, there's still 120 hostages in Gaza, for them, for their families, and there's a lot of heartbreak when I just finished my recent U.S. book launch and speaking tour. I was talking about, we're not in PTSD because we're in the midst of trauma, so we can't get out of it, and that's a big issue, but the other thing, let's not forget, God can change hearts, and we do pray that God will change enemies. Boring that, this will be an endless conflict until complete military defeat, and that may have to come. And of course, I invite everyone to connect, at Genesis 1-3 Foundation, is at Genesis123.co. We're about building bridges between Jews and Christians, and Christians with Israel, and we're doing, without going into a whole commercial, about what we're doing, a whole lot of stuff, and if people want to get involved, hands on, to feel free to reach out to me. Jonathan, thank you so much for joining us this morning on Alabama's Morning News. It's a pleasure, John. Thank you for having me. The 5280 Exteriors James Hardy sighting is a low-maintenance sighting made primarily of cement that resists flame spread and repels wood-borne insects and woodpeckers. Through the month of July, you'll receive free, rigid foam installation with the purchase of whole house sighting. That's installing additional insulation behind your sighting, or free, but only for the month of July. Call today for more details or visit 5280Exteriors.com, 5280Exteriors.com, a James Hardy preferred contractor 5280 exteriors, the altitude of quality.