Christian Media, Muslim Clergy, and Tech Deals: New Alliances Redraw the Middle East
Facing the Middle East finds Felice Friedson in Jerusalem, where the battles over narrative are almost as fierce as the war itself. From the Christian Media Summit, Government Press Office Director Nitzan Chen warns that while Israel is strong on the battlefield, Hamas and its supporters are winning the social media war—and he turns to Christian broadcasters as “ambassadors” to carry Israel’s story into churches and living rooms across the globe. From there, the episode widens to a harsher reality: a surge of antisemitism, from attacks on synagogues and boycotts of Israeli goods to online bounty hunters such as Punishment for Justice targeting Israeli academics by name.
Against that darkness, Friedson introduces an unlikely source of solidarity: Muslim clergy who choose to come to Israel when other leaders stay away. Sheikh Musa Drammeh of New York speaks of an “unbreakable bond” between his city and the Holy Land, while Imam Nuriddin Shakir Mustafaa recalls years of interfaith study circles where Jews, Christians, and Muslims sit over the story of Moses and discover shared ground.
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At the ravaged Nova music festival site, survivor Niv Reuveni remembers the October 7 massacre and the Bedouin Muslim, Yusuf Ziadna, who hid and saved Jews from terrorists, insisting he only did “what needed to be done.” Educator Alyssa Annis urges Israelis and Diaspora Jews to see a growing circle of Muslim allies, while Bronx educator Shireena Drammeh calls Muslims to defend every human life.
The program then moves into boardrooms and battlefields—from quiet Israeli-Saudi tech deals tied to Vision 2030 to ASIO’s “Tech for Defense” tools that give platoon leaders war room capabilities. Friedson threads these stories into a picture of alliances being remade in real time—reason enough to watch the full episode from start to finish.
