The Battle Against Anti-Semitism: A Cinematic Perspective With Levi Hazen

SPEAKER 01 : 0:00

Well, hey, it’s Mike Treen with Crawford Media Group. We’re joined today by Levi Hazen. Levi is the CEO and executive producer for Rushing River Productions. And Levi is working on an extremely important movie that we want to make sure that we talk about. Levi, thank you again for joining us.

SPEAKER 02 : 0:18

Yeah, thank you, Mike. Happy to talk about this subject. It’s very important, as you mentioned. And yeah, we’d love for listeners to hear a little bit more about this film that’s coming out.

SPEAKER 01 : 0:29

So, you know, we got the news reports about what happened in October in Israel. And so we… Yeah, we got a certain amount of information, but there’s so much that I have a feeling we don’t know that you experienced and others experienced there. Tell us a little bit about the movie and why you decided to make this movie.

SPEAKER 02 : 0:53

Yeah, well, here’s the funny thing about it is we actually didn’t seek to make a movie. It just all kind of came together. And I’ll explain what happened. Of course, in the spring of 2024, you had the protests that flared up at places like Columbia University. We saw those on the news, and we’re based out of Chicagoland, and we said as a media team, we’ve got to get to Columbia to see what’s going on here. So we flew out to Columbia, kind of spur of the moment. We got media passes, and we were there on campus. If you remember, the Columbia students, they took over a whole building. They took a janitor hostage. Right. So we were there when all this happened and we started interviewing people and we interviewed Jewish students to learn about their perspectives. We tried to interview a lot of these, what I really call pro-Hamas protesters. I was there amongst them and you could just feel this not so good spiritual presence. And so I started to ask them, Because I have taught college-level courses on the history of the conflict in the Middle East. I’m an adjunct professor at Moody Bible Institute, and we have a class on the history of modern Israel. I wanted to know what these people knew about the situation. And either they wouldn’t talk to us at all, or they just had zero idea. So from Columbia, we saw all of this anti-Semitic signage, Israel’s committing genocide, all this stuff. And so then we decided to go to Israel. Now, this was my 14th time to Israel. And my wife and I have lived there for a year. So Israel was not new to us. We set up multiple interviews across the land of Israel with Israeli soldiers, with former protesters, part of the Students for Justice in Palestine, with NOVA survivors, folks who were there and encountered Hamas face to face. We interviewed Arab believers. And basically what this whole film does, Mike, is it starts off with the message that’s being springboarded from Columbia University and others. And it challenges this narrative, which this narrative is that Israel’s trying to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians. There’s a genocide going on. They’re purposely starving people, all this stuff. It’s all false. It is all a complete lie. And I don’t know about you, but I’ve had many Christian friends now that have been caught up in this narrative that is right out of the mouth of Hamas. And unfortunately, when you start to believe these lies… It really provides fertile soil for anti-Semitism. And this film pushes back against this popular narrative that’s out there. And that’s why we feel like it’s so important. It is a documentary. However, it’s fast-paced. It’s not a boring documentary where we’re just interviewing talking heads. And we’ve done a couple screenings so far of the film. And we’ve received amazing feedback from the people who’ve been able to see it. And they said that they’ve learned so much, and it needs to be seen by everybody, is the feedback we’re getting.

SPEAKER 01 : 4:22

Levi, why do you think some Christians have kind of bought the lies and have almost taken kind of an anti-Israel stance? They’re too harsh. I mean, all the things you just said, much better than I could. What are they believing? It’s not just what they’re sold, but what are they believing about it?

SPEAKER 02 : 4:42

Yeah, so what they’re believing is that Israel is the Goliath in the Middle East. And the narrative that they’re believing is that Israel is this colonial superpower who’s taking over so much land and suppressing everybody and ethnically cleansing and so forth. Because they’re backed by the Western powers and supported, they’re a colonialist entity that should really cease to exist. So folks come at this, and their heart is right. They want to have a heart for justice. They want to have a heart for the oppressed, which is really good. We support all those things. We want justice. However, the narrative they’re buying about Israel is a false narrative. So if you really want to support justice, you support how Israel conducts warfare. You support how Israel actually provides health care to Palestinians. And all of these different things, you don’t support Hamas ideology, which says from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free of Jews. Um, so I think a lot of folks, you know, especially Christians, they, they want to be standing up for the oppressed and so forth. And that’s the right place, of course. However, You’re believing a totally false narrative if you think that Israel is the one that’s oppressing the 22 Arab nations that are surrounding it. Anyhow, so that’s one thought. The other thought is there’s this thing called liberation theology, and it really lends itself to basically the Palestinian narrative coming up right from the Palestinian Authority. which still today, even today, in the midst of a peace process, is saying it’s legal and lawful to kill Israelis, to kill the Jews, and don’t worry if there’s any kind of a peace in Gaza. We’ll make sure that Hamas survives by embedding there. This is what they’re telling their people in Arabic. So there’s a few different reasons for it. Ultimately, we know that this is a spiritual battle, and there’s an enemy out there, capital E, and he’s really crafty with lies and sabotage.

SPEAKER 01 : 6:51

He is. He is. We’re speaking with Levi Hazen. Levi is the CEO. He’s the executive producer as well for Rushing River Productions. And, Levi, I want to say the title of this movie correctly, Shadows of October, but instead of a T, it’s a 7th to remind us it’s October 7th, correct? Correct.

SPEAKER 02 : 7:08

That’s right. We actually have a few different marketing formats with it. One of them is Shadows of October, Israel Under Siege. That’s right. And right now, just so everybody’s clear, there is no place, Mike, to go view this video. It is not available to the public. However, our hope and prayer is that it will be available to the public in the coming months. And so what we would encourage listeners to do who want to take part in this and pushing back against this, in my opinion, demonic narrative that is against the Jewish people. It’s against the God of Israel. If you want to be part of this, the number one thing you can do is pray. Because there’s a whole segment of society that would not want this narrative out there. And so specifically pray that some sort of a major distributor, whether it’s Netflix or Warner Brothers or whether it’s Amazon Originals or somebody else, we’re pitching this to about 30 different major distributors. Okay. Pray that one of them picks it up and gets it in front of millions of people, which we could never do in and of ourselves. um so so pray that that happens please and then if you want to contribute financially to the film in addition to prayers just go to rushingriver.org you can even see some clips of the interviews that we’re using in the movie so um there’s multiple interviews there that give kind of give you a sneak peek for what these people are saying on the ground in israel

SPEAKER 01 : 8:41

I want our listeners to know that we, as a company, have friends in Israel that sent us some of the clips of the atrocities behind October 7th. And there were some things that they sent me that I couldn’t watch. It was unthinkable what happened. And the narrative on the college campuses, I think if our listeners really think through what historically that’s been, they know that often that is evil and it is anti-Israel. And just to be clear, our company and all of us stand strongly and firmly for Israel in our camp. So you must know that. Tell us. So not distributed, but you’re looking for a distributor. And go ahead. You were going to add to that, please.

SPEAKER 02 : 9:30

No, I mean, that’s pretty much it. We’ve never been in this position before. We’re building the plane in the air, and we’re just really praying for the Lord’s right connection.

SPEAKER 01 : 9:40

Yeah, and just to underscore things before we go, the importance of seeing this as what for people, because I have a feeling you’re going to say they have not been exposed to what really happened on October 7th.

SPEAKER 02 : 9:55

That’s right. So there are some films out there, Mike, where it’s very graphic, right? And it shows the body cams of the Hamas terrorists and so forth. That’s actually not this film. Although there are some graphic descriptions and so forth, we’ve rated this film ourselves, you know, PG-13. OK, so the main thing in this film is the pushing back of the of the narrative out there. That is a complete lie. And again, that is being used as a springboard for anti-Semitism today across college campuses and some others. And so the reason why someone would want to see this film is to say, OK, well, OK, what are all these college kids believing? And is it true? And we address that directly in the film. The other thing you’re going to be able to connect with. Again, we sat down from survivors of Hamas terrorism. We sat down with an Israeli soldier who just came out of Gaza and said, hey, is Israel committing a genocide? And we asked of his experience, what’s he seeing in the Gaza Strip? We sat down with Itamar Marcus, the CEO of Palestinian Media Watch, and he tells us, what people are learning from the age of two years old and older, and why this is such a problem between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas-run Gaza Strip.

SPEAKER 01 : 11:15

I’m so glad you brought up what children are being taught. We were, by one of our Friends of Israel contacts, we were given a cartoon book that depicted Jews and the way the Palestinians were teaching their kids about Jews. And I’m not going to get into it because it was absolute evil. It was unbelievably evil and factual because there it was right there in front of us.

SPEAKER 02 : 11:40

That’s right. That’s right. And as one of the folks we interviewed in the film says, Gazan children are being robbed of their childhood by this ideological evil. They’re being robbed. And so if nothing else, we could be praying for the children in these territories who are being taught to hate Jews, that the most important thing you can do is lay your life down for a martyr by murdering Jews. Yes. It is from the pit of hell, really. And so I think viewers should be aware of this. And another reason is because your tax money is going to support it. The Palestinian Authority is funded in the billions of dollars by the Western powers that be.

SPEAKER 01 : 12:22

So sad. And I think we should also point out that while college campuses, you featured Columbia, then broke out the whole issue with college campuses. This is also being furthered by liberal politicians, including our state of Colorado. So just to be clear. Yeah, absolutely. So Levi, once again, touch points and how people get a hold of you if they wish, but certainly to support the project and pray for it.

SPEAKER 02 : 12:51

Yeah, please just go to rushingriver.org and you will see contact information there as well as a place to give if the Lord leads.

SPEAKER 01 : 13:00

Okay, that’s wonderful. Levi, thank you. This is such a critical topic and we cannot forget. We just absolutely cannot what happened on October 7th. Thank you.

SPEAKER 02 : 13:08

That’s right. Thank you very much, Mike.