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How a deeply religious Christian artist captured the spirit of the Jewish holy land
I was briskly walking down the main drag of a swanky neighborhood in Seattle when I saw a faded, old-timey lithograph in the window of an art store. It was a landscape with a fortress built into the cascading side of a massive, dry and desolate canyon. The location was as far from green and leafy western Washington on that drippy spring day as one could imagine. In the foreground, a group of men wearing exotic clothes were standing and sitting outside the fortress.
I did a doubletake — I knew that place; it was Mar Saba, an ancient monastery in the middle of nowhere.
I went into the store and talked with the owners who told me the artist’s name was David Roberts. He was a contemporary of a couple of men named Charles: Dickens and Darwin. David Roberts started his career by painting sets for the London theater. After that, he developed an interest in landscapes and toured western Europe drawing historic churches and later found his way to southern Spain where he drew the famous sites of Moorish architecture.
Then, he did something truly extraordinary, especially for someone living in London at that time. In 1838, he sailed from England all the way to Egypt. Almost no one in Europe had traveled there since Napoleon and his army invaded in 1798. He toured Cairo and sailed up the Nile to the temples, tombs and relics of the pharaohs, detailing them in his sketches.
After returning to Cairo, Roberts embarked upon another excursion even more daring than his Egyptian adventure. A deeply religious Christian, he succumbed to the urge to see the Holy Land. The easiest way to do that would have been to sail down the Nile to the Mediterranean and follow the coast to the east. Or, he could have gone by horse or camel along the Via Maris, the ancient road that follows the coast. Both routes would have taken him only a few days to complete.
Instead, Roberts made a totally radical and potentially dangerous choice. He hired Bedouin tribal guides to take him by camel across the eastern desert of Egypt and through the length and breadth of the Sinai Desert, following the route the Hebrews took during their 40-year journey we now refer to as the Exodus. In the Torah, the book of Exodus is called BaMidbar which means “In the Wilderness,” which is exactly what the forbidding Sinai is like. Life can easily be lost if one is not careful due to lack of water or the threat of bandits.
Once Roberts finally reached Israel, he toured almost all the places mentioned in the Bible and continued on to Lebanon, drawing everything he saw. Upon his return to England, Roberts made lithographs of his drawings and collected them into three jam-packed volumes. Being a shrewd businessman, the artist sold his collection to subscribers. It was an instant hit. His first subscription was purchased by Queen Victoria.
A refuge from the outside world
Years ago, when my wife and I were visiting Israel, we took a bus from Jerusalem to Bethlehem. After visiting the popular sites in that city, we hired a taxi which took us down a one-lane, dusty, rutty, partially paved “road” atop a narrow, steep ridge to its literal end. This road led us deep into the Judean Desert where Jesus spent time and where King David hid from his rebellious son, Absalom, who almost succeeded in having his father assassinated.
Mar Saba sits precariously on the shoulder of the canyon, called a wadi by the locals, in the hills above the nearby Dead Sea. Even though it was mid-October, the air was so hot that a local shepherd and his goats were sheltering in the shade of one of the high walls of the fortress.
We approached the main gate and knocked. A low voice inside answered. It was one of the monks. We were lucky he spoke English. However, we were not so lucky with what he said. He told us my wife could not enter because she was the wrong gender and would have to wait outside. However, he let me in.
Inside the main gate, the compound was crowded with ancient sand-colored stone structures. The monk first showed me the chapel, which was cool and dark in striking contrast to the veritable furnace outside. What it lacked in size, it made up for in ornamentation. The floor had a complex pattern of symmetrical pieces of colored marble. The altar had an elaborate filigree of gold. Most impressive were the walls up to the domed ceiling which were completely covered with icons of various saints, all of which appeared to have been made a very long time ago. Even the inside of the dome was covered with painted images of saints.
I followed my guide to a nearby stone building and was dumbfounded by what I saw. This was the monastery’s sepulcher room. On display on wooden tables under glass were dozens of skulls and bones. The monk explained that when a monk dies, he is buried in the monastery’s cemetery and remains there for several years. After that, the bones and skull are removed and placed on display in this room. He said that many of the remains belonged to martyred monks who were murdered when the Persians invaded in 614 CE.
In what I supposed to be the dining hall, the monk gave me a drink and proceeded to tell me he was from Greece. He seemed to feel free enough to unload his feelings because he went on to elaborate about the corruption and iniquity of the outside world and how his community of believers cherish their refuge from all of that behind the high walls of their little world.
Once I exited the main gate, I found my wife sitting on a rock in the shade waiting for me. Her only company was an old Arab man who was likewise escaping the withering glare of the sun. Her only consolation was that I had taken so many photos of the interior of Mar Saba that I had made a visual record of everything I saw inside the walls.
An island at the end of the world
When I was in the art store in Seattle two years later, the experience of Mar Saba came flooding back and I wound up purchasing the lithograph. I can tell you it is a pretty accurate depiction of what we saw. The place has not changed at all in more than 175 years since the artist was there. I doubt the place has changed much at all since its founding in the fifth century CE.
After learning more about Roberts, where he traveled and what he did, I began collecting more of his lithographs, including a drawing of the Tower of David, which I saw regularly when I was a college student in Jerusalem.
The Tower of David, next to the Jaffa Gate in the Old City of Jerusalem, functioned in ancient times as the citadel of the city. It was originally built during the Hasmonean dynasty who descended from the Jewish Maccabees of Hanukkah fame. I should mention that the Tower had nothing to do with King David as it was constructed by the Romans after their conquest hundreds of years later. When Roberts made his drawing, the road outside the Tower was just a narrow, dusty, dirt path. Now, it is a busy, well-paved, four-lane highway leading from Jerusalem to Bethlehem and Hebron.
Roberts also drew a panorama of the Old City viewed from high atop the Mount of Olives. After my wife and I climbed the steep road up the Mount, past the old Jewish cemetery, which is where legend says the Messiah will appear and raise the dead on Judgment Day, we saw the same precise view that Roberts recorded for posterity. I believe Roberts took some artistic license with his work since he sketched a bridge over the Kidron Valley, even though there never was one.
Roberts drew the Isle of Graia where I traveled with a friend, Andy, when we were on spring break and took a trip to Eilat. At that time, Eilat was extremely remote, and it took hours to get there. The only other passengers on our bus from Jerusalem were workers headed to construction jobs building new hotels. As we got close to our destination, the other passengers pulled knives and guns out of their luggage.
Eilat, located where the Negev desert ends and the Sinai begins, was not much of a town back then. Surrounded by high hills, it is not a pretty landscape of undulating sand dunes; the terrain is rocky and almost completely devoid of any living thing. While Andy and I were there, we heard about an island further down the coast. We hitched a ride with some soldiers in a jeep who were headed down the coast. After about two dozen kilometers, they dropped us off at a place called Hof Almogim, or Coral Beach in English.
It was a beautiful beach without a soul there. It seemed as if we had reached the end of the world. The only thing on the beach was a small shack where the lone proprietor sold Cokes and rented snorkeling gear. Off in the distance was the island. On the opposite coast were the mountains of biblical Edom, in today’s kingdom of Jordan.
When Roberts was there, he was heading north with his local Bedouin guides in a caravan. I believe he included himself, dressed in Ottoman style-clothes, in the lower right corner of his picture drawing the scene; you can see him holding some kind of paper and his writing kit and an umbrella are on the ground in front of him.
When we showed up many, many years later, the weather was scorching, so we did what anyone else would do— we rented masks, pipes and fins and waded into the water. It didn’t matter that I had never gone snorkeling before. It took me a little time to get the hang of it, but I figured it out. The Red Sea’s temperature was like bath water, so we plunged right in and crossed into another world.
Not far from shore, we encountered a multi-colored coral reef that, from the shore, looks distinctly red, which is where the Red Sea gets its name. In stark contrast to the aridity of the land, the sea was alive. The reef was covered by lots of sponges that looked like colorful human brains. It was surrounded by swarms of shimmering, iridescent, palm-sized fish in different hues. As we maneuvered through them, they darted here and there, moving in unison liked flocks of birds.
The coral was razor sharp, so I was careful to keep my distance as we passed over it, at which point the sea floor dropped to 60 feet below us. Suddenly, it was devoid of life and it was hard to see the bottom.
It took almost an hour to reach the island. It has an impressive stone castle which was originally built by the invading Crusaders who wanted to protect the pilgrimage routes in the area and defend their kingdoms centered in Jerusalem. Later, during the Crusades, the Christians lost control of the fortress to Muslim forces. When we were there, Israel controlled the area, having conquered it in the Six-Day war. The Sinai now belongs to Egypt as a result of the 1979 Camp David peace agreement.
When Andy and I reached the beach, the weather was blistering. We could not explore the castle since our only footgear consisted of the fins we had on our feet. So, we did not stay long. On our return, the sun was sinking on the horizon. It was becoming noticeably colder. Sea creatures were emerging from their hiding places; a pink bubble the size of my fist floated directly toward me. It had tentacles that hung down from the body. Instinctively, I turned to avoid it. I later learned it was a Portuguese man o’ war, a type of jellyfish, which carries an evil sting.
Upon reaching the mainland, darkness smothered us, and Andy and I camped on the beach. The next morning, we checked our belongings for scorpions and caught a ride back to Eilat. Today, luxury resort hotels have sprouted on that once-lonely beach. The commercialization of that former paradise is heartbreaking.
Epilogue
Quite a few years have passed since those travels and David Roberts’ lithographs now hang in honored places in our home. Once in a while, I pause in front of one of them and marvel at the precision with which the artist captured the mood of his subject. Some of these locations, such as the ones in Jerusalem, I have been intimately familiar with. Others I merely passed through as a tourist just as Roberts did, albeit under far more primitive and dangerous circumstances. I almost wish I was able to go back in time and travel with him in that caravan.
The post How a deeply religious Christian artist captured the spirit of the Jewish holy land appeared first on The Forward.
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‘Auschwitz’ is a hit Iranian protest anthem, part of a music genre rebelling against official antisemitism
Last month, well-known Iranian singer Mehdi Yarrahi released a song titled “Auschwitz,” about the regime’s brutal crackdown on protesters earlier this winter, which estimates suggest killed between 7,000 and 30,000 people over the course of a few days. The song quickly gained traction online, drawing around 10 million views on the singer’s Instagram account.
The choice of Auschwitz as a historical touchstone was not accidental: it is a direct answer to the Iranian regime’s persistent mockery and denial of the Holocaust, and a point of identification for Iranians who may see an echo of the atrocities committed by the Nazis in their own government’s brutality.
Yarrahi, who lives in Iran, released “Auschwitz” after reports emerged of thousands of Iranian protesters being gunned down in the streets for protesting the regime. The song compares their fate to that of people who endured the Nazi death camps. Its opening line declares: “I come from Auschwitz, of night transfers. I come from a killing field of youth.” The music video accompanying the song features footage of protestors being beaten by regime forces in the streets, as well as photographs of those who were killed.
Yarrahi knows the price one can pay for making anti-regime music. In March 2025, he received 74 lashes as a part of his sentencing for the release of his song “Rousarieto” (“Your Headscarf”), which criticized the regime’s requirement that women cover their hair and dress modestly.
The lyricist behind “Auschwitz,” Hossein Shanbehzadeh, has also faced the regime’s wrath. In 2024, he was sentenced to 12 years in prison after he commented with a single dot in response to a post on X from the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei — a reply that received more likes than Khamenei’s original post. Iranian authorities accused him of being an Israeli spy and of spreading anti-regime propaganda. While Shanbehzadeh languishes in prison, through Auschwitz’s lyrics, his words have now been heard by millions both inside and outside Iran.
The Holocaust metaphor in “Auschwitz” is especially subversive because it invokes a history the Iranian regime refuses to recognize — just as it refuses to acknowledge its own brutality. Many high-ranking members of the Iranian regime have publicly denied, minimized, or questioned the Holocaust, including former Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who was killed on the first day of the fighting on Feb. 28. The regime has also hosted state-sponsored cartoon competitions mocking the Holocaust— most recently in 2021 — and was the only country to reject a 2022 United Nations resolution condemning Holocaust denial.
By comparing the regime’s violence against protesters to Nazi brutality — atrocities that Iranian leaders do not acknowledge — Yarrahi’s song challenges both political repression and the antisemitic narratives promoted by the state that have made it a global pariah.
The soundtrack to the revolution
In Iran, where culture is steeped in poetry, protest music has become a central part of the anti-regime movement.
An Iranian activist who was arrested and jailed for his involvement in the protest movement told the Forward, “These songs push people forward. They give you the energy to keep going.” Now living in the United States, he said the music also connects diaspora Iranians to the movement back home. “When we get together with friends in the community, we play these songs,” he said. “We start talking, and the music is playing in the background.”
Music streaming platforms like Spotify and Apple Music are difficult to access in Iran because of payment sanctions and bans. While protest songs are censored on social media, many Iranians download music using VPNs through Telegram — an encrypted messaging app that has 45 million Iranian users despite being banned — as well as other websites. Many Iranian singers have their own Telegram channels where they share their music.
During the 2022 Women, Life, Freedom protests, the song “Baraye” (“For the Sake Of”) went viral and became an anthem for demonstrators mobilizing against the regime. It garnered 40 million views in its first two days of being released and later won a Grammy.
The singer Shervin Hajipour wrote the lyrics based on responses from Iranians on X to a simple question: “What are you protesting for?” One line references the regime’s “meaningless slogans” — “Death to America” and “Death to Israel.”
According to Thamar E. Gindin, a research fellow at Haifa University’s Ezri Center for Iran and Persian Gulf Research, music has been a meaningful part of the protest movement. “Baraye,” particularly, was sung “from balconies and windows when they didn’t want to go out to the streets and be killed. They sang it at the end of ceremonies.” She compared it to the way many Israelis and other Jews sing “Hatikvah,” as an expression of collective hope.
Polling suggests that Iranian public opinion diverges from official rhetoric.
One survey from last September found that 69% of Iranians believe their country should stop calling for the destruction of Israel. When respondents were asked about their views of foreign countries, the United States received the highest favorability rating, with 53% expressing a positive view. Israel ranked second. A 2014 survey conducted by the Anti-Defamation League found that Iranians held the lowest levels of antisemitic attitudes in the Middle East and North Africa outside Israel, despite decades of state-sponsored antisemitic narratives.
Invoking Iran’s pluralistic past
For many Iranians, protest music has become a way to reclaim their national identity. While the regime defines itself through external struggle with Israel and the West, many protestors prefer to define Iran through its culture and history. One figure frequently invoked in protest discourse and music is Cyrus the Great.
King Cyrus, the founder of the Achaemenid Empire, created one of the largest empires of the ancient world. After conquering Babylon in 539 BCE, he issued a decree allowing exiled peoples — including Jews taken captive by the Babylonians — to return to their homelands. In the Bible, he is remembered for permitting Jews to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the Temple.
According to the activist, “Cyrus to Iranians is like the Founding Fathers to Americans,” adding: “Cyrus is a symbol of peace among nations, and also a person who respects human rights and your beliefs regardless of who you are.” He is viewed as particularly “important for what he did for the Jewish people” and other minorities, which, for many anti-regime Iranians, represents an Iran rooted in human rights.
London-based Iranian artist Amin Big A’s 2018 song “Be Name Iran” (“In the Name of Iran”) channels this sentiment. The song gained massive popularity, especially among the Iranian diaspora, during the 2022 protest movement in Iran and has since been widely shared on social media alongside videos of the current protests. The song opens with a tribute to Cyrus: “In the name of Cyrus, that King of Kings — the one who taught us to be good to our friends and companions.”
Iranians invoke Cyrus, he said, to remind themselves and the world of that history. They want to “signal to the world, especially to non-Iranians,” that “if you want to understand how Iranians think, you can look at our history.” For protestors, it is a way to demonstrate that “the current regime in Iran is not representative of Iranians.”
Another song, “Dictator,” released in January by Iranian artists Shaayn and Moonshid during the height of the protests, contrasts Iran’s current authoritarian system with the nation’s ancient past. “It’s basically saying: we had Cyrus, and Cyrus was not a dictator,” said the activist. “Our history is not all about dictators.” One line in the song reads, contrasting Cyrus with a Turkish conqueror: “One gives freedom to the people, another kills and oppresses…. One becomes like Cyrus the Great, another becomes like Timur.”
Over the years, several anti-regime protests have been held at Cyrus’ tomb in Iran. In response, the regime has restricted access to the site and deployed security forces to discourage protestors from gathering there.
According to Beni Sabti, an Iran expert from the Institute for National Security Studies, Cyrus’ pluralistic legacy makes him recognized as “the best King that Iranians had. It’s another reason to love Jews, or to re-love them,” he said, adding: “They don’t believe the state’s propaganda.”
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War with Iran puts the US-Israel alliance at grave risk
The Iran war is strategically sound yet politically unsupported — an unstable foundation for a gamble that could reshape the Middle East. That creates danger for Israel, which needs the support of an American public that is rapidly drifting away.
For decades, the country’s greatest strategic asset has not been its military technology or intelligence capabilities — spectacular as these are — but rather the political, diplomatic and military backing of the United States. That relationship has not been merely transactional. It was supposed to rest on shared values and deep public support across the American political spectrum.
If that support erodes or disappears, Israel’s strategic environment will fundamentally change. To be blunt: it will not be able to arm its military. This creates a paradox. A campaign that has so far demonstrated extraordinary value for the Jewish state also stands a risk of fundamentally weakening it.
An alliance at its strongest
The conflict has showcased the depth of the current U.S.–Israel alliance. To many observers, and critically to Israel’s enemies, the operation has underscored not only Israel’s capabilities but also the reality that it stands alongside the world’s most powerful state.
The strikes have projected deep into Iranian territory, revealed astonishing intelligence penetration, and destroyed or degraded key threats. Israel’s enemies across the region have already been weakened by previous rounds of fighting since Oct. 7, and the current operation has reinforced the impression that Israel can reach its adversaries wherever they operate.
Moreover, Iran’s regime has managed to isolate itself to the point where most Arab countries are in effect on the side of Israel and the U.S. That projection — of an unbreakable and strong alliance – may ultimately be the most important strategic element of this war.
But therein lies the rub.
The political foundations of American support for Israel are eroding, which means the very element that currently strengthens Israel’s deterrence — American participation — may also be the one most at risk.
A just war, unjustified
Americans do not understand why their country is at war.
A Reuters/Ipsos survey conducted at the start of the conflict found only 27% of Americans supported the U.S. action, while 43% opposed it. Other surveys show similar results, with roughly six in ten Americans against the military intervention.
In modern American history that is highly unusual. Most wars begin with a “rally around the flag” moment when public support surges. Even conflicts that later became controversial — from Afghanistan to Iraq — initially enjoyed majority backing.
This one did not — in part because the case for it has not been made clearly to the public.
That error is compounded by years of polarization in American politics; declining trust in institutions and leadership; and the record of President Donald Trump, who has spent years spreading conspiracy theories and demonstrating a remarkable indifference to factual truth. It is no exaggeration to say that many Americans do not believe a word he says – which is perhaps unprecedented.
When a president with that record launches a war, at least half the country assumes the worst. Even if the strategic logic is sound, the credibility deficit remains.
The tragedy is that the war is, in fact, eminently justifiable. The Islamic Republic has long since forfeited the moral legitimacy that normally shields states from outside force. It brutally suppresses its own population, jailing and killing protesters, policing women’s bodies, and crushing dissent with an apparatus of repression. Its foreign policy is not defensive but revolutionary. Through proxy militias it has destabilized Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen, as well as the Palestinian areas, in some cases for decades.
The regime has pursued nuclear weapons through a series of transparent machinations, deceptions and brinkmanship. Negotiations have repeatedly been used as delaying tactics while enrichment continued. Any deal that relieved sanctions would not simply reduce tensions; it would also inject new resources into a system dedicated both to repression at home and aggression abroad — one that is despised by the vast majority of its own people, as murderous dictatorships inevitably will be.
There is a doctrine in international law known as the Responsibility to Protect — the principle that when a state systematically brutalizes its own population, the international community may have the right, even the obligation, to act. By that standard, the Iranian regime has been skating on thin ice for years.
But with this clear rationale left uncommunicated, the politically dangerous perception has spread that the U.S. was reacting to Israel rather than acting on its own strategic judgment.
A perilous future
If Americans come to believe that Israel caused a costly war that they did not support in the first place, the backlash could be severe.
For centuries, one of the most persistent antisemitic tropes has been the accusation that Jews manipulate powerful states into fighting wars on their behalf. The suggestion that Israel can pull the U.S. into conflict feeds directly into that mythology. Once such perceptions take hold, they can be extremely difficult to reverse.
Even people who reject antisemitism outright can absorb a softer version of the same idea: that American interests are being subordinated to Israeli ones. In a political environment already marked by growing skepticism toward Israel, that perception risks deepening the erosion of support that has been underway for years.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio seemed to inadvertently feed such notions by suggesting in recent days that the U.S. had to attack Iran because Israel was going to do so “anyway,” and then America would have been a target. It was a short path from that to conspiracy theorists like Tucker Carlson blaming Chabad for the war.
A future Democratic president, facing a base that appears to have abandoned Israel, may feel far less obligation to defend it diplomatically or militarily. Even a Republican successor could prove unreliable if the party continues its drift toward isolationism.
That likelihood is compounded by studies showing that a large part of the U.S. Jewish community itself no longer backs Zionism. That process is driven by Israel’s own policies, including the West Bank occupation and the deadly brutality of the war in Gaza.
So the very war that is showcasing the best the U.S.-Israel alliance has to offer is also at risk of fundamentally damaging that partnership. Particularly if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — the rightful object of much American ire — manipulates the Iran campaign into an electoral victory this year, the alliance’s greatest success could also be its undoing.
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Report: Iran’s New Military Plan Is Regime Survival Through Regional Escalation
Members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) attend an IRGC ground forces military drill in the Aras area, East Azerbaijan province, Iran, Oct. 17, 2022. Photo: IRGC/WANA (West Asia News Agency)/Handout via REUTERS
i24 News – After last year’s devastating conflict with the United States and Israel, Iranian leaders have reportedly adopted a major strategic shift aimed at expanding the war across the Middle East to secure the regime’s survival, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Previously, Iran responded to foreign strikes with limited, targeted reprisals. The new doctrine abandons that approach, aiming instead to escalate the conflict regionally, particularly against Gulf Arab states and critical economic infrastructure. The goal is to disrupt the global economy and pressure Washington into shortening the war.
This decision followed the twelve-day war with Israel in June 2025, during which Israeli and US strikes eliminated senior Iranian military leaders, destroyed key air defense systems, and severely damaged nuclear facilities. In response, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei—before his elimination early in the current conflict—activated a strategy designed to maintain continuity even if top commanders were neutralized.
Central to this approach is the so-called “mosaic defense” doctrine: a decentralized military structure in which the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) operates through multiple regional command centers. Each center can conduct operations independently, allowing local commanders to continue fighting even if national leadership is incapacitated. This makes the military apparatus more resilient to targeted strikes.
Analysts cited by the Wall Street Journal suggest that Tehran’s calculation is to make the conflict costly enough for all parties to force the US and its allies into a diplomatic resolution.
However, the plan carries enormous risks. By escalating attacks on regional states and international economic interests, Iran could provoke a broader coalition against itself. Despite prior military losses, Iranian forces retain the capability to launch drone and missile strikes, maintaining their influence over the ongoing conflict.
For Iranian leaders, the immediate priority remains unchanged: the survival of the regime, even if it requires a major regional escalation.