“We Have Forgotten God”: A Conversation with Waleed Siam

It is August 6, 2026 — 81 years to the day since an atomic bomb exploded over the city of Hiroshima. I am walking up four flights of stone stairs in a building in the Minami-Azabu area of Tokyo. Minami-Azabu is home to many embassies, but the building I am in is not technically an embassy. Its chief occupant, His Excellency Waleed Siam, has no state to represent. Siam heads a diplomatic mission to Japan from Palestine.

I met Siam once before, in 2024, about a year into Israel’s latest incursion into Gaza. Since then, the world has changed dramatically, but the only thing that has changed in Palestine is that the suffering of the innocent has multiplied, as has the death toll.

“The figure often cited in the news of 75,000 killed since October 2023 is not accurate,” Siam tells me. “There are bodies buried under the rubble, people who are missing, and people who have been injured. We may never know exactly how many people were killed. Israel is using bulldozers and heavy equipment to clear the rubble and pulverize what is left. When you destroy the rubble, graves, and human remains, you also destroy the evidence. If somebody wants to investigate what happened in Gaza years from now, what will they find? In many places, there may be almost nothing left to examine. Homes, graves, and entire neighborhoods have been turned into dust. They are erasing the physical evidence that Palestinians ever lived there, Christians and Muslims alike.”

I ask Siam about his family, whether they have managed to survive.

“Some of my wife’s family managed to escape Gaza and get to Cairo,” he answers. “But she lost four uncles because they couldn’t get the medicines they needed: heart medicine, blood-pressure medicine, and other essentials. They died in their beds. May they rest in peace. In a terrible way, it was probably the best thing that could have happened to them. The suffering three years ago was terrible, but it is completely different from what people are going through now.”

What about the foreign aid pouring into Gaza, I ask — food, medicine, water, and other supplies? Some aid is getting though, Siam tells me, but nowhere near enough.

“Ordinary Palestinians are caught between Israel and Hamas,” he explains. “There is a terrible political symbiosis. [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s government has become dependent on the war for its political survival, while Hamas has maintained its position through the conflict. The people caught in the middle have no power.”

The war began after Hamas breached what Siam calls “perhaps the most sophisticated” border in the world and attacked communities inside Israel on October 7, 2023.

“It is unacceptable to kill any human being. Every innocent life matters,” he says. “But there are still unanswered questions about exactly what happened that day, including conflicting accounts about the attacks and Israel’s military response. We need a neutral, independent international investigation. We should not simply accept the Israeli, Hamas, American, or Palestinian version. We need facts, evidence, and accountability.”

Israel’s stated objective is to destroy Hamas. Yet after years of war, Hamas remains.

“It is a very dark game,” Siam says. “If the objective is to eliminate Hamas, why has it not been achieved? Israel has destroyed much of Gaza, killed tens of thousands, and displaced hundreds of thousands. Yet Hamas remains. Israel says Hamas is the reason the war has to continue, but we have to ask whether eliminating Hamas is the only objective.”

“And who pays the price for this?” I ask, already knowing the answer.

“Regular people. My wife’s family lives in Khan Yunis [in the southern Gaza strip]. They once had property near the beach and allowed displaced people to put their tents there. But Hamas members demanded money from people who were already suffering. The refugees resisted. At one point, they took weapons and vehicles from Hamas. There was almost a civil conflict. People have lost their homes, livelihoods, and family members, and they are also dealing with armed groups inside Gaza. That is why ordinary Palestinians are the real victims.”

This is not the first time armed conflict has brought suffering to Khan Yunis, which was the site of a 1956 massacre during the Suez Canal crisis, when Israeli forces killed hundreds of Palestinian civilians. But what is happening now is very different.

“I have been in wars before,” Siam says. “This is not a war. It’s more than war.”

“It’s genocide,” I interject.

“It’s more than genocide,” he replies. “It’s also the forced removal of people from their land. There’s a ceasefire, we are told, but people continue to be killed. There’s famine. There isn’t enough aid getting through. Sanitation has collapsed, disease is spreading, and medicine is not getting in. People have contacted me asking for money because their child was bitten by a rat. A rat bite can become fatal if you have no medicine.

“But the worst suffering is psychological. One of my wife’s nieces is married to a man who worked in Gaza for an international organization. When he first arrived, he was a normal person with a good job and a comfortable life. Now his family doesn’t recognize him. He sits alone. Psychologically, he is destroyed. Now imagine that happening to millions of people. Their psyches are in tatters.”

And yet, there are those who refuse to accept that Israel is committing genocide or that Hamas is not a pro-Palestinian group but a parasitic militia using the Palestinian people as a pretext to run a blood-money operation. The situation is utterly depraved on both sides.

“How could there be such pain in one part of the world, and such ignorance of it in another?” I ask.

“It’s simple,” he tells me. “The American media has failed to show the reality of Gaza. Powerful political interests support the Israeli government, and that affects how the conflict is presented.

“But we have to be careful not to make this about Jews. Israel is a state. The Israeli government and military are responsible for their policies and actions. Judaism is a religion, and Jewish people have many different political views. Some Jews oppose the occupation. Some Israelis oppose their own government. Some Jewish organizations support Palestinian rights. Criticism of the Israeli government must never be confused with hatred of Jews. I am against anti-Semitism, racism, and the hatred of anyone.”

Siam also rejects the idea that support for Israel is equivalent to support for Judaism.

“Christianity began in this region,” he says. “Palestinian Christians have lived here for centuries. Israeli extremists have attacked and harassed Christian religious sites and clergy. Those things should be condemned. But we have to distinguish between the Israeli state, Israeli extremists, and Jewish people. If an Israeli soldier commits an abuse, that soldier should be held accountable. If an Israeli settler attacks a Palestinian, that settler should be held accountable. If the Israeli government violates international law, the government should be held accountable. But you cannot blame Jews collectively. That is wrong.”

There are ultra-Orthodox Jews who spit on Christians in Israel. Recently, Israeli soldiers in south Lebanon were photographed holding cigarettes up to statues of the Blessed Mother. There are photos of Israeli soldiers desecrating statues of Jesus, breaking the face of Christ with an axe. In Deir Mimas, Lebanon, Israeli soldiers desecrated a Maronite Christian church and posted videos mocking the Christian faith. Israeli forces have graffitied, ransacked, and destroyed other churches in Lebanon. Many American Christians continue to defend Israel, though, as a force for civilization in the region.

“America was built on land taken from native peoples,” I say. “So was Israel. There seems to be some kind of tacit bond of complicity between Zionists and Christian nationalists. The Puritans and their descendants were neck-deep in genocide and landgrabs long before Theodor Herzl was born.”

“The game is about power and resources,” Siam says. “Israel was established after the decline of the British Empire, and the United States eventually became the dominant external power in the Middle East. During the Cold War, Israel became an important strategic partner for the Americans. Oil and regional influence were major parts of American policy. Today, the relationship is extremely close. The United States provides Israel with enormous political, military, and diplomatic support. But this is about states and political power. It is not about Judaism.”

I wonder if politics and religion can be so neatly distinguished. The U.S. ambassador to Israel, a Zionist Evangelical named Mike Huckabee, acts more Israeli than American. Christian Zionist pastors have prayed over Trump in the Oval Office — which is not a chapel but a place where bombing campaigns are announced.

The intertwined nature of American and Israeli genocide was showcased in Japan a couple years ago. In August 2024 U.S. Ambassador Rahm Emanuel, who volunteered with the Israeli Defense Forces during the first Gulf War, refused to attend a ceremony in Nagasaki honoring those killed by the atomic bomb. Emanuel’s reason for his refusal was that the Israeli ambassador had not been invited. The mayor of Nagasaki said this was due to security concerns. Emanuel insisted it was political, a snub against Israel.

Siam questions why either ambassador was invited. “The American side has never fully confronted the consequences of the atomic bombings,” he says. “And the Israeli government is accused of serious violations of international law in Gaza. Why invite them to assume the moral high ground?”

Behind this farce lies something bigger. Zionism precipitates one massacre after another. Why?

“Some forms of Zionism are expansionist,” Siam says. “But Zionism is not Judaism. Zionism is a political ideology; Judaism is a religion. What we have now is imperialism, not religion. Israel is involved in Lebanon and Syria, and the conflict with Iran has become increasingly dangerous. The region has endured foreign intervention for decades. Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Egypt were historically major powers. Then came wars, coups, foreign interventions, and political upheaval. The people of the region are tired of being treated like pieces on somebody else’s chessboard.”

Everyone in the region has suffered because of imperialist games. There were many Jews in Syria, Iraq, and elsewhere in the Middle East. The Zionists wiped out Judaism in the region. Israel and the United States propped up former al-Qaeda member Ahmed al-Sharaa and used him as a proxy to overthrow the government of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, causing untold misery for Syrians of all religions. The Arab Spring, backed by the U.S. government, caused chaos. Netanyahu and his minsters are openly saying on Israeli television and in Israeli newspapers that they want to expand, that they want to eliminate Arabs, whether Muslim or Christian. The Americans and Israelis tried to tear Egypt to pieces. Egypt did not fall, but that doesn’t mean Tel Aviv and Washington have stopped trying. Now they are attacking Iran, a country supported by Russia, China, and Pakistan.

“I do not support every government in the region,” Siam says. “I believe religion and politics should be separate. But people should be allowed to determine their own future. We are constantly told that the fighting is religious. Sunni, Shia — we are more educated and self-aware than that. We are not going to go back a thousand years to repeat ancient conflicts because Western or regional powers find it useful. I am 100 percent against killing innocent people, anywhere. This is about human life versus those who have no regard for it.

“Illegal settlements and attacks on Palestinian communities are another part of the problem,” Siam says. “Palestinians are being pushed off their land. Settlers take homes and land, often with the protection or backing of the Israeli military. You can call it religious nationalism, racism, or something else. But the fundamental issue is land.”

I ask Siam what Israel stands to gain from all this. Why go to such lengths, commit such horrific atrocities, only to grab more land, which would surely multiply problems instead of solve them?

“Israel says expansionism is necessary for its security,” Siam tells me. “The price of that so-called security is humanity. Palestinians have been treated as though their lives are worth less than Israeli lives. That is the fundamental injustice.

“There are Israelis who want peace. There are Jewish people who stand with Palestinians. There are Israelis who have protested against their own government. We should not erase those people. Palestinians deserve freedom and dignity. Israelis deserve security and dignity. These things are not mutually exclusive.”

Peace is a noble dream, but in the meantime there is only so much people can take before they begin to break.

“After Gaza,” Siam tells me, “a bigger catastrophe is coming: psychological devastation. Palestinians don’t hate. Israelis took our homes and land, killed our families, starved us, humiliated us, and treated us as less than human. But we don’t hate them. Hamas has also contributed to our misery, but we don’t hate them. Hatred is a cancer of the soul. I never taught my children hatred. My children have many Jewish friends. I have prayed in Christian churches since I was a boy. We do not want hatred. We want peace and respect.

“But look at the children growing up in Gaza. They have seen their homes destroyed, their families killed, and their lives defined by hunger, fear, and displacement. They may grow up psychologically damaged. Some may become radicalized. Some may want revenge, not only against Israel but against Hamas and anyone else they blame for what happened to them. That is what we should fear. The consequences will last for generations.”

“How did we get to the point where hatred became the basic operating code of the human race?” I ask.

“People got used to it,” Siam answers. “Look at the Ukraine war. At first, it dominated news cycles. Now it’s in the background. When the war in Gaza started, people around the world were in the streets protesting. Now it has largely disappeared from the headlines. Everyone is looking at Iran. When that war ends, people will look somewhere else. Those who rule the world want to keep us busy. They don’t want us to see the bigger picture. We are consumed with trying to survive.”

“We seem to have lost any sense of the soul,” I say, “of eternity, of responsibility to other human beings that is not transactional but that comes from a knowledge of being in the sight of God.”

“We lost our humanity,” Siam replies. “We forgot what it means to be human. We replaced it with religious hypocrisy. People preach morality and then behave immorally. They pray in mosques and curse their neighbors. They go to church or synagogue and return to their lives as if other people don’t matter. We have adopted the mindset that it is me against the world, and everyone else is not my concern.

“I lived in America for almost 18 years. In the 1970s Americans were so kind. ‘Hey, how are you?’ ‘Nice to see you.’ People used to have barbecues. They went swimming together. They knew each other. They talked to each other. There was community back then. I went back in 2016, and everything had changed. People didn’t know one another in the same way. They didn’t speak to one another. It’s the same in Lebanon and Japan. Everyone is just trying to get through the day.”

Still, the solution is not beyond reach.

“The solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is simple in principle,” Siam says. “Palestinians need freedom, equality, and an end to the occupation. Israelis need security. Both peoples need to live with dignity. Of course, Israel needs security. But Palestinians need security, too. Security and humanity are not opposites. We need both.

“Open your eyes. Open your heart. See the other person as a human being. Today, we are closed off. We see suffering everywhere and shut it out because we don’t want to feel it. It hurts to see a child suffering in Gaza. It hurts to see a child suffering anywhere.

“Christians kill Christians. Muslims kill Muslims. Jews kill Jews. The problem is not between religions. The problem is that we have stopped seeing the other person as a fellow human being, as a fellow child of God. We have forgotten God. He gave us everything, and we rejected and destroyed His gifts. We made money from suffering. We made power from destruction. And now we see the result every evening on the news. Until we remember our humanity, there is no hope for us as human beings.”

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