In this episode of The Real Israel Podcast, Gidon Ariel — a reserve IDF Captain, former IDF spokesperson, and co-founder of Root Source — to talk about what life actually looks like in Judea and Samaria, and why he believes living there isn’t an obstacle to peace, it’s the fulfillment of biblical prophecy.

Gideon made Aliyah from Queens, New York at 14, served 20 years in the IDF Armored Corps, and now lives as a settler in Kiryat Arba, just outside Hebron — the city where Abraham is buried and King David was first crowned king of Israel. We talk about why the headlines calling settlements a “blockade to peace” get it backwards, what security actually looks like on the hilltops that overlook 90% of Israel’s population, and why more than 100,000 people visit Hebron every year despite how it’s portrayed in the media.

Gideon also talks about Root Source, the organization he co-founded to connect Christians directly with Jewish Torah teachers — over 1,000 lessons taught by around 20 Jewish educators — and why reading Scripture in its original Hebrew context changes everything.