Strong support for Israel among religiously committed Christians has long been an American phenomenon. Now a group of British clergy, led by a Pentecostal pastor named Oliver Manyemba, is seeking to change that. Manyemba’s Christian Watchmen over Zion (CWZ) is rapidly recruiting members and making its presence felt. Ari Soffer writes:

Born in Zimbabwe, Manyemba was active for several years in some of the more established Christian Zionist organizations in London, but noticed a frustrating trend: while longstanding groups were indeed working hard to fight in Israel’s corner, they were doing so without reaching beyond a very narrow demographic base of white, middle-aged (or older) Church of England Christians. Millions of potentially sympathetic Christians, most notably among black and South Asian communities, were not being reached, and Manyemba resolved to fix that.

[CWZ] is non-denominational, with members spanning the gamut . . . from Roman Catholics to [adherents of the] Church of England and Eastern Christians. But CWZ’s core constituency and driving force is the rapidly growing Pentecostal movement, particularly among the African and Afro-Caribbean communities.

Its objective is to reconnect Christians to authentic Biblical teachings—most importantly, the place of the cause of Israel or “Zion” and Jerusalem as a central focus of Christian belief. And its success in just two years has been staggering, drawing in thousands of grassroots members along with an ever-increasing number of churches. . . .

“In Zimbabwe, when we prayed for the peace of Jerusalem, we thought of our families or our village. But that’s not what God had in mind—He was talking about the real, physical Jerusalem!” Manyemba explains.

While it is commendable that administrators of several universities finally called upon police to crack down on violent and disruptive anti-Israel protests, the actions they have taken may be insufficient. At Columbia, demonstrators reestablished their encampment on the main quad after it had been cleared by the police, and the university seems reluctant to use force again. The school also decided to hold classes remotely until the end of the semester. Such moves, whatever their merits, do nothing to fix the factors that allowed campuses to become hotbeds of pro-Hamas activism in the first place. The editors of National Review examine how things go to this point:

Since the 10/7 massacre, Columbia’s Jewish students have been forced to endure routine calls for their execution. It shouldn’t have taken the slaughter, rape, and brutalization of Israeli Jews to expose chants like “Globalize the intifada” and “Death to the Zionist state” as calls for violence, but the university refused to intervene on behalf of its besieged students. When an Israeli student was beaten with a stick outside Columbia’s library, it occasioned little soul-searching from faculty. Indeed, it served only as the impetus to establish an “Anti-Semitism Task Force,” which subsequently expressed “serious concerns” about the university’s commitment to enforcing its codes of conduct against anti-Semitic violators.

But little was done. Indeed, as late as last month the school served as host to speakers who praised the 10/7 attacks and even “hijacking airplanes” as “important tactics that the Palestinian resistance have engaged in.”

The school’s lackadaisical approach created a permission structure to menace and harass Jewish students, and that’s what happened. . . . Now is the time finally to do something about this kind of harassment and associated acts of trespass and disorder. Yale did the right thing when police cleared out an encampment [on Monday]. But Columbia remains a daily reminder of what happens when freaks and haters are allowed to impose their will on campus.