Why Christian Leaders’ Pro-Israel Letter Matters

June 18 2021

Yesterday, a group of prominent Christian leaders sent an open letter to Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, congratulating him on the formation of his new government and affirming their support for “the world’s only Jewish state.” The missive—the result of the efforts of the writer and activist Robert Nicholson—expresses its signers’ “strong sense of friendship with Israel based on shared values that originate in the Hebrew Bible.” Elliott Abrams comments:

[T]he letter is signed by dozens of Christian leaders from very mixed ethnic and denominational backgrounds. Certainly their followers are in the tens of millions, many times the population of Israel—or the U.S. Jewish population. The list includes the leader of one of the largest black denominations in the U.S., a member of [former] President Trump’s evangelical advisory board, the CEO of the largest evangelical broadcasting channel, and a range of clergymen and -women, academics, writers, and public intellectuals.

Israel’s new leaders have certain advantages and other disadvantages as they replace Benjamin Netanyahu after his twelve years in office. Many of the relationships he developed, for example with foreign heads of government, were personal and not easy for his successor to jump into. In the United States and in Europe, where many on the left and center-left saw Netanyahu as an opponent, relations may improve; certainly, Democrats in the United States who saw Netanyahu as tied to the Republican party have an opportunity to rebuild relations now with the new team in Jerusalem. This statement by Christian leaders makes a different argument: that their support is for Israel, not any particular leader.

Read more at Pressure Points

More about: Benjamin Netanyahu, Christian Zionism, Evangelical Christianity, Naftali Bennett, US-Israel relations

Western Europe’s Failures Led to the Pogrom in Amsterdam

Nov. 11 2024

In 2013, Mosaic—then a brand-new publication—published an essay by the French intellectual Michel Gurfinkiel outlining the dark future that awaited European Jewry. It began with a quote from the leader of the Jewish community of Versailles: “My feeling is that our congregation will be gone within twenty or thirty years.” The reasons he, and Gurfinkiel, felt this way were on display in Amsterdam Thursday night. Michael Murphy writes:

For years, Holland and other European countries have invited vast numbers of people whose values and culture are often at odds with their own. This was a bold experiment made to appear less hazardous through rose-tinted spectacles. Europeans thought vainly that because we had largely set aside ethno-sectarian politics after the atrocities of the 20th century that others would do the same once they arrived. But they have not.

Perhaps the most unsettling part of this self-described “Jew hunt,” which left five people hospitalized, was the paltry response of the Dutch police. Reports suggest officers failed to act swiftly and, in some cases, to act at all. “I and two others ran to the nearest police station, but they didn’t open the door,” one of the victims claimed.

One hopes there is a reasonable explanation for this. Yet Amsterdam’s police force—with its increasingly diverse make-up—may have had other reasons for their reluctance to intervene. Last month, the Dutch Jewish Police Network warned that some officers “no longer want to protect Jewish targets or events,” vaguely citing “moral dilemmas.”

Read more at National Post

More about: Amsterdam, Anti-Semitism, European Islam, European Jewry