Wednesday, August 24, 2005

Christian support is ignored

From Jerusalem Post Aug. 23, 2005 23:00 Updated Aug. 24, 2005 2:53 By YECHIEL ECKSTEIN ...

Most American Jews are...completely unaware ...of the fact that evangelical Christians feel such a strong tie with Israel and the Jewish people and are expressing that support – without conditions, much like Jews do – through financial donations, tours, political advocacy, hasbara and much more.

...Christians have,...contributed hundreds of millions of dollars to support social service programs in Israel, Turkey, Ethiopia and throughout the former Soviet Union. But not only are most Jews ignorant of these matters because of the negative way in which evangelicals are generally portrayed when mention is made of them, their solidarity is ascribed to all sorts of cynical and nefarious ulterior motives. It's as if their support is too good to be true.

...Why is it that even involved Jews are barely aware of this growing phenomenon? Well, other than The Jerusalem Post , which has both covered and encouraged the budding Evangelical-Jewish relations, the Jewish media has mostly ignored it or, worse, been highly critical of it.
ONE PARTICULAR ...Jewish newspaper in the US – last month ran four articles, most front-page stories, on the mainline Protestant divestment issue, but barely a word on evangelicals, not even the fact that they are among the strongest opponents of these mainline Protestant anti-Israel measures....

...Divestment is, indeed, one of many critical issues that legitimately need to be covered. But I cannot fathom why the Jewish press expends so much energy covering faith groups so clearly contemptuous of Israel while giving another group, larger in both membership and influence and desirous of supporting Israel in any way it can, so little, if any, mention.

The writer is founder and president of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews/Stand for Israel.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I see you have a great list of Jewish sites to right on your site. I wanted to let you know about