Since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on Israel, the issue of support for Israel has become more divisive than ever. The anti-Israel voices are growing louder and ever more violent, and, sadly, many of those voices are Jewish.
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For Jews and Christians, the importance of supporting Israel couldn’t be clearer. The Bible tells us that Israel is God’s Promised Land. Israel is central to the biblical narrative and the beginnings of both Judaism and Christianity. It’s also the only state in the Middle East committed to individual liberty.
Yet so many liberal Jews choose to stand with the terrorists who seek to eliminate Israel. Granted, Jewish people on the left are often secular and use their Jewishness as a cultural identity, but shouldn’t someone who calls himself Jewish at least understand what it means to be Jewish?
Last week, Adam Eliyahu Berkowitz wrote an op-ed at Israel365 News in which he claimed that Zionist Christians have more in common with faithful Jews than Jewish people who refuse to support Israel.
His column begins with the story of Oswald Daniel Rufeisen, a man who was born Jewish, converted to Catholicism, and sought Israeli citizenship under the Law of Return. The government of Israel, which at the time was secular Jewish, refused to grant him citizenship because he changed his faith.
The question of Jewish identity looms in Berkowitz’s mind. He writes that he feels more solidarity with Christians who speak out for Israel’s right to exist than he does with his Jewish brothers and sisters who side with those who want to accommodate terrorists.
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“I feel more at home sitting with Christians who love Israel than with liberal Jews who reject Israel and support political agendas that threaten the Promised Land,” he writes. “My Christian friends share many of my dearest values, share my Bible, and share my love for the most precious thing in my life outside of my family: the land of Israel.”
“Liberal Jews share none of that and have a painful disdain for all of these precious things,” he continues. “How can I call them ‘brother’?”
Related: Faith All Over the Place, Episode 5: Don’t Call It a Comeback
Berkowitz sees the alliance between Jewish Zionists and Christians as uneasy; he writes of Christians as “strangers who it is difficult for us to trust,” and he writes, “I condition my friendship on their setting aside the Christian mandate to ‘spread the gospel’ and proselytize.”
Of course, as a Christian, I desire for him and other Jewish people to embrace Yeshua (Jesus) as the Messiah, but we Christians don’t put conditions on our support of Israel and faithful Jews. Instead, we’re united with our Jewish Zionist friends in our support for Israel, which is something most Christians have done for a long time.
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In Genesis 12, the Lord told Abram (later Abraham), “And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” We Christians don’t see these verses as a promise of prosperity — or at least we shouldn’t; instead, God’s words serve as a call to stand with His chosen people and His Promised Land. In doing so, Zionist Christians show that we have more in common with our Jewish brothers and sisters than the Jews who despise Israel do.
