During the week covered by this review, we received 8 articles on the following subjects:
Anti-Missionary Attitudes
Anti-Missionary Activity
Political Issues
Political Issues / Christian Organizations
Christians and the Holocaust / Christian Organizations
Christian Holidays / Political Issues
Anti-Missionary Attitudes
Various Articles
A number of articles reported again that Or L’Achim submitted a 70-page document opposing the State Attorney Office’s overturning of the Knesset Finance Committee’s decision to revoke tax-exempt status from two missionary organizations. Or L’Achim accused the State Attorney’s Office of supporting aid for missionaries.
Anti-Missionary Activity
HaShavua BeYerushalayim, April 7, 2021
Yad L’Achim organized a seminar for dozens of Jews who recently exited “missionary cults” such as the Jehovah’s Witnesses or Messianic Jewish communities. During the seminar, participants were taught how to properly celebrate the Passover, and were given a tour of a matzah bakery, where they made their own matzoth, and were then given matzoth to take home for the holiday.
Political Issues
Shavua Israeli, March 24, 2021
On his first official diplomatic trip, the Ambassador of Israel to the United States, Gilad Erdan, visited sites that are important to the black civil rights movement in the southern USA. As part of his tour, Erdan visited a number of black churches, including the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, where nine worshippers were shot dead during a prayer meeting by a white supremacist in 2015. Erdan said he was horrified to hear that local police took the shooter to eat at McDonalds after his arrest. The trip marks an attempt to deepen Israel’s relationship with minority communities in the US. Erdan said that he hoped cooperation between Israel and these communities would “strengthen our mutual fight against racism and anti-Semitism.”
Political Issues / Christian Organizations
Israel Hayom, April 9, 2021
Israel has informed the Hague Tribunal that it does not recognize the Tribunal’s authority. Dr. Jürgen Bühler, the president of the International Christian Embassy of Jerusalem (ICEJ), issued a statement of support, saying that Israel does not need to put its confidence in an institution that compares Israel to the Nazi regime. Bühler said that the ICEJ will submit an appeal to the Tribunal in defense of the State of Israel.
Christians and the Holocaust / Christian Organizations
Haaretz, April 8, 2021
This was a piece about the Haifa Home, a care home for elderly Holocaust Survivors established by Shimon Sabag in 2008. Sabag said that when he looked for financial support for the Home, he reached out to many organizations, but the International Christian Embassy of Jerusalem (ICEJ) was the only one to respond. The ICEJ raised money to help buy the first floor of the Home’s first building. ICEJ coordinator, Yudit Setz, originally from the Netherlands, moved from Jerusalem to Haifa in order to coordinate Christian volunteers who came from abroad to renovate the Haifa Home. Currently there are three German Christian women working at the Haifa Home who opted not to return to Germany when the pandemic started. They work as nurses and/or assistants to the residents. Before the pandemic, about 900 volunteers, many of them German, came annually to volunteer in various Israeli facilities. Currently there are 95 volunteers working in 25 public or private nursing homes, where most residents are Holocaust survivors.
Christian Holidays / Political Issues
The Jerusalem Post Lite, April 7, 2021
Israeli President Reuven Rivlin sent a message to Pope Francis, wishing him a Happy Easter. The article noted that even though this is the second Easter of the pandemic, many more Christians were allowed to attend Easter celebrations in Jerusalem this year than were last year. Rivlin said: “This pandemic has shown that the borders between countries are artificial, as the sickness does not differentiate between followers of different religions.”