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The Family Research Council is promoting a dedicated time to Pray For & Stand With Israel across the country on May 19. The goal is Christians in every place of worship this Sunday, among thousands of churches and communities, would take time to pray for Israel's peace, prosperity and protection. Israel needs prayer as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continues to push toward his goal of total destruction of Hamas after the terrorist group's Oct. 7 attacks killed roughly 1,200 Israelis last year. 
"The greatest way we can pray for the Jewish people is that they would experience the salvation that the scriptures promised them. Now, of course, we stand in solidarity with Israel, and of course, we push back against the evil of this rise of antisemitism. But just know this at the same time – Israel doesn't need our physical defense. And at the end of the day, God will protect them. However, we are commanded to pray for the peace of Jerusalem," Jack Hibbs, senior pastor of Calvary Chapel in Chino Hills, California, told show host Tony Perkins. |
The modern state of Israel celebrated its 76th anniversary Tuesday (May 14, 2024) amid the eerie backdrop of war and weakening support from its chief ally, the United States. Through the recent months of the Israel-Hamas war, President Joe Biden has tried the thread the needle of support for Israel while not harshly criticizing anti-Semitic demonstrations on college campuses or many in his Democratic voting base.
Forty-two years ago, however, then-Senator Joe Biden wasn't even trying to thread the needle. In 1982, he argued against aid for Israel, Dr. A.J. Nolte, Regent University professor and director of the school's Institute for Israel Studies, recalled on Washington Watch Monday.
"I'm reminded of an incident where a senator, who at the time served on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was talking about the need to – if Israel went into Lebanon – of potentially cutting off aid," Nolte told show host Perkins.
The (Brits') Promised Land
When the Holocaust occurred, the Jews had already been promised a homeland by an earthly governing authority. The promise was made by British Foreign Sec. Arthur James Balfour in a letter to Lionel Walter Rothschild, the leader of the British Jewish community on Nov. 2, 1917.
In the letter, which came to be known as The Balfour Declaration, Balfour told Rothschild the king had signed off on "the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people."
The area was then under Ottoman control, but The Balfour Declaration paved the way for what in 1948 became the modern-day State of Israel. Yet it took a bold move by future Israeli Prime Minister David Ben Gurion to make the state a reality.
The promise had not been fulfilled when Ben Gurion formally declared independence for Israel at midnight on May 14, 1948, Nolte explained. Within minutes, then-U.S. President Harry Truman gave America's official recognition to the State of Israel.
That is how history notes the beginning of modern-day Israel. But according to Nolte, many Israelis will paint a different picture of Zionism – the national movement for an Israeli homeland in Palestine.
"Zionism is very diverse, but one thing all Zionists would agree on is that the State of Israel was never something that was to be gifted to the Jewish people by other people," said Nolte. "It was something that would be brought about through the efforts of the Jewish people and, for those who are more of a religious bent within the Zionist movement, also through the efforts of God."
God's plan for Israel
There's also no denying the presence of God in the coming of the Jewish State.
"Oh absolutely, 100 percent," Nolte said. "You look at the fact that you have refugees who were armed with sort of mismatched weapons, fighting against Arab armies that had both British and German military training, depending on which army you are talking about. It was a serious mismatch.
"It also leads to one of the most fundamental differences between the false Arab perception of Israel and reality, because what ended up happening was basically, you had a bunch of refugees who had just come through – [at least] for the European refugees among them – one of the worst experiences in Jewish history," Nolte continued.
"For the Middle Eastern refugees who had come after, through a similar experience of being ethnically cleansed from their homelands, they had nowhere else to go. Their backs were against the wall and they fought to survive and they won – and that has consistently been the reality."
As Nolte explained, the wandering history of the people of Israel has had the unfortunate consequence of motivating its enemies through the years.
"There's this misapprehension born out of left-wing post-colonialism that if you simply kill enough Israelis that they'll go somewhere else. But they've got nowhere else to go; this is the only homeland they have," he shared. "Oftentimes we hear Israel described as settler colonialism. [But] we're not dealing with settlers – you're talking about resettled refugees. There's a there's a vast difference, and that's not true. There's nowhere for them to go."
The anti-Israel sentiment that is so visible today has its roots in the Marxist class distinctions of oppressor and oppressed, Nolte stated. When God's chosen people wandered with no homeland, they fit the Left's vision of oppressed people in need of assistance. But when Israel took matters into their own hands, he explained, they saved themselves.
That blew holes in the Left's narrative of the Jews as oppressed people. The only remaining option in which they could be viewed – and stay within Marxist thinking – was that of "oppressor," Nolte said. And oppressor status in the eyes of the Left, he added, made Israel unworthy for a share of the billions spent by the U.S. on foreign aid.
Remember Sen. Biden's position
Nolte said it's important to keep in mind Biden's position in 1982.
"[Israeli] Prime Minister Menachem Begin is reported to have said, 'I am not a Jew with trembling knees. We will defend ourselves,'" Nolte recalled. "It's so important to keep that history in mind also as we're looking at today. One of the problems that I think we've seen with the Left is that when Israel is seen as weak, then the Left wants to support them – but when Israel has the temerity to actually show resilience and stand up and defend itself, that's unacceptable [to the Left].
"That's the broader issue here, because Israel as an oppressed people that frees themselves doesn't fit the narrative. Minorities are to be permanent victims – that's their role in the Left's religion. Israel and the Israelis didn't play by the rules. They stood up and founded their own nation."
