The Great Bond Between Israel and Christians

Menachem Begin and the Evangelicals

Posted by: David Parsons April 2, 2014 , 8:51 am

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This year, the Menachem Begin Heritage Center is marking the 100^th Anniversary since the birth of this remarkable Jewish leader. Part of these observances included an event this week honoring Menachem Begin as the first Israeli prime minister to openly embrace the support of Christians worldwide. Co-hosted by the Begin Center and the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem, the evening featured an address by Dr. Daniel Gordis of the Shalem College, who has just published an absorbing biography entitled Menachem Begin: The Struggle for Israel’s Soul.

Indeed, of all the successive prime ministers of Israel following the nation’s re-birth in 1948, Begin stands out as the first premier to publicly welcome Christian Zionist support and to seek to harness it in defense of the Jewish state. Others before him may have had connections to individual Christian figures, but the story of the Israel-Evangelical partnership as we know it today starts with Begin.

From the birth of the modern Zionist movement, there are many examples of individual friendships and even partnerships forged between Jewish and Christian figures with the mutual goal of resettling Jews back in the historic Land of Israel.

When the Jewish philanthropist Moses Montefiore toured Palestine in 1849 to assess the prospects of establishing Jewish colonies there, he was accompanied by a prominent Christian Zionist named George Gawler. He was a British army officer and governor of South Australia who wrote a book in 1845 advocating the Jewish return to the land. After their joint tour, Gawler was active until his death in raising funds from Christians to help plant Jewish colonies in Eretz Israel.

When Theodor Herzl published his book Der Judenstaat in 1895, he was quickly befriended by Rev. William Hechler, chaplain to the British Embassy in Vienna. Hechler soon became a sort of “foreign minister” for the Zionist movement, opening doors for Herzl to the German Kaiser and other European leaders. In his diary, the secular Herzl also noted that Hechler’s encouragement and biblical inspiration contributed to his own growing sense that he was a modern-day Moses leading his people back to the Land of Promise.

At the First Zionist Congress in Basel in 1897, Herzl also coined the term “Christian Zionist” when thanking his friend John Henry Dunant and other Christians present at the gathering for their strong backing of his efforts.

Zionist leader Chaim Weizman in turn was befriended by Arthur James Balfour a decade before he became foreign secretary for the Lloyd George war cabinet and signed the Balfour Declaration. Weizman also was close to the Christian Zionist figure Jan Smuts, a British general and governor of South Africa who conceived of the League of Nations mandate system.

Israel’s founding prime minister David Ben-Gurion also had encounters with Christian Zionists, as noted Southern Baptist leader Dr. W. A. Criswell, former president of Dallas Theological Seminary, claimed to have had a relationship with Ben-Gurion. Later, Dr. Pat Robertson and others made attempts to reach out to Yitzhak Rabin.

So there were even instances of personal friendships and engagement between Israeli leaders and individual Christian Zionist figures following Israel’s rebirth in 1948.

But Menachem Begin holds the unique distinction of being the first Israeli prime minister to warmly embrace Christian Zionist support in an open manner. He, too, had developed personal friendships with individual Christian leaders like author Dr. David A. Lewis. But Begin went further than his predecessors by actively seeking Christian support and acknowledging its value in public. There are several reasons why.

First, Begin came to realize that he shared a certain biblical worldview with evangelical Christians. Although Begin saw much of the world through the prism of the Holocaust and thus was fully aware of the long, tragic history of Christian anti-Semitism, he also had a strong biblical worldwide and knew this gave him much in common with Bible-believing Christians today. In particular, he looked on the Bible as Israel’s title deed to the land and saw the Jewish return to the land as fulfillment of the vision of the Hebrew prophets, just as many Christians did.

Second, Begin was surrounded by several close advisors who shared his friendly disposition towards pro-Israel Christians. This included the late Harry Hurwitz, the founder and long-serving president of the Begin Heritage Center.

Hurwitz had served as head of the South African Zionist Federation in Cape Town before making aliyah in the early seventies. While still in South Africa, he had been exposed to genuine Christian supporters of Israel and was particularly close to a gentleman named Basil Jacobs, founder of Christian Action for Israel. Basil Jacobs attended the first Feast of Tabernacles celebration in September of 1980 when the International Christian Embassy was founded. His good friend Harry Hurwitz was thus the key official within Begin’s inner circle who convinced Begin to endorse the founding of a Christian Embassy in Jerusalem in 1980.

Finally, Begin’s last years in office were marked by several steep challenges to the nation, including the American AWACS sale to Saudi Arabia, the US “reassessment” after the Osirak bombing operation, and finally the fallout from the First Lebanon War. In all these cases, Begin actively sought Christian support, especially from among prominent American Christian leaders like Jerry Falwell, Ed McAteer. For example, media accounts from those days tell of Begin approaching a wealthy American Jewish friend to lend his private jet to bring over Christian solidarity missions at critical times during the Lebanon crisis.

Yet Begin’s first public embrace of pro-Israel Christians came at the ICEJ’s Feast of Tabernacles in 1981, when he stood before a gathering of several thousand cheering Christians from dozens of nations and warmly told the crowd: “Tonight, I know that we are not alone.”

Later, when Begin resigned from office, the Christian Embassy sent him a letter of gratitude for his friendship. In response, Begin wrote back: “Your decision to establish your Embassy in Jerusalem at a time when we are being abandoned because of our faith was an act of courage and a symbol of the closeness between us. Your acts and gestures gave us the feeling that we were not alone.”

The partnership between Israel and her Christian friends has grown ever since into what Foreign Ministry officials have now acknowledged as a “strategic asset” for this nation. Current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu knows this history as well as anyone and continues to both solicit and express appreciation for Christian support. But this official open embrace truly starts with our beloved friend Menachem Begin.

Israel Must Prepare For The Time That The US Is No Longer A Force For Good In The Middle East

Superpower Outage

Martin Kramer - Commentary Magazine,  November 13th, 2013

Jonathan Tobin rightly dismisses as dangerous any Israeli attempt to play China or Russia off the United States out of frustration with the Iran policy of the Obama administration. When it comes to dealing with the immediate threat posed by Iran, only Washington has superpower leverage, and if Israel wanders off the reservation, it will only damage itself.

But Jonathan makes a further claim: “Israel’s long-term safety must be seen as linked to the ability of the United States to maintain its status as the leader of the free world. Even at times of great tension with Washington, Israelis must never forget that it is not just that they have no viable alternatives to the U.S. but that American power remains the best hope of freedom for all nations.” This “linkage” is problematic, and its acceptance could blind Israelis to what they need to do to survive through the next half-century.

The problem with American power, like all power, is that it waxes and wanes. We have become used to the notion that U.S. preeminence in the world and the Middle East is a constant. But it isn’t so. Geography has rendered the United States the most self-contained superpower in history. As a result, it goes through manic bouts of interventionism and isolationism, and sometimes awakens to the responsibilities of its power too late. It did so during the Holocaust, and it did so during the first years of Israeli independence, when the fledgling Jewish state had to look to the Soviet Union and France for the arms essential to its defense. The simple truth is that Israel cannot rely on the United States to do just the right thing at just the right time. That’s at the heart of the crisis of confidence between the United States and Israel over Iran, and its sources run deeper than the particular world view of Barack Obama.

More than six years ago, before Obama even declared his candidacy, I told the Conference of Presidents that “America’s era in the Middle East will end one day,” and that “it is possible that in twenty years’ time, America will be less interested and engaged in the Middle East. What is our Plan B then?” Obama accelerated that timetable, but the long-term trend has been clear for years. And one doesn’t have to be a “declinist” to realize that the United States can lead the free world and still write off the Middle East, which isn’t part of it. That’s precisely the mood in America today.

Hedging has been a fundamental principle of Zionism from its inception. That’s how it managed to outlast the fall of two empires that dominated the Middle East in the pre-state decades. When political Zionism emerged, the Ottoman Empire still held sway over the land, and Theodor Herzl went as a supplicant to the sultan’s palace in Istanbul. As late as 1912, the future first prime minister of Israel, David Ben-Gurion, and the future second president of Israel, Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, went to Istanbul to study Ottoman law, on the assumption that they would have to build the Yishuv under the same Ottoman power that had ruled the country for four centuries. (Here they are, looking like the deputies to the Ottoman parliament they planned to become.) A few years later, Ottoman power collapsed. Fortunately, Chaim Weizmann had laid the foundations for the support of the Allied victors, above all the British, whose empire now expanded to encompass the core of the Middle East.

British dominance in Palestine lasted for thirty years, during which London became the center of Zionist political activity. Britain was the mother of democracy, bastion of freedom, and home to a strong tradition of philo-Judaism and Christian Zionism. Much was made of “shared values.” But Britain, after facilitating the remarkable growth of the Yishuv, backtracked on its commitment to Zionism at the very moment of paramount Jewish need. It was Ben-Gurion who understood that the world war would bring down the British empire across Asia and Africa, Palestine included, and who sought an alliance with the ascendant United States. Still, years would pass before the United States would admit Israel to a “special relationship,” leaving Israel to fend for itself in the world’s arms market. That insecurity drove Israel to ally with Britain and France against Nasser’s Egypt—to Washington’s chagrin—and to build a nuclear capability with French assistance—in defiance of Washington.

Those days may seem distant, and Israel and the United States have had an extraordinary run. But history stands still for no people, and if our history has taught us anything about geopolitics, it is this: what is will not be. However enamored we are of the status quo, Israel needs a Plan B, and it has to consist of more than editorially flogging America for failing to maintain its forward positions in the Middle East. The State of Israel, like Zionism before it, must be agile enough to survive a power outage of any ally, and to plug in elsewhere. If Israel’s long-term safety really did depend on America’s will to govern the world, then it would be a poor substitute for Judaism’s own survival mechanism, by which the Jewish people outlasted the fall of countless host empires. But Israel’s future depends upon something within its own grasp: its ability to read the changing map of the world, to register the ebb and flow of global power, and to adapt as necessary.

Let us pray for the perpetuation of America’s power to do good in the world. Let us prepare for something less.