May 27, 2025 6:18:28 pm

Earlier this week, ultra-Orthodox Jews parading through Jerusalem’s Old City passed a group of Christians bearing a large wooden cross. Some of the Jews spat on the ground in the Christians’ direction. In recent months, Christian clergy in Jerusalem have been complaining of an upsurge in spitting incidents against Christians, both on their robes as well as on the ground.

Christian leaders and others have attributed the increase in these attacks to the presence in the Israeli government of extremist ministers, whom they accuse of encouraging anti-Christian delinquent behavior. While some of these politicians’ rhetoric is indeed inflammatory, the situation is rather more complicated and disturbing.

For centuries, hundreds of thousands of Jews in Europe were subject to forced conversions by the Catholic Church under the threat of expulsion or death. Countless numbers of Jews were tortured or massacred for refusing to abandon their faith. This inherited collective trauma is reflected in Talmudic and other rabbinic sources and remains an all-too-live issue in the minds of many religious Jews.

“I support spitting at every cross, every Christian, to degrade them forcefully. They used to slaughter and massacre us,” one such man told Israeli Army Radio.

Attempts to convert the Jews constitute an aggressive, predatory, and ultimately, exterminatory attack on Judaism. Given this history, missionary activities remain a matter of the most acute sensitivity for Jews. Alarmingly, in recent years there has been an upsurge in such activities in Israel.

There may be several reasons for this, including the rise of the messianic “Jews for Jesus” movement and the resurgence of “supersessionist” anti-Israel and anti-Jewish preaching in progressive Protestant denominations.

APOCALYPTIC FERVOR: More pertinent still, the world’s civilizational disorders have provoked an increasing belief among a number of evangelical Christians that the messianic age is now imminent—an apocalyptic fervor that, for such believers, makes the conversion of the Jews increasingly urgent.

“The prayer for the salvation of Israel is deeply related to the second coming of Yeshua and the revival of the whole earth.”

A spokesman for one of the groups said, “We believe God is raising up 100 million intercessors for Israel to be restored and saved.” The Fellowship of Israel Related Ministries—one of dozens of organizations affiliated with the event—released a video seeking donations to “see people in Israel come to know Jesus as their Messiah until all Israel believes.”

Earlier this month, Alan Schneider, director of the B’nai Brith World Center in Jerusalem, wrote about this on the B’nai Brith International website: “Unfortunately, many Israeli leaders got the narrative wrong and referred to the 200-300 participants who took part in the southern steps event as innocent ‘pilgrims,’ ‘tourists’ or ‘worshippers,’ saving their criticism for a group of mainly rabbis, yeshiva and seminary students who issued a call only days earlier to protest the call for conversion of the Jews.”

The Southern Steps event, he wrote, was the launching pad of a decade of world evangelization announced last February. That month, 110 Christian leaders, representing 79 Catholic and evangelical organizations in 22 countries, met in Rome and established the Global 2033 Initiative.

The initiative is to promote missionary activity around the world from Pentecost this year until Pentecost 2033, described as the 2,000th anniversary of the death and resurrection of Jesus. A plethora of organizations and umbrella groups, wrote Schneider, are engaged in a multimillion-dollar campaign to convert Jews in Israel and around the world.

Much of this is taking place under the radar. Organizations such as One for Israel train “messianic” Jews to evangelize other Jews they will encounter in the IDF. The group Altar of Prayer promotes a pro-life agenda from a Christian perspective to Israeli women.

Others erect messianic monuments in the public space or establish projects to benefit the poor, aged, lone soldiers, new immigrants, sex workers and other vulnerable populations, as well as “planting” messianic congregations, especially among Ethiopian immigrants.

“The ICEJ has never engaged in missionary activity in Israel,” said the group’s Spokesman David Parsons in response.

However, wrote Schneider, in a recent online interview, the ICEJ’s president Dr. Juergen Buehler spoke approvingly of a report on the spread of messianism in Israel: “That is an exciting report. There is a new openness even in Israel.”

ANTI-CHRISTIAN HOOLIGANISM: Schneider stated, “It cannot be ruled out that these well-publicized events and the massive appropriation by evangelical Christians of Jewish traditions have contributed to the recent uptick in incidents of Jews targeting Christian clergy in Jerusalem and demands by fringe Jewish elements to pray at the Stella Maris Monastery—where the tomb of Prophet Elisha is believed to be located—which have engendered general outrage and the intervention of President Isaac Herzog and Chief of Police Yaakov ‘Kobi’ Shabtai.”

In other words, while the Israeli authorities have been ignoring the increase in Christian missionary aggression—whether through naiveté, sloppiness or fear of provoking a diplomatic rupture with the Christian world—religious Jews protesting it have been getting it in the neck.

Anti-Christian hooliganism by Jews should be condemned and dealt with. But if the delicate balance between faiths in Israel is to be maintained, Christian missionaries must be pulled back, too.

JNS cited an expert analysis piece by B’nai B’rith World Center-Jerusalem Director Alan Schneider about the concerning resurgence of Christian missionary efforts in Israel. October 5, 2023.

THE WESTERN WALL Heritage Foundation, often mentioned as the Western Wall Foundation, is the body responsible for administration for all matters concerning the Western Wall in Jerusalem. The group is made up of mostly ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) Jews and operates under the auspices of the office of the Prime Minister of Israel and the Government Companies Authority. 

In 2023, the Foundation came under criticism after an employee told German Catholic clergyman Nikodemus Schnabel, a high-ranking Benedictine monk and abbot of the Abbey of the Dormition in Jerusalem, to hide his cross necklace while at the Western Wall, with an official saying the cross was “really big and inappropriate for this place. It’s a Jewish place, you need to respect that” and that the prohibition was a new regulation, according to Christoph Schult of Der Spiegel. 

This came amid a rise in anti-Christian sentiment among Haredi Jews and religious Zionists in Jerusalem, including spitting at Christian clergymen and tourists, desecration of Christian burial grounds, as well as attacks on priests and vandalism of Christian religious sites. – Wiki –

USING ACCUSATIONS OF ANTI-SEMITISM TO CRACKDOWN ON DISSENT: President Donald Trump is cutting the federal government’s remaining contracts with Harvard University, worth about $100 million. The administration has frozen about $3.2 billion in grants and contracts with Harvard, which sued the government in response. Trump has waged war on elite universities, accusing them of antisemitism and blasting their ‘woke’ ideology. He claims the top schools in the country are controlled by ‘Marxist maniacs and lunatics.’

Many Republicans see elite universities as an example of extreme progressive values that advance liberal power and discriminate against conservatives. The attacks on the schools also reflect Trump’s effort to root out DEI practices throughout the country. As part of his attack, Trump’s also trying to stop Harvard from accepting foreign students and portraying the school as antisemitic.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem accused Harvard of ‘perpetuating an unsafe campus environment that is hostile to Jewish students, promotes-pro-Hamas sympathies, and employs racist ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ practices.’

‘Let this serve as a warning to all universities and academic institutions across the country,’ she noted. The administration also claims Harvard failed to adequately act against antisemitism during protests following the October 7, 2023, attacks on Israel by not taking steps against pro-Palestine protesters. Emily Goodin for DM.

UPDATE 28/5 – IRANIUM: President Donald Trump said that he urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to disrupt US-led nuclear talks with Iran, telling reporters Wednesday that he cautioned his counterpart that such a move would be “inappropriate.”

Asked about reports that he warned Netanyahu against disrupting the talks during a phone call last week, Trump said, “Well, I’d like to be honest. Yes I did.” He added: “It’s not a warning – I said I don’t think it’s appropriate.”

Trump said that his team is having “very good discussions” with Iran, which have taken place over the last several weeks led by special envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff and moderated by Oman.

“I said, I don’t think it’s appropriate right now, because if we can settle it with a very strong document, very strong with inspections. … I told him this would be inappropriate to do right now because we’re very close to a solution,” he said.

Trump indicated that any agreement with Iran would be “very strong,” saying, “I want it very strong where we can go in with inspectors. We can take whatever we want, we can blow up whatever we want, but nobody getting killed. We can blow up a lab, but nobody’s going to be in the lab, as opposed to everybody being in the lab and blowing it up.”

Trump offered a caveat that the situation “could change at any moment – could change with a phone call.” But, he added of Iran, “Right now, I think they want to make a deal. And if we can make a deal, I’d save a lot of lives.” From CNN’s Betsy Klein