Controversy Over Clergy Visas

In this episode, we delve into the controversy surrounding the Israeli Interior Ministry and its denial of clergy visas for pro-Israel Christian organizations. Joel and Carl discuss the shocking developments in the summer of 2023 that left the International Christian Embassy of Jerusalem (ICEJ) and other organizations in limbo. 

As they navigate the complexities of Israeli politics, religious factions, and tensions between different Jewish sects, Joel sheds light on the impact this decision has had on the Christian community in Israel. 

Get ready for an eye-opening discussion that explores the delicate balance between faith, politics, and national security in the historic land of Israel. 

Listen to this episode to find out more!

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Transcript: 

- But what's happening is something not healthy, something quite wrong going on inside the Ministry of Interior. And it's causing a problem for Christian organizations that work and operate here in the land.

- Is the Interior Ministry of the State of Israel turning against evangelical Christians? Hi, and welcome to "Inside the Epicenter With Joel Rosenberg," a podcast of The Joshua Fund, a ministry dedicated to blessing Israel and her neighbors in the name of Jesus. I'm Carl Moeller, Executive Director of The Joshua Fund. And today, we're talking with Joel Rosenberg in Jerusalem to answer that very important and pressing question. Hi, Joel; welcome. How are you doing today?

- I'm doing well, Carl. Great to be with you. And it was great to have you here in Israel last week at least as we're recording this. I don't know exactly when the podcast will be posted. But we just loved having you and The Joshua Fund team in the country. And it was a little toasty.

- Yes, it was a little toasty.

- Mmm toasty, but it was wonderful.

- Yeah, I know. We're gonna talk about that, I'm sure, on a future podcast. But, you know, it was also a time of somewhat controversy and tension that I noticed. And I know that we've discussed this and we wanna talk a little bit about that today, particularly the Ministry of the Interior and its position around Christians. And I guess we could start off, Joel, with asking and maybe helping our listeners understand a little bit of what the state of the alliance and the relationship between Israel, its leadership, and evangelical Christians around the world has been and really sort of where we still continue to see the primary relationship between those things.

- Sure. Well first, we have to start on a positive note.

- Yeah.

- And I think, you know, in the grand scheme of the last 2,000 years, Jewish/Christian relations are stronger than they've ever been, certainly in the last 75 years. I would say that we've never had a prime minister in Israel who understood the strategic relationship, friendship, alliance between Israel and the Jewish people and the Christian world, particularly the evangelical Christian world but the Christian world broadly. There's been nobody better at that than Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. And for just umpteen reasons, some of which we've talked about on the podcast, he has proven himself not just in word but in deed in standing with Christians, reaching out to Christians. Of course, you and I and our evangelical delegation to the UAE, Bahrain and Israel had an hour or more with then former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the Knesset about a year ago, roughly. And he, you know, certainly seemed excited to meet with more Christians, but also was excited. He believed he was coming back to power, and he certainly did. So I think that's the first thing we need to say. And let me just note as we talk about a difficult topic coming up two more points. One, our listeners I hope will recall that in March, "All Israel News" broke that story that two ultra-Orthodox members of the Knesset, the Israeli Parliament, had introduced legislation that would put followers of Jesus in prison if they talked about their faith with others. And we broke that story; we covered it for several days. And on the fourth day, there had become such an international uproar over that bill that Prime Minister Netanyahu weighed in and put out a statement saying, "No, I'll never allow legislation to pass "that would harm Christians." So that was yet another evidence of how much the Prime Minister gets this, this friendship, the importance of this friendship. But the other point to make is that what we're about to say has so far nothing to do with the Prime Minister, although he can fix it. But what's happening is something not healthy, something quite wrong going on inside the Ministry of Interior. And it's causing a problem for Christian organizations that work and operate here in the land.

- Right. Well, Joel, maybe also, what exactly does the Minister of the Interior do in Israel? I mean, are they in charge of national parks? I mean, what's the relationship there?

- Right. So primarily, the Interior Ministry here in Israel deals with legal issues related to citizens of Israel and those who wanna become citizens. So anybody that wants to make Aliyah, that's the process of coming from another country as a Jew, bringing your documents, proving that you're Jewish and applying to become a citizen of Israel, that is all handled primarily through the Ministry of Interior. Of course, other people coming, you know, Ukrainian refugees who want asylum here even temporary would need to go through the Interior Ministry and so forth.

- Got it.

- There's other roles too. But in this case, what's happening is the Interior Ministry has made a sharp pivot away from policy that was around for at least 40 years. And that is, the ministry has begun denying consistently for the last number of months clergy visas for pro-Israel Christian organizations that work here in the land to help people, Jews, come and make Aliyah and become citizens of Israel. For example, the International Christian Embassy of Jerusalem, the ICEJ, is probably the foremost Christian Zionist, pro-Israel Christian organization based here in Israel. They have headquarters all over the world as well. Their executive director, I know you interviewed at NRB.

- I was gonna say that.

- And that interview will air probably, you know, later in the coming weeks, Dr. Jürgen Bühler. And Jürgen's a dear friend. He sits on the Advisory Board for "All Israel News." Well, what happened just about a week ago as you and I record this, is he reached out to me and he said, "Look, we've got a huge problem. "And we've been trying to keep it quiet "and deal with it quietly without a big brouhaha. "But here's the problem. "Our visas, our clergy visas for our staff "that come here from foreign countries "to help with our work, "they just keep getting denied, denied, denied." The Christian Embassy is not the only one. There are other pro-Israel Christian organizations that both help with Aliyah, humanitarian relief. The Christian Embassy holds the largest annual Christian conference here in Israel every fall, every September during the Feast of Tabernacles. 4,000 to 5,000 evangelicals come in from all over the world to worship and to study the word and to hear from Israeli leaders and hear from Christian leaders. It's a great event.

- It's amazing.

- The Christian Embassy has been operating with legal, you know, agreements with the state of Israel for 40 years, 43 years actually. They started in 1980, and they had the full blessing of then Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin. So they're not new. And as the name of the Christian Embassy might imply, they're Christian. But there are bureaucrats at the Israeli Interior Ministry this summer that literally wrote them a letter that said, "You're not a religious organization, "and therefore you do not qualify for clergy visas." Now, first of all, that's insane.

- That's crazy.

- And second of all, the Christian Embassy actually has... I spoke to their lawyer. And their lawyer said to me on the record that not only is Christian Embassy a Christian religious organization, but that they actually have a written agreement with the Interior Ministry to receive a quota, a certain number, of clergy visas every year. And not just Christian Embassy, but several other organizations as well. So this is a blatant violation of that agreement. It's a violation of the religious liberties and a little bit crazy because I don't know that any organization of non-Israelis do more in this unique, specific type of work than the Christian Embassy. There's other wonderful Christian organizations that bless Israel. The Joshua Fund is one of them. The difference is the Joshua Fund doesn't employ foreign nationals to work inside Israel. We hire Israelis. And so we haven't had that visa issue by and large. But this is a problem. And I asked Jürgen. And he said, "I actually don't know. "We've been working on this. "It's been a problem actually for several years, "but it's gotten worse this year. "And it's gotten really bad in the last few months. "And we finally decided, "we're knocking our heads against the wall. "We're gonna go public." Why? Not because they wanna fight. They're ready, they're getting ready to go to court if they have to. But they don't want to. What he said is, "I can't actually tell you, Joel, "whether this is a problem from the Minister of Interior," who was a new person to the job in the last few months. He's ultra-Orthodox. He's from the Shas Party, which is not particularly known to be friendly to Christians or to Messianic Jews, Jewish believers in Jesus. But it's not clear to the Christian Embassy or the others whether this is really coming from him or from some set of mid-level bureaucrats that just have decided that sort of while the cat's away, the mice will play. Meaning because of five elections in the last three and a half years and the fact that, you know, last year, Netanyahu was removed from office 'cause he couldn't put together a government. And Yair Lapid and Benny Gantz, and Naftali Bennett actually who was the prime minister, made a new government. And so that changed all the top-level political appointees and sort of froze what was going on at the Interior Ministry. And then Netanyahu came back and there was a new set of political leaders. So there's been a bit of, we would say in Hebrew balagan, a bit of a circus going on.

- Balagan.

- Balagan, yeah, that's a good word to learn. And so it may just be that without a firm hand and clear directives from the top, mid-level people who maybe have a political or a religious theological animus, or a personal animus, I don't know, against these Christian Zionists, maybe they're just doing this and it's not getting to the top, much less to Netanyahu. So they went public. We did a story at "All Israel News." "Haaretz," a left wing Israeli newspaper, did a story. "Christian Broadcasting News" had just done a story. My "Rosenberg Report" for this week, the first lead story is this. Yeah, it's a problem.

- It's a problem.

- I won't go into it more unless you want to. But this is actually a part of a larger set of things that are going on. There have been a series of attacks and real problems between some extremist Jews in Israel.

- Well, I think we wanna get into that a little bit after the break. Because there's a context here, and we wanna talk about some of the context and some of the reasons why, you know, right now, "All Israel News" and "Rosenberg Report" as well as this podcast are taking the opportunity to kind of talk about these things. So we wanna set the context. But tell us a little bit about this Minister Moshe Arbel and his background. You mentioned the Shas Party. Maybe, you know, before we take a break here, if you could just give us a description of what does that mean to most people just listening who have no really idea about these different parties in Israel?

- Sure. Well, I have not met Minister Arbel. Again, he's fairly new to this role. He's an ultra-Orthodox Jew. He's an ultra-Orthodox rabbi. And I'll describe ultra-Orthodox in a moment. He is a member of the Knesset, and he's a member of this party called the Shas Party, S-H-A-S, Shas. And that is an ultra-Orthodox party. Now, what does that mean? Well, in the whole spectrum of Israelis, you know, if you go on one end of the spectrum, you would have very secular, atheist, agnostic, or just not particularly religious type of Jews who are Israeli citizens. And then you sort of scale towards the more religious. You'd have a traditional Jew who says: Ah, I don't really read the Torah or the Tanach, which is what we would call the Old Testament. The Torah is just the first five books of the Bible. The Tanach is the Torah and several other things like the prophets and the history books and, of course, the wisdom literature, so what we would call the Old Testament. So they'd say: Ah, I don't really read it. I mean, I go to synagogue maybe on Yom Kippur, the High Holy Day, maybe on Passover. I light candles maybe. We do as a family on Friday nights, because that's part of the religious tradition. You know, so we do some things. In Christian terms, we might say that's like a Easter and Christmas Christian. You know, I'm sort of a Christian. I don't know, I'm not super religious. I don't take it super seriously, but I do some... I put up a Christmas tree. They're not really that devout, but they're trying a little bit. And then it keeps scaling. You'd have what's then maybe a modern Orthodox. These would be wearing a kippah. They would keep kosher, but they're still... They would serve in the army here in Israel. They're Zionists. They believe in the State of Israel. They vote, they're part of things. And then you keep moving. And then you get to what's called the ultra-Orthodox. The ultra-Orthodox are super religious. Some of them are Zionists, meaning they believe in the State of Israel. But some are not, meaning they're like: Until the Messiah comes, we're here, we're citizens, but we don't wanna have anything to do with you guys, the rest of you, country. The ultra-Orthodox generally, though, are pretty politically powerful. They have formed political parties. Shas is the leading party, but there are several others that have a bunch of nuances amongst themselves. But my point is, the ultra-Orthodox generally don't wanna send their children, their sons and daughters to the army. They resist that. In fact, they're trying to get legislation passed to say they don't have to. And they've been battling that for a long time, wanting that. And they keep threatening various governments. You know, if you try to put our kids in the army, we're gonna quit your coalition, and then you won't be able to form a coalition. They demand large amounts of money from the Israeli government budget to fund the men who rather than work will study Torah. And so it's essentially a welfare program so that you don't have to work, but you can just read the five books of Moses and mostly other commentaries, or the commentaries all day, every day except, of course, on Saturdays, on Shabbat. So there's a lot of resentment in the country towards the ultra-Orthodox. Because most people are like: Listen, I have to work. I have to pay high taxes to fund our defense system and everything. It's an expensive country to live in. Gasoline here is like $10 a gallon 'cause we don't have gasoline. And we have to send our kids to the army. And we don't get to just, you know, sit around and read the Bible all day. Because you've got welfare and you don't have to work, you just keep having babies. Us taxpayers are paying for your babies. And so your cohort is getting larger and larger and it's sort of crushing us. And plus, they feel like... I mean, again, obviously the ultra-Orthodox have a very different view of this. But I'm just saying that's the part of the tensions. And so, many Israelis feel like the ultra-Orthodox are hypocritical on various issues. But the ultra-Orthodox say: Hey, we're the Jews that are keeping the Torah. We're doing the law. I had an Orthodox rabbi tell me once that he considers himself a Pharisee, part of the Pharisaic tradition.

- Interesting, we would use that.

- And we're so un-used to that as evangelicals because we'd say: You want to be identified with the Pharisees? 'Cause we don't see that as a positive. But this person did. So what I'm saying is the ultra-Orthodox and even some modern Orthodox, but certainly the ultra-Orthodox, their view is: Hey, you are all a bunch of heathens, the rest of the country. We're doing what Moses told us to do. Now you and I would say they're doing what Jesus told them not to do. But nevertheless, they feel like they don't have any... Not only do they not listen to Jesus, right, they hate, many of them, not all of them, but they hate the idea of a Jewish person following Jesus. And they're not big fans of anybody following Jesus. They see him as a heretic. They see him as a renegade rogue rabbi. They see him as a polytheist who's trying to proclaim three gods instead of, you know, "Hear, O Israel, the Lord is one." So they have a huge deep theological animus against Christians and certainly against Messianic Jews. They're not interested in seeing any of us as friends or allies. They see us as enemies. And I would argue they see us as threats at times. And therefore, they are very forward leaning when the political opportunities are... When they feel comfortable to do it, they're trying to push, push, push against Christianity and trying to drive Christianity out, or at least suppress it here in the country. And the Interior Ministry, sort of the rules and regulations of daily life inside the country plus who can come into the country, that has been a key ministry, government department that they have wanted control of.

- Sure, sure.

- For a long time. Because, again, they want to be the keepers of what really happens inside the country and who comes in and who can't. So I say all that to say, even though there are rotations of the top minister, the bureaucrats who run the department up and down the system for decades have been placed there, hired there, by the Shas Party which has, as much as they have been able to, asked for and often gotten control of the Interior Ministry for themselves. So that's just an important backgrounder.

- Well, we're gonna talk a lot more about that when we come back from this break. But, Joel, thank you for the context. 'Cause it's really important for a lot of people to understand how these situations can impact us. And we're gonna talk a little bit about that on the second half of this broadcast. So stay with us. Our verse of the day today is found in Matthew 5:44. "But I tell you, love your enemies, "bless those who persecute you, "do good to those who hate you, "and pray for those who mistreat you and persecute you." And our prayer requests today are: number one, to pray for the leaders of Israel, that God continues to help them put aside sentiment and help them make decisions that will enhance the growth of Israel; and second, pray for evangelicals and pro-Israel groups working in Israel, that they continue to find favor before the authorities in the nation of Israel. Well, we're back, Joel. And I gotta tell you, this is a very interesting subject, particularly for those of us who come in and out of Israel quite a bit and have known people like Jürgen and Vesna Bühler, who have ministered and served the state of Israel really so faithfully by helping Jews from around the world make Aliyah to Israel. And so it's fascinating to me. I mean, Christians are really thriving in Israel right now. I mean, they continue to thrive. But this context makes it very difficult. I know last week we had the opportunity, we're gonna talk about this, to be in Israel. And we heard from a minister of the Knesset, Matan Kahana, talk about some of the recent tensions between ultra-Orthodox and Christians and Jewish believers in Jesus. So maybe you can talk a little bit about that context and how this certain development in the bureaucracy is really impacting Christians.

- Yeah, if it was just the problems inside the Interior Ministry right now resisting, you know, these pro-Israel Christian groups, that would be bad. But, you know, it might be somewhat isolated. And by the way, let me just say that in a column I did, I really called on Prime Minister Netanyahu to intervene. You know, nobody believes that this is coming from him. Nobody believes this is the policy of the Israeli government, of the Netanyahu leadership. I really don't think until we published our article that he even was probably even aware that this was happening. You know, he's got a lot of issues on his plate. It's been a long hot summer. And I mean that literally. You were here. Up in the galley, it was like 108. It was about 99 here in Jerusalem. It was like 115 in Eilat. And so, it's literally been one of the hottest summers that people can remember here in Israel. But it's been also hot politically, right? There's huge judicial reforms, protests as you and I speak. It was just the 33rd week of massive protests against the reforms that Netanyahu's trying to make in the judicial and legal system. Plus, Netanyahu is being told he cannot come and meet President Biden. There's no official invitation yet: Come to the White House and meet with President Biden.

- That's another podcast for us for sure.

- Yeah, and Iran's getting closer to nuclear weapons. And the Saudis wanna make peace with Israel, but they wanna make peace with Washington first. There's been a lot of things going on here this summer. So visas, clergy visas for the Christian Embassy and these other Christian organizations, you know, this is not the type of thing that normally should be on the prime minister's plate. But we are concerned, and I wrote this column explaining what was happening. And I've already heard back from a Netanyahu advisor that it is on the plate now. They've got a lot of other things ahead of it. But I'm hopeful that and with the prayers of those listening to this podcast, the Lord will take care of things. But there is a broader context. And for that context, I need to say there's been a lot of physical attacks and verbal attacks and spitting and rock throwing through windows of churches against Christians. Now, most of this is not actually happening from the ultra-Orthodox. There's a subset now between the modern Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox. And I didn't mention that in the first half, but now we need to zoom in. There is a group of extreme, or extremist, ultra-nationalistic, modern Orthodox Jews. They're not part of the mainstream of modern orthodoxy. And they're not really ultra-Orthodox. There are theological and political distinctions there. But they're a small but very aggressive subset. And they are becoming real bullies against not just evangelicals or Messianic Jews, that's certainly happening, we can talk about that, but also against Roman Catholics who live and work here, Orthodox or Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, who we'd call the historic churches in Jerusalem and so forth. And I wanna say on this podcast something that I actually just recorded from my "Rosenberg Report" program that'll air this Thursday night, end of August. Although this podcast may air after this.

- We don't know.

- In that, I actually apologize openly to start off the show of the "Rosenberg Report" to my friend and neighbor, the King of Jordan, King Abdullah II. Because a year ago, he gave a speech to the United Nations General Assembly in which he said Christianity was under threat, under fire, particularly in Jerusalem. And he was concerned about it, and he was drawing attention to it. Now, at the time, you know, I was actually shocked by that. I mean, I'm not saying that I wasn't aware at the time. I was aware that there had been some attacks and there had been some things. But I didn't think it merited mention at the United Nations because that really brings an awful lot of scrutiny and criticism of Israel.

- It's a big platform.

- And I explained why I didn't think... Because you said something that I say in the column, which is Christians are thriving, and that is true. Christians are safer here in Israel than in any other part of the world, though they're reasonably safe in Jordan and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain and so forth. But Israel is the place of the most religious freedom. And, of course, it's a democracy too. But I have to say, and I apologize and I apologize on this program to King Abdullah because A, I wasn't seeing what he was seeing. And moreover, it's gotten much worse since he said it. And "All Israel News" has been covering it. It's just one thing after another after another. Let me just give you a few examples of headlines that we've done. August 20th of this yeah, okay? "Israeli authorities prevent thousands of Christian pilgrims "from celebrating Feast of Transfiguration on Mount Tabor." That was August 20th. August 18th, "Israel's Interior Ministry "turns against evangelicals, refuses to issue staff visas "for pro-Israel groups like Christian Embassy." We just talked about that. August 17th, "Condemn anti-Christian attacks, "Anti-Defamation League appeals to the Jerusalem mayor." You've got the Jewish group now, the Anti-Defamation League, seeing these attacks, seeing what's going on, I'll mention a few more of these, and saying to the mayor of Jerusalem: Hey, you need to step in and condemn these things. August 3rd, 2023, "Israeli foreign minister "calls to prosecute attackers of Christians "without leniency." Okay, so that's a good thing. You have the ADL, you have the Foreign Minister of Israel saying: Whoa, what's happening? June 19th, "Stones thrown at stained glass window "in the room of the Last Supper "causes damage in latest anti-Christian attacks." I'm not gonna keep going. But there was a concert in June, a thousand Christians and Messianic Jews coming to King of Kings Community Church in Jerusalem, the largest congregation in Jerusalem, for a concert. And ultranationalists, the extremist Jews, came and were pushing, shoving, harassing, screaming at these Christians trying to get into the concert. It got so bad, an 82-year-old man was punched in the back while he was trying to protect a nine-year-old child from this mob. It really created a riot. The Israeli police had to come. They had to escort these folks into the concert. A month before that, the week that you were here for the Jerusalem Prayer Breakfast, you'll recall that a group of evangelicals who were here for that week, some of them for the Prayer Breakfast, some for just to celebrate Pentecost, they were praying for the peace of Jerusalem at the southern steps, which is right next to the western wall. And this same group, or same type of group of ultranationalist extremist bullies, Jewish bullies, came and were pushing and shoving and screaming and cursing and telling these Christians to go home. You have no right to be here. Like what happened to, this is gonna be a house of prayer for all the nations, right? That's in their text. That's in the Old Testament. That's in the Jewish scriptures. What about the fact that the prophets say that, you know, in the last days, 10 Gentiles will tug at the cloak of a Jew saying: Hey, take me with you to Jerusalem. But we've just seen one thing after another after another. And so, even the Israeli President Isaac Herzog just... It's a headline I just skipped over; I apologize for that. I was just going through them. But the point is, he actually went to a church, an Orthodox church in Haifa up in the north of Israel just a few days ago to meet with the Christian leadership there and publicly condemn the types of attacks from these extremist Jewish bullies. And so, it's getting noticed by the president of Israel. It's getting noticed by the foreign minister of Israel. It's getting noticed by other Jewish groups, not just by Christians. And, of course, I think King Abdullah may have been the first to, you know, there were obviously other Christians but he sounded the alarm bell a year ago. And it's much worse today.

- Yeah, I think that's very insightful of you, Joel, to connect those things. Because sometimes, we hear things out of the Arab world and, you know, we immediately just sort of wall against, you know, condemnation of Israel because there's just so many factors in that. But you've really said, you know, this is someone whose opinion, whose support of Israel among Arab leaders has been strong.

- Well, support of the peace process. I mean, King Abdullah, he's managing a country that are not fans of Israel, but they don't want it to be the chaos of Yemen or Syria or Libya. So King Abdullah, and admittedly, he's walking through a minefield. But he has a peace treaty with Israel. He's keeping that treaty. But he cares about what's going on in Jerusalem, and he cares about the Christians and the Muslims and the Jews here, and he has spoken out. So I owe him that apology. I am issuing that apology. I will send that as a formal apology tomorrow actually to him, and with a list of what I see happening and why he was right and I was wrong. But we need our people to listen to this podcast, to be aware of it. Because, again, I wanna be clear, and I know you see this the same way, we are not condemning the Israeli government or the Israeli people for this.

- [Carl] I was just gonna say that.

- But we've gotta condemn the specific acts of violence as we would to acts of Palestinian violence against a Jew or an act of terrorism. I mean, this hasn't risen yet, thank God, to the act of killing any Christian. But this is not right in a country of such pluralism and religious freedom. You and I were taking a tour with a group of evangelical pastors that we had brought to Israel. We'll talk about that in another podcast. But as we took the tour of the Knesset, they show us the case where the Declaration of Independence is, and they read part of the Declaration of Independence. And in fact, on a future show, we should probably walk our way through Israel's Declaration of Independence. Because it says right there, you have freedom of religion. And that's a very important element right from May 14th, 1948. But it's not being carefully enough guarded and protected by the Israeli government and by the Israeli police. Much more needs to be done. And I think at this point, we really need to ask and pray that Netanyahu because he loves Christians so much, that he will intervene to make it clear to every cabinet minister and every bureaucrat: Listen, these types of acts are not acceptable. They'll be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. And within the government itself, the policy is to be pro-Christian, not anti-Christian.

- Absolutely. And I think we heard while we were at the Knesset as well, you know, the difference between not supporting Israel and deeply being against Israel is not the case here. It's those that care and that support and that love Israel that can also bring legitimate critique of certain things that are going on. And much like those of us in America who would criticize if you'd call it the deep state of the bureaucracy, you know, opposed to certain elements here.

- That's a great phrase. 'Cause that is what we're seeing, the deep state pushing.

- This is a bureaucratic machine that is working in this direction, not necessarily even the leadership of the government there in Israel. So I think it's important for people to understand, we're not undermining or criticizing Israel in so much as we're saying this is a thing that is happening. And those that love and care about Israel should make a difference in praying about this. Well, Joel, what do you think about this: Well, the government would pay attention to some of these things, and maybe as it gets on the plate. Because this could potentially be a diplomatic disaster. Could it not? I mean, this is something that could be really a black eye again in Israel. And we're trying to, you know, not have those things happen. Correct?

- Yeah, I think that... So let me give an example of how sensitive it is to me. You know, so the question is, are we gonna do a podcast about this? Because we're asking Christians to consider coming with us in November on a once in a lifetime, come see Israel, come tour the lands, meet believers. But a person might hear this podcast and say: Well, I'm not gonna go to a country that treats Christians that way. Well, the country isn't treating Christians that way. But there's a spike in a problem. It comes from two streams, and actually extremist streams within those streams of Judaism, a certain type of ultra-Orthodox Judaism and a certain type of ultranationalist, extremist modern orthodoxy. But those are not illustrative of broader movement of religious Jews. Now, religious Jews here in Israel and in America have strong theological disagreements, and they have a lot of anxiety about should we build friendships with Christians? And they are particularly sensitive and sometimes hostile, at least in their hearts and sometimes in their words, towards Jews who believe in Jesus. I just recently had a modern Orthodox Jew that I was having I thought a reasonably good, healthy relationship with who texted me and said, "I have to tell you how much I abhor you." I'm like: Whoa, where did that come, right? He suddenly has turned on me because he's decided that he doesn't want to be identified as a modern Orthodox Jew with any Jewish person who believes in Jesus. But he's not an extremist. He's just somebody who has a strong theological, and therefore he's turned that into a visceral abhorrence, I guess, that's his word, not mine, against me. So I don't want this to discourage. It may discourage some people listening to say: Well, I'm not going to that country. Well, so several things. First, we just had 40 pastors and their wives here in the country. They weren't spit on. Nobody threw rocks at them. Like, there was no problems. In the day to day, most believers don't even experience this. But that's what news is. It's when something out of the ordinary happens, we cover it, right? And when you see a trend, a trend that even the Israeli president, the Israeli foreign minister, and others are starting to speak out on, then it's not just us. But I wanna say, I wanna encourage people to come. And part of that is a key phrase here, and we've talked about it from the first podcast I think: unconditional love, right? We don't have to agree with everything that anybody does: a Jewish person, an Israeli thinks, does. We still love them. It's like, I don't agree with all my Palestinian friends on their theology, their politics, their eschatology, sometimes even their basic daily practices. I still love them because Jesus loved them, right? Jesus was loving people, right? He was loving people that were killing Him. He said, "Father, forgive them. "They don't know what they're doing." That's the ultimate love if you're laying down your life and you're asking God to forgive the very people who are killing you unjustly. So we're not facing that. So let's make sure we take the same level of love and forgiveness, and as you just read from Matthew 5, I believe it was. Maybe you wanna read that one more time, We're supposed to be praying for those who are persecuting us. Some of this, I wouldn't even say rises to the level of persecution like a China, or Iran, or Pakistan where they're burning down churches right now as we speak. This is harassment. This is resistance. This is, I would say a number of other words. But even if you call it persecution, okay, pray for those who persecute you. Love, bless them, love them, lean forward in unconditional love. But you can call them out. You can ask for legal things to be done to protect the believers. Absolutely. Let's not let that develop a root of bitterness. In fact, I would say come and let's pray, because there's no better way to stand with Israel than to stand in Israel.

- Yeah. Well, you know, Joel, I agree with everything you just said there. Because for many years I worked with Brother Andrew. And one of the things that he said about Christians in America was that often we weren't persecuted, we were intimidated. And I think this is maybe an attempt to intimidate Christians from a bureaucratic standpoint about keeping away from the idea of persecution. I mean, we would certainly say it's a sign of healthy democracy. It's a sign of strength of the state of Israel's protection or commitment to religious liberty that Christians like us at The Joshua Fund and like other Christian organizations can say to the government: Hey, this is happening. I mean, you would never say this in a country like Iran to the Christian community there.

- They'd say: Exactly, it's happening.

- They'd go: Oh, where are you meeting? Exactly. So I think it's an actual important component of the dialogue that we have to have with the Israeli government. And I so appreciate your orientation and your tenor on this. Because it is out of love and it's out of support and a blessing to Israel that we say: Can we work on this, guys? Just call out a problem for what it is, a problem that needs to be fixed.

- Yeah, yeah. And last point I would make on this part was it was wonderful to spend time in the Knesset in the actual Parliament Building. Most of the group had never even been to Israel, so they'd certainly never been to the Knesset. In fact, one of our staff mentioned to me, "Wow, I've been with The Joshua Fund for a long time. "I've actually never been to the Knesset." So that was very special that we were able to go. And then to sit for, I don't know, 45 minutes, whatever it was, with the man who is a modern Orthodox Jew, is a member of Knesset, and in the previous government had been the Minister of Religious Affairs. Not the Minister of Interior, but the Minister of Religious Affairs and trying to build bridges between Jews and Jews, very religious Jews and more secular Jews. But he's seeing so much tension that he said, "I needed bodyguards 24/7, not to protect me "from Palestinian terrorists or Iranian terrorists, "but from ultra-Orthodox "and these sort of extremist Orthodox Jews "who wanted to do me harm." That was a very interesting conversation. And we commended Matan Kahana because you were there when he briefed us at the Jerusalem Prayer Breakfast in May. He apologized at that time for the harm that was being done: the verbal and physical attacks against Christians. And we brought that up. We thanked him again in person for him standing with Christians even though he disagrees with us. He doesn't agree with who we believe Jesus to be. He doesn't see it that way. But he's a good man, and he's trying to do the right thing and, you know, may his tribe increase.

- Amen, Amen. Well, Joel, this has been I think a very important and very fascinating conversation around this issue and the steps that we as believers here in America and around the world listening to this podcast can take to bring to attention those things that are happening right now in Israel.

- Oh, that's right. And, Carl, sorry. One more thing, it's just coming to mind. We also, of course, had lunch with a former interior minister, right, Natan Sharansky, which I think we'll talk about it in the next podcast or in another podcast. But Natan Sharansky, Jewish hero, eventually became the Deputy Prime Minister of Israel, a dear friend of mine, arguably, the most important Jewish hero or one of them, in the top 10, of the last half century. And he had lunch with us. He was a former Interior Ministry. And I can tell you, none of these problems were happening when he was the Interior Minister. And to this moment, here he is sitting with 40 pastors and their wives, evangelicals. He's a Jew; he doesn't see Jesus the way we do. But he's willing to welcome us and sit with us and answer our questions. That was a great time. So there's two examples: of a Religious Affairs Minister who's religious and a former Interior Minister who is not religious but his wife is, Natan Sharansky, who loves Christians and appreciates Christians wanting to stand with Israel. So I should have mentioned that sooner, sorry.

- Yeah, no, that's a wonderful point to make. And we'll get into that conversation and many others that we had on that recent trip with the pastors in a future podcast. But I know we'll wanna also talk about just what a conversation that was with Natan Sharansky. And he's a Israel Prize winner, which is essentially the Nobel Prize for Israelis. And he's on the wall.

- And a winner of the Presidential Medal of Freedom in the United States, and the Congressional Medal, gold medal as well. I mean, quite a hero.

- It's amazing. Well, there's so many things that we can talk about. That's what I love about this podcast. Every dimension of the engagement with Israel, every engagement with the entire epicenter region, and all of those things are really part and parcel with what we deal with on this podcast. So, I don't know sometimes whether we're gonna talk about biblical history, prophecy, current ministry, or the political and geopolitical dimensions of Israel in the modern world. I can tell you, it's always fascinating talking with you, Joel. And really appreciate these conversations that we get to have.

- Well, I love it as well. Thank you, Carl.

- Well, and to our listeners, if you'd like to learn more about The Joshua Fund, you can visit our website at joshuafund.com. And there, you can learn about what God is doing in the Middle East through us to bless Israel and her neighbors in the name of Jesus, and how you can participate in the healing work we're doing in this critical region. And as always, you can check out our show notes for anything you heard on this podcast that you'd like more information on. And for Joel Rosenberg, I'm Carl Moeller. Thanks for listening to this episode of "Inside The Epicenter."

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