During the week covered by this review, we received 10 articles on the following subjects:
Anti-missionary Attitudes
Christian Tourism
Israeli/Jewish Attitudes Concerning Christians/Christianity
Anti-missionary Attitudes
Various articles, January 13, 2022
As reported in our previous reviews, the Yad L’Achim anti-missionary organization mentioned that Jews for Jesus rented an office in downtown Jerusalem. Yad L’Achim claimed to have material showing the head of the Jews for Jesus office proclaiming his desire to bring the “Christian gospel” to Jerusalem. “It is clear to us that the Jerusalem Foundation made an innocent mistake and was unaware that its facility would be used by missionaries. We hope that, as a result of this exposure, the foundation will move quickly to evict them,” said Yad L’Achim, adding that its calls to the Foundation went unanswered.
Christian Tourism
Maariv, January 19, 2022
After lifting most of its COVID travel restrictions, Israel welcomed a group of 27 Christian evangelists from Brazil who visited the holy sites. The owner of the travel agency that hosted them said: “Apart from kissing the ground at the airport, they did almost everything to show their love for Israel.” He added his wish that all travel restrictions be lifted, because many others would like to come to the Holy Land.
Israeli/Jewish Attitudes Concerning Christians/Christianity
Kivun Hadash, January 19, 2022
This article expressed an opinion that since its inception, Christianity has considered itself to be “true Judaism”, but since you cannot inherit something from someone still alive, the existence of the Jewish people will always be a problem that needs to be “solved”. According to the article, Christianity did not want to destroy the Jewish people, but to convert them to Christianity, but because they were unable to do that, they decided to kill all the Jews who would not convert. The rise of Hitler and the Nazi party, claimed the article, was an opportunity to achieve the destruction of the Jews without any blame, which was the reason that Pope Pius XII supported the “Final Solution”. The article also claimed that given a chance, the Church will support any attempt to renew this “solution”.
Makor Rishon, January 21, 2022
This was an article about the recently deceased Archbishop Desmond Tutu, claiming that the late archbishop was an anti-Semite who “spread hatred towards Israel”. According to the article, for many centuries, a large portion of the Protestant world considered the Jewish people to be “the freedom fighters of the bible”, on whose behalf God fought Pharaoh, and whom He brought into the Promised Land. Furthermore, stated the article, the Jewish people have been an inspiration for many human rights activists in the USA throughout its history. According to the article, Tutu “used his reputation as a fighter against apartheid” to present Israel as an “evil apartheid regime”, convincing many that the Palestinians were not terrorists, but native freedom fighters, and besmirching Israel’s image in the eyes of the Christian world. Fighting the perception that Archbishop Tutu created, concluded the article, is the greatest challenge that Israel is facing today.
Shacharit, January 21, 2022; Hamevaser, January 24, 2022
These two articles written by Yad L’Achim were about Yaakov Wechsler, a Jew born in Poland during World War II. When he was a few months old, his mother handed him over to a Christian family before she was sent to the gas chambers. According to the article, Wechsler grew up to become a priest, but after discovering he was Jewish at the age of 35, he decided to leave the priesthood and come to the Holy Land. Wechsler gave a lecture attended by nearly 100 Yad L’Achim activists, in which he encouraged them to continue their efforts on behalf of Jews like him who had somehow ended up in Christianity. The articles concluded by stating that “for Yaakov’s listeners, the lecture crystallized Yad L’Achim’s sacred and eternal motto: We don’t give up on even a single Jew”.