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TEL AVIV: The nearly 400 mostly Orthodox Jews from North America stepped off a chartered jumbo jet into the summer sunshine to begin new lives as immigrants to Israel.
In a new twist to a centuries-old saga of struggle for the Holy Land, it was Christian faithful who vocally back Israel in its conflict with the Palestinians who made the newcomers’ Zionist dream come true.
US evangelical congregations underwrote the $2 million cost of sending to Israel the largest group of newcomers from the United States and Canada in years, believing the return of Jews to a biblical homeland will hasten the Second Coming.
The campaign, launched amid the Israeli reoccupation of Palestinian cities after suicide bombings in the Jewish state, underscored a decades-old tightening of ties between Israel and US conservative Christians packing a powerful political punch.
David Parsons, spokesman for the Jerusalem-based International Christian Embassy, a ministry with US roots that advocates support for Israel, said the Bible commands gentiles to bless the natural seed of the patriarch Abraham — the Jews.
The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (IFCJ), a Chicago-based group partly funded by conservative Christian churches, paid $5,000 to $30,000 to each family that arrived on July 9. The money becomes a grant after three years in Israel.
Under Israel’s Law of Return, Israeli citizenship is granted automatically to any newcomer with at least one Jewish grandparent.
Israel, however, opposes Palestinian right of return to lands Palestinians fled or were forced to leave in the 1948 Middle East war, saying such an influx would spell the demographic demise of a Jewish state.
CHRISTIAN CONNECTION: A widely-quoted study by the University of Akron in Ohio after the US 2000 elections showed that evangelical Protestants were victor George W. Bush’s strongest constituency and that 84 per cent of them voted for the Republican candidate.
Conservative Christian supporters of Israel took pride of place at a pro-Israel rally in April in Washington during a crushing Israeli offensive in the West Bank. Israel has actively courted fundamentalist Christian leaders for decades.
But in a Middle East policy speech on June 24, Bush said, “Israeli settlement activity in the occupied territories must stop.” The international community regards settlements as illegal under international law. Israel disputes this.
Reuven Hazan, an Israeli political analyst, said that Israel views US Conservative Christian support as paramount, even if the average Israeli does not understand the theological motivation behind it.
US JEWS IN ISRAEL: Israel has been built on immigration since its establishment in 1948, drawing nearly one million Jews from the former Soviet Union and some 37,000 Ethiopians in the last decade alone.
Palestinians have always viewed the influx with alarm, especially the settlement since 1967 of tens of thousands of newcomers in the occupied West Bank, where American-accented Hebrew is widely heard. Immigration also bolsters the ranks of the Israeli army.
But the prospect of living in Israel, even before a Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation began in September 2000, has held little appeal for most US Jews.
Some six million Jews currently live in North America. But only about 113,000 have moved from there to Israel since its establishment, according to Israeli government figures, with immigration surging after the Middle East wars of 1948 and 1967.
At least a quarter of North American immigrants are believed to have returned to the United States and Canada over the years.—Reuters
