Israeli representatives find Christian allies at evangelical broadcasters’ event

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Israelis here at the National Religious Broadcasters International Christian Media Convention are finding sympathetic, if not enthusiastic, support — especially among evangelicals who see Israel as not just an embattled democratic outpost but also the fulfillment of prophecy.

The NRB’s board of directors this week approved a resolution that says, in part: “Israel’s history, including the creation and continued existence of the modern State of Israel, attest to the providential hand of God and the fulfillment of His promises in Scripture.”

The organization “pledges its continued support and friendship with Israel in her time of need,” the resolution states.

The NRB document calls on broadcasters to “exercise integrity and exhibit moral clarity as they speak to these challenging issues in a hostile, biased, and distorted media environment.”

Evangelical support for Israel, which goes back decades, has mounted anew in the aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attack in which more than 1,200 Israelis were killed and scores of others were taken hostage by the Palestinian militant group.

Asked about the importance of reaching this constituency, Tal Heinrich, a spokesperson for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said there is an organic connection between evangelicals and the Jewish state.

“You guys get it,” Ms. Heinrich said of evangelicals during a video interview with The Washington Times at the NRB event. “We stand for the same values. We support each other. And you understand the history of our region.”

Ms. Heinrich said that in many of her recent media interviews, questioners have referred to either the 1948 founding of Israel or the 1967 Six-Day War, in which Israel gained control of Jerusalem and territories such as the Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights.

“When I’m here,” she said, referring to the NRB, “people actually talk to me about more than 3,000 years of Jewish presence in a tough neighborhood and knowing what it takes to survive there.”

Uri Schacham is chief of Israel’s emergency services charity known as Magen David Adom, Hebrew for Red Star of David. He arrived in Nashville with co-workers, an ambulance and a motorcycle used to ferry blood transfusions, and set up a display for the NRB audience.

He said his group is grateful for the support of evangelicals such as the Rev. Franklin Graham, who visited Israel on Nov. 15 and whose Samaritan’s Purse charity donated 21 ambulances after the Oct. 7 attack.

“We see the Christian community in the [United] States especially as solid partners for life-saving in the State of Israel,” Mr. Schacham said in an interview. “We are here first to tell our story, but most importantly to say thank you for the great support that we [have been] getting since October 7 and throughout the years.”

Nir Salomon, leader of an Israeli pro-life group, said evangelical opposition to abortion is another commonality that drew him to the NRB event.

“I think that there’s no greater bridge between the Christian and Jewish world [than] in embracing life,” said Mr. Salomon, executive director of EFRAT, which helps women in crisis pregnancies. “We want the Christians to know about us and maybe even they’ll embrace our loving angle on helping women instead of just looking at it from a political standpoint. We’re focused on the angle of health.”

EFRAT also is outfitting soldiers and civilian patrols during the conflict.

Perhaps the most consistent presence at the NRB over the years has been the Israel Ministry of Tourism (IMOT). The governmental agency has long had a major presence on the exhibit floor, sponsored breakfasts for broadcasters and pastors to present the country’s tourism story, and brought Israeli tour operators to the NRB to offer packages for evangelical audiences.

Eyal Carlin, the tourism commissioner for North America, said that tourism — which had set records in 2023 before the Oct. 7 attack — stopped after the Hamas incursion. 

“What we’re seeing now, though, is a slow and kind of slow-paced resuming of travel,” he said. “From December until now, there’s been 60,000 U.S. tourists coming to Israel, they’re coming as either a solidarity group,or they’re coming as volunteers, or they’re [traveling] to visit their friends and their families.”

Jill Daly, who runs the IMOT office covering the U.S. Midwest, explained that “voluntourism” involves people coming over as replacements for Israeli military reservists called up to the war.

The tourists come “to harvest the fields who’s going to plant the fields, there was a group of cowboys that came from the US that went to Israel, and they volunteered on the farms, to make sure that things continue to run,” Ms. Daly said.

She said her message at the convention is: “If you support Israel, if you want to be a voice for Israel, do it with your feet, do it in Israel by being there.”

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article misspelled the surname of Tal Heinrich.