EVANGELICALS OFFER $10K TO IRANIAN JEWS TO IMMIGRATE TO ISRAEL

Evangelicals up payments to Iranian olim (JTA)
U.S. evangelical Christians are offering Iranian Jews $10,000 per person to immigrate to Israel.

The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, which is sponsoring the program, has raised $1.4 million for the aliyah project. It increased the grant offer to $10,000 from $5,000 after a lower-than-expected response rate, The Associated Press reported.

The fellowship claims the Jewish community in Iran is in grave danger, but the AP story says most of the 25,000 Jews in the Islamic republic do not feel threatened -- a claim buttressed by Iran.

Most of Iran's Jews left for the United States or Israel over the past 50 years. Iran’s Jewish community remains the largest in the Middle East outside of Israel, and Iranian Jews have legal and constitutional protections as well as a representative in Parliament.

The charity, based in Jerusalem and Chicago, annually funnels millions of dollars in evangelical donations to Israel.

CHRISTIAN ZIONISTS LOBBY AGAINST IRAN

Christian Zionists: Ahmadinejad Is New Hitler - Yitzhak Benhorin (Ynet News)
Thousands of members of Christians United for Israel headed to Capitol Hill on Wednesday to lobby Congress on behalf of Israel. The group's founder, the Reverend John Hagee, called on President Bush to move the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

He also called for American divestment from Iran, which he compared to Nazi Germany as a threat to the Jewish people. Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Salai Meridor told the group, "We must make it clear to the Iranians that all options are on the table and that there is no way they will be allowed to hold nuclear weapons."

CARTER TRIES TO DISUADE CHRISTIAN ZIONISTS FROM SUPPORTING ISRAEL

Some Evangelical Christians are BIG supporters of Israel. There are some Jews who are uncomfortable accepting such support, fearing it comes with a hidden agenda. Jimmy Carter is working the other side. He doesn't think Evangelical Christians should support Israel.

Carter Challenging Baptists On Conversions, Says Rabbi (JewishWeek)
Wading into the delicate fray over the alliance between Jews and pro-Israel Evangelicals, former President Jimmy Carter last week reportedly said it was a mistake for Jews to accept such ties, and that he was working to convince Southern Baptists to change the way they look at Judaism and the Middle East.

Christian Zionists can be better friends of Israel by challenging its government’s policies, while accepting Judaism as a legitimate path to God, Carter told a group organized by Rabbi Michael Lerner in California last week, according to the rabbi....

“Carter described his efforts to counter the extreme right-wing Christian Zionists, and his efforts to help the Baptists understand that the real way to be allies to the Jews is not by giving unconditional support to the current government of the State of Israel,” Rabbi Lerner announced in an e-mail to supporters after the meeting. He said the comments were on the record, taped and would appear, in part, in Tikkun this summer.

In a phone interview from California, the rabbi said Carter, a devout Southern Baptist, “has been involved and continues to be involved in theological debate within the American Baptists on the issue of how best to serve Jewish interests …

“He pointed out the strong connections between Christian Zionism and the desire to push the Jews eventually toward converting to Christianity or burning in hell. He pointed out that the Christian Zionist view is part of that general theology that essentially views the Jews as an obstacle, not as friends, but temporarily views the Jews as friends in the process of bringing back Jesus and at that point having all of us convert .”

Carter, said Rabbi Lerner, “says that Judaism is an equally legitimate path to God and does not believe that a second coming of Jesus requires destruction of the Jewish path to God … He argues that the book of Revelations from which this perspective has been derived is deeply misinterpreted by the fundamentalists.”

Rabbi James Rudin, the expert on Christian-Jewish affairs for the American Jewish Committee, took exception to the notion that Jewish leaders were acting against their interests.

“The Jewish community is much more sophisticated than maybe the president thinks,” said Rabbi Rudin. “We certainly understand that there are people such as he is describing, but that’s not the majority of Christian Zionists. There are many different views.”

6 MILLION CHRISTIAN CHILDREN TO PRAY FOR ISRAEL ON PURIM

Six million Christian children to pray for Israel on Purim (JPost)
Inspired by a kabbalist rabbi, an Evangelical leader from Ft. Worth, Texas, plans to enlist the "pure hearted prayers" of six million Christian children worldwide to protect the Jewish people from the Iranian nuclear threat.

The prayer rally will take place before Purim, a holiday that commemorates the redemption through divine intervention of the Jewish people from an evil Persian ruler about 2,500 years ago. Purim starts on Saturday evening.

Michael D. Evans, best-selling author of The American Prophecies: Ancient Scriptures Reveal Our Nation's Future, said on Monday evening that the inspiration for his idea from a report in The Jerusalem Post.

"After reading about Rabbi [David Batzri's] campaign to enlist 10,000 children to pray that God annul [Iranian President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad's plans for the destruction of the Jewish people, I said to myself, 'Why stop at 10,000?'" Evans said in a telephone interview from his Jerusalem hotel room.

"The number six million is a reminder to Christians that never again must we allow a Holocaust," he said. "And since the young suffer most in times of catastrophe, it is fitting that children should be the ones praying."