Christians are key patrons for Jewish immigration

TEL AVIV— Israel’s founding fathers, who etched a commitment to encouraging Jewish immigration into the declaration of independence, might be surprised to find that, seven decades later, the state is relying on Christians to fulfill that promise.

What was once a strictly Jewish-funded mission is increasingly being bankrolled by evangelical Christians. Israel’s Christian allies now fund about a third of all immigrants moving to the country, according to a tally by The Associated Press.

The figures reflect the evertightening relationship between Israel and its evangelical Christian allies, whom Israel has come to count on for everything from political support to tourism dollars.

“After 2,000 years of oppression and persecution, today you have Christians who are helping Jews,” said Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, president of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, a group that raises money from evangelical Christians for Jewish causes.

Israel has long depended on diaspora Jewish communities, especially in the U.S., for donations and to lobby their local governments on its behalf. But evangelical communities have become increasingly important.

Israeli charities raise millions of dollars from Christians around the world, and evangelical Christians make up 13 percent of all tourists to Israel. A parliamentary caucus works with evangelical legislators around the world to foster support for Israel.

“Israel has no better friends, I mean that, no better friends in the world than the Christian communities,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said last year.

European and American Jewish philanthropists championed immigration to Israel even before the creation of the state in 1948, by working to settle Jews in what was then Ottoman and British Palestine. In the decades after independence, the government partnered with Jewish groups to organize dramatic airlifts of Jews from troubled countries.

Christian support for the immigration to Israel largely began with the collapse of the Soviet Union and has grown in recent years as American Jews have redirected charitable donations to niche causes.

Not everyone is pleased. Some in Israel are suspicious that the evangelical embrace stems from a belief that the modern Jewish state is a precursor to the apocalypse — when Jesus will return and Jews will either accept Christianity or die.