1,000 US pastors travel to train as 'ambassadors' for Israel

More than 1,000 U.S. Christian pastors and influencers traveled to Israel this month becoming “the largest group of American Christian leaders to visit Israel since its founding.”

At the height of the Christmas season — one of the two most important celebrations for Christians of the year, the birth of Christ, the other being Easter which marks his death — these pastors were on mission paid for by the Israeli government “to provide training and prepare participants to serve as unofficial ambassadors for Israel in their communities,” Fox News reported.

Trip organizer Mike Evans is an author, a top evangelical ally of Donald Trump, longtime confidant of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and founder of the Friends of Zion Heritage Center in Jerusalem. “For Christians, Israel is not just another country on the map. It is the cradle of our faith. The story of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, King David, and Jesus starts here. If you cut Israel out of the Bible, you do not just edit a text, you undermine the foundations of Christian faith itself," the long-time, prominent Christian Zionist said in a press release about the trip.

Such Christian Zionists believe that the state of Israel fulfills biblical prophecy. Sometimes they say things like the people of Israel are "a special treasure above all the people on the face of the earth, that includes the United States of America" as Pastor John Hagee, leader of Christians United for Israel, exclaimed in a speech this summer, referring to scripture.

“This week we want Pastors to experience Israel first-hand and be reminded of these foundational truths,” Evans said of the trip, which would be, he said, giving these pastors and others “an immersive, state-level experience” that included meetings with Israeli officials, generals, intelligence leaders and President Isaac Herzog.

The “mission” it would seem is just as critical to firming up support for the government’s military actions in Gaza and the West Bank as it is to affirming support for the religious integrity of the national project.

As such, evangelical participants on the sojourn wanted to talk about Israel in terms of perpetual victimhood. Tamryn Foley of Florida told Fox Digital, "more than half of the Palestinian population embraces Hamas’ ideology of radical Islam, which isn’t based on land for peace but on establishing an Islamic state and eradicating the Jewish state."

Foley, who did not provide evidence for her claims, was part of the trip as an executive team member of the National Faith Advisory Board, founded by President Trump’s spiritual advisor Paula White-Cain. When “Trump’s understanding of the need to support the Jewish state intensified in 2003, when he contacted Evangelist Paula White-Cain…they became quick friends and White-Cain introduced Trump to several other Evangelicals. Since then, she has served as his personal pastor — and these other Evangelicals, including (Mike) Evans, have been influencing the president," the Jerusalem Post reported in early 2020.

White-Cain has been a longtime loyal supporter of both Israel and pro-life causes.

The National Faith Advisory Board, Fox reported, “is the largest coalition backing and advocating for people of faith… Its mission is built on four pillars — protecting religious freedom, promoting a strong America, defending life at all stages and honoring family values — and it identifies the U.S.-Israel alliance as central to that agenda."

“Life” is important to evangelical Christians. According to a 2024 Pew Poll, 73% of white evangelical Protestants this abortion should be illegal in all or most cases.

But defending “life” at all stages? Their “immersive” experience might not have been quite immersive enough.

In May, a United Nations report detailed the plight of women and girls living in Gaza. “UN Women estimates that more than 28,000 women and girls have been killed in Gaza since the beginning of the war in October 2023 — that is one woman and one girl on average killed every hour in attacks by Israeli forces,” the report noted. “Among those killed, thousands were mothers, leaving behind devastated children, families, and communities.” That estimate is from six months ago.

The official numbers, according to the Gazan Health Ministry, are over 70,000 killed since Oct. 7, 2023. Other estimates, which take account undiscovered dead bodies under the 68 million tons of rubble in the Strip, are well over 100,000 Palestinians killed, most of whom are considered civilians, since the beginning of the war.

Defenders of Israel’s collective punishment, especially American evangelicals, contend that it is mere retaliation for the horrific October 7, attack on Israel by Hamas. According to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs in September of last year, 64 percent of white Protestant evangelicals maintain that Israel is defending its interests and is justified in its military actions in Gaza, roughly double that of the overall American population (32%). It is also a far greater proportion than Americans of other faiths, including Catholics (34%),non-evangelical Protestants (31%), and far more than non-religious Americans (19%).

Some of the U.S. evangelical travelers to Israel last week conveyed stories to media about meeting Israeli October 7 survivors and witnessing their pain up close, creating a more intimate understanding of their plight.

There were no reports of the evangelical travelers also visiting Gaza or listening to harrowing stories of Palestinian survivors of Israel’s bombardments, the displacement of millions, and famine and disease conditions now exacerbated by flooding and the continued lack of shelter, food, and medicine. It simply does not appear to be part of the conversation, and to the degree that it ever is, it is almost always to defend Israel’s actions.

Responsible Statecraft’s Paul R. Pillar analyzed the one-sided nature of the conflict in late July. “The news stories emerging almost daily from Gaza are not about pitched battles between the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and Hamas fighters,” he wrote. “They are mostly not about battles at all.”

Pillar continued, “Instead, they are about the latest large-scale killing by Israel of Gazans, mostly civilians, at a rate that has averaged about 150 deaths per day since the current round of carnage began in late 2023. Civilians are killed largely with airstrikes but also more recently through getting shot while seeking ever-scarcer food.”

In November, Responsible Statecraft’s Connor Echols reported that trip organizer Mike Evans once began writing a fictional novel that was edited by a paid Israeli reserve colonel “about an all-out war on Israel, masterminded by a rogues’ gallery of Iran, Hamas, ISIS, and, to a lesser extent, the media.” The book was never published.

Its outline was described by Echols as “bleak” and he noted that “Evans goes to great lengths to blur the lines between Hamas members and civilians.”

Speaking on Israel's critics, Evans told Fox News Digital, "These devils that hate Jews hate Christians just as much. What is being said against the state of Israel is one hundred times worse than what the Nazis said on their party platform in 1920, and everyone is ignoring it.”

“They don’t realize how dangerous this is,” Evans added. Mike Evans’ Zionist missionaries also seem to ignore things. Big things. No matter how dangerous to life that has been.