Palestinian Pastor Flees after Death Threats

With the dirt still fresh over the coffin of a Palestinian martyr in Gaza, an Evangelical pastor in Palestinian-ruled Ramallah fears he may be the next target of persecution against Christians and is taking no chances. Isa Bajalia fled to Jerusalem after receiving several threats against his life and being refused protection by Palestinian officials.

The threats underscore the growing intimidation against Christians, particularly Evangelicals, in the Palestinian areas. In October, a Palestinian Bible Society worker in Gaza, Rami Ayyad, was kidnapped and killed by Islamic militants.

“I was told, ‘The same things that happened to Rami in Gaza will happen to you,’” Bajalia recounted. “They said, ‘We’re going to break your arms and legs. We’re going to shoot you in your knee caps.’”

Two men in Ramallah, one of them a low level Palestinian Authority (PA) official, have been attempting to extort land and money from Bajalia. One is a Moslem and the other a nominal Christian. Bajalia brought these threats before the PA where one official said he didn’t have time for him and a police officer said that for $5,000 he could promise protection. Instead, Bajalia left Ramallah for now. 

“It made me so cautious that I started to always watch around me and behind me,” he told Israel Today. “I am sure Rami was sitting in the same position as I am now not long ago.”

Moslem hatred of Christians in Palestinian territories has intensified since the Iraq War and the terrorist attacks in the US on Sept. 11th, 2001, Bajalia noted.

“There was always some element of hatred toward Christians, hidden perhaps, but now we are seeing acts of persecution, threats and violence,” he said.

Bajalia, who was born in the US and is an American citizen, moved to Ramallah—where both his parents were born—16 years ago. He brings in humanitarian aid, pastors a church and focuses his work on the Moslem community.

“There is openness among Moslems, much more than we’ve ever seen,” but the radical element of Islam is also active, he said.

Bajalia, 47, was the first of his four brothers and parents to get saved growing up in Birmingham, Ala. and later went on to Rhema Bible Training School in Oklahoma for his seminary degree. His parents were shocked when he decided to go back to the Land they left, but he said it was a calling he couldn’t deny. When Balalia arrived in Ramallah in 1991, it was his first trip to his parents’ homeland.

“I was amazed at how historic, how rustic the appearance of the landscape and housing was,” he said. “I had come from a society where things were always moving forward. Here it was like time was frozen.”

The threats began after visiting doctors and nurses from abroad volunteered at Bajalia’s medical clinic and prayed over some patients. Apparently some of the patients were plants who reported that the outreach was attempting to convert Moslems. The two men harassing Bajalia told him to stop evangelizing and also demanded he give them a plot of land his family owns plus $30,000. 

The PA’s lack of response to his case isn’t necessarily because he is a Christian, Bajalia said, but because “I am a nobody on the landscape of society.” He feels the same way about the American consulate which has received his case but has only been in touch with him once with one suggestion: Don’t go back to Ramallah.

Ramallah was once known for its thriving Christian population. Now, of 70,000 residents in the city and its outlying villages, the Christian population has dwindled to just 1 percent. Of that, Bajalia estimates that at most, 400 are Evangelicals.

“You definitely feel like a minority in terms of the numbers,” Bajalia said. “But that’s the type of challenge I like. These are untouched territories in terms of the gospel and it is an opportunity for God’s light to shine through.”

Bajalia has fostered good ties with Messianic pastors in Israel during his time here. He said that his church prays for the nation of Israel and for the Jewish people.

“I believe loyalty to God’s sovereignty is more important than loyalty to a nation,” he said, stressing that he stays out of politics. Bajalia said he sees the suffering on both sides: the struggle with poverty, checkpoints and the security barrier among Palestinians, and Jewish lives torn apart in suicide attacks. 

“We hurt when we see Israelis hurt,” he said. “We want to be a part of the healing process.”

A Bomb or a Bible

American minister sees salvation and transformation in Jericho

JERICHO – This Arab town may look like a rocky, barren desert, but after five years of laboring in obscurity, American Karen Dunham has seen it become an oasis of hope and salvation in the Palestinian territories.

“Now Jericho is given into the hands of the Lord,” Dunham said. “There isn’t anywhere you can’t talk about Jesus.”

While most Palestinian towns—and Israel for that matter—are closed off to evangelism, Jericho has been plied open by Dunham’s ministry. She lived, with her teenage son, in a refugee camp, distributing humanitarian aid, killing scorpions and suffering water shortages and blackouts with the people while some Moslems tried to run her out of town.
 
She runs a church attended by up to 300 Palestinians. No one leaves empty-handed—but no one gets humanitarian aid without also getting a tract and a Bible.
 
Despite enduring two car bombings and fires set at her home and office, Dunham stayed on and organized even more aid programs. Her persistence and humility gained favor with Palestinian officials and Jericho’s elders, and she expanded her ministry. As one Moslem leader told her, “If this whole city goes with your faith then all I can say is, ‘Cheers!’”
 
While Hamas was gaining a foothold in Gaza and Christians in Judea and Samaria (the so-called “West Bank”) were timidly tolerated in their towns, Jericho, a Moslem farming community of 25,000, was becoming a model of transformation. Dunham estimates that about 200 residents have accepted the Lord. Openness among Moslems is high and the gospel is allowed. Dunham said the city council voted, specifically for her, that handing out a tract or a Bible is no longer considered evangelism.
 
The results of Dunham’s outreach stem from a simple yet profound strategy: a Bible or a bomb. She provides the gospel, and hopes the results are that people turn to God instead of violence to meet their needs.
 
Noted Christian speakers and authors Jill Austin of Master Potters Ministry and Cindy Jacobs, who traveled to Israel during the Feast of Tabernacles, joined Dunham for two days of ministry. They spent time on both sides of the border and led a humanitarian outreach in Jericho with Dunham.
 
The Jericho Municipality insisted that its official policy has always been to accept all religions without prejudice and that the city supports Dunham by not requiring her to pay certain city bills. Mayor Hassan Saleh, a moderate Moslem and member of Fatah, said the town welcomes “Christians in Jericho because it is a holy place that joins all religions.”
 
“There is no policy to prevent them from expressing their religious background,” he said. “If you see the people here, how Christians and Moslems relate, they’re free to express what they believe.”
 
Sami Musallam, a former governor of Jericho, said Dunham’s actions speak louder than words. “Her purpose is to extend help to needy people,” he said. “She does some good work and provides support for them.”
 
A wealth of energy and strong faith, Dunham was a pariah among Christian organizations in the Land because her work in the Palestinian camps was seen as anti-Zionist. But her efforts were not lost on a key Zionist group: the Israeli army. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has not only facilitated Dunham’s border crossings but also helped her get NGO (non-governmental organization) status.
 
The army even asked her to continue her work in the 28 other Palestinian refugee camps where it sees a need. Next on the list is southern Hebron where the IDF told her some Arabs live in caves and have no running water. Dunham will raise money and get supplies, and the military will allow her into territories where no Christian organization, no Israeli and not even the United Nations has ventured.
 
An IDF officer, speaking on background, said soldiers at the Israeli civil administration in Jericho were impressed by Dunham and don’t mind her spreading the gospel. “She’s less interested in a political message and doesn’t complain about what the Israeli army is doing,” he said.
 
Her work, he said, has a greater impact on the Palestinians than the bigger organizations because “she has less internal bureaucracy and comes with honesty to the people. Because of Karen’s activities, their lives are improved and they have a more positive attitude toward the IDF because they realize we are supporting her.”
 
Dunham is not intimidated by Christian leaders, Moslem extremists or her lack of knowledge of either Hebrew or Arabic. Her team includes several teenagers who share her fearlessness going into the tough places, like her son Blake.
 
Dunham initially came to Israel simply to pray. She met a Catholic priest who told her, “If you can feed Jericho, you can win the city for Jesus.” The words burned in her heart, and soon after, she moved to a refugee camp there. News of her success began reaching Jerusalem in the last two years. Now volunteers join Dunham every week in Jericho for church services and tour groups from overseas include Jericho among their stops.
 
“Five years ago it wasn’t popular to be here at all,” she said.
 
Jericho was once a destination for Israelis and tourists with some 3,000 Israelis spending their Sabbath at the city’s casino or visiting holy sites—before the second Palestinian uprising erupted in 2000.
 
Somehow Dunham has managed to walk a tightrope, maintaining favor with both Palestinian and Israeli army officials. Kamel Sinokrot, who runs the largest tourist attraction in the city—a cable car up to the Mount of Temptation with a restaurant and lookout point—is a devout Moslem, but he lent his facility to Dunham for her TV broadcast. He welcomes her overtly Christian gatherings, and, of course, the tourism she brings to the desert town.
 
“We’re not opposed to this at all,” Sinokrot said as 140 foreigners participated in a worship service at his restaurant. Even with Moslem women joining in the worship, he didn’t have a problem. “We are very happy,” he said. “We all worship the Lord.”

‘Shaheed’ for the Gospel

Rami Ayyad, a 29-year-old father of two with a pregnant wife, became the first martyr for the gospel in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. His death underscores the mounting danger faced by evangelical Christians in Gaza.

Ayyad’s body was found some 12 hours after he was kidnapped, with two gunshot wounds including one to the back of the head, stab wounds and with a blow to the head.

When Hamas seized control of Gaza in a Palestinian civil war in June, its leaders announced that a new era of Islamic rule had arrived. For Christians, it amounted to an ultimatum: submit to Allah’s dictates or leave.

Some 3,000 Christians or fewer live among 1.5 million Palestinian Muslims in Gaza. Evangelical Christians number in the mere hundreds, and most are wary of speaking to outsiders about their trials for fear of retribution from their Muslim rulers. 

Pastor Hanna Massad of the Gaza Baptist Church spoke of Ayyad’s final hours. Two days prior to his kidnapping and brutal murder, he was followed home from work at Gaza’s only Christian bookstore by a car full of Islamic militants. Ayyad had been threatened by Muslim elements before, and his unwelcome entourage was seen as little more than an act of intimidation. But after closing the Bible Society bookshop on a Saturday afternoon, he was abducted, held for several hours and killed.

Massad said that Ayyad was one of his congregation’s most beloved and passionate members, and a man who fearlessly shared the gospel despite the threats that sought to silence him. “Rami was a very strong believer. He would not compromise with his faith,” said Massad. Even in the face of death threats, Ayyad “loved the Lord and was willing to pay the price for his faith.”

Massad said the dangers facing believers in Gaza are growing. “We never had anything like this,” said the pastor, noting that an increasing number of local Christians “are afraid and some have many questions.”

Nevertheless, most remain dedicated to their faith and  hold up Ayyad as “a shaheed (martyr) for the gospel.” It is an ironic twist because Palestinians use the Islamic (Arabic) word “shaheed” to describe suicide bombers.

Massad said that he has no doubt the Lord will use Ayyad’s death in a powerful way, and while Gaza believers wait for the next step to become clear, they will continue to pray for and encourage one another.

Echoing the propaganda of the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, the international media maintains that relations between Christians and Muslims in Gaza are generally good. But it is becoming clear that Christians are merely tolerated, and evangelical Christians even less so. Those who dare to share the gospel in Gaza truly lay their lives on the line.

Sabbatical Year, not so Restful

 
DALTON, northern Israel – It is supposed to be a year of rest for the land in accordance with the biblical command to refrain from working the ground every seventh year: “You shall sow your land for six years and gather in its yield, but on the seventh year you shall let it rest and lie fallow, so that the needy of your people may eat; and whatever they leave the beast of the field may eat.” (Exodus 23:10-11)
 
The sabbatical year (shmita in Hebrew) began on Rosh Hashanah (September 12th), but lawyers, rabbis and farmers are doing anything but resting as a war between synagogue and state is brewing.
 
Normally, the sabbatical year has a routine approved by the Chief Rabbinate: Jewish farmers “sell” their land to non-Jews during that year so that produce is considered kosher because it was not grown by Jews. This is known as heter mechira (consent of sale). With this practice, instituted in the late 1800s, the fruit and vegetable market generally stays the same.
 
This year, however, the ultra-Orthodox rabbinical authorities adopted a stricter approach. “From the point of view of the Rabbinate the heter mechira is acceptable,” said Avi Blumenthal, spokesman for Chief Rabbi Yonah Metzger. “But the local city rabbi has the right not to accept it.”
 
The decision put a wedge between the rabbinate and farmers, and even Zionist Orthodox Israelis are unhappy about it. The rift deepened when some local rabbis adopted the strict ultra-Orthodox view and warned that they would revoke kosher licenses to shops and restaurants if produce was bought from a farm that was symbolically sold. That means major losses for the nation’s farmers.
 
In the late 1880s, Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook came up with the idea of heter mechira so the Land may be cultivated at no loss to farmers. But many ultra-Orthodox Jews see this as a way to avoid religious obligations. During shmita years, they buy their produce from Arab farmers in Israel, the Palestinian territories, or import from abroad.
 
“This is a betrayal of religious Zionism and a betrayal of Jewish farmers,” Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, rabbi of the settlement of Efrat near Bethlehem, said. “Tragically, issues such as this are dividing even observant Jews.”
 
Riskin said his community never buys Arab produce even during a shmita year.
 
Tzohar, a group of younger Zionist rabbis, announced that they will issue heter mechira certificates of their own in cities where the local rabbi will not. “We believe it is important to strengthen Jewish farmers and provide reasonably priced produce to the Jewish nation,” said Tzohar chairman Rabbi Rafi Freuerstein.
 
Agriculture Minister Shalom Simchon accused the ultra-Orthodox, who represent only 5 to 7 per cent of the population, of “religious coercion” and announced that he will ban imports that compete with Israeli farmers. That could affect Palestinian farmers in Judea and Samaria, though produce is not likely to come from Gaza as it did seven years ago. Israel has stopped all exports from Gaza since the Hamas takeover in June.
 
The shmita feud was so bitter that it wound up in the Supreme Court, which responded to an appeal from the Israel Farmers’ Federation and the Plants Council.
 
“This is a clash between religion and state,” said the farmers’ lawyer Shaul Pelles. The court ruled in favor of the petitioners and ordered the Chief Rabbinate to force local rabbis to change their decision or replace them.
 
At the moment, refrigerated fruit and vegetables grown before the Jewish New Year are being sold. But planting will soon begin for winter vegetables such as peppers and lettuce, which take only two to three months to grow.
 
In Upper Galilee, the prestigious Dalton Winery is harvesting grapes and making wine, but producing only one kosher label this year while the rest will be marketed abroad.
 
“If you’re a wine fan, you’ll still have the Dalton label on the shelf,” Assaf Haviv told us. “But most will be sold outside the country. This year we will sell modestly in Israel.”

Palestinian Doctor Crosses Borders

Dr. Rula Awwad listened to the heartbeat of a Palestinian baby, checked his vital signs and read his chart as she prepared to tell his mother that her one-month old son had Downs Syndrome.
 
While these activities are normal for any doctor, Awwad’s journey to medicine and the Wolfson Medical Center in Holon near Tel Aviv was a long road, not just in the three-hour commute she made that morning, but as a working Arab woman in a high-profile career.
 
Awwad is an anomaly in Arab culture. She is 33, single and a Christian living in a predominantly Moslem town.
 
Every morning she gets up at 5:30 a.m. and leaves her home in Beit Sahour, a Bethlehem suburb, taking a taxi to the checkpoint into Jerusalem. There she waits with thousands of Palestinians who have permits to work in Israel, most of them construction workers. The wait to get through security can be up to an hour most days. Then she takes an Arab bus to the Old City, walks to a Jewish bus stop, gets a ride to the Tel Aviv Central Bus Station and finally grabs a taxi to Holon.
 
With a half-smile smirk and deep brown eyes, Rula lives with her feet on both sides of the border. She identifies herself first as a Palestinian. But she doesn’t deny the incalculable advantages of working as a doctor in Israel. “It’s worth it because I can be in contact with a team and I can stay up to date on medicine,” she said.
 
And while she still hesitates to express any optimism toward Israel, her three years at Wolfson highlight the possibility of Israelis and Palestinians working together seamlessly. “I lived through the intifada [Palestinian uprising]. I have bad scenes in my mind of shootings and demonstrations,” Awwad told Israel Today. “In my mind, Israelis were always the soldiers. To come and work in Israel was a very big issue to me. I was worried how they would treat me and how I would deal with the Israeli people.”
 
But her worries were quickly allayed by her team of doctors and staff at the hospital. ‘We’re trying to cross borders,” said Dr. Alona Raucher Sternfeld. “We talk about people, not politics. As women we talk about how to accommodate a career.”
 
Sternfeld, who like Awwad is a pediatric cardiologist, recognizes the immense challenges facing her Palestinian counterpart. “It’s amazing for an Arab woman who grew up in a conservative community to reach out like this,” she said. “Rula had to do things that for us were obvious. It was obvious to my parents I’d go to university; it was obvious to my community that I’d go to work; it was obvious to my husband that the household would be 50/50.”
 
Arab society is very different. Awwad fought on many fronts: as a Christian minority in a Moslem town, as a woman seeking higher education and as a Palestinian crossing the border every day to go to work.
 
In order for her to assimilate fully she had to become fluent in Hebrew, a language she didn’t know despite growing up five miles from Jerusalem. In just one month of study and work, she learned the language well enough to write medical charts and communicate with the nurses.
 
Her ambition stems from hard-working and successful parents who encouraged all of their five children in their educational and career pursuits. Awwad graduated high school as the top student in all of Judea and Samaria, earning her offers to universities in Germany, Greece and Jordan. She chose to study medicine at the University of Jordan.
 
From there she moved back to Beit Sahour to live with her family and worked at Mukassed, an Arab hospital in East Jerusalem. After a few years, the Israeli organization Save a Child’s Heart (SACH) and the European Union sponsored Awwad for a fellowship at the Wolfson Medical Center. SACH, which has enabled 1,584 children from 27 nations to receive life-saving heart surgeries since 1996, also brings in doctors from developing countries for training so they can perform these operations in their own land.
 
In one instance, Awwad identified the problem of a Palestinian child who visited the clinic in Bethlehem and, through her contacts, scheduled him at Wolfson for open heart surgery.
 
“This is how we see the fruit of the project,” said SACH executive director Simon Fisher. “She takes the knowledge and expertise with her to save the lives of children. Not only was a child’s life saved, but there was cooperation between Israelis and Palestinians.”

Tragedy Hits Home

KIRYAT SHMONA – Having grown up in this heavily bombarded city just one mile east of the Lebanese border, the Saadia family is no stranger to war. Since the 1960s, the city has been the frequent target of rockets launched from Lebanon. 

But a year ago it hit closer to home. Liran Saadia has the tragic distinction of being one of the first Israeli soldiers killed in combat during the Second Lebanon War. He was 21. 

“He was killed right over this mountain,” Liran’s father Zion said, pointing to the peak shadowing their home. “So he protected us and this city.”

Zion and his wife Michal were in Thailand when the tragic news reached them. When the war began on July 12, 2006, Liran insisted that his parents continue their vacation and not worry about him.

They spoke with Liran at 12:30 p.m. on July 20. He was killed less than three hours later.

“When I saw the Israeli ambassador coming toward us at the hotel, I ran toward her and said, ‘Please tell me my son is only injured, that he lost a leg or an arm,’” Zion recalled, knowing a visit from a government official can only mean bad news. “The ambassador said, ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry.’”

That began a long, sad journey back to Israel in disbelief. 

“I thought it had to be a mistake,” Michal said. “I had to return to Israel and see the body so I could tell them it was a mistake, that it wasn’t my son.”

The funeral took place under the threat of falling rockets, but the attacks eased for two hours enabling the family to bury their son under a pink and smoky sky. Then they sat shiva in a bomb shelter rather than at home so as not to endanger their guests. 

“For two weeks I had a bad feeling,” Michal said, referring to Liran’s transfer from a counseling position in the army to a combat unit three months before the completion of his mandatory service. With a mother’s intuition, she was wary about the move but kept silent. “Every mother in the country knows this feeling, but we all say nothing will happen to us.”

Now, family members are coping with the loss in their own way. The oldest daughter, Hadar, 21, is in the army and has recently been promoted to lieutenant.

“We’re always scared of war and that there will be another,” Hadar said. “But since our tragedy, it’s personal now. We identify. To us it’s no longer just another name announced on the news.”

Yarden, 16, talks about her brother all the time and made a video of him, but her school work is suffering. Aviv, the youngest at 12, doesn’t mention Liran at all, but is quietly mimicking his brother in basketball and drawing cartoons. He even picked up guitar, something Liran did in the last few months of his life.

The parents manage in their own ways.

“From the moment I heard Liran died, I chose life,” Zion said. “It is so difficult for us, but it is the right choice. The other choice is to give up, and then the whole family would collapse.”

Their grief still profoundly apparent, the family is focusing on Liran’s legacy rather than his death. They talk about a vibrant young man who, since his childhood, gave selflessly.

“In life we only knew this much of Liran,” Zion said holding up two fingers a couple inches apart. “After he died, we saw so much more of him through his friends and people who come to visit us.”

Liran gave away a hard-earned top-of-the-line computer when he was 15. When he was 12, he saw a classmate selling cheap toys to help his family makes ends meet. Liran bought one to help his friend. And in his army years, Liran would bring friends home with him every weekend —soldiers with no family in Israel and nowhere to go on Shabbat (the Sabbath). 

Building on this, the family established a scholarship fund in Liran’s name and is building a house for lone soldiers called Liran’s Home. The city of Kiryat Shmona donated a plot of land and a Christian ministry from Germany has taken up the cause, but the family is seeking additional sponsors. 

The cost of Liran’s generosity was high for the family.

“He gave too much in the end,” Michal said. “He gave his life.”

For more information or to donate to Liran’s Way, e-mail: bedarkeyliran@walla.com

Taking Matters into His Own Hands

Two years after the Gaza pullout, one man starts from scratch

AVNEI EITAN – Under the blazing Golan sun, dry wind and flies whipping through the moshav, Yuval Matzliah sits at a handmade wooden picnic table and talks about the last two challenging years since being expelled from Gaza along with 8,500 other Jewish residents of the Gush Katif settlement bloc.

“Life won’t return to what it was in Gush Katif,” he said. “But we will return there, hopefully in another year. I love this land more than I loved anything in my life.” 

Matzliah lives in a 90 square-meter (968 square-foot) temporary house, called a caravilla, on this collective farm near the Syrian border. He hasn’t found employment or received a permit to build a permanent home.

But Matzliah has taken matters into his own hands. The tables, ice cream hut and two wooden guesthouses on the moshav are his handiwork, an attempt to create jobs for both him and his neighbors. 

“I decided I had to put the past behind and take care of my children,” he said. “So I began to look for a way to make a living. The state wasn’t doing anything, so we had to look on our own and we were starting from zero.”

Avnei Eitan, a religious community, took in 22 families from Gush Katif. The government built two rows of square orange houses, one floor each with no insulation. They remain undecorated and bleak. Breaking up the monotony are the large containers in backyards holding the families’ belongings.

A year into his exile from Gaza, still living in a hotel with his wife and three daughters, Matzliah sank into depression. When their son was born—and nearly died due to complications—his wife urged him to snap out of his despair for the sake of the family.

“I’m 32, I’m still young,” Matzliah said, “Imagine someone who is 50 years old, or sick or handicapped. How does he start over? I’m living well compared to most.” 

According to a report by the Gush Katif Committee, Matzliah is right. Thirty seven percent of the settlers are still out of work, although Matzliah disputes that as too low a figure. Some 500 families are on welfare. And since many residents don’t have jobs, they are spending their compensation checks on daily needs rather than saving to build a home. Less than 1 percent of the settlers have started building permanent housing and most could be living in temporary housing for another five years.

The Ministry of Commerce says family income has decreased by 40 percent, with many receiving no income for two years. Young people face large gaps in their education, scarred from the trauma of eviction and switching schools several times.

Gaza’s Jewish communities once provided a high percentage of Israel’s agricultural produce, but of the 400 farms and other agricultural businesses that once operated in Gush Katif, only 33 have been compensated with land. 

Matzliah’s parents, immigrants from France, were some of the first people to settle in Netzer Hazani in Gush Katif 30 years ago. Matzliah worked on a cow farm there, running the milking machines. He is also an expert carpenter.

He refused his first compensation check of 50,000 shekels (about $12,000) and told the government to hold it until they are ready to give him the whole sum they owe him.

So Matzliah, which means “he succeeds” in Hebrew, built two tzimmers (popular guesthouses in the north), in order to start making a living. He employed his neighbors and their children to help him build so they could also have some work.

While the tzimmers are charming and can accommodate a family of eight, there is a glut of them in the north. Matzliah hopes people will come because they want not only a place to stay, but a fascinating story. He is shocked when Israelis tell him they wish they could trade places because of all the compensation he got from the government.

“What compensation?” he asked while soberly noting that the small falafel and ice cream business he established barely pays salaries and will do even worse when tourism hibernates in the winter.

“Think of a man who has everything—a house, money in the bank and work,” he said. “Then all of a sudden he has nothing. You can’t imagine.”

Golan Druze Live in ‘Syria’—and in Denial

MASAADE, Golan Heights – Though you didn’t cross a border or get your passport stamped, many people in this Druze village on the northern Golan Heights will insist you are in Syria, not Israel.

It takes awhile to get into their thinking, but the answers are simple: Why do you not take Israeli citizenship? Because we’re Syrian. Why do you not serve in the Israeli army or permit anyone from your community to do so? Because we’re Syrian. Why are the Druze in the Haifa area pro-Israel and you are opposed to the state? Because they are Israeli; we are Syrian.

The Druze, a tight-knit religious sect based on a form of Islam, populate many Middle Eastern countries and are loyal to the nation in which they live. The community is usually closed but friendly and the men fight on behalf of their nation. It gets a little confusing in Israel though. In such a young state, borders are not what they used to be; and the Golan was in Syrian hands until 1967 when Israel seized the strategic plateau in the Six Day War. Syria failed to regain control of the Golan during the Yom Kippur War in 1973.

Israel and Syria have no diplomatic relations, but instead a tenuous quiet on the border interrupted by occasional threats and military buildups, and now talks of trading the Golan for peace. Unlike with Jordan and Egypt, with whom Israel has peace treaties, Israelis and anyone with an Israeli stamp on his passport are prohibited from traveling to Syria.

Many Druze in the northern Golan were born in Syria, held Syrian passports and all of them have family on the other side of the border. The culture is extremely land-oriented, however, and therefore the questions get confusing.

“All of the air of the Golan Heights is Syria,” said Ghassan Sabra, who owns a shop in the town. “The residents of the Golan Heights are Syrian. That’s it. Maybe during the day you can be confused, but at night you remember where you live.”

Sabra, who moved with his family from Syria to present-day Israel when he was one, said he doesn’t encourage his five children to integrate into Israeli society because they don’t actually live in Israel—so they don’t need to.

These sentiments run wide in the community, enforced through religious rulings prohibiting taking Israeli citizenship and joining the army, the latter an offense punishable by death. Integration is not only unnecessary, but also amounts to treason. 

Israelis in the area are concerned about giving back the Golan, but the majority of the Druze look forward to the possibility and even expect it. 

“It is 1,000 percent certain that Syria will return,” Sabra said.

Despite their dislike of the Israeli government, the Druze here are friendly with Israelis and have no animosity toward anyone who visits their villages. Druze and Israelis attend each other’s weddings and funerals, play soccer and work together. There is no intermarriage but there is peace.

Peace on a wider scale, between Israel and Syria, is also expected one day. Sabra said he wants to travel freely between Damascus and Haifa. He insists Syria wants peace as much as Israel.

Hassan Jawad Batheesh, an imam and elder in the community, was more pragmatic. 

“Masaade is my homeland,” he said. Life was good under Syria, Batheesh insisted, and it is fine now under Israel, but, “As an Arab I would like Syria to come back to govern the Golan Heights.” 

And if there’s no peace between Syria and Israel? 

“That’s not my problem,” he said.

New Café, New Critics…

It was another epic in Jerusalem, another milestone, another opening of yet another coffee shop that was long under construction, tantalizing all of its prospective customers who watched the progress day by day with rapt anticipation.

Hailing from Tel Aviv, the upscale and trendy Arcaffe has now made its presence known in the capital city. With staff dressed in vests and bowties, Arcaffe immediately makes one feel they are in a European café once they step over the threshold. 

Arcaffe is a destination coffee shop in Tel Aviv known for its decadent baked goods and elegant paninis (sandwiches). The décor is upscale and cosmopolitan. When asked once by a Jerusalemite visiting Tel Aviv when the café would open up a branch in Jerusalem, a waitress sniffed, “Never.”

Ah, but never say never. Jerusalem may not be yuppie, secular Tel Aviv, but it sure does pride itself on cafés. 

Jerusalemites, well all Israelis, are obsessive about their cafés and the whole culture surrounding the caffeine imbibing experience. So zealous are they about preserving their style that Israeli cafés put Starbucks out of business here!

When finally the day came that the legendary Arcaffe opened in Jerusalem, an understated opening at that, customers tepidly entered, lingering back by the door while surveying the place. They eyed the counter suspiciously already comparing and critiquing.

Since everyone in Jerusalem is a self-appointed critic, the analysis of new places always kicks into high gear. Atmosphere? Product? Seating? And of course, prices? These days any café must also provide free internet access in order to compete, another item on the evaluation checklist.

Many passersby stopped and gawked from the outside on that first day, peering through the windows. Some ventured in to be the first who could report to their friends about the new venue. But by day two, the café blended into the framework of Jerusalem establishments, packed with people eating lunch and leaving with their coffee to-go.

Whether the café receives high ratings or not from the city’s plethora of experts, the establishment will thrive as nearly all do in the city. It will be full just as all other coffee shops are for lunch, after dinner and of course Friday brunch.

Under the Gun: Christians in Gaza

Caught amid the infighting between Hamas and Fatah and Israel’s retaliation for rockets launched at its southern towns is an easily overlooked segment of the population: Christians number only 2,000 among 1.3 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip—less than 1 percent of the population.
 
Evangelical Christians are even fewer.
 
“We are a minority of minorities,” Hanna Massad, pastor of Gaza Baptist Church, said. “It is really difficult. The Christian community here is 2,000 including Catholic, Greek Orthodox and Evangelical Christians.”
 
Gaza Baptist Church, the only Evangelical church in the Strip, ministers to 150 to 200 people.
 
In recent fighting an Israeli missile landed on a Hamas office, shattering all the windows in Massad’s house just 300 feet (100 meters) away. No one was injured, but the consequences of a war they are not involved in are continually getting closer to home.
 
Frequently one faction or the other commandeers the church’s buildings to use as a lookout point. Once a library worker was caught in the crossfire and shot in the back. He has since recovered.
 
The church driver wasn’t as fortunate. The 22-year-old newlywed was shot and killed in a Hamas-Fatah shootout, an innocent bystander.
 
Massad said living in Gaza is like being in a big prison. Many people have died because they haven’t been able get over the border in time for proper medical treatment in Israel or Egypt.
 
“The people are under siege from the sky, land and sea,” he said, adding that medical supplies and food are often delayed getting to the Strip. “Unemployment is 72 percent. Militant Moslems are against us and some Christians are not with us because we are Evangelical.”
 
Not long ago militants carried through on a threat to bomb the Gaza Bible Society where Massad’s wife is a director. Now the church itself has been threatened.
 
“There is a small militant group that hates everything western and Christian and in their minds, they are trying to clean up the city,” Massad said. “They are a narrow-minded group and the government is unable to control it.”
 
But the Gaza church isn’t playing victim to the circumstances. Instead the Christians are running clinics, libraries, bringing humanitarian aid to the needy and carrying on meeting. They meet openly at the church.
 
“One thing that strikes me is that you don’t hear negative language from them,” Labib Madanat, director of the Bible Society in Israel and Palestinian territories, told us. “Their language is positive, a language of mission: ‘What is my role as a believer; what can I do in this situation?’”
 
“I’m not saying it is not hard, that they don’t have fears,” he said. “There are troubles, threats, danger and sometimes they are down. But the overall sum is they are a group of people who are resilient, totally dependent on the Lord and positively thinking of what God wants them to be in the Gaza Strip.”
 
Madanat said the church worldwide needs to encourage believers in Gaza. Compared to believers in the West Bank, the believers in Gaza are more “focused on what God wants them to do in this situation. Gaza is much more difficult. The sense of need of total dependency on the Lord is much stronger.”
 
The American Consulate has been warning all Americans to get out of Gaza because of the constant dangers. Massad, who also holds American citizenship, was asked by the consulate if they want to leave.
 
“Without any hesitation I said no,” he explained. “This is where we feel God wants us to be at this time and it is a privilege to be in the midst of God’s will.”

Jerusalem: Destination for Worship

The One Thing Jerusalem conference put Israel’s capital city on the map as a destination for worshipers and worship leaders across the nation and around the world. 

The first-of-its-kind conference in Israel highlighted a growing trend among Messianic Jews and Christians to make worship pilgrimages to the Holy City. 

The three-day event was broadcast live by God TV, which boasts an audience of 1 billion. Several renowned Christian artists and speakers from Europe and America made their first trip to Israel for the conference, showing that for many, Israel is taking on a greater role in their journey of prayer and praise. 

“Where Israel had been cut off in many ways or was left behind in the move that God was doing in the earth, now it’s not just catching up, but it’s going to run ahead,” said Emily Schiavi, a worship leader at Succat Hallel, which organized the conference. “When people catch the vision of God’s heart for Israel, nothing is going to stop what will go out from here.”

Despite the civil war in Gaza and rumors of war in the North, One Thing Jerusalem drew more than 1,500 people, including an estimated 600 Jewish and Arab youth from the believing community in Israel and young people from 20 nations.

“The conference was way beyond anything we imagined,” Rick Ridings, founder of Succat Hallel house of prayer on Mount Zion, said. “A group came from Australia that was doing a 40-day fast for youth revival in Israel. A Chinese group came. This is not just something we’re doing. There are people in the nations praying to make Jerusalem a ‘praise in the earth.’”

One Thing Jerusalem featured young Israeli worship bands as well. A decade ago, that might have been impossible.

“When I first moved here [eight years ago] I felt like it was a valley of dry bones,” said Anna Boyd, who works with Israeli youth and made her own album in Israel. Boyd, 25, who lived in the US and Belgium before moving to Israel, said the worship music scene has gradually awakened since she’s been in the country.

“Right now I feel like all the [believing] youth are incredibly hungry for God,” she said. “They are starting to cry out for their friends’ salvation. There’s a sense of being so excited that, ‘God saved us so we want to worship him.’”

The awakening among Israeli youth has paralleled a rise in the number of Christians from overseas who have come to Israel to take part in worship watches or make a recording of their own. 

Kish Johnson, 32, originally from Slough, England, arrived in Israel three years ago and finished his first album here. While living in Jerusalem, he started writing worship songs. 

“When you understand the importance of Israel, you can’t help but understand the call of the nations,” he said. “We are pioneering to a certain degree.”

Another pioneer from abroad is Jess Cantelon, from Canada. Cantelon made his first recording here in English and is now writing songs in Hebrew. 

“Israel is a blank slate in a way,” he said. “If we went to Kansas City or England, these things have been done. Here there’s lots of potential because it’s a new country and we’re talking about the second generation of believers. We’ve not been too affected by the West. Israel is its own culture, its own generation, its own expression.”

Schiavi, 30, said she has seen major changes in worship in Israel since she came from the US four years ago. After the One Thing conference, which was meant to galvanize a generation of Israelis and Arabs in their own Land, she expects an even greater change.

“Local things have connected internationally. The nations come to Jerusalem, they gather here and the word will go forth from Zion,” Schiavi said. “It’s not going to be from people coming here. Now the people who live here are going to take this for themselves and run with it.”

Buying His Way into Politics

Arcadi Gaydamak has stacked up a resume of noteworthy social, economic and philanthropic activities in Israel.
The Russian-born billionaire has pushed himself into the social scene, throwing lavish parties for the Israeli elite. He has earned a reputation for extravagant generosity, filling in where the government fell short during last summer’s Lebanon War to set up housing and shelters in southern Israel and sponsoring trips for children to get them away from incoming rockets in southern Israel. He has also endeared himself to sports fans, bankrolling a Jerusalem basketball team and buying a Jerusalem soccer club.
 
Now Gaydamak, who doesn’t speak Hebrew in public and has no political experience, wants to be mayor of the city considered the capital of the Jewish people. With the announcement that he’s running for Jerusalem mayor, Israelis are questioning whether he was buying his way into their favor all along or whether his concern for the city is genuine.
 
Two months earlier, Gaydamak announced the formation of a new movement called Social Justice, which he said could turn into a political party at any time and would apparently align itself with the Likud led by former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He said at the time that he did not want to run for a Knesset seat himself.
 
Shady Business Past
 
Gaydamak was born in Ukraine in 1952, grew up in Russia and immigrated to Israel when he was 20. He served briefly in the Israeli army, worked on a kibbutz and then left for France, where he lived and made his fortune. In December 2000 he returned to Israel after being accused of illegal arms trading with Angola, tax evasion and money laundering. Gaydamak is now wanted in France, but Israel has refused to extradite him.
 
In Israel he has also been investigated for money laundering but has denied any wrongdoing. Gaydamak’s philanthropic activity in Israel, low key until then, became high profile after these accusations surfaced. During the Second Lebanon War, he constructed a tent village on a Nitzanim beach in southern Israel hosting thousands of families who fled the North. In November 2006, he funded a week-long vacation in Eilat for hundreds of residents from the southern town of Sderot who were enduring rocket attacks from Gaza.
 
Gaydamak decided to make a bid to oust current Mayor Uri Lupoliansky after City Hall banned a march by World War II veterans, which the billionaire has financed for the past three years. He said Lupoliansky’s “spirit was wrong” for the city.
 
Good Chance of Winning
 
With the potential support base of Beitar Jerusalem soccer fans, the ultra-Orthodox community whom he has tried to woo, and a reputation for funding out of his own pockets what should be government initiatives (à la the erstwhile American presidential candidate Ross Perot], Gaydamak stands a good chance at the polls.
 
“I have no doubt that the entire city will vote for me,” he confidently announced. “There’s not one person who is not familiar today with Gaydamak and his ability.” He added that he wants to turn Jerusalem into “a symbol of peace and Judaism.”
 
“The city will be much better, and not only from the economic point of view,” he said. “It will also become a symbol of the Jewish spirit. It’s my duty to defend the Jewish tradition.”
 
To Run or Not to Run
 
But Israeli politics is fickle. The elections are not for a year, plus sources close to Gaydamak say the tycoon may not run for mayor after all. He may choose instead to back another candidate who will do his bidding in office or try to win a majority of city council seats. Some analysts say that Gaydamak’s announcement to run for mayor was simply a slap at Lupoliansky for cancelling one of his pet projects.
 
Another name that has been thrown into the ring as a potential mayoral candidate is former police chief Mickey Levy. Gaydamak could potentially back Levy, which might be useful as he is still under investigation for money laundering.

Heart to Heart

 
Faced with the choice of saving his daughter’s life while potentially jeopardizing his family in northern Iraq, Abu Sakar chose life. It wasn’t a hard decision for the father of three, but it was one laden with great risk as he left his home town in northern Iraq to head to Israel.
 
“Yes, there was a danger in coming here, but they gave me a dream,” Abu Sakar said as he watched his now healthy 10-year-old daughter, Sakar, bound through the Old City in Jerusalem and shyly smile for the camera.
 
Sakar was diagnosed with a fatal hole in her heart and would have died without a highly-specialized surgery that she could not get in Iraq. In a most unlikely scenario, a Christian organization brought this Iraqi family to Israeli doctors for a new chance at life—a complicated procedure considering the two nations do not have diplomatic relations and where, in Iraq, the mere mention of Israel can arouse sometimes lethal suspicion.
 
But nationality and religion knew no borders on the operating table, where Sakar, a Kurdish Iraqi from a Moslem family, received life-saving treatment at the hands of a Jewish Israeli doctor. “The doctors here were like friends,” Abu Sakar told Israel Today, two weeks after his daughter’s surgery. “I didn’t feel any rejection or anything for being Iraqi.”
 
Abu Sakar could make a good ambassador for Israel if he would speak about it. However, out of the perpetual fear that plagues Iraq these days, he wouldn’t give his last name, he asked that his photo not be taken, he told friends and relatives that he was bringing his daughter to Italy and he spoke softly about his experiences, worried that word would reach his hometown and extremists would accuse the family of spying for the “Zionist enemy.”
 
But he proudly let his daughter Sakar enjoy her new-found energy and endurance as she toured the Old City. Sakar, who shyly averted her big brown eyes and zestful smile, was given the go-ahead to play like a regular child her age. She was already doing things she couldn’t before, such as climbing stairs and playing, without tiring.
 
“Thank God she’s fine,” her father said. “She can do anything she wants to do now.”
 
In Iraq, Sakar’s parents were given dismal chances for their daughter’s survival. They sold a house to pay for treatments, but were told doctors there could not save her. When they heard of Shevet Achim, a Christian organization that brings Iraqis and other Arabs to Israel for heart surgery, they applied for help.
 
Shevet Achim, which means brothers dwelling (together), intervenes on behalf of Arab families who have children with life-threatening heart diseases, helping them attain visas and transporting them to Israel and back home. In Israel, the families are housed by Save A Child’s Heart, the organization that provides the Israeli surgeons who perform the operations. Only one parent or guardian is allowed a visa to accompany their child.
 
The approval process can take months if it is on a “fast track,” said Donna Petrel of Shevet Achim, who escorts the families through border control and to their destination. The Israeli Embassy in Amman performs a background check on the patient and parent which sometimes takes longer than a child has to live.
 
Petrel said that a doctor wanted one child sent to Israel for surgery on the same day he examined him in Jordan. A visa was issued the same day for the child, but he had to be hospitalized in Amman as his father’s visa took another two weeks for approval.
 
Shevet Achim has brought 518 Arab children to Israel since 2003, including at least a dozen from Iraq, with dozens more seeking visa approval and funding. The organization, founded by Jonathan Miles, began by bringing Palestinian children with heart problems to Israeli hospitals. “We see it as our mission to be a vehicle of reconciliation between Israel and its neighbors,” said Alex Pettett of Shevet Achim.
 
Save a Child’s Heart has examined more than 4,000 children between 1996 and 2005 from third world countries including Nigeria, Tanzania, Congo, Ghana, Moldova, Russia, Vietnam and Ecuador.
 
While Abu Sakar was in Israel with his daughter, his son was injured in a terrorist attack in their village. Sakar was given the doctor’s approval to rush home with her father ahead of schedule to reunite with their family.
 
But he dreams of coming back. By the end of the trip Abu Sakar, whose grandmother on his father’s side is Jewish, said his perspective on Israel had completely reversed and that he wanted to live here. “I always thought that Israel was one way,” he said. “I didn’t expect this. The people are wonderful and kind.”

Jesus on the Jordan

JORDAN RIVER CROSSING - In an event that underscored the potential for peace between Israelis and Palestinians, about 150 Christians, Jews and Muslims gathered on the border between Israel and Jordan to pray at the eastern gateway to the Promised Land—a site packed with biblical and prophetic significance. 

“This is the eastern gateway opened up—this is no small matter,” said Karen Dunham who runs a ministry in Palestinian-ruled Jericho. 

The restricted area is opened only three times a year by the Israeli army for certain groups, including one led by Dunham, who comes every year. This year the army even suggested that she bring a bus load of new Muslim converts from her church to join the prayer meeting. The site is also opened once a year to both Catholics and Orthodox Christians to perform baptisms in the Jordan. 

An offering collected to help the Israeli army maintain the site was in turn given by the army to help Palestinians in Jericho. An Israel soldier guarding the border said that unlike the usual tension between Palestinians and Israelis, the atmosphere there and with Jericho residents is friendly. 

Dunham listed Biblical events that occurred at or near this location: Jesus was baptized in the Jordan River across from Jericho; Joshua brought the Israelites across the Jordan; Elijah went up in the chariot of fire; and David reconciled with Judah at Gilgal on the eastern edge of Jericho. 

Christians, Messianic Jews and Muslims joined in prayer and several were baptized in the Jordan. 

One soldier, asked whether there could be peace between Israel and the Palestinians, said, “At this place right now, anything is possible.” 

Some Palestinians from Jericho also joined in the worship. The women, although converts, still wore the Islamic headdress while some of the men are still Moslem. 

“I’m Muslim but what does it matter?” said Shadi Mahmoud Fuda. “I go to hear Karen everyday. She teaches the Bible and about God.” 

Iyad Abu Rashed said the atmosphere in Jericho has changed for the better in the three years that Dunham has been in Jericho. “Freedom has come not from Bush, Abu Mazen [i.e., Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas] and Arafat,” he said, “but it comes from Jesus.”

Night Watchmen

Giving up social lives and sunlight to pray through the night in Jerusalem
 
 
It is midnight and the busy city is finally winding down, traffic has dwindled and most residents have retired for the evening. But some are just beginning their day.
 
It’s the graveyard shift at Succat Hallel (Tabernacle of Praise), a 24/7 prayer ministry, and the diligent “night watchers” are taking over at the prayer room. They put in a six-hour shift of worship and intercession until one of the “day watchers” files in at 6 a.m.
 
While most people in Israel are sleeping, these Christian volunteers are keeping the nation covered in prayer. At least two houses of prayer in Jerusalem operate 24 hours a day, 7 days a week: Succat Hallel directly across from Mount Zion in West Jerusalem, and the Jerusalem House of Prayer for All Nations on the Mount of Olives, on the eastern side of the city.
 
But why pray through the night in addition to the other 18 hours of prayer?
 
“The devil is working 24 hours a day, so we cannot sleep,” said Sam Dewald, administrator of the Jerusalem House of Prayer.
 
It’s a challenge and a reward. “You work all day and are tired, then cover a night watch,” Dewald, who is from India, told Israel Today. “The thing that keeps us going is the calling of God.”
 
Lindy Heidler, head of the Succat Hallel night watch, sees their mission as “shaking the wicked” out of the night based on Job 38:12-13—stewarding the time when evil and occult practitioners operate more intensely. Heidler, from Denton, Texas, and her team, ranging in age from 22 to 34 years old, have completely revamped their lives to a night schedule. Giving up the social scene and sunlight, they head to bed and usually sleep until around 3 p.m., when the sun is already low in the winter sky.
 
Steve Hansen, who began night watches at Succat Hallel with his wife Tonya three years ago, provided biblical backing for praying through the night: The Lord called Samuel and appeared to Solomon, both times at night. He said God releases strategy and revelation in the night season, without the distractions of the day. Plus, Hansen said, they are preempting the Moslem call to prayer, which occurs before 5 a.m.
 
The Bible speaks of four night watches, each divided into three hours beginning at sundown or approximately 6 p.m. and ending at around 6 a.m.
 
Both Succat Hallel and the Jerusalem House of Prayer operate 24 hours a day. The JHOP is divided into two-hour watches covered by two intercessors per shift while Succat Hallel’s night watch is an intense, six-hour shift staffed by a team of about four to six.
 
“The night watch lifestyle is a complete sacrifice—it’s a fast,” Hansen said.
 
The watches ebb and flow, sometimes exhaustion takes over, but many times they are propelled by worship or a prayer focus. The Succat Hallel team takes a “devotional” break at around 2 or 3 a.m. where they pray individually and eat what is, for them, lunch.
 
The team has experienced various seasons. Before Ramadan one year, they went on a silent fast, not speaking to each other or praying out loud for an entire week. Each morning after four hours of individual prayer, the team headed out to the Western Wall at 4 a.m. where they prayed silently and then marched around the Old City, encircling the Temple Mount.
 
Dewald said the hours from 2 to 4 a.m. are the most powerful times of prayer: “Darkness is where evil spirits prevail, so we pray against it. The power of God flows more, especially during the night watches.”
 
And the night watch bears fruit. Many times they read the results of their prayers in the newspapers the next day. And for one, there have been no terrorist attacks since 2004 in Jerusalem, the most spiritually contested city in the world.
 
“This is the city where God will set up His throne and this is where He wants to be worshipped,” Hansen said. “It’s an eternal thing, but we’re to replicate in the natural what God is doing in eternity.”
 
“The Bible says that the Word of the Lord will go out from Zion [Jerusalem],” Heidler said. “There’s an anointing and authority here.”

Once Lost, Now They are Found

Indians believed to be a lost tribe return to Israel


CARMIEL – Just a few months ago, rockets were battering this well-manicured town in the North and residents were living in bomb shelters. But that didn’t stop a group of Indian Jews from moving here, motivated by their simple yet profound faith in one thing: Israel is the Promised Land.

“Our dream is to be in Israel. Hashem [the Lord, literally ‘the Name’] promised His people to be in one Land,” Dagan Zohmingtea Zolat said. “Our dream has been fulfilled.”

Many other immigrants gave a similar answer: They made aliyah (immigrated to Israel) because Israel, not India, is the Promised Land for the Jewish people. So now, 87 of the 218 who arrived in Israel this fall will live at an absorption center in Carmiel for one year while the rest are at two centers in Upper Nazareth.

The arrival of these Jews, known as the Bnei Menashe (sons of Manasseh), unlocks one of the age-old mysteries of the Lost Tribes of Israel.

“This Aliyah of the Bnei Menashe is nothing less than a miracle of biblical proportions,” said Michael Freund, the head of the Shavei Israel organization, which was instrumental in bringing the Indian Jews here. “Exactly as the prophets foretold, God is gathering his people from the four corners of the earth and we are witnessing the prophetic fulfillment right before our eyes.”

A New Life
 
After fanfare at the airport hailing their arrival, the welcome to Israel for the Bnei Menashe was a dingy government building—the absorption center where they would spend their first year. The rooms are like dorms and kids play in the hallway when organized activities are not taking place.

Their day begins with prayers at 6 a.m., breakfast, and Hebrew classes until early afternoon for the adults. Children are already attending Israeli schools. Volunteers at the center help the new immigrants open bank accounts, apply for health insurance and tackle other bureaucratic necessities. 

Yitzhak Kolni, who immigrated to Israel six years ago from India, is helping the new immigrants to settle in just like he did. “The ones here now are very Zionistic and religious,” said Kolni, who lives with the immigrants in the absorption center. 


Rivka Pachuau who arrived with her husband and three children, said the family’s preparation to make aliyah took several years and a lot of prayer. Now they are glad to be in Israel where they can observe Shabbat (the Sabbath) and keep kosher much more easily than in India.

Some of the immigrants joined relatives already here, but most left family behind. Zolat’s family was worried that he was leaving with his wife and three young children to live on the frontline.

“But we came here based on the promises of God,” he said. “Whether in India or here in Israel, Hashem protects us.”

Zolat also hopes to be an example to secular Israelis, encouraging them to return to a pure biblical faith like the Bnei Menashe.

The Long Road Home

As the mass wave of Russian aliyah was beginning to fade in the mid-1990s, the Bnei Menashe came to Freund’s attention.

“When I first heard about the Bnei Menashe 10 years ago, I didn’t buy into the whole lost tribe idea,” Freund said. “But knowing the struggle to retain their Jewish identity over the centuries, I believe they are members of the lost tribe.”

At the time, the government allowed 100 Jewish Indians to enter Israel as tourists each year and then undergo the official conversion process to Judaism. This influx of 218 marks the first time the Bnei Menashe have arrived in Israel already converted under Halacha (Jewish Law), which makes them eligible to receive new immigrant incentives including major tax breaks.

The Ministry of Interior froze Indian aliyah in 2003 until Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar sent a delegation of religious judges to meet the people of the remote northeastern Indian states of Mizoram and Manipur and learn of their customs. Based on their long-held traditions, Amar ruled that the 8,000 Indians were indeed descendants of Israel. 

The ruling was expected to clear the way for the resumption of aliyah, but there were complications. First, the Interior Ministry refused to register the expected newcomers as Israeli citizens. Then, the Absorption Ministry decided to withhold benefits from them. After a three year hiatus, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert personally intervened in June 2006, and aliyah finally resumed. 

But as the Bnei Menashe were set to embark upon their journey this summer, the war in the North broke out further delaying their return. They waited it out and then proceeded with their move to Israel.

“The Bnei Menashe are a blessing for Israel,’ Freund told Israel Today. “They were lost to us for centuries, but they never forgot who they were and where they came from.”

History of the Tribe

Long before the modern day opposition, the return to Israel had been a long, hard road for the lost tribe. Exiled by the Assyrians in 721 BC, the 10 tribes of Israel were scattered eastward. 

Today, the Bnei Menashe live in Manipur and Mizoram but look more like their Asian neighbors in Myanmar and Tibet than like Indians. About 90 years ago, British missionaries visited the region and discovered a people already living a biblical life. 

“They were convinced they stumbled upon one of the lost tribes,” Freund said. 

The Indians there practiced a biblical form of Judaism, were monotheistic, called God by His Hebrew name Yah, celebrated Passover and the other Feasts, observed the Sabbath, practiced circumcision and kept kosher.

Most of the community converted to Christianity after the missionaries’ visit, with the notable exception of the 7,000 Jews slated to make aliyah, following the 1,000 who already have. Nevertheless, all of the 750,000 residents of Mizoram—Jews and Christians alike—believe they are Bnei Menashe. 

“Not everyone in Mizoram is Jewish, but all are Bnei Menashe,” said Zolat, who believes that the Christian descendants of Manasseh will return to the roots of their faith. “They will know the name of God and the Messiah and that the Jewish people were always protected by God. They will be here in Israel. Some are already awakening.” 

The state of Mizoram is 90 percent Christian and so Zionistic that officials considered renaming it “the second State of Israel” and its main road “Zion Street.” 

Freund is focusing on bringing the professed and practicing Jews to Israel. And what about the Christians? “If those people are Bnei Menashe and are fated to be here,” he said, “God and the Messiah will do so.”