The Road to Hell is Paved with Good Intentions

I found it alarming on October 24th, when I received an email from IMRA, the Independent Media Review, that the, "US Consul General Launches campaign to attract Palestinian students to United States."

Is this really in the realm of good intentions when Palestinians are raised cradle to the grave on hatred of Israelis and Jews, and currently American college campuses are ground zero for the growing American anti-Israel and anti-Jew movements? This is not just my perception but backed up by a ‘Devastating’ survey shows huge loss of Israel support among Jewish college students as  "Brand Israel Group raises the alarm on a widening gap in the US between older supporters and the increasingly pro-Palestinian next generation" - a June 21, 2017 headline from the Times of Israel.

First, off, let's note that US Consul General Donald Blome who launched the campaign in Ramallah to encourage more Palestinian students to study in the United States, is a 2015 Obama-appointment who is known to cater to West Bank and East Jerusalem Palestinians with consular services and assistance while ignoring Jews who live in the same area.

According to the IMRA report, the #PalStudyUSA2018 campaign "will include social media outreach to identify Palestinian participants for an elite 'boot camp' examining all aspects of study in the U.S., a series of week-long information sessions with Amideast at American Spaces in Jerusalem, Ramallah, Salfeet, Nablus, and Gaza; and a series of television, print, and social media stories by Palestinian journalists on Palestinian students studying in the United States which will air later this year. The sessions, for potential students and their parents, will focus on admissions, testing, and financial aid, highlighting the ongoing educational advising services provided by the Consulate’s partner Amideast."

It should be noted that Amideast is an outgrowth of an anti-Zionist organization called the “American Friends of the Middle East”. It is also the recipient of funding from George Soros (as documented by NGO Monitor).

"Consul General Blome announced a number of new higher education cooperation initiatives at the event, including a $1 million project funded by the Middle East Partnership Initiative to support cooperation between Notre Dame and Palestinian university partners to build a shared research hub; a $400,000 project between Palestine Polytechnic University and University of Michigan to promote critical thinking and entrepreneurship; and a $100,000 Tech Camp with the State Department’s Bureau of International Information Programs and Partners for Sustainable Development to build teams of university students that will tackle problems provided by Palestinian businesses."

Do we need MORE Palestinians on US college campuses/ We are importing even more anti-Israel voices into the already dire environment? This should be prayed against and challenged, because it will not produce a more stable Palestinian economic situation because it does not address the anti-Israeli/anti-Jew indoctrination that is rampant in Palestinian society.

According to the co-founder of Brand Israel Group Fern Oppenheim, on college campuses, “We are allowing Israel to be defined by its detractors.”  There is no longer nuance in campus conversations about Israel, she said. Instead, the “atmosphere is oppressor versus victim. Israel is just another symbol of this.”

The Brand Israel Group survey discovered that 31% of Jewish students reported experiencing anti-Semitism and 59% of them linked the incidents as being linked to anti-Israel attitudes. The incidents, however, did not sway their general opinions of Israel. In fact, between the 2010 and the 2016 surveys, Jewish college students dropped 27 percentage points on the question of whether they lean towards the Israeli side of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

This is a real problem in the US, not just among the Jews on college campuses, but in general among the Christians everywhere. Young Christians generally dismiss the support of older Christians toward Israel as unenlightened old think. That is happening on several levels from views of homosexuality, racial issues and the subject of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Like the lady said, we are allowing those issues to be defined humanistic values rather than Biblical values.

The younger generations are being greatly swayed by social justice issues which lean strongly toward the Palestinian  narrative that Israel is the aggressor in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Not only that, but young Christians are not being taught God's exciting vision of the one new man in Messiah of Ephesian 2:14-17 "For He Himself is our peace, who has made both one...so as to create in Himself one new man from the two, thus making peace, and that He might reconcile them both to God in one body through the cross.

As long as the Church cannot see the full vision of what God is doing which heavily includes Israel, those who are most influencing the younger generation of Christians will play a part in the deterioration of Israel support in the American public.

We must pray for Christian young people to begin to understand Biblical social justice, and to catch the vision of the one new man with the body of Christ.  Many of the mega churches in America are full of excited young Christians and almost none of them have a vision for the salvation of Israel even on their radar. This must change and we must address it.