Where’s the Coverage? Christians Support Israel

The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg recently wrote a column “Israel Relies on Evangelicals at its Moral and Political Peril” in which he stated:

Evangelical support always struck me as a narrow reed on which to rest Israel’s fortunes in America, and not only because many evangelicals, in my experience, have no love for Jews as autonomous people, but merely as vehicles for the Christian redemption. I also thought it was odd to build a strategy around evangelicals because evangelicals don’t represent a majority of Americans.

Now, according to an important op-ed in The Times by a young evangelical pastor, it seems as if evangelicals represent fewer Americans than ever. I hope those Israelis who believe they can ignore the wishes of their liberal brethren (and their increasingly-former allies among non-Jewish liberals in the U.S.) read the whole thing.

Keep in mind that the op-Ed Goldberg cites does not even mention Israel. Still, in the wake of the October 5 letter to Congress from a group of Christian leaders alleging “widespread Israeli human rights violations committed against Palestinians,” it may seem that support for Israel in the broader community is diminishing.

This could be because the media refuse to cover the many Christians who do support Israel.

A recent poll conducted by The Pew Research Center after Pillar of Defense demonstrates that Americans, the vast majority of whom are Christian, sympathize with Israel at five times the rate they sympathize with the Palestinians. In fact, data shows that since 1978, support for Israel has gone up five percentage points while support for the Palestinians has gone down four points. CAMERA could find no media coverage of this important survey except in the Israeli press.

Furthermore, last month, Protestants from around the globe came together in Jerusalem to create the Protestant Consultation on Israel and the Middle East (PCIME). They issued “The Jerusalem Declaration” which vowed support for Israel and put that support in a broader context:

The future of 2,000-year-old Christian communities, and the future of pluralism, are at stake in the Middle East today. We cannot afford to ignore this big picture in which the conflicts around Israel occur. We are committed to stand with Israel and the Jewish people, as we also stand with persecuted Christians and other minorities in the region.

In attendance at this meeting was CAMERA’s Christian Media Analyst Dexter Van Zile, but the meeting and the important declaration were ignored by the popular press.

So, while the media relish the opportunity to report any bad news for Israel, when it comes to the enduring support for Israel among people of good faith, we have to ask… Where’s the coverage?