On October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorists killed over 1,200 Israelis on the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War. The attacks marked the single greatest act of violence against Jews since the Holocaust, with Israel immediately declaring war against the terror group.
Over 250 hostages from a dozen nations were taken into Gaza by Hamas. Most were Israeli, including women, children, infants, and elderly. It is believed that less than 20 of them are still alive, although Hamas continues to hold the bodies of those who have died as part of their psychological warfare against the Jewish people and a means to inflict more cruelty on their families.
As Israel called up reservists and warned civilians in Gaza to flee to safe areas ahead of ground assaults, pro-Palestinian protests launched worldwide, calling for an immediate cease-fire. Protesters stopped traffic on bridges in New York and San Francisco, while others were arrested storming the Capitol in Washington.
At elite college campuses in the U.S., academic leaders justified the brutal actions of Hamas, equating rape with resistance. Some were criticized, and college presidents at Harvard, Columbia, and U Penn resigned over anti-Israel rhetoric, while others remain under pressure.
A new distinction also became popular during this time. To avoid the label of anti-Semitism, those on the left made a distinction between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. Anti-Zionism is the view that opposes Zionism, or the belief that the Jewish people have the right to establish their own nation. While the distinction became popular among many liberals, the view does not escape an anti-Semitic worldview.
Jewish conservative commentator Dennis Prager rightly critiqued this view by the illustration of another nation: “Imagine a group of people who work to destroy Italy because, they claim, Italy’s origins are illegitimate. Imagine further that these people maintain that of all the countries in the world, only Italy doesn’t deserve to exist. Then imagine that these people vigorously deny that they are anti-Italian. Would you believe them? Now substitute “Israel” for “Italy,” and you’ll understand the dishonesty and absurdity of the argument that one can be anti-Zionist—that is, against the existence of a Jewish state—but not be anti-Jew. Yet, that is precisely what anti-Zionists say. They say that Israel’s existence is illegitimate. They don’t say this about any other country in the world, no matter how bloody its origins. And then they get offended when they’re accused of being anti-Jew.” 
This is precisely the argument the mainstream media often makes in referring to Israel as an apartheid state, comparing it with the racism of South Africa of the last century. Rather than affirming the right of the Jewish people to live in their historical homeland and establish a nation, the media and political left argue for either a so-called two-state solution or even advocate for removing Israel from the map.
Iran directly supports Hamas. Iran has been waging a war against what it calls the “Little Satan,” Israel, for decades, and Iran has been waging a war against the “Great Satan,” America. On October 23, 1983, I preached the Gospel to the Marines in Beirut, giving them the Christmas gift of a small Bible. A young soldier, 18, from Worcester, Massachusetts, asked me if I could send a message to his mom. So, I had my camera crew tape it. He said, “Dear Mom, I know you’ve been praying for me. I won’t be coming home for Christmas. But I have a Christmas gift for you. I’ve just accepted Jesus Christ as my personal Savior. Merry Christmas, Mom.” That Marine and 240 others were dead the next morning.
Since then, Iran has conducted ongoing attacks on numerous countries in a long-term effort to exert influence in the region. A 2021 State Department report observed that in that year alone, “Iran pursued or supported terrorist attacks against Israeli targets…including a thwarted January plot to attack an Israeli embassy in East Africa, a January bomb attack outside the Israeli embassy in New Delhi for which the Indian government said the IRGCQF was responsible, and a disrupted attempt to attack an Israeli businessman in Cyprus.”
The United States presently has the USS Eisenhower Carrier Strike Group in the Red Sea south of Israel, including an array of weapons and 5,000 sailors. The U.S. also has a nuclear-powered Ohio-class submarine in the area, the USS Ford Carrier Strike Group in the Mediterranean Sea, which includes three ballistic missile defense ships and four additional warships. The Pentagon deployed 1,200 additional troops to the Middle East since October 7 to act as a deterrent and protect 45,000 U.S. service members and contractors throughout the Middle East. Despite the show of force, Iran has attacked U.S. troops over 40 times since October 7, 2023. A reported 56 U.S. military personnel have been injured. The U.S. has responded with airstrikes hitting targets in Syria and over 800 targets in Yemen.
During one of my many trips to Israel following the October 7 attacks, I spoke with four individuals who told amazing stories of divine intervention. I heard a story of a woman whose kibbutz was attacked by Hamas terrorists. She lifted her hands and started declaring in the mighty name of the Lord that God would blind their eyes. They were entering her room, another room where her mother was, and a third room where the grandchild was. The terrorists went up to all three doors with their weapons but didn’t open any of the doors, nor did they fire through any of them. When the Israeli military came, they saw the deaths of many near her home, and she told the story of lifting her hands and crying out to God.
Another woman in Jerusalem was in a terror attack. As the terrorists were firing in her direction, she shouted out loud in Hebrew Psalm 121. It says, “The Lord will keep you from all harm—he will watch over your life” (v. 7). Not a bullet touched her. A third soldier told the story that his battalion was in a line late at night, going into a highly explosive area, when suddenly he saw a dove flying towards his face. He thought he was seeing things because he had hardly slept for 36 hours. Suddenly, the dove stopped within a foot of his face in midair. He felt he was imagining the dove, so he stuck his rifle out to poke in the direction of the dove. At that moment, he realized the dove was perched on a tripwire. Had it not been for the dove, he would have hit the tripwire, detonating enough C4 explosives to kill his entire battalion.
Another soldier was eating a can of tuna fish. He struck a match to the oil to warm the tuna fish, and it caught on fire. He threw it down into a nearby tunnel shaft, not realizing it contained explosives. It blew up the explosives, and all the terrorists came out of the tunnel, surrendering over his can of tuna fish! Another soldier had the book of Psalms in his front pocket by his heart. When terrorists shot at him during the battle, a bullet lodged into the book of Psalms and saved his life.
Israel is under attack by Iran and its demon-possessed proxies, but this is nothing new. This battle has continued for thousands of years since the day Abraham pitched his tent on Mount Sinai and made a covenant with God, but I’ve never seen the battle as fierce as it is at this present moment.
On October 7, the codename for the attacks by Hamas was the Al-Aqsa Flood after the Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount. This is where Satan declared that he would exalt himself above the Most High (Isaiah 14:13). Despite the agony Israel is going through, I can hear the prophet Zechariah crying out, “I will set out to destroy all the nations that attack Jerusalem” (Zechariah 12:9).
Israel is a tiny country about the size of New Jersey, the fifth smallest state in the U.S. The survivors of the Holocaust poured into Israel as human skeletons, crying and rejoicing as Israel was reborn in March of 1948. The day they declared independence, Israel was attacked. There has been war ever since. The Jewish people believed that neither they nor their children would ever again experience what they had experienced in the Holocaust. But they did on October 7.
Israel is God’s dream. The title deed belongs to Him. A spirit of anti-Semitism has swept the globe in a way that I’ve never seen in my lifetime. You and I cannot be silent.
Like Esther, we have come into the kingdom for such a time as this. Satan has tried time and time again to wipe the Jews off the planet. Pharaoh attempted it. Hitler attempted it. Now, Iran is on the brink of going nuclear and is attempting it. You and I, as Israel’s last line of defense, must do everything humanly possible to help. There’s never been a time in my life when our ministry has done more for the nation of Israel. I can tell you the people of Israel are very grateful, but the battle is not over yet.
For me, the battle against anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism is personal. I have been the target of an assassination. Richard Snell, a member of The Covenant, The Sword and the Arm of the Lord—a white supremacist—aimed to take me off this earth. On June 30, 1984, while I was working with Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, Snell attempted to assassinate me because I supported Israel and the Jewish people’s right to a state in their historic homeland.
Sadly, Richard Snell was labeled as a Christian extremist, even though he was not a real Christian. Real Christians believe in the promise, the truth that God has given the land of Israel to the Jewish people. Real Christians are friends of Israel and friends of the Jewish people. Snell believed that the United States was being taken over by the Jewish people and other minorities at the expense of “white Americans.”
My father was also an anti-Semite who cursed the Jewish people and believed in anti-Jewish conspiracy theories. Their ideology is ignorant and intolerant at best; the Jewish community is one of the biggest success stories in American assimilation. American Jews serve in public service roles nationwide and play an active and positive role in the country’s future. The Jewish community, a tiny minority in the United States, has always contributed more to society than is possibly known.
In my experience, I have faced too many Christians who are not educated on the Christian’s real role in assisting the Jewish people. That is why I have dedicated my life to defending Israel and the Jewish people. Yet much work remains. Even near my own home, anti-Semitism has been deadly. In January 2022, I woke up Saturday morning to drive down Pleasant Run, near where I live, to my favorite Starbucks. As I drove, I passed Congregation Beth Israel as I do every morning. It was around 11 a.m. I am very familiar with the congregation and have participated in many of their services online through Facebook, but suddenly, I saw police cars rushing in every direction on Pleasant Run.
I asked someone nearby what was happening and was told there was a terrorist on Pleasant Run at the Beth Israel synagogue who was threatening to blow it up. The man, later identified as a 44-year-old UK citizen named Malik Faisal Arkram reportedly had a bomb and held four Jews as hostages. More than 200 local, state, and federal law enforcement officers converged on the Beth Israel synagogue. The terrorist had been making statements that were going out live on Facebook from the synagogue that he would be going to Jannah, the Muslim concept of heaven. He was shouting about dying and not liking police officers or Jews. Why would such a thing happen? The answer is simple: Anti-Semitism. It’s being fueled and fed, and it gets Jews killed.
That terrorist was originally from Pakistan. Anti-Semitism doesn’t begin with a gun in the hands of a terrorist. It begins with young children being brainwashed to hate Jews. Some of the attackers of Jews are not Muslims, like the ones who attacked the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh and the Chabad of Poway synagogue in California, but the vast majority are Muslims.
We must acknowledge the root of the problem and stop the media terror. The media often fuels anti-Semitism and lionizes these demon-possessed individuals. Terrorists are the only group in the world that gets free media. Everyone else must pay for it. The founder of Israeli intelligence, Isser Harel, described it this way. “You kill a fly and rejoice. We kill one, and 100 come to the funeral.” You can be sure there will be many more recruited who want to become martyrs and be famous. We must stop media terror by cutting it off at its roots.
The sad and inexplicable truth is this: Anti-Semitism is alive and well on planet Earth, and the United States is not immune. For me, all of this is very personal. My mother named me after her grandfather, Rabbi Mikel Katz-Nelson. A rabid and bigoted mob burned him to death inside his synagogue in what is now Belarus, along with 2,000 Jewish men, women, and children.
Many people have asked me why I built the Friends of Zion Center and Museum in Jerusalem. The answer is quite simple: to combat Jew hatred. My work began when I was 11 years old. My father, an anti-Semite, beat my Jewish mother, declaring her to be a whore. My father, a Christian man, insisted I was not his son. My greatest shame was that I could not protect my mother, and when I tried, my father picked me up by the neck and nearly strangled me. At that early age, I knew that my life’s work would be to defend the Jewish people.
Anti-Zionism has been an Ebola virus of anti-Semitism. The sickness has mutated from the pogroms, the Nazi Party, and Hitler, and now it’s being fueled and fed by radical Islam.
The face of evil has been revealed, and it is up to us to respond.
