JERUSALEM, Israel – Against the backdrop of tense ceasefires in Gaza and Lebanon, the Israeli Government Press Office is hosting Christian Media from around the world at a summit to help Christian journalists understand the situation in Israel and fight the battle for truth.
Since the beginning of the October 7th, 2023, war, Israel contends that one of the biggest battlefronts is the information war.
Lital Shemesh from Israel’s Channel 14, told the journalists at a Monday summit kickoff, “The Christian Media Summit is not only a gathering of journalists and leaders, it is a bridge of solidarity between our peoples built to shared values, mutual respect, and an unbreakable bond grounded in faith and partnership with Israel.”
The 7th annual summit hosted by the G.P.O. is taking place for the first time since the war began two years ago.
G.P.O. Director Nitzan Chen called it “a summit where we hope you will understand the graveness of the events of the past two years and also come to understand the beauty of the people and incredible resilience that they have shown.”
Texas Pastor Trey Graham has been to Israel many times, yet he told CBN News that for first-timers, there are many surprises.
“[Visitors are] coming here to see things on the ground again for the first time, for some to be reinforced; for others, is the way to take back to whatever countries these journalists have come from to share what’s really happening on the ground,” he said.
One of the difficult issues for the rest of the world to grasp is that of biblical Judea and Samaria, also known as the West Bank, where Palestinians want to have a state.
The Christian media group visited Samaria and met with the governor, Yossi Dagan.
Dagan insisted that “if people come here and visit, especially in Judea and Samaria, the biblical heartland, they will understand the geography better, which helps you to understand military tactics and why giving up that high ground would be military suicide for this country.”
First-time visitor Timothy Weeraskera, an editor from Singapore, now better understands Israel’s security needs.
“One of the things that struck me, being on the ground in Samaria, is when you look across the armistice lines, you can see just how close the territories are,” Weeraskera observed. “And to see that Tel Aviv is just an artillery shell away from where we were, in Samaria, made me think a lot about Israel’s need to defend itself and the need to have a security buffer zone in that place.”
Jonathan Feldstein, an Israeli who heads a foundation that fosters understanding between Jews and Christians, does not believe that what is going on now in Gaza is a peace process.
“I think, unfortunately, that anyone who calls this a peace process is naive on steroids because it’s not peace. It’s a ceasefire, which we know in Arabic is a very common thing that they do in a Islam called a “hudna.” And they’re making a ceasefire in order to regroup and re-strengthen,” Feldstein said.
Feldstein, who lives in Judea, observed that it’s been strangely quiet there during the war.
“But we know that Hamas is there. We know Hamas is crying. We know that our Arab neighbors don’t love us, and all it will take is one little trigger for something else to start there,” he cautioned.
Feldstein would like to be optimistic, and he believes things will be quiet for a while, but in the long term, he feels that Israel has just kicked “the can down the road.”
“My oldest grandson just turned seven this week, and so in 12 or 13 years, he’ll be wearing an Army uniform and fighting against jihadi peers who are out to kill us the same way we saw two years ago,” he declared.
