On Monday, Oct. 7, my organization, CURE, Center for Urban Renewal and Education, co-hosted with Michigan Lighthouse Ministries a press conference with more than 50 pastors from across the State of Michigan, noting the atrocities committed last year by Hamas terrorists against Israeli citizens and expressing solidarity with the State of Israel.
We chose a church in the state of Michigan for this program because Michigan is home to the largest Arab American population in the country.
It is also home to Rep. Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian American representative in the House of Representatives and one of the nation's most strident voices against Israel.
Were these clergy, mostly Black, expressing opposition to Arab Americans? Certainly not. On the contrary, their support of the Jewish state, and the values it embodies and expresses, is an expression of support for the welfare and betterment of all mankind.
Of great concern to these Christian evangelicals is the cloud of darkness spreading and enveloping so much of our world today.
The miraculous return of the Jewish people to their historical homeland after 2,000 years in dispersion, and their transformation of desert and swamp into a thriving modern state, with per capita income higher than most European countries, shines laser-like light into the thick dark cloud of evil around us.
Hamas terrorists noted Oct. 7 by firing missiles into Israel, saying that, given the opportunity, they would commit the same atrocities again and again.
By atrocities, we're talking about murder, rape, beheadings, burning of babies, mutilation of corpses.
How is it that there is sympathy for this depravity?
Iran, which provides the billions financing Hamas, Hezbollah, and other terrorist organizations had, per tradingeconomics.com, just $5,740 per capita GDP in 2023. This is just 13.5% of the $42,674 per capita GDP of Israel, despite Iran having the fourth largest holdings of oil reserves in the world.
The difference is that Israel is about choosing life and personal responsibility and creativity, and Iran is about a government stealing the wealth of its citizens to finance a hateful, destructive ideology.
Similarly, the Hamas terrorists. The billions infused into Gaza over the years from Iran, but also from European countries and from the USA, was used to fund terror rather than build a country and create wealth.
When I first visited Israel, I saw the similarities of the culture of blame and denial of personal responsibility among the Palestinians that have caused so much destruction in America's own inner cities. We see a corrupt political leadership exploiting the worst tendencies in people by attributing their suffering to others, fostering a culture of blame, rather than taking personal responsibility for their own lives.
The Black clergy that gathered in Michigan on Oct. 7 did so to stand for truth and to stand for a better world.
Inscribed on America's Liberty Bell in Philadelphia are the words from the book of Leviticus in the Hebrew Bible, "Proclaim Liberty throughout all the land unto all the Inhabitants thereof." The bell was commissioned in the state of Pennsylvania in 1751 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of William Penn's first constitution of the state in 1701. Penn observed, "If we will not be governed by God, we must be governed by tyrants."
This is the message our pastors convey to a world swimming in darkness.
When our own country was attacked by Muslim terrorists on Sept. 11, 2001, evangelical pastors pleaded that the nation do its own soul-searching for its sins. They were chastised for saying this.
But we see, over the 23 years since then, those sins continue to weaken our nation.
The appeal of our pastors is unwavering support for the one Jewish state, for the Bible we have received from the Jewish nation, and to end, everywhere, the sick and evil culture of blame.