The largest Christian evangelical group in the Holy Land said Thursday that it intends to push back against European sanctions on Israeli communities in the biblical heartland.
The move comes a week after 11 European countries and Canada announced coordinated plans to ban the import of goods originating from Judea and Samaria.
The International Christian Embassy Jerusalem said it would use its annual Feast of the Tabernacles gathering in the city this month to take a strong stand with Jewish communities against the sanctions.
The week-long event, which coincides with the Jewish festival of Sukkot, gets underway on September 25, with some 3,000 Christian pilgrims from over 70 nations. The gathering is traditionally the city’s single largest tourist event of the year.
“We are excited to be celebrating the biblical festival of Sukkot once more with Christians from around the world,” said ICEJ President Jürgen Bühler. “Yet our Feast also is taking place amid the series of extremely troubling sanctions being imposed by European nations on Jews living in Judea and Samaria, the Golan and even Jerusalem.”
“These discriminatory measures are intended to choke out the existence of Jewish communities which remarkably came back to life in Israel’s ancient heartland after centuries of Jewish exile among merciless Gentile nations,” he added. “These acts of economic warfare targeting hundreds of thousands of Israeli Jews are racist and far too reminiscent of past Jewish boycotts for us to remain silent.”
The United Kingdom, France, and Canada committed to introducing comprehensive bans on goods produced in Israeli communities over the Green Line. Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Ireland, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, and Sweden joined a joint statement backing national or broader European restrictions on such trade.
Intentional breaches of the Dutch trade ban on Israeli settlement goods carry a maximum criminal penalty of up to six years’ imprisonment.
Defying the legal ban, the Christian group, which has won accolades from the Israeli government for its years of faith-based support for the Jewish State, will be offering products for sale from the biblical heartland in the event’s main exhibit hall, and arranging tours for Christians from Europe and elsewhere to visit shops, wineries and Bible sites in the region.
“We cannot just be silent and let this happen,” David Parsons, ICEJ Senior Vice President & Spokesman, told JNS on Thursday. “We got to push back.”
The annual evangelical celebration highlights how faith-based support for Israel by millions of Bible believers around the world serves as a counterweight to international opprobrium in the West over the Gaza war triggered by the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas massacre.
Local community leaders affected by the sanctions and the US Ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, a Baptist minister and ardent supporter of Israel, are expected to address the gathering.
Besides its focus on the sanctions, this year’s event will also highlight the group’s efforts over the past three years to help the Israeli communities along the Gaza border recover and rebuild their homes and villages following the Oct. 7 invasion.
The largest evangelical organization in Israel first held a public celebration marking the Feast of Tabernacles in Jerusalem in 1980 and has hosted the event every autumn since, in times of both peace and war.
