As I traveled through Illinois on my way to speak at the Worldview Matters Conference earlier this month, an encounter along the way startled me. At a gas station, I was taken aback when the man working behind the counter suddenly pointed to my David’s Star necklace and asked, “Do you feel safe wearing that?” I was briefly on guard until the man reached to show me his own Jewish Chai pendant necklace tucked carefully into his shirt.
The man explained that he often asks individuals wearing prominent Jewish indicators whether they feel concerned for their safety. Having grown up in an area with a large Jewish population, he detailed his shock at witnessing antisemitism become mainstream in his state, even noting verbal abuse he had experienced for his Hebrew jewelry.
I marveled at the timing of this encounter, telling the man that I wear a David’s Star as a Christian to show my love for God’s chosen people, and that I was currently on my way to a conference to speak on antisemitism. Also by no coincidence, I was traveling to the event with Tiauna Lodewyk, a representative for the Friends of Israel Gospel Ministry (FOI). As stunned as we were to be in the conversation, the man was equally stunned to encounter Christians actively involved in defending the Jewish people and their nation-state. He thanked us repeatedly, and we left him with a Gospel-centered FOI pamphlet explaining Christian support for Israel, which he gleefully took.
That remarkable encounter showcased the importance of the conference message I was about to deliver, which focused largely on how the media plays a critical role in constructing an antisemitic worldview in society.
The Jewish people in the United States and across the globe no longer feel safe leaving their homes wearing anything overtly Jewish—and the media has played no small role in crafting this hostility through the vicious demonization of the Jewish State and the promotion of anti-Jewish blood libels.
Despite the troubling rise of Jew-hatred in our culture, the news media is not reining in its propaganda—they’re doubling down.
Just last week, the Israeli foreign ministry reacted to a disturbing article published by the New York Times, calling it “one of the worst blood libels ever to appear in the modern press.” The column accused Israel of ferocious sexual violence against Palestinians, including a warped claim that the Israeli guards had trained dogs to violate arab prisoners. One particularly egregious quote from the article insisted: “The horrific abuse inflicted on Israeli women on Oct. 7 now happens to Palestinians day after day.”
Israel responded to the fabricated accusation harshly, “In an unfathomable inversion of reality, and through an endless stream of baseless lies, [New York Times] propagandist Nicholas Kristof turns the victim into the accused. Israel – whose citizens were the victims of the most horrific sexual crimes committed by Hamas on October 7, and whose hostages were later subjected to further sexual abuse – is portrayed as the guilty party. This publication is no coincidence. It is part of a false and well-orchestrated anti-Israel campaign.”
As noted by The Huckabee Post, many believe that this New York Times column may have sparked a march “scarily reminiscent of Germany in the ‘30s” days later, where “masked protesters, of the same type we see on college campuses and Antifa rallies, marched through an Orthodox Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn, chanting, ‘Zionism will fail.’”
From increasing acts of terrorism targeting Jews across the globe to accosting a gas station worker in a small Illinois town for wearing a Hebrew necklace, the fruit of the media’s antisemitic lies is clear, and the impact is vast.
And yet, the stark contrast between ambassadors for Christ and the world around us also has a vast impact. As the world is enveloped under a dark cloud of Jew-hatred, Christians have an incredible opportunity to shine the light of the Gospel, illuminating the love of Jesus to Jewish people around us.
