I traveled to Israel on May 14 during the Gaza War to defend the State of Israel against a vicious anti-Semitic Muslim Brotherhood attack against Israel in the media. I mobilized the top evangelicals in America to film and express their support for the State of Israel and had scheduled a global Facebook live special that I had produced.
The leaders included the Rev. Franklin Graham, son of the famous evangelist Billy Graham, along with Christian Broadcasting Network President Gordon Robertson, former President of the 22-million member Southern Baptist Convention and Pastor Jack Graham, First Baptist Dallas Pastor Robert Jeffress, former presidential candidate and Gov. Mike Huckabee, actors Jon Voight and Pat Boone and numerous other major evangelical leaders representing tens of millions of evangelicals.
I was informed on the plane to Israel that my Facebook page the Jerusalem Prayer Team, with 77 million followers, had been attacked by an anti-Zionist Muslim Brotherhood group and we had become a victim of cyber terrorism. The organized attack included more than 2.1 million anti-Semitic hate messages posted on the page in a 72-hour period.
Many of the posts included death threats. Others said Hitler should have killed all the Jews. Facebook had the power to stop those comments from being posted, but they didn't. My team made many appeals to Facebook for help but were ignored.
To our shock, instead of Facebook blaming the perpetrator, they punished us, the victim, and shut our page down. We are the largest religious Facebook page in the world and without a doubt the largest pro-Israel page worldwide. We had recruited more than 14 million Muslim young people as followers in an attempt to win their hearts and their minds to combat antisemitism.
I brought camera crews into the warzone to film so we could tell the truth about Sderot and Ashkelon and show the suffering that the Jewish people were experiencing because the media was only spotlighting the suffering that Muslims were experiencing, and blaming Israel. It was Jew-hatred, fundamentally fueled by the Muslim Brotherhood’s anti-Zionism.
When I was then informed that Ra’am, an anti-Zionist party, was joining the government, I was outraged. To think that a pro-Muslim Brotherhood, anti-Zionist party would be part of a Jewish State was more than I could stand.
I've been mobilizing support for the State of Israel since the days of Menachem Begin, and have stayed out of politics. As a matter of fact, Shimon Peres dearly loved me and I dearly loved him. He was my international chairman and commissioned the Friends of Zion award that has been given to 22 world leaders, including two U.S. presidents. My policy has always been not to focus on the right-wing or the left-wing, but always focus on the bird, Israel.
Yet on this particular occasion, I came out strong and hard, criticizing the government that was being formed because it included a pro-Muslim Brotherhood, anti-Zionist party. I apologized at a press conference for those comments because I realized that it was wrong for me to criticize Naftali Bennett, who has been a very strong Zionist.
Regretfully, while I was in Israel in May, there were media organizations that made false statements of what I had said. As a journalist for more than 40 years, I know the game the media plays. It's called, “If it bleeds, it leads.” Sometimes secular media makes up fake news simply for headlines.
I've dedicated my life to supporting the State of Israel—and I will not stop now. I have built a $100 million campus, the Friends of Zion Heritage Center in Jerusalem, to create a home for the 800 million evangelicals of the world and Israel. They are, I believe, Israel's best friends. As I have always done over the decades, I will continue to mobilize support for the State of Israel with all of the evangelical organizations that I have founded.
Last year, the Friends of Zion Heritage Center hosted the Government Press Office Christian Media Summit. We broke all records for the State of Israel with 7.5 million viewers. On Tuesday, Nov. 16, I hosted the Beauty Pageant for Holocaust survivors at my Friends of Zion Heritage Center Campus. More than 60 media organizations covered it and there have been thousands of articles around the world showing Israel's greatness.
On the Friends of Zion Heritage Center campus in Jerusalem, I'm building an Ambassador Institute to train Christian ambassadors to support Israel's brand in their countries and combat antisemitism. I'm building the first evangelical Research Institute and think tank to provide strategic, real-time data to universities, Christian media outlets and churches throughout the world and the State of Israel, along with building a 21st-century social network platform that cannot be gamed by anti-Zionist Jew-haters.
As an example, Ayelet Shaked, the Minister of Interior, sent me a short three-minute video on Jerusalem. In two weeks, we had more than 21 million people view it.
I wish Prime Minister Bennett as well as Yair Lapid, Minister of Foreign Affairs, God's richest blessings and great success. My Jerusalem Prayer Team members will continue to lift them up in prayer. We will stand 100% behind the State of Israel.
Mike Evans is a #1 New York Times bestselling author with 108 published books. He is the founder of the Friends of Zion Museum in Jerusalem that has hosted Israel’s Christian Media Summit viewed by more than 7.5 million people and the recent Holocaust Survivor Beauty Pageant. The late President Shimon Peres, Israel’s ninth president, was the organization’s first international chairman.