by Mimi Kirk. June 10, 2025

Last week Israeli channel ILTV broadcast a segment titled, “Can You Be Jewish and Believe in Jesus?” The interview with Texas-based Christian Zionist author Samuel Wearp in part concerned the May 21 killing of two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington, DC, particularly that of Yaron Lischinsky due to his identity as a Messianic Jew. Lischinsky’s mother is Christian and his father Jewish, and when Yaron was 16 the family moved from Germany to Jerusalem, where they attended the Messianic congregation Melech Ha’Mlachim, or “King of Kings;” experts estimate dozens of such congregations in Israel. 

An ostensible purpose of the ILTV segment was to address Jewish viewers’ fears of both Messianic Jews and Christian Zionists, whose propensity to proselytize Christianity causes anxiety among some Jewish Israelis. Ultra-Orthodox lawmakers, for instance, regularly submit bills for consideration that would punish Christian proselytizers with jail time. 

Host Maayan Hoffman asked Wearp to clarify the difference between Messianic Judaism and Christian Zionism. Wearp explained that Messianic Jews are Jews who believe in Jesus, in contrast to his identity as a Christian Zionist (“I’m not a Jew, I’m just a Christian,” he said), but stressed that whatever one’s belief system Christians and Jews must work together to support Israel against their common enemy. The words “Palestinian,” “Muslim,” or “Islam” were barely uttered in the 30-minute conversation – and never mind the Palestinian Christian community, of course. Rather, Wearp invoked Hitler and “the left” as proxies for Palestinians: 

If we look back to the time of the Holocaust, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a Christian pastor, a non-Jew, David Fogel was a Jewish believer in Jesus, and then we had Anne Frank, who was, you know, just a Jew. All three were killed by Hitler. And so, for me, we can get into the nuances of ‘you believe this and I believe this,’ the reality is that Hitler would have killed all of us and we see now that the ideas of the left and what’s being promoted against Israel is beginning to pay the price.

Wearp’s response was savvy in that it sidestepped any uncomfortable differences between the Jewish and Christian communities, including the question of proselytization. 

Matthew Taylor, senior Christian scholar at the Institute for Islamic, Christian, and Jewish Studies in Baltimore, has chronicled the history of Messianic Judaism, noting that in the wake of the 1967 Naksa hundreds to thousands of Jews in the United States were energized by Christian Zionist ideas and converted to Christianity. Today, the resulting Messianic Jewish congregations in the US, Israel, Russia, and Ukraine “pick and choose from Judaism, but the base is Christianity,” he said. “It’s a proselytizing movement that wants to bring Jews into faith in Jesus.” 

While US Christian Zionists have traditionally adhered to more “premillennial” beliefs that look to the eventual second coming of Jesus as the time for Jews to convert to Christianity, Christian Zionism’s recent drift toward more charismatic forms as detailed by Joseph Williams in his 2015 article, “The Pentecostalization of Christian Zionism,” translates to an increased emphasis on building a Kingdom of God on earth now – and this also means an emphasis on the contemporary conversion of Jews. 

These more charismatic leanings in Christian Zionism accord with Messianic Judaism, whose communities are predominantly charismatic – and whose roots, after all, are also based in the conversion of Jews to Christianity. Such proselytizing ideologies naturally cause concern among Jewish Israelis. 

The ILTV segment looked to allay such concerns in a time when, as host Hoffman lamented, Israel has “lost the diplomatic war.” “We’re seeing so many nations come against us more and more as we continue to try and fight for our security,” she said. 

Hoffman’s fretful words conveyed a need for reassurance that Israel still has friends that will stand by it as it commits genocide, and Wearp obliged. He called on Messianic Jews and Christian Zionists to “love Jews for who they are.” “Don’t love them because you think you can change them,” he admonished and then assured Hoffman, “There is a movement of Christians who are coming out and saying, we support you, we want you to be the best Jews that you can be, we believe in your mission and your vision.” 

Wearp then called on young evangelicals, who are polling increasingly critical of Israel, to join the fight for “God’s land.” “Before you have a peace process you have to have a war process,” he said. “[You have to] be willing to give your life, just like Yaron and Sarah.” With this final comment Wearp placed Yaron as a Messianic Jew firmly on “our side” – a move Hoffman echoed in a follow-up article in Ynet News when she quoted Rabbi Tuly Weisz, who runs an organization that fosters connections between Jews and Christian Zionists. Hoffman paraphrased Weisz’s view that Yaron’s death “demonstrates that, because of their shared dedication to Israel, Jewish and Christian Zionists now face a common fate. It is a blood covenant.” 

Such declarations should be understood as an attempt to solidify, at all costs, the “Judeo-Christian” partnership – one that hinges on the erasure and genocide of the Palestinian people.