ARTICLES

By Arlene Bridges Samuels

A week ago in Queens, New York, anti-Zionist protesters gathered outside a synagogue where a Jewish school was in session. Their chant pierced the air: “Say it loud, say it clear, we support Hamas here.” The words may have sounded rhythmic, but their message was deadly. Behind the rhyme was a call for violence, glorifying the massacre carried out by Hamas against Israel on October 7, 2023.

These voices of hate are not isolated. They are accompanied by actions. In Jackson, Mississippi, the historic Beth Israel synagogue was set ablaze, one of twenty-one synagogues around the world targeted or burned since October 7. The hateful words of the past have reignited into literal fires.

The language of hatred did not end in 1945 when the Nazi regime fell. It has simply evolved, adopting new slogans, new technology, and new disguises. The same vocabulary that once fueled genocide now echoes again in chants, graffiti, and social media posts.

When Hamas orchestrated the deadliest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, the world’s reaction revealed how easily old hatreds can reawaken. The phrase “Never Again,” once a sacred vow after World War II, is being challenged by those who seek to make it happen again.

How could the Nazis have engineered the industrialized murder of six million Jews? How could they have convinced more than sixty-five million Germans to follow such evil? Understanding their methods provides insight into today’s dangerous rhetoric.

Before World War II, Jews made up less than one percent of Germany’s population. Yet their contributions to science, medicine, literature, and the arts were extraordinary. They were fully integrated citizens who spoke the same language and shared the same culture. Twenty-four percent of Germany’s Nobel Prize winners were Jewish. Despite this, Hitler considered Jews an inferior race that had to be eradicated.

The groundwork for genocide began early. In 1920, the National Socialist German Workers’ Party adopted a 25-point platform that formally segregated Jews from “Aryan” society. Hitler’s election as chancellor in 1933 unleashed the machinery of propaganda and persecution that would culminate in the Holocaust. The same spirit of deception and moral corruption that poisoned Germany now poisons parts of our world once again.

Hitler’s propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, perfected the weaponization of words. His job title, “Minister of Propaganda and Public Enlightenment,” masked the regime’s true goal: replacing truth with lies. Propaganda began not with violence, but with ideas, slogans, and symbols. Public book burnings became early rituals of purification, conducted by university students and soldiers who cast thousands of works by Jewish and “un-German” authors into the flames.

Goebbels’ lies spread through every available medium—radio, newspapers, magazines, and film. In a world without television or the internet, there was no competing voice. Repetition and manipulation slowly desensitized the German public. Neighbors turned against neighbors, convinced that Jews were parasites, subhumans, and enemies of the state. The Nazis used bureaucratic language to disguise atrocities, replacing “murder” with “final solution” and “deportation” with “relocation.” By the time the Holocaust began, consciences were dulled, and moral clarity had vanished.

The parallel with today is sobering. The demonization of Jews is once again normalized. Protests that glorify terror are defended as “free speech.” Terms like “Zionist,” “colonizer,” and “occupier” are used as modern euphemisms for “Jew.” The phrases “globalize the intifada” and “resistance by any means” are shouted on college campuses and city streets. The internet amplifies this rhetoric faster than Goebbels could have imagined, spreading lies to millions within seconds.

After Hamas’s massacre on October 7, these ready-made slogans appeared almost immediately. Posters, chants, and scripts materialized in coordinated demonstrations across the world. Like the Nazis’ propaganda machine, today’s movements rely on repetition, manipulation, and intimidation. The result is the same: fear, division, and moral confusion.

It is worth remembering that the Nazis’ rise from ideology to power took only fourteen years, from their 1920 manifesto to Hitler’s 1933 election. Evil grows quickly when words are left unchallenged.

In today’s climate, a new “dictionary of rage” has emerged. Phrases once meant to promote justice are distorted into calls for violence. “Resistance” becomes justification for murder. “Liberation” becomes a banner for antisemitism. “Social justice” is twisted into a weapon that excludes Jews and silences truth.

This rhetoric is not confined to the Middle East. It has infected Western universities, newsrooms, and social media platforms. It fuels arson attacks, vandalism, and assaults on Jewish students. It also targets Christians and conservatives who refuse to surrender to the shifting language of hate.

Words shape reality. Proverbs 12:18 warns us, “The words of the reckless pierce like swords, but the tongue of the wise brings healing.” The challenge before us is to resist this verbal violence with truth, courage, and faith.

History teaches that silence in the face of evil is complicity. Today, the faithful are called to use words that honor God, speak truth with wisdom, and defend what is right without hysteria or hate. Each of us bears responsibility to restrain reckless speech and to train our hearts toward integrity and courage.

When words become weapons, silence becomes surrender. The moral clarity of the faithful must overcome the noise of rage.

Our CBN Israel team invites you to join us in prayer this week, remembering that God remains sovereign and truth remains undefeated.

Prayer Points:

• Pray fervently for the Iranian people as thousands continue to be massacred, injured, or imprisoned.
• Pray that free nations will send aid and support to those risking their lives for liberty in Iran.
• Pray that people of goodwill will speak boldly on behalf of the oppressed in Venezuela and Iran.
• Pray that mainstream media will report truthfully and widely about events in Iran.

Arlene Bridges Samuels is the weekly feature columnist for CBN Israel since 2020. Working on the staff of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) as their SE Regional Outreach Director for nine years, International Christian Embassy Jerusalem USA engaged her as the Leadership Outreach Director part-time for their project American Christian Leaders for Israel. Arlene is an author at The Blogs-Times of Israel, is published at AllIsrael.com and The Jerusalem Connection, and has traveled to Israel since 1990. By invitation, she attends Israel’s Government Press Office Christian Media Summits as part of Christian media worldwide. In 2024, Arlene and her husband Paul co-authored Mental Health Meltdown: Illuminating the Voices of Bipolar and Other Mental Illnesses. www.TheMentalHealthMeltdown.com.

By Arlene Bridges Samuels

Two oppressive regimes are trembling. Venezuela’s dictator, Nicolás Maduro, now sits in a Brooklyn, New York, prison cell, awaiting trial after being extradited to the United States. Meanwhile, Iran’s aging Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has reportedly arranged an escape to Moscow, where Vladimir Putin will likely grant him refuge even as he orders continued violence against the Iranian people. Both nations have long crushed freedom and faith, but the tide appears to be turning.

Predictably, leftist critics have condemned President Donald Trump’s bold decision to arrest and extradite Maduro, but their outrage cannot silence millions of voices rising for freedom. In Iran and Venezuela, people who have endured decades of oppression are filling the streets, calling for justice, dignity, and self-determination. Together, their populations total more than one hundred million people whose cries for liberty can no longer be ignored.

Late Saturday night, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu congratulated President Trump on social media, writing, “Congratulations President Trump for your bold and historic leadership on behalf of freedom and justice. I salute your decisive resolve and the brilliant action of your brave soldiers.” Netanyahu, who has long understood the Iranian regime’s global threat, also voiced his support for the Iranian people, saying, “We, in Israel, sympathize with the struggle of the Iranian people and with their aspirations for freedom and justice. It is very possible that we stand before a decisive moment, in which the Iranian people take their destiny into their own hands.”

In Venezuela, the celebration is unmistakable. After years of hardship, citizens were waving American flags in gratitude for Maduro’s arrest, although much of the mainstream media has ignored their jubilation. An estimated eight million Venezuelans had already fled their homeland due to economic collapse, political persecution, and humanitarian crisis. Those who remain filled the streets to celebrate, shouting prayers of thanksgiving.

A Venezuelan exile living in Florida posted a blunt message to American leftists who defend Maduro: “None of them have ever been to Venezuela, and none have any personal connection. I dare them, come to Miami. Hear our stories. Understand why we are overjoyed and how Maduro betrayed and destroyed our country.”

Venezuelan refugees in Panama and Chile have joined the celebration, tearing down Maduro’s posters and rejoicing at what many are calling “a miracle from God.” Swiss authorities quickly froze Maduro’s international assets, valued at more than $800 million. Christian leaders also view his capture as an answer to prayer. Worship leader Sean Feucht said, “For years, the church of Venezuela has been fasting, praying, and crying out to God for deliverance. The removal of Maduro was an answer to their prayers.”

The technology community has also played a role. Elon Musk announced that his Starlink satellite network will provide free internet access to Venezuelans through February, helping them stay connected as their nation transitions toward freedom. In Iran, where the government had shut down internet access to silence protesters, Musk activated Starlink to give the people a voice again.

The same longing for liberty echoes across Iran. After forty-seven years under an oppressive theocratic regime, citizens are risking their lives to challenge their rulers. Some Western commentators have dismissed the uprising as merely economic, but those who know Iran’s people understand it is a cry for freedom.

Marziyeh Amirizadeh, an Iranian-born Christian and now a U.S. citizen, was imprisoned in 2009 for sharing her faith and distributing twenty thousand Bibles. She narrowly escaped execution after nine months in Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison. Today, she speaks boldly on behalf of the persecuted. “The people are shouting ‘Long live the Shah,’” she said, referring to the late monarch’s exiled son, Reza Pahlavi. “The Iranian media has betrayed the people, who are united and only want freedom.”

Elam Ministries, founded a decade after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, reports that the Iranian church is now one of the fastest-growing Christian movements in the world. Despite persecution, thousands are coming to faith through underground churches and digital evangelism.

Yet the regime continues its brutality. According to UN Watch Director Hillel Neuer, Iranian security forces have cracked down in seventy-eight cities since late December, killing more than thirty people, injuring dozens, and arresting nearly one thousand. The United Nations Human Rights Council has issued no resolutions and held no emergency sessions. The silence of the global community is deafening.

Iran and Venezuela have been allies for more than two decades, united by their hatred of the United States and Israel. Their partnership began under Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez and deepened under Maduro, who opened his nation to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps and its terror proxy, Hezbollah. The two regimes used Venezuela as a weapons depot and trafficking hub, exchanging gold, oil, and arms to sustain one another under international sanctions. In 2022, they formalized a twenty-year cooperation pact covering energy, defense, and infrastructure.

That alliance now lies in ruins. On January 3, U.S. Special Forces launched Operation Absolute Resolve, a flawless overnight mission that captured Maduro and his wife while they slept. The dictator who impoverished his people now faces justice in an American courtroom.

In Iran, millions of citizens are defying Khamenei’s authority, shouting for freedom, waving pre-revolutionary flags, and calling for the restoration of their monarchy under Reza Pahlavi. As one Iranian protester said, “We have lived in darkness for too long. Now we want light.”

Psalm 72:4 offers a fitting prayer for this historic moment: “May He defend the afflicted among the people and save the children of the needy; may He crush the oppressor.”

The world remains volatile, filled with both brutality and blessings. Yet amid the chaos, the hymn In Christ Alone reminds us of a timeless truth: “No power of hell, no scheme of man, can ever pluck me from His hand. Till He returns or calls me home, here in the power of Christ I’ll stand.”

Our CBN Israel team invites you to pray with us during this pivotal time in world history.

Prayer Points:

• Pray with thanks for the excellent meetings between President Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
• Pray that the citizens’ freedom in Iran and Venezuela become a reality.
• Pray for those in Iran who are risking their lives for freedom.
• Pray that Reza Pahlavi can return to his country to help shape a new Iran with freedoms.

Arlene Bridges Samuels is the weekly feature columnist for CBN Israel since 2020. Working on the staff of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) as their SE Regional Outreach Director for nine years, International Christian Embassy Jerusalem USA engaged her as the Leadership Outreach Director part-time for their project American Christian Leaders for Israel. Arlene is an author at The Blogs-Times of Israel, is published at AllIsrael.com and The Jerusalem Connection, and has traveled to Israel since 1990. By invitation, she attends Israel’s Government Press Office Christian Media Summits as part of Christian media worldwide. In 2024, Arlene and her husband Paul co-authored Mental Health Meltdown: Illuminating the Voices of Bipolar and Other Mental Illnesses. www.TheMentalHealthMeltdown.com.

By Arlene Bridges Samuels 

New Year’s resolutions are nothing new. They can be traced back some four thousand years, when ancient Babylonians promised annually to pay any debts and honor their king. Nor is the custom of marking an event by dropping a “time ball” new. The first-time ball, installed at the Royal Conservatory in Greenwich, England, was something 19th-century ship captains set their navigational instruments to each day.

In the United States, efforts to set New Year’s resolutions are as famous as our iconic Times Square celebrations. 

Just before midnight on December 31, 1907, the very first ball dropped to welcome the New Year of 1908. The spectacle of fireworks had been banned, so New York Times owner Adolph Ochs conceived of the ball drop instead. The seven-hundred-pound ball was constructed with wood and iron and studded with one hundred 25-watt light bulbs. Yet the revelers standing in Times Square over a hundred years ago could not have imagined this year’s creation! It weighed 12,350 pounds (about twice the weight of an elephant), was covered with over 5,000 Waterford crystals, and was illuminated by an 32,256 dazzling LED lights.

In fact, the 2025 pyrotechnic display was a first for the Times Square Ball Drop and featured the late Ray Charles’s beloved rendition of “America the Beautiful.” After the midnight countdown on New Year’s Eve, a fantastic burst of red, white, and blue confetti covered revelers celebrating the coming United States Semiquincentennial. The momentous new year marks our nation’s 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence! In a grand collaboration between America250 (formed in 2016 to plan the nation’s 250th birthday) and One Times Square, the unforgettable moments will long remain in the memories of Times Square crowds and millions of viewers worldwide.

The years seem to come faster and faster, and 2026 is no exception. The 24/7 news cycle bombards us with devastating events near and far—and thankfully also awakens our hopes with good news. As we make and keep new goals, New Year resolutions help us personally. They also provide a valuable exercise to determine how we can have a helpful influence on others, our country, and our ally Israel. 

What follows is my curated list of New Year’s resolutions for Christians who ask, “What can I do or say to help Israel?” This selection offers choices for a New Year’s resolution to implement your support for Israel in 2026. 

A quote from Robert F. Kennedy’s 1966 address to South African youth provides a plan for personal and help-focused New Year’s resolutions: “Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation.”

Together, the Christian community possesses abilities to “change a small portion of events” that are coming in 2026. In doing so, we honor the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Jesus Who makes His eternal intentions clear in Jeremiah 31:35-36. This is what the LORDs says, He who gives the sun for light by day and the fixed order of the moon and the stars for light by night, Who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar—the LORD of armies is His name: “If this fixed order departs from Me,” declares the LORD, “then the descendants of Israel also will cease to be a nation before Me forever.”

It is never too late for any generation to befriend the Jewish state and Jewish people across the world in tangible ways. As we head into 2026, I have taken the liberty of curating an action list for your New Year resolutions to bless Israel. Research your own ideas or feel free to choose what resonates with you, then act on it.

Every Name Counts presents a meaningful volunteer opportunity: to be part of building a digital memorial organized by Arolsen Archives, the International Center on Nazi Persecution. Volunteering to help is simple. Arolsen Archives emails a list of Holocaust-era names that must be digitized on their easy-to-use document, then emailed back. The Center houses the most extensive documentation of victims and survivors following World War II, and much of the information still remains on paper notecards after eighty years. Allies founded the Arolsen Archives in 1948 after the Holocaust. Originally called the International Tracing Service, the organization officially changed its name in 2019 to Arolsen Archives. This change reflects not only its location in Bad Arolsen, Germany, but more importantly its purpose as an important, award-winning archive inscribed on the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) “Memory of the World” register. Of note, Arolsen Archives is upgrading its digital resources to engage the Gen Z population to help. 

Genesis 123 Foundation (Genesis123.co) is a U.S.-based non-profit. Its purpose is to build bridges between Jews and Christians working together on special projects and outreaches in and for Israel. Some examples include providing hot soup and warm jackets for IDF soldiers and distributing children’s games to Israeli families now living in hotels due to the upheaval of the Hamas war.

The CBN Israel Resilience Center is a timely addition in 2025 for many thousands of Israelis suffering traumas, shock, and living in survival mode even after the war. The Resilience Center’s hub matches patients’ needs to a pool of counseling professionals for both adults and children—psychiatrists, psychotherapists, and social workers, as well as financial and parenting coaches. Although the Israeli government provides private therapy for direct victims, their families and friends need counseling as well. The Resilience Center is also available to and focused on the faith community, which is struggling with the aftereffects of war and in need of spiritual encouragement.

https://cbnisrael.org/2025/04/23/cbn-israels-resilience-center-helps-trauma-victims-2/

On social media, be sure to comment whenever you read or hear lies about Israel. Be civil, make certain your facts are correct, and avoid accusations and name-calling. 

Pray for Israel, its leaders, and its citizens. International Christian Embassy Jerusalem hosts the weekly Isaiah 62 Global Prayer Gathering online.

Sign up for a tour to Israel. Root & Branch Tours offer a new, hands-on tour where Christians harvest olives in Israel and interact with IDF members, hostage families, and survivors. Their projects blend Christians from all over the world with Israeli Jews in a powerful demonstration of unity, symbolized by the ancient olive trees they harvest together. Root & Branch is an enactment of Romans 11 that Christians are grafted into the covenant God made with the Jewish people: that the Root supports the Branch.

Friends of the Israel Defense Forces. Make a financial contribution that champions the soldiers of the IDF and cares for their needs as they protect the State of Israel, democratic values, and Western civilization. FIDF is the official organization authorized to collect charitable donations for the IDF in the United States. 

Enjoy an inspiring 2026 with successful New Year’s resolutions that bless and strengthen you, your family and friends, the United States, and Israel! Remember, silent voices accomplish nothing. Make yours heard with actions that speak louder than words.

Our CBN Israel team sends our warmest wishes and prayers for a blessed 2026.

Prayer Points:

• Pray for Israelis enduring ongoing traumas. 
• Pray with thanks for thousands of Christians who came to Israel on solidarity tours.
• Pray for the fine organizations on this New Year’s list.
• Pray for the wisdom and safety of Prime Minister Netanyahu.

Arlene Bridges Samuels is the weekly feature columnist for CBN Israel since 2020. Working on the staff of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) as their SE Regional Outreach Director for nine years, International Christian Embassy Jerusalem USA engaged her as the Leadership Outreach Director part-time for their project American Christian Leaders for Israel. Arlene is an author at The Blogs-Times of Israel, is published at AllIsrael.com and The Jerusalem Connection, and has traveled to Israel since 1990. By invitation, she attends Israel’s Government Press Office Christian Media Summits as part of Christian media worldwide. In 2024, Arlene and her husband Paul co-authored Mental Health Meltdown: Illuminating the Voices of Bipolar and Other Mental Illnesses. www.TheMentalHealthMeltdown.com.