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By Arlene Bridges Samuels

Often lost in the pages of American history was that 41 pilgrim fathers signed the Mayflower Compact, with their endorsement coming even before our Pilgrim fathers and mothers disembarked from their ship, the Mayflower. The Compact became the first document of the New World’s government. It was signed on November 11, 1620. At the first Thanksgiving, some historians believe the Pilgrims fashioned their celebration after the Jewish fall festival of Sukkot.

Our early founders derived many of their best concepts from a Judeo-Christian perspective. Since May 14, 1948, when the modern Jewish state declared its independence, our alliance has combined into massive blessings for both nations.

As citizens of the United States, we have endless reasons to thank God for our freedoms, family, and friends at our Thanksgiving tables. For Israeli families, weekly Shabbats (a day of rest) are like Thanksgiving each week! Despite their current seven-front war, Israelis have proven the observation of an early 20th-century Zionist, Ahad Haam: “More than the Jews kept Shabbat, Shabbat has kept the Jews.” Rabbi Abraham Heschel described Shabbat as a “palace in time.”

The array of mutual blessings for our two nations is wide-ranging. I have chosen a few, to celebrate our mutual ideals of freedom, economic prosperity, equality, rule of law, and security. With Israel described as the start-up and genius nation, Jews—with a small population, living in their small strip of land—have made profound contributions to our world. First and foremost, it is not surprising when we recall God designating Abraham as the first Jew. He then fashioned the Jewish culture and tasked His chosen vessels in ancient times to reveal the Old and New Testaments in a 66-book Bible that has transformed the world with truth.

In exploring the modern contributions of the start-up, genius nation, I begin with two of my favorites. I witnessed these Israeli inventions at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) policy conferences during my nine years on AIPAC staff. Thousands of us watched as a paraplegic walked onto the stage in a “ReWalk,” a robotic exoskeleton. Moments of astonishment and an extended applause filled the Washington Convention Center. Available to the public since 2014, ReWalk uses a wrist-mounted remote control to give movement signals from a backpack of batteries, enabling its user to stand, walk, and take stairs—rather than sitting in a wheelchair. 

Creating water out of air? We gasped as we watched an amazing demonstration at another policy conference inside the Washington Convention Center. Someone held a glass up to the WaterGen machine and pushed a button. We watched the glass fill, then the product demonstrator drank the high-quality water extracted from the air. Now in 65 countries and backed by a 24/7 tech support team, WaterGen invites you to “Enjoy a Sip of Fresh Air.”

Thank Israel for the Flexible Stent. You or a loved one may have benefited! It has saved millions of lives. Physicians use the tube-shaped device to open arteries up to treat coronary heart disease and blockages. Its use can significantly reduce the need for open-heart surgery.

Technology we rely on to protect mobile phones and computers is a security invention through Israel’s cornerstone firewall, Check Point—the original protection from cyber threats across the digital world. From pioneering firewalls to our AI-powered, cloud-delivered security solutions, they are committed to safeguarding organizations with an industry-leading 99.8% prevention rate.

Israelis invented another important water-related technology in 1967: Netafim’s drip irrigation, using pipes that drip water onto crops, thereby reducing water usage. This boon to crops is now used in 110 countries, including the USA, where it helps farmers “Grow More With Less”!

In TIME magazine’s 2024 best products, 10 of Israel’s products are included. Here are a few: Nuvo’s wearable Invu remote pregnancy monitor performs non-stress tests on babies before birth. OrCam Hear is an upcoming AI-powered hearing amplification tool for those needing focused hearing help. BeeHero, a beehive management system. InnerPlant’s CropVoice, where plants inform farmers about funguses. NanoxAI helps identify undetected chronic conditions by analyzing CT heart scans of the heart, liver, and bones.

Looking at some sectors of our valuable partnership with the Jewish state, Israel invests in our economy, creates American jobs, and promotes our innovation. Their partnership supports more than 255,000 American jobs. Likewise, the U.S. is the largest foreign investor in Israel, a business hub for more than 2,500 U.S. companies. Our free trade agreement with them since 1985 has provided billions of dollars for Israelis and Americans.

Our two nations are pioneering together in future challenges in cybersecurity, healthcare, artificial intelligence, water scarcity, food security, climate change, and renewable energy. When you board a flight or use your computers, be aware that Israeli technology and expertise help protect American airports, cities, cyberspace, and other infrastructure from terrorist threats.

Israel can be described as our “aircraft carrier” in the Middle East. Israel is our eyes and ears in the region. With its military strength, location, and our shared intelligence cooperation, it helps our homeland security and American soldiers. Our annual congressional approval of security investments in Israel directly increases our security and safety here at home. Unlike other U.S. allies, Israel insists on defending itself by itself. They rely on our help only to guarantee Israel’s added ability to defend itself with U.S. funding, most which is spent here in America. 

Christian advocacy for Israel in the United States makes a huge difference in influencing congressional appropriations for Israel’s security. Those decisions in turn increase our security. Our partnership also protects our American troops with military technology, helping us to counter missiles, tunnels, and drones. Israel is also a leader in helping soldiers from both nations cope with PTSD—a much-needed service.

At your Thanksgiving table today and in the future, you may place a prayer in the Western Wall (Kotel) for Israel and its people especially during war. AISH.com, which overlooks the Western Wall Plaza, will print your prayers. The AISH staff gathers all the prayers, takes the short walk to the Kotel, and places them in the crevices: [Submit your prayer here].

Our CBN Israel team wishes our readers and supporters a most blessed Thanksgiving 2024! Together let us recite Psalm 107:1, “Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good; His love endures forever.”

Prayer Points:

• Pray for the ongoing emotional traumas suffered by Israelis.
• Pray for upwards of 6,000 wounded IDF soldiers.
• Pray with thanks for senior medical officers stationed with each company.
• Pray for the 101 hostages still captive in Gaza and their heartbroken families.
• Pray with thanks for our longstanding friendship with Israel.

By Arlene Bridges Samuels

On December 6, Netflix is releasing its Christmas movie called Mary. The title character is played by 21-year-old Noa Cohen, with 22-year-old Ido Tako as Joseph. Legendary actor Anthony Hopkins in the role of Herod is sure to weave a star-powered combination in the trio. However, BDS and anti-Israel groups are outraged! Why? The actors portraying Mary and Joseph are Israeli Jews—not Palestinians.

When Palestinians instigated boycotts in 1995, they assumed Israel would breathe its last if strangled with economic warfare, terror, and propaganda. Clearly, they were mistaken. BDS—Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions—targets Israel, the world’s only Jewish nation. Now, BDS is manifesting further madness about the film, Mary.

Bottom line: BDS adherents aim at erasing the Jewishness of Mary, Joseph, and Jesus—our Jewish Messiah—born in the fields of Bethlehem Ephrathah near the Tower of the Flock (Migdal Eder). In a fascinating side note, some research suggests that King David and Jesus, the Perfect Lamb, were born in or near Migdal Eder (Micah 5:2), where Levitical shepherds raised and oversaw the births of Passover lambs.

Trying to erase 2,000 years of world history, BDS is aimed not only at Jews but also levels its slander into the minds of 2 billion Christians. Unfortunately, some Christians have swallowed these lies as if they were truth. Satan has resurrected Hitleresque propaganda by invading the world through social media warfare and savagery.

Frankly, I do not know if the film Mary will please the Christian community with regard to its portrayal of Jesus’ mother. I have not previewed it. But I respect Director D.J. Caruso’s comments in October’s Entertainment Weekly. “It was important to us that Mary, along with most of our primary cast, be selected from Israel to ensure authenticity.” Filmed in Morocco, Caruso added that the film’s writing and production were done with “great care” to create “a story that feels both sacred and modern.”

For decades the Palestinian Authority, as well as pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel activists, have called the Holy Family “Palestinians.” Author and theologian Eitan Bar writes about those who claim, “Jesus was a ‘Palestinian freedom fighter,’ suggesting Jesus led a revolt against—you guessed it—the Jews!”

Bar adds that some Muslims and radical liberal Christians have adopted the Palestinian freedom fighter narrative in trying to justify violence against Jews. It is a fairly recent construct, dating back to 2018, when a university campaign in the U.S. claimed that Jesus was Palestinian. If you wish to go deeper into this controversy, click here.

The movie denigrators represent millions of people in both Muslim and non-Muslim communities who have adopted violence as a tool, recently evidenced by Muslim gangs launching a vicious attack against Israeli fans attending soccer games in Amsterdam and Paris.

Some social media agitators are “offended” by Israeli actors portraying Jewish Mary and Joseph. Here’s an example of such comments: “A film [about] a Palestinian woman played by actors from the settler state [Israel’s biblical heartland] that is currently mass slaughtering Palestinian women. Oh, the disgusting audacity.”

Proponents of BDS are taking the word of Hamas and its evildoers and treating them like heroes. Those with minds persuaded by lies are calling for a boycott against the film Mary, which is not only offensive to Christians but also denigrating to the Jewish people seeing that Mary, Joseph, and their children were all Jewish, historical figures who lived in biblical Judea.

Nevertheless, despite the October 7 genocide and escalating dangers globally, Israelis remain dedicated and determined to win their defensive war of justice. Unsurprisingly, Israel Defense Forces are finding Arabic translations of Hitler’s handbook Mein Kampf in the tunnels under Gaza. When an IDF unit in Lebanon found a copy of Mein Kampf in a living room, one soldier observed that “parts were underlined and highlighted inside, as if someone had studied it line by line.” In fact, Hamas, Hezbollah, and the degenerate gangs funded by the Islamic Regime imitate Hitler’s strategies that led to the genocide of 6 million Jews.

Sadly, in the U.S. and beyond, BDS includes churches, labor unions, universities, and grassroots groups that BDS recruits internationally to inflict financial and propagandic havoc on Israel. In fact, just a scant few days after October 7, 2023, a hateful global intifada exploded among university students—and professors—sitting in prominent campus locations.

These groups now mourn the mounting deaths of Hezbollah leaders instead of October 7 victims and hostages, among them seven Americans. At Columbia University, the mindless shouts of “We are Hamas” and “Hamas make us proud” fill the air. Thirty-six percent of protestors deem violence as acceptable.

No matter what is happening in our personal lives and the Jewish world, Zephaniah 3:17 assures us that “The LORD your God is with you, the Mighty Warrior Who saves. He will take great delight in you … but will rejoice over you with singing.” 

I daresay that one of the biggest crises in our world today is that too many are boycotting the Judeo-Christian faiths and the Bible—both the Old Testament, which clearly prophesied our coming Jewish Messiah, and His fulfillment in New Testament.

The world may use its evil energy to devise every boycott, divestment, and sanction it can against the God of the Universe, yet He is the everlasting King.

Our CBN Israel team welcomes you to pray with us for Israelis and the 15.8 million Jewish people globally.

Prayer Points:

• Pray for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s safety from incoming drone attacks against his private home.
• Pray for the IDF’s great successes to defeat Hezbollah.
• Pray for IDF families with increasing IDF deaths in Gaza and Lebanon.
• Pray for Christians to repost truthful social media.
• Pray thanking God from Deuteronomy 7:6, “The Lord your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on the face of the earth to be His people, His treasured possession.”

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

The musical Fiddler on the Roof is an emotional display of romance, sorrow, tradition, and joy in a small Russian village. Offering a glimpse into the Russian Jewish culture of 1905, the movie script and songs brim with the stories of Tevye the milkman, Golde his wife, and their five daughters. The matchmaker, rabbi, and poor families had strong hearts, hopes, and humor as they lived in a robust way based on their Jewish faith.

Amid these unforgettable songs, romances, and dancing the hora, it is sometimes easy to forget that the 1971 Fiddler on the Roof movie is based on the true stories of the Russian czar’s Cossacks—and the attempts to destroy the Jewish culture and its people.

The Cossacks were a quasi-military force that guarded borders and performed police duties. Remember the movie scene where they violently broke into the joyous wedding celebration of one of Tevye’s daughters? Last week, on the night of November 7, 2024, Jew-hating violence broke out in Amsterdam—violence that has been, and is, spreading more aggressively in Europe.

This time, it’s not the Cossacks on horseback of 120 years ago but murderous Muslims, using knives, car rammings, beatings, and throwing Jews into the canals. Their well-organized plan against Israeli soccer fans meant the new Nazis were waiting as Israelis exited a match between Ajax Amsterdam and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Miraculously, no Israeli was murdered, but Israel called it a pogrom, and that is exactly what it was.

What is a pogrom? This Russian word means “to wreak havoc, to demolish violently”—particularly in the context of local attacks on Jews. The term pogrom originated during the Russian Empire and became commonly used in anti-Jewish riots from 1881 to 1884, starting after Tsar Alexander II was assassinated. The term was first used in English in 1882.

Non-Jewish Cossacks and local populations planned and conducted deadly attacks up though the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. Tens of thousands of Jews were murdered between 1918 and 1920. Between 1881 and 1924, massive waves of Jewish refugees fled Russia and Europe for America, which they called “the Golden Land.” Arriving by ship, they first sailed past the iconic Statue of Liberty and disembarked onto Ellis Island for processing.

My husband Paul is a proud first-generation American because each of his parents fled Russian pogroms as children with their parents. They walked into freedom through Ellis Island. His parents later met and married in Bronx, New York, worked hard, and raised five children. His father served in World War II, drove a taxi, and ran a newspaper stand in Manhattan. His parents rarely if at all spoke about the old country, but Paul remembers his mother describing her fear-filled childhood—hiding in haystacks to escape pogroms against Jews. Our family has watched Fiddler on the Roof countless times since Paul adopted it as his family’s story.

In 1903, a tablet with Emma Lazarus’s words in her poem, “The New Colossus”—“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free”—was affixed to the Statue of Liberty’s base. Lazarus is considered America’s first Jewish-American poet. Patriotic songs in Yiddish also expressed the immigrants’ love and loyalty. A popular song from the bygone era was raised by the Jewish voices of new arrivals, which included his parents. The opening lyrics proclaim, “To express loyalty with every fiber of one’s being, to this Land of Freedom, is the sacred duty of every Jew.” 

Now, in response to the Amsterdam attacks in the Netherlands, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu aptly called them a pogrom and sent civilian planes to rescue over 2,000 Israeli citizens. Christians in the USA and worldwide would do well to listen to Netanyahu’s warnings: “Attacks of this kind threaten not only Israel but endanger the entire world.” He commented on historical proof that “Wild attacks that start against Jews, never end with the Jews.”

He emphasized that free nations face the same savage murderers seeking to “destroy our common civilization and return all of us to a dark age of tyranny and terror.”

In the famous movie, Tevye himself gave intriguing comments in an answer about his home village. “A fiddler on the roof! Sounds crazy, no? But here, in our little village of Anatevka, you might say every one of us is a fiddler on the roof trying to scratch out a pleasant, simple tune without breaking his neck. It isn’t easy. You may ask, ‘Why do we stay up there if it’s so dangerous?’ Well, we stay because Anatevka is our home. And how do we keep our balance? That I can tell you in one word: tradition!”

And biblical tradition is immersed in facts that Jews are God’s chosen people and Israel is His chosen Land—the birthplace of our Savior and our Christian faith. In Fiddler on the Roof, pogroms forced Tevye to flee from Anatevka, an example of centuries of Jewish dispersion living in other homes and lands across the world.

After Israel announced its modern independence on May 14, 1948, the Jewish people have been returning in record numbers to their ancestral homeland. This massive wave of Aliyah—the immigration of Jews to Israel—was clearly foretold by the ancient prophet Ezekiel, who, writing at the time of the Babylonian captivity, proclaimed this message: “For I will take you out of the nations; I will gather you from all the countries and bring you back into your own land. … Then you will live in the land I gave your ancestors; you will be my people, and I will be your God” (Ezekiel 36:24, 28 NIV).

The modern State of Israel echoes a message that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared when he spoke at the United Nations General Assembly on September 27, 2024. “Generations after generations in which our people were slaughtered, remorselessly butchered, and no one raised a finger in our defense, we now have a state. We now have a brave army, an army of incomparable courage.”

He referred to the book of Samuel about Israel defending itself, affirming: “The eternity of Israel will not falter. In the Jewish people’s epic journey from antiquity and our odyssey through the tempest and upheavals of modern times.” And in conclusion: “The torch of Israel will forever shine. … The people of Israel live now, tomorrow, and forever.”

To be sure, Tevye the actor and Netanyahu the prime minister both expressed the vibrant spirit and strength of the Jewish people. In God’s plans, the pogroms will end!

Pray with our CBN Israel team with ongoing prayers for Israel and Europe.

Prayer Points:

• Pray for Prime Minister Netanyahu’s safety and decision-making.
• Pray for European nations to enact security for their citizens.
• Pray for the European Union to make wise, not weak, decisions.
• Pray with thanks that Jews were not murdered in the Amsterdam pogrom.

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.