5,000 Gather For Christian Pro-Israel Group Amid Pro-Trump Fever
Israel?s Friends: Evangelical Christians from the U.S. participate in Sukkot festivities in Jerusalem. Image by getty images
By Ron Kampeas July 17, 2017
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Christians United for Israel activists will lobby for a congressional bill that cuts nearly all U.S. funding to the Palestinian Authority until it stops payments to the families of Palestinians jailed for or killed in attacks on Israelis.
The pro-Israel group, meeting this week in Washington, D.C., for its 12th conference, on Tuesday also will push a measure that expands anti-boycott laws to target the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel. Some 5,000 activists are attending the conference.
The United States currently provides some $300 million a year to the Palestinian Authority.
“Mahmoud Abbas’ Palestinian government, by legislation, by law, gives rich financial rewards to anyone who kills an Israeli,” David Brog, the founding executive director of CUFI, said.
The U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate are considering versions of the bill, which is named for Taylor Force, an American student slain in a stabbing attack in Tel Aviv in 2016. Mostly just Republicans are supporting the measure.
The other bill backed by CUFI, the Israeli Anti-Boycott Act, would expand 1970s-era laws that make illegal compliance with boycotts of Israel sponsored by governments — laws inspired at the time by the Arab League boycott of Israel — to include boycotts backed by international organizations.
The conference mood was one of jubilation and celebration of the Donald Trump presidency. CUFI had vigorously opposed policies of the administration of President Barack Obama.
It’s our birthday and we’re still celebrating!
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news.
This week we celebrate 129 years of the Forward. We’re proud of our origins as a Yiddish print publication serving Jewish immigrants. And we’re just as proud of what we’ve become today: A trusted source of Jewish news and opinion, available digitally to anyone in the world without paywalls or subscriptions.
We’ve helped five generations of American Jews make sense of the news and the world around them — and we aren’t slowing down any time soon.
As a nonprofit newsroom, reader donations make it possible for us to do this work. Support independent, agenda-free Jewish journalism and our board will match your gift in honor of our birthday!
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
