What is it about Israel and the Jews that makes a relative or close friend suddenly cut off contact with you?
It is not only Israeli friends of mine who have experienced this, it’s some of our LEMA’AN ZION friends also. Over the years, we have often read letters from Christians saying that in their church services they could pray aloud for any need, but they were stopped from praying for Israel.
A woman in Sweden wanted no more mail from us because Muslims live in her building and our mail might land in their mailbox. Afraid or ashamed, if there is persecution of Jews in Scandinavia and a Jew knocks on her door pleading for shelter, would she open it to save him? Is this still possible after the Holocaust? John 15:13 is a difficult teaching of Jesus to fulfill.
A recent Blue Square poll revealed that 29 percent of Americans aged 18 to 44 believe Jews are a threat to society. Only 52 percent of American youths aged 18 to 29 believe Israel even has a right to exist (Times of Israel, July 16, 2026).
The generation that lived during the Holocaust is dying. The survivors’ testimonies are being forgotten in old books on dusty shelves. The new generations have zero memory of decades-old tragedies. The new generations are influenced by what they see and hear now.
Many factors influence opinion, but increasingly today it is the influence of social media. One’s family and social circle, culture, history and news media have impact, but digital media–unregulated, uncensored, and agenda-driven–have outsize influence in altering people’s minds, particularly among the young.
Hours spent on phones watching video “shorts” has consequences. Biased and unverified reports about Gaza, about food shortages, or about refugees, all of them real-looking, have a devastating effect. The numbers of views and followers suggest consensus. After all, if everyone’s watching this, then it must be true, and so there’s no need to verify it. See the same message over and over, month after month, and eventually everyone believes it.
Even the revered New York Times used fake photos of “malnourished” children (July 25, 2025). Terrorists masquerading as journalists supply stories that are never checked. Often, Gaza stories include foreign war videos that have nothing to do with Gaza. How would the average viewer know? We used to call this propaganda.
IRAN: After October 7, a multitude of AI messages circulated on social media criticizing Israel’s Gaza operation. They seemed like American or other Western messages. However, when Israel attacked Iranian military sites in June 2025, knocking out Iranian internet for 16 days, those same “Western” voices suddenly also disappeared. In Britain, these fake messages were viewed 224 million times. During the 2026 US campaign in Iran, 60 percent of allegedly US reports online were sourced overseas.
Graffiti in Paris, October 2023
CHINA: Thousands of messages sourced in China appeared on TikTok, all of them pro-Palestinian.
China wasn’t limited to social media, however. Chinese tech billionaire Neville Roy Singham spent $20 million to fund massive anti-Israel demonstrations worldwide that began suspiciously on October 8, 2023, before Israel even responded to the massacre. Numerous charities and shell companies with terror links have been involved.
RUSSIA: In an operation reminiscent of KGB tactics, Russian agents stenciled blue Stars of David on 250 buildings across Paris in October 2023. They exploited the Israel-Hamas war to inflame antisemitic fears, stoke societal division, and destabilize French public debate. This was supplemented by pictures of the graffiti circulating online through a network of 1,000 Russian bot programs to whip up rage.
QATAR: All this pales next to the quarter billion dollars Qatar has spent since 2016 influencing public opinion through subsidizing US universities and hiring 88 PR and lobbying firms to burnish their own image and tarnish that of Israel.
Against this monolith, Israel hasn’t much chance on a human scale. It hasn’t the resources, finances and manpower to counter the big players.
And yet, Israel continues in a David-versus-Goliath effort because it is a treasured nation of faith, governed by a covenant with God:
“The LORD did not set His love upon you, nor choose you, because you were more in number than any people, for you are the fewest of all people. But because the LORD loved you, and because He keeps the oath which He swore to your fathers” (Deut. 7:7-8).
“For you are a holy people unto the LORD your God, and the LORD has chosen you to be a peculiar people unto Himself, above all the nations that are upon the earth” (14:2).