Hobe Sound Bible Church

A true believer in Christ must never attend or support a church that believes in Zionism, or that teaches Christians have an obligation to support Israel. If a church says it supports Israel, it is a Zionist church. Hobe Sound Bible Church said it. Pastor Matt Ellison wrote that he supports and stands with Israel, and that many in the congregation do too.

Zionism takes the land promises and turns them into a duty to defend a modern state no matter what that state does. That is not the gospel. Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36). The promise to Abraham reaches the nations in Christ, not in a flag (Galatians 3:16). A church that uses Genesis to bless a secular government has bent the Book to a political program.

That support is support for a wicked nation. The killing in Gaza is a genocide. The International Court of Justice accepted South Africa’s case under the Genocide Convention, found the rights of the Palestinians plausible, and ordered Israel to prevent genocidal acts. A United Nations commission of inquiry found that Israel committed genocidal acts. The Court’s final written judgment is still ahead. The destruction is not. Standing with that nation is standing with the killing.

Scripture forbids it. “Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them” (Romans 1:32). “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil” (Isaiah 5:20). “He who justifies the wicked and he who condemns the righteous are both alike an abomination to the Lord” (Proverbs 17:15). “Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness” (Ephesians 5:11). “Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers” (2 Corinthians 6:14). “Do not take part in the sins of others” (1 Timothy 5:22). Whoever greets a teaching that does not bring Christ “takes part in his wicked works” (2 John 10–11). “Come out of her, my people, lest you take part in her sins, lest you share in her plagues” (Revelation 18:4). A Christian who supports this nation, or a church that supports it, is in rebellion against those commands.

The same support kills the people Israel’s own founders described as the Hebrew farmers who never left the land. It has also hit Christians. On July 17, 2025 an Israeli strike hit Holy Family Church in Gaza, the only Catholic church there. Three people sheltering in the compound were killed. The pastor, Gabriel Romanelli, was wounded. In December 2023 two women were shot dead inside that same compound. Israel called the 2025 strike a mistake. The photographs of the damage were published anyway.

Former Palestinian detainees have testified, in published investigations, that guards used dogs to rape prisoners, including at the Sde Teiman camp. A leaked video from that camp led to charges against Israeli soldiers. The charges were later dropped. A church that claims holiness and supports this is not holy. It is hypocrisy.

Israel also publicly promotes homosexuality. In the summer of 2026 it held Pride Land at the Dead Sea, July 1–4, billed as the largest Pride festival in the Middle East, and the state’s own channels advertised it. The Dead Sea is the biblical location of Sodom and Gomorrah. That festival was held directly beside those cities. No other point is required. A church that bans lipstick and blesses this is a hypocrite.

Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). He said, “If you knew me, you would know my Father also” (John 8:19). “No one who denies the Son has the Father” (1 John 2:23). Judaism rejects the divinity of Jesus. The New Testament says a worship that will not come through the Son does not reach the Father. That worship is idolatry. A Christian, or a church, that supports Israel is supporting a people and a state in that idolatry, and in the wickedness named on this page. By 2 John 11 and Revelation 18:4, that supporter shares the guilt.

Jesus tied love to obedience. “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15). “Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me” (John 14:21). “Whoever does not love me does not keep my words” (John 14:24). Love is keeping his words, not keeping a dress code. A church that blesses partiality and the oppression of the stranger has thrown out James 2:9 and Exodus 22:21. By his own words, a pastor who will not keep those commandments does not love him. The pulpit is then a political lobby in religious clothes.

Paul told the church not to keep company with anyone who is named a brother and is an idolater, a reviler, or an extortioner, “not even to eat with such a one” (1 Corinthians 5:11). A worship that refuses the Son is idolatry. A preacher who uses the pulpit to bless the killing and the starvation is reviling the innocent and taking part in the theft of their lives. Paul says judge those inside the church, and do not call that man a brother in good standing.

When a house will not receive the words of Christ, he did not say to stay and split the difference. “If anyone will not receive you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet when you leave that house or town. Truly, I say to you, it will be more bearable on the day of judgment for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah than for that town” (Matthew 10:14–15). A church that teaches Christians must stand with Israel has refused his words. Leave it.

A gospel that gives a nation the favor of God apart from Christ is another gospel. “Even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed” (Galatians 1:8). The word is anathema. In the Greek Old Testament it translates the Hebrew cherem, a thing devoted to God for destruction and cut off from ordinary use. A related Greek word, anathēma, was a votive offering set aside for a god and taken out of human use. Paul is not scolding. He places the preacher of another gospel under that ban. Paul says such men are false apostles, and Satan’s servants disguise themselves as servants of righteousness (2 Corinthians 11:13–15). “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will recognize them by their fruits” (Matthew 7:15–16). The fruit named on this page is the weapons, the dead, and the partiality. That fruit is not the Sermon on the Mount.

Jesus said many will say to him, “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?” And then he will declare to them, “I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness” (Matthew 7:22–23). A churchgoer who stays in open rebellion, blessing what he forbade, is not walking with him. The verse does not say those people were his and then lost a place. It says he never knew them. Staying in a church that teaches this is not a safe profession of faith. Come out.

One of the most disturbing questions facing Christianity today is why so many religious institutions appear unwilling to confront the suffering of innocent people when doing so might conflict with their political loyalties or longstanding theological traditions.

Scripture does not merely encourage believers to be compassionate. It repeatedly commands God’s people to defend the oppressed, speak for those who cannot defend themselves, confront injustice, and refuse to participate in wickedness.

Proverbs 31:8–9 commands us to speak for those who cannot speak for themselves, judge righteously, and defend the poor and needy.

Isaiah 1:17 tells God’s people to seek justice, correct oppression, defend the fatherless, and plead for the widow.

Jeremiah 22:3 commands the practice of justice and righteousness, including delivering victims from the hands of their oppressors and refusing violence against the innocent.

Isaiah 58:6–7 describes the kind of worship God desires: breaking the bonds of wickedness, freeing the oppressed, feeding the hungry, and sheltering those in need.

Micah 6:8 teaches that God requires justice, mercy, and humility.

Matthew 25:35–45 records Jesus’ teaching about our responsibility toward the hungry, the stranger, the sick, the imprisoned, and those who suffer.

These are not obscure passages. They are central to the moral responsibilities described throughout Scripture.

The moral crisis facing the modern church

How can Christian leaders preach about righteousness while remaining silent about the suffering of Palestinian children, mothers, families, and other innocent civilians?

How can a church proclaim that every human life is sacred while appearing more concerned with defending a government’s reputation than acknowledging the suffering of its victims?

And how can religious leaders dismiss concerns about mass civilian deaths simply by referring to the atrocities committed on October 7, 2023, or repeating that Israel has a right to defend itself?

The attacks and hostage-taking of October 7 were grave atrocities. They deserve condemnation.

But those crimes do not justify atrocities against Palestinian civilians.

The right of a state to protect its population does not eliminate its obligations toward innocent people.

Nor should criticism of government conduct automatically be dismissed as antisemitism. Genuine antisemitism must be opposed, but legitimate criticism of Israeli government policies is not inherently hatred of Jewish people.

The genocide findings cannot simply be ignored

In September 2025, a United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry concluded that Israeli authorities and security forces had committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.

The International Court of Justice has also issued binding provisional measures in the genocide case brought by South Africa against Israel. A final judgment on the merits remains pending.

These are serious findings and legal proceedings that deserve examination, not automatic dismissal.

Christians may disagree about political solutions, military policy, or the precise legal classification of particular actions.

But should any of those disagreements prevent believers from condemning the killing of innocent civilians, forced displacement, starvation, or other grave abuses?

Our responsibility to defend the oppressed does not disappear because the alleged perpetrator is a nation our church has been taught to support.

When religious loyalty replaces biblical obedience

I believe one of the most dangerous forms of spiritual deception occurs when Christians are taught to defend a government so unconditionally that they become unwilling to acknowledge its wrongdoing.

When religious leaders selectively emphasize biblical promises concerning Israel while overlooking commandments about justice, mercy, oppression, and the treatment of innocent people, they risk distorting the moral message of Scripture.

Jesus repeatedly confronted religious leaders who emphasized outward religion while neglecting more important matters.

In Matthew 23:23, Jesus specifically identifies justice, mercy, and faithfulness as weightier matters of the law.

What does that say about churches that passionately defend a modern nation but appear unwilling to speak with equal conviction about innocent people suffering under its military actions?

I believe this is more than a political disagreement.

It is a serious question of biblical obedience.

I regard the deliberate dismissal or justification of atrocities against innocent people, especially when defended through religious teaching, as a grave spiritual failure. Where such conduct involves knowingly abandoning the teachings of Christ, I believe it raises profound questions about apostasy and faithfulness to the Gospel.

Questions every Christian should ask their church

• Does our church publicly condemn atrocities against civilians regardless of who commits them?
• Does our pastor teach the biblical responsibility to defend the oppressed, or does that responsibility seem to disappear when Israel is involved?
• Does the church distinguish between supporting Jewish people, respecting biblical history, and endorsing the policies of the modern Israeli government?
• Are members encouraged to examine documented human-rights findings independently?
• Can someone express concern for Palestinian civilians without being accused of opposing God or hating Jewish people?

And most importantly: if Jesus Christ stood before our congregation today and asked what we had done for the hungry, the displaced, the wounded, and the innocent children suffering in Gaza, what would our answer be?

A call to biblical accountability

Cult Watch believes that churches should be among the first institutions to confront oppression, defend innocent lives, and demand accountability for grave abuses.

We should not have to wait for secular institutions, international investigators, journalists, or human-rights organizations to remind Christians that innocent human life matters.

The Church has already been given that responsibility through Scripture.

We call upon Christian leaders to examine their teachings, acknowledge the suffering of innocent people, reject the justification of atrocities, and place obedience to Jesus Christ above political alliances.

The question is not whether we stand with Israel or Palestine as a political identity. The question is whether we stand for the righteousness, justice, mercy, and truth that Jesus Christ commands.

A church cannot fulfill its calling merely by preaching about love while refusing to practice justice.

“But let judgment run down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream.” — Amos 5:24

The Commission concluded that genocide occurred. The International Court of Justice has not yet issued its final judgment on the merits. The documents are in Who has called this a genocide, and what the counts say.

The biblical duty to confront oppression is central to this discussion. It is set out in The Church’s biblical duty to confront oppression and injustice.

These are not rumors. They are public statements by a chief rabbi, a former chief rabbi, a cabinet minister, and men who lead the street. A church that supports this country is supporting a country whose leaders have said Christians are idolatry, that gentiles exist to serve Jews, and that spitting on Christians is not a crime.

On 22 August 2006 the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem, the Anglican bishop, the Lutheran bishop, and the Syriac Orthodox archbishop signed the Jerusalem Declaration on Christian Zionism. They wrote, “We categorically reject Christian Zionist doctrines as false teaching that corrupts the biblical message of love, justice and reconciliation.” They said the Christian Zionist program identifies the Gospel with “empire, colonialism and militarism,” and that it advances “racial exclusivity and perpetual war rather than the gospel of universal love, redemption and reconciliation taught by Jesus Christ.”

The condition was already in the prophets. “If you truly execute justice one with another, if you do not oppress the sojourner, the fatherless, or the widow, or shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not go after other gods to your own harm, then I will let you dwell in this place” (Jeremiah 7:5–7). The promise of the land was not a blank check for a modern army.

“God shows no partiality” (Romans 2:11). “If you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors” (James 2:9). “You shall not wrong a sojourner or oppress him, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt” (Exodus 22:21). “You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself” (Leviticus 19:34). In Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek (Galatians 3:28).

Hajo Meyer, who survived Auschwitz, said in January 2010, “The Israelis tried to dehumanise the Palestinians, just like the Nazis tried to dehumanise me.” He said the Zionists “have not any right whatsoever to use the Holocaust for any purpose.” He toured under the title “Never Again for Anyone.” The Holocaust does not license a new oppression, and it does not make a church holy for blessing one.

Three human rights reports, from inside and outside Israel, called the system apartheid. On 12 January 2021 the Israeli group B’Tselem titled its paper “A regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea: This is apartheid.” In April 2021 Human Rights Watch, in “A Threshold Crossed,” concluded that Israeli authorities are committing the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution. In February 2022 Amnesty International concluded that Israel’s treatment of Palestinians is the crime against humanity of apartheid. A church that calls this holy is calling partiality holy. James says that is sin.

These organizations have said, in their own words, that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza.

Gaza medical sources, reported on 9 October 2026, counted 74,254 Palestinians killed and 175,306 injured since 7 October 2023. They counted 21,976 children killed and 1,134 amputations among children. Gaza’s Health Ministry reported 74,498 killed and 175,616 injured in a count published 22 October 2026. A separate compilation dated 24 October 2026 reported 74,540 killed in Gaza, including 20,179 children. The counts do not match to the last person. All of them are counts of the recovered dead. The United Nations has said Gaza has the highest rate of child amputees per capita in the world. They are not a complete count of everyone killed.

In Lebanon, Human Rights Watch reported in June 2026 that the Lebanese Health Ministry counted at least 3,711 people killed since the 2 March 2026 escalation, including 247 children. That figure is for that escalation. It is not the whole toll since 2023. The same organization documented unlawful white phosphorus in populated areas there.

The International Criminal Court found reasonable grounds that the blockade created conditions of life calculated to bring about the destruction of part of the civilian population, including the death of children from malnutrition and dehydration. Amnesty recorded mass starvation. Civilians have been killed at aid distribution points. Farmland and water systems have been destroyed. In Lebanon, the UN Development Programme counted 34 water facilities damaged in the hostilities, cutting clean water for more than 400,000 people. Supporting Israel, Zionism, and the Greater Israel Project are the same thing. The Greater Israel Project is the taking of the West Bank and the land around it into one state, and it is underway now. A church that blesses Israel through a genocide will not question it.

Christian churches were hit. On 19 October 2023 an Israeli strike hit the Greek Orthodox Church of Saint Porphyrius in Gaza City and killed people sheltering there. On 17 July 2025 a strike hit Holy Family, the only Catholic church in Gaza. Three people were killed. Pastor Gabriel Romanelli was wounded. This page names the churches in the public reports instead of inventing a total.

United Nations human rights investigators, and the charges at the International Criminal Court, say the government used starvation as a weapon. The blockade closed crossings and held back trucks of food, clean water, and medicine. The Committee to Protect Journalists reported the deadliest period for media workers since it began keeping records. Reporters who were filming the hunger and the strikes were killed. A church that stands with Israel is standing with that.

The 7 October 2023 raid is used as a license for a destruction that was already prepared. In the late 1980s Israeli officials, including former military leaders, helped cultivate Hamas as a rival to the Palestine Liberation Organization, so Palestinian leadership would be split.

Haaretz reported that a significant number of Israelis killed that day were killed by their own forces. Tanks and Apache helicopters fired on homes under the Hannibal Directive, the order to stop captives from being taken even if the captives die. The government had a detailed warning of the attack plan a year before and set it aside. The Nova festival on the fence was given a last-minute one-day extension while border units were drawn down.

Hamas leadership then offered to return the civilian hostages for an immediate ceasefire. The government refused, and kept the campaign going. The land taking did not start in 2023. Early Zionist groups bought some tracts. The greater part was taken by force, by driving the people out, and by destroying hundreds of Palestinian villages, over the deeds of families who had lived on that ground for generations. Standing with Israel is standing with that record.

Israel does not confirm that it has nuclear weapons. These are the public statements, with the dates.

On 29 April 2017 North Korea’s Foreign Ministry called Israel the “only illegal possessor of nukes in the Middle East, under the patronage of the U.S.” It threatened “merciless, thousand-fold punishment” to anyone who hurt “the dignity of its supreme leadership.” The statement answered Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman, who had called Kim Jong Un a madman.

On 5 November 2023 Heritage Minister Amihai Eliyahu was asked about a nuclear strike on Gaza and said, “That’s one way.” Netanyahu suspended him from cabinet meetings. On 7 November Russia’s Maria Zakharova said, “This has raised a huge number of questions,” and, “It turns out that we are hearing official statements about the presence of nuclear weapons?” On 14 November China’s deputy UN ambassador Geng Shuang called the remark “extremely irresponsible and disturbing” and urged Israel to join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty as a non-nuclear state.

On 23 September 2026 Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian told the UN General Assembly, “Atomic and nuclear weapons are in the hands of the Israeli regime, but the inspectors are requested to come to Iran.” He said Israel “has the bombs,” is not in the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and “has not allowed a single inspection.”

On 29 December 2023 South Africa filed at the International Court of Justice and alleged that Israel’s acts in Gaza were genocidal in character. On 2 June 2024 Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan called Netanyahu a “barbarian” who must be stopped, and spoke of “genocide policies.” On 22 September 2025 he told Fox News, “This is completely a genocide.”

Under the memorandum that runs through 2028, the United States gives Israel $3.8 billion a year in military aid. $3.3 billion of that is Foreign Military Financing. $500 million is missile defense. That yearly sum did not stop in 2024. In April 2024, Public Law 118-50 added more on top of it: $3.5 billion in Foreign Military Financing, $4 billion for Israel to buy Iron Dome and David’s Sling, $1.2 billion for Iron Beam, and $4.4 billion for the Pentagon to replace American stocks already given to Israel. That money buys weapons. It is not a check for American rent or groceries.

A notified arms sale is not the same thing as a gift. In 2024 the United States notified Congress of a possible sale of up to 50 F-15IA jets, estimated at $18.82 billion. Deliveries were estimated to begin in 2029. The notice does not say the jets were already paid for. Israel’s yearly military-financing grants are the usual way it pays American contractors for weapons like these. States do not ship weapons. Some state treasuries, including Florida, buy Israel bonds. A bond is a loan that pays interest back. It is not a donation.

The lobby spends to keep the aid in place. The New York Times reported in August 2026 that AIPAC spent nearly $25 million to defeat Representatives Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush, both critics of Israel, and about $10 million of that against Bowman alone. Its primary spending across the 2022, 2024, and 2026 cycles was about $138 million in the Times count. The Federal Election Commission overview for the United Democracy Project, committee C00799031, lists $112.8 million in receipts and $85.1 million in disbursements from 1 January 2025 through 14 October 2026. That is one committee in the current cycle. It spends on Democrats and on Republicans. That is an election campaign, not a bribe written into the statute. It is still American money spent to punish members who will not vote the aid through.

Christian Zionist groups raise still more, from church people, and send it toward Israel. Money also flows the other way. The government of Israel is funding American churches, including churches in Arizona and Texas, in grants reported up to $4 million, to preach Israel. A church is commanded to preach repentance and the gospel. It is not commanded to preach Israel. Pastors go to Israel for seminars and sit under rabbis who do not believe in Jesus. They are not there doing evangelism. Those teachers publicly condemn Jesus. The uncensored Talmud, Gittin 57a, says Jesus is punished in boiling excrement. Their teaching says Mary was a promiscuous woman, that Jesus was conceived in adultery, and that his father was a Roman soldier, Pantera. A non-Jew is called a goy, treated as less than a person, and this teaching is used to justify lying to the goy. That is how this system looks at the Christians who support it.

Medical care in Israel is provided to the people there. The American money is for the weapons. Washington keeps finding billions for these weapons while telling Americans there is no money for food and rent.

In September 2026 the Washington Post and the Associated Press reported a further package the Trump administration was moving: about $2.8 billion for 20,000 Mark 84 bombs and 20,000 BLU-117 bombs, both in the 2,000-pound class. The reporting said Israel would buy them with Foreign Military Financing, which is American money. The State Department had not yet posted a formal notice. A Mark 84 does not vaporize a half-mile. It carries close to 1,000 pounds of explosive, digs a crater on the order of 50 feet across and 36 feet deep, and kills people in the open for hundreds of feet. Israel can drop it from the F-15s, F-16s, and F-35s it already flies.

The House put a further step in its 2027 defense bill. Section 219 would order the Secretary of Defense to name an executive agent to expand joint work with Israel on artificial intelligence, cyber, directed energy, and data fusion. The Senate version is Section 1217, called the FUTURES Act. It is not finished law. It does not put Israeli officers in command of American troops. Opponents have called the House vote treason. That is their accusation. No court has charged it.

Benjamin Netanyahu is on trial in Israel in three corruption cases. He denies them. None is a conviction.

Case 1000 charges fraud and breach of trust over luxury gifts, valued in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, from Hollywood producer Arnon Milchan and billionaire James Packer. Case 2000 charges fraud and breach of trust over a proposed deal with publisher Arnon Mozes for favorable coverage in Yedioth Ahronoth. Case 4000, the most serious, charges bribery, fraud, and breach of trust over regulatory favors for the telecom company Bezeq in return for favorable coverage on the Walla news site. Under Israeli criminal law the bribery count carries up to 10 years. Fraud and breach of trust each carry up to 3 years.

On 21 November 2024 the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu and for Yoav Gallant. The warrant is an accusation, not a conviction. The Court’s own defendant page says he is allegedly responsible for the war crimes of starvation as a method of warfare and of intentionally directing an attack against the civilian population, and for the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts. Under the Rome Statute a single conviction can bring up to 30 years in prison, or life imprisonment when the extreme gravity of the crime and the circumstances of the convicted person justify it. The International Court of Justice does not issue arrest warrants. That court is hearing South Africa’s genocide case against the state. The personal warrant is from the International Criminal Court.

On 9 October 2023, Gallant, then defense minister, said: “I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel. Everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly.”

In late October 2023 Netanyahu said, “Remember what Amalek did to you.” That line sits beside the command in 1 Samuel 15 to kill men, women, children, and infants. He said it over Gaza.

In a speech in March 2026 he said Jesus Christ has no advantage over Genghis Khan, and that if you are strong enough, ruthless enough, and powerful enough, evil will overcome good.

In April 2008 the Israeli paper Ma’ariv reported a lecture he gave at Bar-Ilan University. It quoted him: “We are benefiting from one thing, and that is the attack on the Twin Towers and Pentagon, and the American struggle in Iraq.” He added that those events swung American public opinion in Israel’s favor.

Israel votes on Tuesday, 27 October 2026. A man is on that ballot under the name Yeshua Israel Ben David, with a party called Gan Eden, Garden of Eden. Yeshua is the Hebrew name translated Jesus. Ben David means son of David. He claims to be the Messiah. He claims to be Jesus Christ, the son of David. Many people in Israel recognize him as the Messiah, and he has a large following there. He is running in this election.

On 7 September 2026 Ynet quoted him: “I would like to serve as a priest in the future Temple.” And: “If I can’t, we’ll start with the Knesset. It’s a Sanhedrin.” He appeared at the elections committee wearing a high priest’s breastplate emblem. He asked for ballot letters that spell the divine name.

Jesus said, “Many will come in my name, saying, ‘I am the Christ,’ and they will lead many astray” (Matthew 24:5). Many Christians believe this man is the Antichrist, or a man who could become the Antichrist, because he takes the name and the office of Jesus Christ. The real Christ was crucified, buried, and raised, and does not need a Knesset seat. A church that blesses this state is blessing a nation in that spiritual disorder.

Netanyahu is seeking another term while his trial continues. The charges are the ones already named: fraud and breach of trust in Cases 1000 and 2000, and bribery, fraud, and breach of trust in Case 4000. The bribery count carries up to 10 years. Fraud and breach of trust each carry up to 3 years.

Critics and political opponents argue that he prolongs the wars to keep those cases from closing in. The postponements are in the court record. He has asked to delay testimony for security and diplomatic reasons, and the court has granted delays. In April 2026 Reuters reported that a halt in the attacks on Iran meant the corruption trial would resume. The legal team’s premise is that a sitting prime minister cannot stand trial in the ordinary way while he is managing an active war. The war also holds his far-right coalition partners in the government. If that coalition breaks, an election can take the office away.

If the fighting stops, the security reason for delay stops with it, and the trial goes back on a regular schedule. If he loses the office, he loses the leverage to push immunity bills. What remains is the ordinary case, with up to 10 years on the bribery count. The delays are in the court record. The war is what keeps the cases from closing in on him.

The seven Noahide laws are a classical Jewish legal category, not a new statute. Maimonides lists them in Mishneh Torah, Laws of Kings and Wars 9:1. Idolatry is one of the seven. In his list of the commands to Adam, the ban on idolatry stands first.

Orthodox Jewish teaching holds that God is not a man. Numbers 23:19 says God is not a man, that he should lie, nor a son of man, that he should repent. On that doctrine, giving divine worship to Jesus gives worship to a man. A strict reading of this law calls that idolatry. In the uncensored text of Maimonides, Christian worship is classed as foreign worship for that reason.

The penalty in that same classical system is the sword. The Talmud, Sanhedrin 56a–57a, says a descendant of Noah who violates these laws is executed by decapitation, on the word of one witness and one judge, without a warning. Maimonides restates it. Laws of Kings 9:14 says a Noahide who transgresses these commands is executed by decapitation. Laws of Kings 10:5 says the capital punishment for a Gentile’s transgression is decapitation by the sword.

These laws are being made international. President Trump and Jared Kushner are scheduled to join the religious congress in Israel, with leaders from other nations who have agreed to sign on to these rules. The written law assigns death by the sword for breaking them. Idolatry is the first of them, and under that ban the worship of Jesus is idolatry. It may not be forced on the first day. The text is still the certified law, and the text is the roadmap.

Churches are told that standing with the modern State of Israel is standing with the Israelites of the Bible. The men who later led that state wrote something else about the old farming people of the land. They wrote it as young Zionist organizers, not as a decree from office.

David Ben-Gurion became Israel’s first prime minister in 1948. In 1917 he was not prime minister. In New York he published “On the Origin of the Falahin.” Falahin means the peasant farmers. The essay ran in Luach Achiezer (1917, pp. 118–27) and was reprinted in Anachnu U’Shcheneinu (Tel Aviv: Davar, 1931, pp. 13–25). He wrote:

The same claim is in the 1918 book he wrote with Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, Eretz Israel in the Past and Present, first published in Yiddish in New York by the Poale Zion Palestine Committee. There Ben-Gurion wrote that the fellahin are not descendants of the Arab conquerors of the seventh century. The conquerors, he said, did not destroy the agricultural population they found. They expelled the Byzantine rulers and did not touch the local farmers, and they did not settle the land themselves.

Ben-Zvi became Israel’s second president in 1952. He was not the first. Chaim Weizmann was the first president. In 1929, long before that office, Ben-Zvi wrote that the vast majority of the peasant farmers did not come from the Arab conquerors, but from the Jewish farmers who were already numerous on the land. That is the wording reported from his 1929 writing.

So the political project churches call “support for Israel” is not, on these men’s own early pages, support for a people who arrived with the Arab conquest. They described the Muslim peasant farmers as the Hebrew farmers who stayed, learned Arabic, and in time took the Muslim religion rather than give up the soil.

The point follows from that. A church that blesses the modern state, and blesses the Greater Israel project, thinks it is protecting biblical Israel. It has not read what the founders wrote. The communities those essays described are among the people being killed in Gaza and the West Bank now. That destruction is a genocide. Standing with it is not standing with the remnant those Zionists said never left.

The modern state is not a fulfillment of prophecy. God said the return to the land depends on the people turning back to him with the whole heart (Deuteronomy 30:1–3). This state is a secular republic. Its leadership rejects Jesus Christ. It does not meet the condition.

Jesus told it in the parable of the vineyard. The owner leased it to tenants. They beat the prophets and killed the son. “What then will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and destroy those tenants and give the vineyard to others” (Mark 12:9). By killing the Messiah, that leadership lost the lease.

Paul wrote the consequence. “And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise” (Galatians 3:29). The heir is not a flag and not a bloodline that refuses the Son. The heir is the body of people who belong to Jesus Christ. A church that calls the modern state God’s chosen nation is preaching a lease God already ended.

Churches use that one line to teach that Christians must support and bless the modern State of Israel or God will curse them. That is not what the verse is doing. God said it to Abram, at the start of the covenant, long before a modern nation by that name existed. The promise has three parts: God will deal with those who bless or dishonor Abram, and in Abram all the families of the earth will be blessed.

The New Testament tells you where that blessing went. Paul says the gospel was preached to Abraham ahead of time: “In you shall all the nations be blessed” (Galatians 3:8). He says the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring, “who is Christ” (Galatians 3:16). And he says if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring and heirs of the promise (Galatians 3:29). The blessing on the nations is Christ. It is not a standing order for a church to take a political side.

So a pulpit that skips Abraham, skips the families of the earth, and skips Christ, then aims the curse at anyone who will not stand with a modern government, has twisted the verse. Blessing Abraham’s promise means receiving Christ. It does not mean funding, defending, or joining a church because that church stands with Zionism.

Christians are not called to give religious support to a denial of Jesus Christ. He said no one comes to the Father except through him (John 14:6). Second John 10–11 says that if you welcome a teaching that does not bring Christ, you take part in its wicked works. First Timothy 5:22 says not to take part in the sins of others. Support a wicked work and you share it. That is the warning.

Do not twist those verses the other way. They do not tell you to refuse a neighbor, and they do not tell you to stop praying for people. Jesus said to love your neighbor and your enemy. The line this page draws is against blessing a political project and calling it obedience. It is not a curse on a person for being Jewish, and it is not Genesis 12:3 turned into a club.