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New Group Fosters Jewish, Christian Alliances to Combat Hate: ‘There Is so Much We Can Do Together’
A congregant from a church that participates in “Solidarity Sunday” hugs an Oct. 7 survivor at the event on May 5, 2024. Photo: Provided by Moral Hearts Alliance
The founders of a new organization that aims to foster closer ties between Jews and Evangelical Christians who support Israel told The Algemeiner that not putting an effort into aligning the two communities is a “missed opportunity” at combating hatred targeting the Jewish state.
“Together there is so much that we can do,” said Dana Cohen, a co-founder of the Moral Hearts Alliance. “We all recognize the evil that is Hamas and is facing Israel, but now on the college campuses, it’s on our shores too. We have an amazing ally and we have to reach across the aisle to one another and come up with ways to build on that alliance and activate it for all of us.”
The main goal of the Moral Hearts Alliance is to strengthen relationships for Israel and the Jewish people around the world with different religions, ethnicities, and countries that share their same values. Partnering with Christians who support Israel should be an obvious alliance considering that there are 60 million Evangelicals in the United States and 600 million globally, according to Cohen.
“We have to put aside our prejudices as a group and accept that they want to love us and embrace us and be there for us. They want to be there for Israel and want to be included,” added Valerie Feigen, a fellow co-founder of the organization and Cohen’s sister-in-law.
The two women co-founded the Moral Hearts Alliance earlier this year after Feigen went to Israel in January and met with survivors of the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attacks. One survivor asked Feigen to help share first-hand testimonies from Oct. 7 attacks with people outside of Israel, and she came back to the US with that mission in hand. She became dedicated to having people “outside of the Jewish bubble” hear stories from survivors just like she did.
Feigen’s trip to Israel inspired a project that the Moral Hearts Alliance organized last week called “Solidarity Sunday,” in which seven survivors of Oct. 7 — including three from the massacre at the Nova Music Festival — spoke at seven churches across the United States, from California to New York, about their experiences surviving the terrorist attacks that day. The event was organized in cooperation with the Christian pro-Israel organization Eagles‘ Wings.
The largest congregation to host a “Solidarity Sunday” event was in San Bernardino, Calif., with roughly 1,500 people.
The events took place across the US on May 5, the eve of Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day (Yom Hashoah), and the overwhelming response was “emphatic love for Israel, love for the Jewish people, and the desire to stand with Israel,” Cohen said.
Each congregation sang Israel’s national anthem Hatikvah at the event, and lit candles and held a moment of silence in honor of the victims of the Oct. 7 attacks. At one church, a Jewish prayer shawl, known in Hebrew as a tallit, was draped upon a cross inside the congregation. The events were also live streamed and shared on Zoom for others who wanted to hear the testimonies from the survivors.
A sign outside the Family Worship Center in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, ahead of the “Solidarity Sunday” event hosted by the congregation on May 5, 2024. Photo: Provided
“The overwhelming response was extraordinary love and gratefulness that the Israelis had come all this way to share their story,” Feigen explained. “From every pastor to every member of the church, every single Israeli and Moral Hearts representative chaperoning each Israeli were received with such love. And we heard after from the Israelis that people lined up for an hour and a half to hug them, thank them, bring them gifts. They were welcomed with such tenderness, love, and kindness.”
“We’re late in doing it,” Feigen added about helping Oct. 7 survivors share their experiences with people outside of the Jewish community.
“The Jewish community missed an incredible opportunity in the last seven months since the Oct. 7 attacks in not bringing stories about the attacks to the Christian community,” Cohen noted. “The Christians were hungry for these stories.” She said the positive response to “Solidarity Sunday” was even more heartwarming when considering the sometimes violent anti-Israel protests that have erupted on US college and university campuses in recent weeks.
At a “Solidarity Sunday” event hosted at a church in New York led by Bishop Robert Stearns, the founder of Eagles’ Wings, a Jewish student leader from the Students Supporting Israel chapter at the University of Buffalo also spoke to congregants about the hatred Jews are facing on college and university campuses. Stearns urged church congregants to support a pro-Israel rally taking place at the University of Buffalo the next day, and on Monday, 100 members of the congregation attended the campus demonstration to show solidarity with the Jewish state.
The Moral Hearts Alliance wants to help encourage similar displays of unity in the future, in which Jews and Christians can show support for one another.
“We believe this is an amazing opportunity for the Jewish community to turn the tide of hate against Israel and what is occurring in the United States,” Cohen said, emphasizing the importance of seizing the possibilities that come with forming alliances between Jews and Christians.
“We have this amazing partnership potential and we just need to meet them halfway, and we just want to spearhead that effort,” she added. “There is just so much we can do together.”
The post New Group Fosters Jewish, Christian Alliances to Combat Hate: ‘There Is so Much We Can Do Together’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Trump’s Travel Ban on 12 Countries Goes Into Effect Early Monday
US President Donald Trump attends the Saudi-US Investment Forum, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, May 13, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Brian Snyder
US President Donald Trump’s order banning citizens of 12 countries from entering the United States goes into effect at 12:01 am ET (0401 GMT) on Monday, a move the president promulgated to protect the country from “foreign terrorists.”
The countries affected by the latest travel ban are Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen.
The entry of people from seven other countries – Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela – will be partially restricted.
Trump, a Republican, said the countries subject to the most severe restrictions were determined to harbor a “large-scale presence of terrorists,” fail to cooperate on visa security, have an inability to verify travelers’ identities, as well as inadequate record-keeping of criminal histories and high rates of visa overstays in the United States.
He cited last Sunday’s incident in Boulder, Colorado, in which an Egyptian national tossed a gasoline bomb into a crowd of pro-Israel demonstrators as an example of why the new curbs are needed. But Egypt is not part of the travel ban.
The travel ban forms part of Trump’s policy to restrict immigration into the United States and is reminiscent of a similar move in his first term when he barred travelers from seven Muslim-majority nations.
Officials and residents in countries whose citizens will soon be banned expressed dismay and disbelief.
Chad President Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno said he had instructed his government to stop granting visas to US citizens in response to Trump’s action.
“Chad has neither planes to offer nor billions of dollars to give, but Chad has its dignity and its pride,” he said in a Facebook post, referring to countries such as Qatar, which gifted the U.S. a luxury airplane for Trump’s use and promised to invest billions of dollars in the U.S.
Afghans who worked for the US or US-funded projects and were hoping to resettle in the US expressed fear that the travel ban would force them to return to their country, where they could face reprisal from the Taliban.
Democratic US lawmakers also voiced concern about the policies.
“Trump’s travel ban on citizens from over 12 countries is draconian and unconstitutional,” said US Representative Ro Khanna on social media late on Thursday. “People have a right to seek asylum.”
The post Trump’s Travel Ban on 12 Countries Goes Into Effect Early Monday first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Israeli Military Says It Struck Hamas Member in Southern Syria
Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa speaks during a joint press conference with French President Emmanuel Macron after a meeting at the Elysee Palace in Paris, France, May 7, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Stephanie Lecocq/Pool
The Israeli military said on Sunday that it struck a member of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas in southern Syria’s Mazraat Beit Jin, days after Israel carried out its first airstrikes in the country in nearly a month.
Hamas did not immediately comment on the strike.
Israel said on Tuesday it hit weapons belonging to the government in retaliation for the firing of two projectiles towards Israel for the first time under the country’s new leadership. Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz held Syria’s President Ahmed al-Sharaa accountable.
Damascus in response said reports of the shelling were unverified, reiterating that Syria does not pose a threat to any regional party.
A little known group named “Martyr Muhammad Deif Brigades,” an apparent reference to Hamas’ military leader who was killed in an Israeli strike in 2024, reportedly claimed responsibility for the shelling. Reuters, however, could not independently verify the claim.
The post Israeli Military Says It Struck Hamas Member in Southern Syria first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Israel Orders Military to Stop Gaza-Bound Yacht Carrying Greta Thunberg
FILE PHOTO: Activist Greta Thunberg sits aboard the aid ship Madleen, which left the Italian port of Catania on June 1 to travel to Gaza to deliver humanitarian aid, in this picture released on June 2, 2025 on social media. Photo: Freedom Flotilla Coalition/via REUTERS/File Photo
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz told the military on Sunday to stop a charity boat carrying activists including Sweden’s Greta Thunberg who are planning to defy an Israeli blockade and reach Gaza.
Operated by the pro-Palestinian Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FFC), the British-flagged Madleen yacht set sail from Sicily on June 6 and is currently off the Egyptian coast, heading slowly towards the Gaza Strip, which is besieged by Israel.
“I instructed the IDF to act so that the Madleen .. does not reach Gaza,” Katz said in a statement.
“To the antisemitic Greta and her Hamas-propaganda-spouting friends, I say clearly: You’d better turn back, because you will not reach Gaza.”
Climate activist Thunberg said she joined the Madleen crew to “challenge Israel’s illegal siege and escalating war crimes” in Gaza and highlight the urgent need for humanitarian aid. She has rejected previous Israeli accusations of antisemitism.
Israel went to war with Hamas in October 2023 after the Islamist terrorists launched a surprise attack on southern Israel, killing more 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages back to the enclave.
Katz said the blockade was essential to Israel’s national security as it seeks to eliminate Hamas.
“The State of Israel will not allow anyone to break the naval blockade on Gaza, whose primary purpose is to prevent the transfer of weapons to Hamas,” he said.
The Madleen is carrying a symbolic quantity of aid, including rice and baby formula, the FFC has said.
FFC press officer Hay Sha Wiya said on Sunday the boat was currently some 160 nautical miles (296 km) from Gaza. “We are preparing for the possibility of interception,” she said.
Besides Thunberg, there are 11 other crew members aboard, including Rima Hassan, a French member of the European Parliament.
Israeli media have reported that the military plans to intercept the yacht before it reaches Gaza and escort it to the Israeli port of Ashdod. The crew would then be deported.
In 2010, Israeli commandos killed 10 people when they boarded a Turkish ship, the Mavi Marmara, that was leading a small flotilla towards Gaza.
The post Israel Orders Military to Stop Gaza-Bound Yacht Carrying Greta Thunberg first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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