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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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Syria’s Sharaa Says Talks With Israel Could Yield Results ‘In Coming Days’
Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa speaks at the opening ceremony of the 62nd Damascus International Fair, the first edition held since the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime, in Damascus, Syria, Aug. 27, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Khalil Ashawi
Syria’s President Ahmed al-Sharaa said on Wednesday that ongoing negotiations with Israel to reach a security pact could lead to results “in the coming days.”
He told reporters in Damascus the security pact was a “necessity” and that it would need to respect Syria’s airspace and territorial unity and be monitored by the United Nations.
Syria and Israel are in talks to reach an agreement that Damascus hopes will secure a halt to Israeli airstrikes and the withdrawal of Israeli troops who have pushed into southern Syria.
Reuters reported this week that Washington was pressuring Syria to reach a deal before world leaders gather next week for the UN General Assembly in New York.
But Sharaa, in a briefing with journalists including Reuters ahead of his expected trip to New York to attend the meeting, denied the US was putting any pressure on Syria and said instead that it was playing a mediating role.
He said Israel had carried out more than 1,000 strikes on Syria and conducted more than 400 ground incursions since Dec. 8, when the rebel offensive he led toppled former Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad.
Sharaa said Israel’s actions were contradicting the stated American policy of a stable and unified Syria, which he said was “very dangerous.”
He said Damascus was seeking a deal similar to a 1974 disengagement agreement between Israel and Syria that created a demilitarized zone between the two countries.
He said Syria sought the withdrawal of Israeli troops but that Israel wanted to remain at strategic locations it seized after Dec. 8, including Mount Hermon. Israeli ministers have publicly said Israel intends to keep control of the sites.
He said if the security pact succeeds, other agreements could be reached. He did not provide details, but said a peace agreement or normalization deal like the US-mediated Abraham Accords, under which several Muslim-majority countries agreed to normalize diplomatic ties with Israel, was not currently on the table.
He also said it was too early to discuss the fate of the Golan Heights because it was “a big deal.”
Reuters reported this week that Israel had ruled out handing back the zone, which Donald Trump unilaterally recognized as Israeli during his first term as US president.
“It’s a difficult case – you have negotiations between a Damascene and a Jew,” Sharaa told reporters, smiling.
SECURITY PACT DERAILED IN JULY
Sharaa also said Syria and Israel had been just “four to five days” away from reaching the basis of a security pact in July, but that developments in the southern province of Sweida had derailed those discussions.
Syrian troops were deployed to Sweida in July to quell fighting between Druze armed factions and Bedouin fighters. But the violence worsened, with Syrian forces accused of execution-style killings and Israel striking southern Syria, the defense ministry in Damascus and near the presidential palace.
Sharaa on Wednesday described the strikes near the presidential palace as “not a message, but a declaration of war,” and said Syria had still refrained from responding militarily to preserve the negotiations.
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Anti-Israel Activists Gear Up to ‘Flood’ UN General Assembly
US Capitol Police and NYPD officers clash with anti-Israel demonstrators, on the day Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses a joint meeting of Congress, on Capitol Hill, in Washington, DC, July 24, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Umit Bektas
Anti-Israel groups are planning a wave of raucous protests in New York City during the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) over the next several days, prompting concerns that the demonstrations could descend into antisemitic rhetoric and intimidation.
A coalition of anti-Israel activists is organizing the protests in and around UN headquarters to coincide with speeches from Middle Eastern leaders and appearances by US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The demonstrations are expected to draw large crowds and feature prominent pro-Palestinian voices, some of whom have been criticized for trafficking in antisemitic tropes, in addition to calling for the destruction of Israe.
Organizers of the demonstrations have promoted the coordinated events on social media as an opportunity to pressure world leaders to hold Israel accountable for its military campaign against Hamas in Gaza, with some messaging framed in sharply hostile terms.
On Sunday, for example, activists shouted at Israel’s Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon.
“Zionism is terrorism. All you guys are terrorists committing ethnic cleansing and genocide in Gaza and Palestine. Shame on you, Zionist animals,” they shouted.
BREAKING: PRO-PALESTINE PROTESTORS CONFRONT “ISRAELI” AMBASSADOR DANNY DANON AT THE UNITED NATIONS
1/5 pic.twitter.com/4G1VYEMGzV
— Within Our Lifetime (@WOLPalestine) September 14, 2025
The Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM), warned on its website that the scale and tone of the planned demonstrations risk crossing the line from political protest into hate speech, arguing that anti-Israel activists are attempting to hijack the UN gathering to spread antisemitism and delegitimize the Jewish state’s right to exist.
Outside the UN last week, masked protesters belonging to the activist group INDECLINE kicked a realistic replica of Netanyahu’s decapitated head as though it were a soccer ball.
US activist group plays soccer with Bibi’s mock decapitated HEAD right outside NYC UN HQ
Peep shot at 00:40
Footage posted by INDECLINE collective just as UN General Assembly about to kick off
‘Following the game, ball was donated to Palestinian Genocide Museum’ pic.twitter.com/TQ84sgZhKr
— RT (@RT_com) September 9, 2025
Within Our Lifetime (WOL), a radical anti-Israel activist group, has vowed to “flood” the UNGA on behalf of the pro-Palestine movement.
WOL, one of the most prolific anti-Israel activist groups, came under immense fire after it organized a protest against an exhibition to honor the victims of the Oct. 7 massacre at the Nova Music Festival in southern Israel. During the event, the group chanted “resistance is justified when people are occupied!” and “Israel, go to hell!”
“We will be there to confront them with the truth: Their silence and inaction enable genocide. The world cannot continue as if Gaza does not exist,” WOL said of its planned demonstrations in New York. “This is the time to make our voices impossible to ignore. Come to New York by any means necessary, to stand, to march, to demand the UN act and end the siege.”
Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), two other anti-Israel organizations that have helped organize widespread demonstrations against the Jewish state during the war in Gaza, also announced they are planning a march from Times Square to the UN headquarters on Friday.
“The time is now for each and every UN member state to uphold their duty under international law: sanction Israel and end the genocide,” the groups said in a statement.
JVP, an organization that purports to fight for “Palestinian liberation,” has positioned itself as a staunch adversary of the Jewish state. The group argued in a 2021 booklet that Jews should not write Hebrew liturgy because hearing the language would be “deeply traumatizing” to Palestinians. JVP has repeatedly defended the Oct. 7 massacre of roughly 1,200 people in southern Israel by Hamas as a justified “resistance.” Chapters of the organization have urged other self-described “progressives” to throw their support behind Hamas and other terrorist groups against Israel
Similarly, PYM, another radical anti-Israel group, has repeatedly defended terrorism and violence against the Jewish state. PYM has organized many anti-Israel protests in the two years following the Oct. 7 attacks in the Jewish state. Recently, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AK) called for a federal investigation into the organization after Aisha Nizar, one of the group’s leaders, urged supporters to sabotage the US supply chain for the F-35 fighter jet, one of the most advanced US military assets and a critical component of Israel’s defense.
The UN General Assembly has historically been a flashpoint for heated debate over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Previous gatherings have seen dueling demonstrations outside the Manhattan venue, with pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian groups both seeking to influence the international spotlight.
While warning about the demonstrations, CAM noted it recently launched a new mobile app, Report It, that allows users worldwide to quickly and securely report antisemitic incidents in real time.
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Nina Davidson Presses Universities to Back Words With Action as Jewish Students Return to Campus Amid Antisemitism Crisis
Nina Davidson on The Algemeiner’s ‘J100’ podcast. Photo: Screenshot
Philanthropist Nina Davidson, who served on the board of Barnard College, has called on universities to pair tough rhetoric on combatting antisemitism with enforcement as Jewish students returned to campuses for the new academic year.
“Years ago, The Algemeiner had published a list ranking the most antisemitic colleges in the country. And number one was Columbia,” Davidson recalled on a recent episode of The Algemeiner‘s “J100” podcast. “As a board member and as someone who was representing the institution, it really upset me … At the board meeting, I brought it up and I said, ‘What are we going to do about this?’”
Host David Cohen, chief executive officer of The Algemeiner, explained he had revisited Davidson’s remarks while she was being honored for her work at The Algemeiner‘s 8th annual J100 gala, held in October 2021, noting their continued relevance.
“It could have been the same speech in 2025,” he said, underscoring how longstanding concerns about campus antisemitism, while having intensified in the aftermath of Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, are not new.
Davidson argued that universities already possess the tools to protect students – codes of conduct, time-place-manner rules, and consequences for threats or targeted harassment – but too often fail to apply them evenly. “Statements are not enough,” she said, arguing that institutions need to enforce their rules and set a precedent that there will be consequences for individuals who refuse to follow them.
She also said that stakeholders – alumni, parents, and donors – are reassessing their relationships with schools that, in their view, have not safeguarded Jewish students. While supportive of open debate, Davidson distinguished between protest and intimidation, calling for leadership that protects expression while ensuring campus safety.
The episode surveyed specific pressure points that administrators will face this fall: repeat anti-Israel encampments, disruptions of Jewish programming, and the challenge of distinguishing political speech from conduct that violates university rules. “Unless schools draw those lines now,” Davidson warned, “they’ll be scrambling once the next crisis hits.”
Cohen closed by framing the discussion as a test of institutional credibility, asking whether universities will “turn policy into protection” in real time. Davidson agreed, pointing to students who “need to know the rules aren’t just on paper.”
The full conversation is available on The Algemeiner’s “J100” podcast.