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Pat Robertson, pastor who personified American Jews’ dilemma with evangelicals, dies at 93
(JTA) — Pat Robertson was trying to pay Jews a compliment.
“They’d rather be polishing diamonds than fixing cars,” he said in 2014 on his show on the Christian Broadcasting Network, the station the Southern Baptist minister founded in 1960 that had grown into an evangelical Protestant powerhouse.
Robertson made his observation — while chuckling — in a conversation with a rabbi who was sympathetic to his conservative beliefs, Daniel Lapin. He clearly thought that diamond polishing was a good thing, and somehow rooted in biblical precepts.
“What is it about Jewish people that make them prosper financially?” Robertson continued. “You almost never find Jews tinkering with their cars on the weekends or mowing their lawns. That’s what Daniel Lapin says, and there’s a very good reason for that, and it lies within the business secrets of the Bible.”
Those remarks were sharply emblematic of a dilemma that has for years dogged the American Jewish establishment and that was personified by Robertson, who died Thursday at 93. Like many evangelicals with a vast television audience and political influence, Robertson was full of admiration for Jews and deeply supportive of Israel.
At the same time, Robertson’s message carried with it the baggage of age-old stereotypes that caused Jews discomfort. Those came alongside a history of statements denigrating feminism, LGBTQ people and Muslims.
“ADL genuinely values the support of Israel these leaders have demonstrated,” an Anti-Defamation League statement said in 1994 after a 60-page report it published on Robertson’s Christian Coalition drew pushback from Jewish political conservatives, led by Lapin. “But this support cannot be used as a shield from legitimate criticism.”
Robertson broadcast his hugely popular “700 Club” show multiple times from Israel, and articulated the argument that biblical prophecy necessitated Christian support for the Jewish state. That view has since permeated the Republican Party.
“The survival of the Jewish people is a miracle of God,” he said in an undated speech posted on his website. “The return of the Jewish people to the land promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is a miracle of God. The remarkable victories of Jewish armies against overwhelming odds in successive battles in 1948, and 1967, and 1973 are clearly miracles of God. The technological marvels of Israeli industry, the military prowess, the bounty of Israeli agriculture, the fruits and flowers and abundance of the land are a testimony to God’s watchful care over this new nation and the genius of this people.”
Following his death, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee called Robertson “a great friend of Israel and a pioneer in the modern Christian Zionist movement.”
“I was deeply saddened to learn of the passing of Pat Robertson, a brilliant orator and faith leader and an extraordinary friend of Israel and the Jewish People,” David Friedman, former President Donald Trump’s ambassador to Israel, tweeted on Thursday. “Deepest condolences to Gordon and the entire Robertson family. May you derive much comfort from his incredible legacy.”
Yet this “genius” people kept irking Robertson. In 2014, he called the director of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, which advocates against proselytizing in the military, a “little Jewish radical.” The subject of that epithet, Mikey Weinstein, was not mourning Robertson on Tuesday.
“I know quite well what it felt like to be savaged by him just for being a Jewish person who fights for civil rights in our armed forces,” he said in a statement.
In 1988, when the ADL asked Robertson to condemn the antisemitism that was emerging in protests against Martin Scorcese’s movie, “The Last Temptation of Christ,” Robertson demanded a quid pro quo: that Jewish groups condemn the movie’s Jewish producers.
In 1995, Robertson got into trouble when he tried to get out of trouble for his 1991 book, “The New World Order,” in which he blamed much of the world’s woes on “European bankers” who happened to be Jewish.
Robertson’s defense was a familiar one. The book, he told The New York Times, was “pro-Israel and pro-Jewish” because among its targets was the United Nations. He added that he had “many, many friends in the Jewish community.”
Robertson was so confident of those friends that he thought they would help propel him to the presidency in 1988. “I would anticipate, especially among Conservative and Orthodox Jews, I would have a tremendous body of support,” Robertson said then. “I’m counting on it from everything I’ve seen.”
The support never materialized; Robertson dropped out of the race early. But he consolidated a style of campaigning that mixed Christian piety with politicking, which Jimmy Carter had pioneered a dozen years earlier and that has now become ubiquitous, at least among Republicans. Mike Pence, the former vice president, has made his evangelical faith inseparable from his politics as he launches a campaign for the 2024 GOP political nomination.
Unlike Pence and other Christians running for office, Robertson was never able — our perhaps willing — to obscure the foreboding manifestations of his beliefs, preaching about an apocalypse in Israel and blaming a stroke that struck the late Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, on his withdrawal from the Gaza Strip (a view which made him persona non grata with the Israeli government for a short period).
In 2002, the ADL’s then-national director, Abraham Foxman, summed up the ambivalence many Jews felt when Christian Evangelicals were planning a Washington rally for Israel at a time when it was beset by the second intifada. Jewish groups were neither discouraging nor encouraging the event, he said.
“There is no alliance,” Foxman said. “The relationship is based on this one, specific issue.”
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High-Stakes US Special Forces Mission Rescues Airman From Iran After F-15 Crash
FILE PHOTO: A U.S. Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle aircraft takes off for a mission supporting Operation Epic Fury during the Iran war at an undisclosed location, March 9, 2026. U.S. Air Force/Handout via REUTERS/File Photo
US forces staged the audacious rescue of an airman behind enemy lines after Iran downed his fighter jet, officials said on Sunday, resolving a crisis for President Donald Trump as he weighs escalating the war, now in its sixth week.
The airman rescued by special operations forces, who Trump said was a colonel, was the weapons-systems officer on the downed F-15, a US official told Reuters.
“Over the past several hours, the United States Military pulled off one of the most daring Search and Rescue Operations in US History,” Trump said in a statement, adding that the airman was injured but “he will be just fine.”
The officer was the second of two crew members on the warplane that Iran said on Friday had been brought down by its air defenses. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said several aircraft were destroyed during the US rescue mission, Tasnim news agency reported.
Reuters reported on Friday that the first crew member had been retrieved, triggering a high-profile search by both Iran and the United States for the remaining airman.
Iranian officials had urged citizens to help find him, hoping to gain leverage against Washington in the war Trump and Israel launched on February 28.
Trump has threatened to escalate the conflict in the coming days with attacks on Iran’s energy infrastructure.
Had Iran captured the airman, the ensuing hostage crisis could have shifted American public perception of a conflict that opinion polls show was already unpopular.
Trump said the airman was rescued “in the treacherous mountains of Iran” in what he said was the first time in military memory that two US pilots had been rescued, separately, deep in enemy territory.
The official told Reuters that as the weapons-systems officer was moved from near a mountain to a transport aircraft parked within Iran, US forces had to destroy at least one of the aircraft because it had malfunctioned.
U.S. AIRCRAFT HIT
The rescue effort, involving dozens of military aircraft, encountered fierce resistance from Iran.
Reuters reported on Friday that two Black Hawk helicopters involved in the search were hit by Iranian fire but escaped from Iranian airspace.
Separately, a pilot ejected from an A-10 Warthog fighter aircraft after it was hit over Kuwait and crashed, the officials said, though the extent of crew injuries was unclear.
Still, Trump was triumphant.
“The fact that we were able to pull off both of these operations, without a SINGLE American killed, or even wounded, just proves once again, that we have achieved overwhelming Air Dominance and Superiority over the Iranian skies,” he said in his statement.
US air crews are trained in what to do if they go down behind enemy lines, measures known as Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape, but few are fluent in Persian and face a challenge in staying undetected while seeking rescue.
The conflict has killed 13 US military service members, with more than 300 wounded, US Central Command says. No US troops have been taken prisoner by Iran.
While Trump has repeatedly sought to portray the Iranian military as being in tatters, they have repeatedly been able to hit US aircraft.
Reuters reported on US intelligence showing that Iran retains large amounts of missile and drone capability. Until just over a week ago, the US could only determine with certainty that it had destroyed about one-third of Iran’s missile arsenal.
The status of about another third was less clear, but bombings probably damaged, destroyed or buried those missiles in underground tunnels and bunkers, Reuters sources said.
The US and Israeli war on Iran has spread across the Middle East, killing thousands and hitting the global economy with soaring energy prices that are fueling fears of inflation.
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On Easter, Pope Leo Urges World Leaders to End Wars, Renounce Conquest
Pope Leo XIV waves from the main balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica after delivering his “Urbi et Orbi” (To the city and the world) message, on Easter Sunday at the Vatican, April 5, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Remo Casilli
Pope Leo urged global leaders in his Easter message on Sunday to end the conflicts raging across the world and abandon any schemes for power, conquest or domination.
The pope, who has emerged as an outspoken critic of the Iran war, lamented in a special message to the thousands gathered in St. Peter’s Square that people “are growing accustomed to violence, resigning ourselves to it, and becoming indifferent.”
“Let those who have weapons lay them down!” the first US pope exhorted. “Let those who have the power to unleash wars choose peace!”
Leo did not mention any specific conflicts in the message, known as the “Urbi et Orbi” (to the city and the world) blessing. It was unusually brief and direct.
The pope said that the story of Easter, when the Bible says Jesus rose from the dead three days after not resisting his execution by crucifixion, shows that Christ was “entirely nonviolent.”
“On this day of celebration, let us abandon every desire for conflict, domination, and power, and implore the Lord to grant his peace to a world ravaged by wars,” Leo urged.
Leo, who is known for choosing his words carefully, has been forcefully decrying the world’s violent conflicts in recent weeks and ramping up his criticism of the Iran war.
In a sermon for the Easter vigil on Saturday night, he urged people not to feel numbed by the scope of the conflicts raging across the world but to work for peace.
The pope made a rare direct appeal to US President Donald Trump on Tuesday, urging him to find an “off-ramp” to end the Iran war.
In his address from the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica on Sunday to the Square below, decorated with thousands of brightly colored flowers for the holiday, Leo offered brief Easter greetings in ten languages, including Latin, Arabic and Chinese.
The pope also announced he would return to the Basilica on April 11 to host a prayer vigil for peace.
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Temple Mount Set for Limited Reopening to Jews and Muslims
Israeli National Security Minister and head of Jewish Power party Itamar Ben-Gvir gives a statement to members of the press, ahead of a possible ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, in Jerusalem, Jan. 16, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Oren Ben Hakoon
i24 News – Israeli authorities are preparing to partially reopen the Temple Mount in Jerusalem to both Jewish and Muslim worshipers for the first time since the start of the war with Iran, under a tightly controlled and highly restricted security arrangement, i24NEWS has learned.
According to details obtained by i24NEWS, the Israeli police, backed by National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, are also expected to permit limited access for Jewish worshipers to the Western Wall as part of the same phased plan.
Under the framework, access to the Temple Mount and surrounding holy sites would be restricted to small groups of up to 150 people at a time. In the event of a missile alert, all visitors would be immediately evacuated in accordance with emergency protocols.
The decision follows a recent Supreme Court ruling allowing demonstrations in a limited format. Police argue that a consistent standard must apply across both civic gatherings and religious sites, with Ben-Gvir insisting that “there cannot be one rule for demonstrations and another for the Temple Mount.”
However, the reopening contradicts recommendations from the Home Front Command, which has advised keeping sensitive sites closed due to the ongoing risk of missile attacks.
Israeli Justice Minister Yariv Levin has proposed transferring authority over such security-related decisions exclusively to defense officials, an initiative that could reshape the balance between the judiciary and security establishment regarding restrictions on public access.