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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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Leader of Lithuanian Government Party Found Guilty of Hatred Against Jews
Dawn of Nemunas Party leader Remigijus Zemaitaitis attends a press conference after general election in Vilnius, Lithuania, Oct. 28, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Ints Kalnins
A Lithuanian court found the leader of a junior party in the ruling coalition government on Thursday guilty of incitement to hatred against Jews and belittling the Holocaust in social media posts in 2023.
Remigijus Zemaitaitis, founder of the populist Nemunas Dawn, was fined 5,000 euros ($5,835) for falsely accusing the Jewish people, as a group, of historical crimes, encouraging hostility, and strengthening negative stereotypes, the court said.
“[Zemaitaitis] publicly mocked and despised Jewish people and incited hatred against the Jewish community” in social media, the Vilnius Regional Court said in its ruling.
It said he had also used “language that is degrading, derogatory to human dignity, and which incites hostility on ethnic grounds.”
Zemaitaitis has denied any wrongdoing. He told the BNS news agency on Thursday that he considered the verdict politically motivated and that he would appeal.
After resigning from parliament over the issue in April 2024, Zemaitaitis was re-elected in October of that year and his party, Nemunas Dawn, joined the new coalition government led by the Social Democrats. He is not himself a government minister.
Prime Minister Inga Ruginiene, whose three-party coalition has a slim majority in Lithuania’s parliament, told reporters she had not yet read the verdict.
Her Social Democratic Party said in a statement it respected the court’s ruling, while noting the decision was not yet final.
Thousands gathered at the parliament in Vilnius in November 2024 and again in August this year to protest against Nemunas Dawn’s inclusion in the government.
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Israel Strikes Hezbollah Targets in Two South Lebanon Towns
People inspect a damaged site after Israel’s military said it struck targets in two southern Lebanese towns on Thursday, in Jbaa southern Lebanon, Dec. 4, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ali Hankir
Israel‘s military said it struck targets in two southern Lebanese towns on Thursday after ordering the evacuation of two buildings it alleged were being used by Hezbollah terrorists.
About an hour after the initial warning, the army’s Arabic spokesperson issued another notice instructing residents of buildings in two other towns to leave.
The strikes came a day after Israel and Lebanon sent civilian envoys to a committee overseeing a fragile ceasefire agreed a year ago that both sides have accused the other of breaking.
The envoys would broaden the scope of talks between the long-time adversaries, both sides said.
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Anti-Hamas Gazan Clan Leader Reported Killed
Leader of the Popular Forces Yasser Abu Shabab and his deputy Ghassan Al-Duhaini stand next to armed men in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, in this screenshot taken from a video released on Nov. 18, 2025. Photo: Yasser Abu Shabab/Popular Forces via REUTERS
The head of an armed Palestinian faction that opposes Hamas in Gaza has been killed, Israeli media reported on Thursday, in what would be a blow to Israeli efforts to support Gazan clans against the ruling Islamist terror group.
Yasser Abu Shabab, a Bedouin tribal leader based in Israeli-held Rafah in southern Gaza, has led the most prominent of several small anti–Hamas groups that became active in Gaza during the war that began more than two years ago.
His death would be a boost to Hamas, which has branded him a collaborator and ordered its fighters to kill or capture him.
There was no immediate word about Abu Shabab’s status on the Facebook page of his group, the Popular Forces.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu acknowledged in June that Israel had armed anti–Hamas clans, though Israel has announced few other details of the policy since then.
RAFAH SECURITY SWEEP
Abu Shabab’s group has continued to operate from areas of Gaza controlled by Israeli forces since a US-backed ceasefire between Hamas and Israel was agreed in October.
Rafah has been the scene of some of the worst violence during the ceasefire. Residents had reported gunbattles there on Wednesday, and Israel said four of its soldiers were wounded there. The Israeli military said on Thursday its forces had killed some 40 Hamas terrorists trapped in tunnels below Rafah.
On Nov. 18, Abu Shabab’s group posted a video showing dozens of fighters receiving orders from his deputy to launch a security sweep to “clear Rafah of terror,” an apparent reference to Hamas fighters believed to be holed up there.
Abu Shabab’s death was reported by Israeli media including Kan, Israel’s public broadcaster, citing a security source.
Israel’s Army Radio, also citing a security source, said he had died in Soroka hospital in southern Israel of unspecified wounds, but the hospital soon denied he had been admitted there.
The reports did not say when he died or how he received the reported wounds.
RAFAH ADMINISTRATION
An Israeli government spokesperson declined to comment on the reports. Hamas had no comment, its Gaza spokesperson said.
Israel’s policy of backing anti–Hamas clans took shape as it pressed the Gaza offensive against the group, aiming to end its rule of the coastal strip in the wake of the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on communities in southern Israel.
In an article published in the Wall Street Journal in July, Abu Shabab – a member of the Tarabin Bedouin tribe – said his group had established its own administration in the Rafah area and urged US and Arab support to recognize and support it.
Abu Shabab’s group has denied being backed by Israel.
Netanyahu said in June that Israel’s backing for Gazan clans was a good thing that had saved the lives of Israeli soldiers.
But the policy has also drawn criticism from some in Israel who have said such groups can provide no real alternative to Hamas, which has controlled Gaza since 2007.
CONTROVERSIAL POLICY
“The writing was on the wall. Whether he was killed by Hamas or in some clan infighting, it was obvious that it would end this way,” Michael Milshtein, a former Israeli military intelligence officer at the Moshe Dayan Center in Tel Aviv, told Reuters.
Several other anti–Hamas groups have emerged in areas of Gaza held by Israel. Palestinian political analyst Reham Owda said that Abu Shabab’s death would fuel doubts among them about their “ability to challenge Hamas.”
US President Donald Trump’s Gaza plan foresees Hamas disarming and the enclave run by a transitional authority supported by a multi-national stabilization force. But progress has appeared slow, with Hamas so far refusing to disarm and no sign of agreement on the formation of the international force.
Hamas has accused Abu Shabab of looting UN aid trucks during the war. Abu Shabab’s group has denied this, saying it has protected and escorted aid.