(Oct. 20, 2026 \/ JNS)\n <\/p>\n
A national organization of Black American pastors on Monday categorically rejected an assertion made by former U.S. President Barack Obama that Israel \u201ctook land off people,\u201d saying that claim was a dangerous omission of the Jewish people\u2019s three-thousand-year-old connection to the Holy Land.<\/p>\n
The strong pushback by the Christian leaders came just days after the first Black president made the contested remarks in Northern Ireland, adopting a common claim used by anti-Israel activists.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen a former president of the United States tells a European arena that Israel was founded on theft, he hands a talking point to every campus mob, every synagogue vandal and every ideologue who has spent half a century teaching that the Jewish state is a colonial crime,\u201d said the Black Christian Leadership Council on Israel.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Council will not be silent while that happens, and we will not let the claim go unanswered in the African American churches we serve,\u201d the statement added.<\/p>\n
The church leaders noted that Obama himself had called Israel \u201cthe historic homeland of the Jewish people\u201d during a 2013 visit to Israel, and had highlighted that Jews lived, worked the soil and prayed in that land more than 3,000 years ago.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was right then. He is wrong now. Nothing in the ground changed between 2013 and 2026. Only the audience did,\u201d the statement continued.<\/p>\n
The pastors added that in his Belfast speech, the former president omitted the historical connection of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel, noting that it was never emptied of Jews and was both lawfully recognized and legally purchased.<\/p>\n
The group, which was established this summer and seeks to revive historic Black\u2013Jewish relations, plans to lead a major pilgrimage to Israel next month of 500 pastors and church leaders.<\/p>\n
The tour, which has been dubbed \u201cUnfinished Business,\u201d commemorates a large-scale Holy Land visit originally planned by Martin Luther King Jr. in November 1967, which was postponed following the Six-Day War and later prevented by his assassination in 1968.<\/p>\n
Last week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also fired back at Obama\u2019s remarks.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Jewish people are not foreign occupiers in the land of our forefathers,\u201d Netanyahu responded in a video rebuke posted on X.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur land is not stolen land. This is our homeland; it\u2019s called Judea. That\u2019s where Jews come from. We\u2019ve been attached to it for thousands of years,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Oct. 20, 2026 \/ JNS) A national organization of Black American pastors on Monday categorically rejected an assertion…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":652090,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[85,46,43],"class_list":["post-652089","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652089","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=652089"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652089\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/652090"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=652089"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=652089"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=652089"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}