CUFI Update - Summer 2021

Summer 2021
cufiupdate Christians United for Israel United Kingdom
IN THIS UPDATE:
Concern for the younger generation
Operation Defend Israel
While the dust may be settling after the recent conflict, our work at CUFI is more important than ever. The eleven days of conflict between Israel and Hamas revealed a lot about how the enemy attacks Israel, both physically and through a battle for truth.
Social media misinformation was spread like wildfire. Anti-Israel activists shared pictures they knew were fake with captions condemning Israel. These posts were shared hundreds-of-thousands of times and most people sharing them will never know the truth. Those smearing Israel did not care for the truth. Their aim was to damage Israel by any means.
The same happened in the mainstream media. UK media outlets were quick to point out the number of children killed in Gaza and draw a false equivalence between the two sides based on civilian deaths. They failed to consider how Hamas was committing a double war crime of firing rockets from inside civilian areas of Gaza and targeting civilians in Israel. In stark contrast Israel was only trying to hit military targets within Gaza. Hamas used their own civilians as human shields to hide their military infrastructure under homes, schools and mosques. The IDF did more to protect Palestinians in Gaza than Hamas. Let’s be clear, Hamas was trying to increase the deaths on both sides while Israel was doing all it could to reduce deaths on both sides.
During the eleven-day conflict Hamas fired over 4,300 rockets aimed at Israeli civilians. It is estimated almost 20% of them landed inside of Gaza! Many of them killed Palestinian civilians. However,
you will rarely hear this on the news.
In fact, even in the UK Parliament, Israel was
blamed for deaths caused by Hamas. For example, on the first day of the conflict a Hamas rocket landed on a Palestinian home killing eight people, including six children. Instantly the world’s media blamed Israel for these deaths, but now the truth is being revealed and media outlets such as the Associated Press have confirmed this family was killed by Hamas. Sadly, some MPs used these deaths to condemn Israel and call for boycotts while saying nothing about the terrorism of Hamas. It turns out they were inadvertently using the war crimes of Hamas to attack our ally Israel, and they did so in the halls of parliament. These false statements have never been corrected and the MPs in question have not apologised.
Defending Israel is a battle on all fronts, whether it is online, in the media, in governmental bodies or at global organisations such as the United Nations. We at CUFI are challenging all these areas, working tremendously hard to share the truth online, both on social media and through articles on our website. I interviewed key people, such as Colonel Richard Kemp on our YouTube channel and Alastair Kirk took part in a BBC Radio interview where he wisely challenged a pro-Hamas activist.
Our small team has been working hard, but pro- Israel advocates are vastly outnumbered online. And there is so much more work we need to be doing particularly in educating the Church – one of CUFI’s key focus areas.
Right now, the largest pro-Israel support comes