PNW - Ron Dermer, who served as the Israeli Ambassador to the United States from 2013-2019, spoke at the second annual "Am Olam" conference held by Hebrew-language news service Makor Rishon in Jerusalem on Sunday.
Dermer discussed issues that arose during the difficult years under President Obama when relations between Israel and the US were far less than ideal. One questioner suggested that under Netanyahu, too much emphasis was placed on building a relationship with evangelical Christians.
Dermer responded by emphasizing that one of the keys to having a pro-Israel influence in the White House, according to Dermer, was the evangelical Christian community, even more than the Jewish community in the US. Dermer described the evangelical support for Israel as "passionate and unequivocal" whereas the US Jews were "disproportionately among our critics."
"People have to understand that the backbone of Israel's support in the United States is the evangelical Christians. It's true because of numbers and also because of their passionate and unequivocal support for Israel," Dermer said.
"About 25% of Americans -- some people think more -- are evangelical Christians. Less than two percent of Americans are Jews," he said. "Reform Jews are about one-third of American Jews. The largest group of American Jews are those who are not affiliated with any denomination. So if you look just at numbers, you should be spending a lot more time doing outreach to evangelical Christians than you would do to Jews."
Dermer also noted that.....READ MORE
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