My heart breaks over the shocking carnage Hamas carried out in Israel. At the time of this writing, at least 1,400 people in Israel, including more than 30 Americans, have been slaughtered by Hamas terrorists. As the war in Israel continues to escalate, it is disturbing to see anti-Israel protests and a rise of antisemitism around the globe, especially while innocent civilians, including children, the elderly, and the disabled, were mercilessly slaughtered by the Islamic jihadists of Hamas.
Now more than ever, it is important to understand why Israel matters and why it is the center of global discussion.
As someone who has traveled to Israel over 30 times, visiting Israel has had a profound impact on my faith, as I know it has for so many believers. Through Covenant Journey, one of the ministries I founded, I’ve had the opportunity to lead over a thousand people on a life-changing experience in the Holy Land, showing them where our faith originated and experiencing the historic and spiritual impact of Israel.
A Short History
A sliver of land in the Middle East no larger than New Jersey, Israel is the birthplace of both Judaism and Christianity. It remains a centerpiece of world history and is significant in world politics, the global economy, America and the church. 
From Pharaoh down to Haman, Hitler and Hamas, the Jewish people have repeatedly been up against adversaries who want to obliterate them from the face of the earth, and yet each time, God intervened to deliver Israel and the Jewish people in mighty ways to preserve the Jewish people from destruction.
God rescued the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, preserved the Jewish people from Haman’s plot to destroy them during the reign of the Persian King Ahasuerus and delivered the Jewish people from the genocide of the Nazi Holocaust. These examples are but a few of the many times the Jewish people were saved against all odds throughout history.
On May 14, 1948, after nearly 2,000 years, the Jewish state of Israel was reborn. It was a historic fulfillment of biblical prophecy that a nation could be born in one day (Isa. 66:8). In the British Mandate on May 14, Great Britain proposed two states—one for the Arabs and one for the Jews. The Jews said “yes,” but the Arabs said “no.”
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Yael Eckstein 
Michael L. Brown 
