A general view shows the plaza of the Western Wall in Jerusalem, amid the coronavirus pandemic, May 6, 2020. Photo: Reuters / Ronen Zvulun

The State of Israel was founded in 1948 and admitted to the United Nations as a member state in 1949. Nevertheless, as Susie Linfield writes in The Atlantic, “Seventy years after its founding, Israel is regarded … as a cause, a tragedy, a miracle, a nightmare, a project — one that is highly provisional and should perhaps be canceled.” Linfield asks: “Is there any other sovereign nation, from the most miserable failed states to those that are flourishing, of which the same can be said?”

In other words, is there any other country whose very legitimacy — whose very right to exist — is publicly challenged?

The challenges take several forms. Leftists in the US and Europe, along with Palestinian writers, try to delegitimize Israel with charges of “imperialism” and “settler colonialism.” At a rally in May, a member of the Irish parliament, Richard Boyd Barrett, told the crowd, “We must demand the dismantling of the Israeli state.”

Prominent anti-Zionists like Peter Beinart argue that while Jews have a right of self-determination, they do not have the right to a sovereign Jewish state. He supports allowing five million Palestinian refugees to exercise their “right of return” to the land inside the Green Line, which would mean Israel’s destruction. Thus, he maintains, the very existence of the Jewish state is an injustice, and the only proper solution is to dismantle it.

The false notion of a Palestinian “right of return” is also the cornerstone of the BDS movement, without which, its leaders say, there can be no solution to the conflict. Again, the conflict cannot be resolved without bringing an end to the Jewish state.

Israel’s legitimacy is also under attack in the United Nations. No less than three UN entities — the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People (CEIRPP), the Division for Palestinian Rights (DPR), and the Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices Affecting the Human Rights of the Palestinian People and Other Arabs of the Occupied Territories (SCIIHRP) — devote themselves to undermining Israel’s security and economy, and delegitimizing the Jewish state.

A fourth UN office, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), strongly promotes the “right of return” and runs hundreds of schools that teach Palestinian children that the Jewish state is illegitimate.

American evangelicals provide a crucial counterweight to these efforts. Their support for Israel is well known. Less well known is the support of Hispanic evangelicals, which, importantly, is international in scope.

For example, the Latino Coalition for Israel mobilizes support for Israel in the United States, Latin America, and the Caribbean. Its mission in those regions is “to counter the global rise of antisemitism and the campaign to delegitimize the nation of Israel.” It seeks “to educate the church and governmental officials in Latin America about the importance of pro-Israel relationships.”

Pastor Carlos Ortiz of Miami is the founder and president of Hispanos Aliados por Israel (Hispanics Allied for Israel, HAI), “an organization dedicated to the protection and support of the State of Israel.” According to the Israel Allies Foundation, “He is known as the leading pro-Israel Hispanic voice in America.” He is also an international advocate on behalf of Israel, training pastors in Spanish-speaking countries such as Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Peru. And he frequently works with Latin American governments to build support for Israel in the UN.

Mariano Rivera, the retired New York Yankees relief pitcher and member of the Hall of Fame, is another prominent evangelical advocate for Israel. As Jonathan Mark wrote in the New York Jewish Week, Rivera “is looking for one more save: an Israel under assault from too many directions to count.”

A few years ago, Rivera spent several million dollars renovating an abandoned 1907 church in New Rochelle, New York. He then reopened it as Refugio de Esperanza (Refuge of Hope), an evangelical Pentecostal church. Rivera has been to Israel several times and considers himself a Christian Zionist. He has addressed the annual conference of Christians United for Israel (CUFI); CUFI’s national Hispanic outreach coordinator, Rev. Peter DeJesus, has also spoken at his church. Rev. DeJesus told the congregation: “As Christians we love the God of Israel. And as Christians we should love the Israel of our God. It’s not a contradiction to our Christian faith, it’s a complement to our faith, it’s a fulfillment.”

Some American Jews have given this kind of support a mixed reception. On the positive side, the American Jewish Committee (AJC) has welcomed and encouraged the support of Hispanic evangelicals. In 2019, the AJC accepted an invitation to address the General Assembly of the Alianza Evangelica Latina (AEL, Latin Evangelical Alliance). It was the first Jewish organization to do so. At the Assembly’s opening service, Rabbi Noam Marans, the AJC Director of Interreligious and Intergroup Relations, said, “At a time of rising racism, xenophobia, and antisemitism, Jews and Latino Evangelicals must be brothers and sisters who will together battle the hate that demonizes both our communities.”

Similarly, the American Jewish International Relations Institute (AJIRI) allies itself with faith-based leaders, including Hispanic evangelicals, to help further its mission of reversing discrimination against Israel at the UN. Indeed, the AJIRI recently appointed Pastor Ortiz to its board of directors (I serve with him on that board.)  There, he works internationally to combat UN efforts to delegitimize the Jewish state.

But unfortunately, many moderate and left-leaning American Jews tend to discount the support of evangelicals because they don’t like the brand of Christian theology it’s based on. New Israel Fund CEO Daniel Sokatch provides a good example of this in his recent book, “Can We Talk About Israel?” There, he devotes a whole chapter to a dismissive take on evangelical support for the Jewish state.

This attitude is all too common among some American Jews. Writing in the Winter 2008 issue of City Journal, James Q. Wilson noted that, “in one Pew survey, 42 percent of Jewish respondents expressed hostility to evangelicals and fundamentalists.”

Jews with this mindset ignore an important rule of coalition building: Coalition partners don’t have to agree on everything. They just need to agree on one thing: in this case, the legitimacy of Israel as the sovereign nation state of the Jewish people. Jewish rejection of evangelical support is shortsighted and self-defeating. And that is especially true of support from Hispanic evangelical leaders, whose political influence and work on behalf of Israel are international in scope.

As Wilson said, “Whatever the reason for Jewish distrust of evangelicals, it may be a high price to pay when Israel’s future, its very existence, is in question.” Thus, he concluded: “When it comes to helping secure Israel’s survival, the tiny Jewish minority in America should not reject the help offered by a group that is ten times larger and whose views on the central propositions of a democratic society are much like everybody else’s.”

Jewish leaders would do well to keep that in mind.

Paul Schneider is an attorney, writer, and member of the Board of Directors of the American Jewish International Relations Institute (AJIRI), an affiliate of B’nai B’rith International. He lives in Bethesda, Maryland, and frequently travels to Israel.