“Thus said Hashem: I will raise My hand to nations and lift up My ensign to peoples; and they shall bring your sons in their bosoms, and carry your daughters on their backs.” (Isaiah 49:22)
On the morning of February 23, 1945, a handful of exhausted Marines clawed their way to the summit of Mount Suribachi on the island of Iwo Jima. They fought for every inch of black volcanic sand against a dug-in enemy who meant to kill every last one of them. At the top, under fire, they found a length of iron pipe, lashed an American flag to it, and drove it into the rock.
Down below, thousands of men on the beachhead looked up and saw the Stars and Stripes snapping in the wind. A roar went up across the whole island. Ships in the harbor sounded their horns. The photograph of that flag flashed around the world within days, and a war-weary nation that had begun to wonder whether the Pacific could ever be won suddenly believed again that victory was possible.
That is what a raised flag does. It tells the men in the valley that someone has reached the high ground, and that hope is not lost.
A flag is being raised again in our day, and it is being raised for Israel. It is the flag of Zionism, and the world has rarely needed to see it more than it does right now.
Eighty years ago, hatred of the Jewish people led directly to the death camps of Nazi Europe. That hatred did not end with the war. It has come back, loud and unashamed, in our streets and our universities, and Jews are once again blamed for the troubles of the Middle East, for the world economy, for the sins of every age. They are branded “occupiers” of land their ancestors received from the God of the Bible nearly four thousand years ago.
Yet into this rising darkness, a movement of hope is climbing the mountain.
A Zionist is someone who believes the Jewish people deserve a homeland and is willing to stand up and say so. It is the conviction that Jews have the right to live in safety, in dignity, and in sovereignty in a nation of their own. Rabbi Tuly Weisz captured this with fresh power in his new book, Universal Zionism, which makes the case that supporting the Jewish state and the Jewish people’s right to their historic land is not a political opinion but a biblical calling. For the Christian who takes Scripture seriously, that calling should be impossible to ignore.
So why do so many Christians hesitate to embrace it?
The first roadblock is a doctrine that has crippled the Church’s witness for centuries: Replacement Theology, the teaching that the Church has replaced Israel as God’s chosen people. Those who hold it quietly transfer every promise God made to the Jewish people onto the Church, spiritualize the nation of Israel into a metaphor, and treat the prophecies of the last days as poetry rather than as the plain word of God.
A Christian cannot hold that view and stand with Israel at the same time. God Himself tears the doctrine to pieces:
“Surely I will take the children of Israel from among the nations, wherever they have gone, and will bring them into their own land; and will make them one nation in the land, on the mountains of Israel.” (Ezekiel 37:21–22)
To support Israel honestly, we must agree with what the God of the Bible actually says about a homeland for His people. There is no neutral ground left to stand on. Either the Jews are God’s chosen people with a prophetic destiny that is unfolding before our eyes, or we count ourselves among those who oppose them and walk straight into judgment.
The prophet Joel saw that judgment coming, and his warning reads like a modern news headline:
“For behold, in these days… I will gather all nations and bring them down to the Valley of Jehoshaphat; and I will enter into judgment with them on account of My people, My heritage Israel, whom they have scattered among the nations; they have also divided up My land.” (Joel 2:1–2)
Read those words carefully. The nations are not judged for some vague offense. They are judged for two specific crimes: scattering the Jewish people from their land, and dividing that land up. God calls Israel “My people” and “My heritage.” He has not replaced them and He has not handed their land to anyone else, and He promises to bring every nation that carves it up into the courtroom.
This is why the fashionable solutions of our age collapse under the weight of Scripture. Trading covenant land for the promise of peace has already been tried, and it has failed every time. Gaza was surrendered for the pipe dream of a Palestinian state living quietly and peacefully alongside Israel. Instead it became a fortress of terror, governed by men who built their power on the murder of Jews.
The Bible never offered a two-state solution. It offers a one-state vision in which the land belongs to the Jewish people and every nation is welcomed to come and be blessed there:
“I give to you and your descendants after you the land in which you are a stranger, all the land of Canaan, as an everlasting possession, and I will be their God.” (Genesis 17:8)
When those Marines raised their flag on Suribachi, they did not do it in silence. They shouted, and the shout carried hope across an entire island. The prophet Isaiah commands the Zionists of our generation to do exactly the same:
“For Zion’s sake I will not hold my peace, and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest, until her righteousness goes forth as a burning torch… and all kings your glory.” (Isaiah 62:1–2)
We are not called to whisper. We are called to climb the mountain of influence in our own day, to plant the flag of Zionism on the high ground, and to shout so loudly that the men in the valley look up and remember that hope is not lost. The tide of antisemitism can be turned, but only by Christians who refuse to stay silent.
It is time to raise the flag.
Rabbi Tuly Weisz’s new book, Universal Zionism, is available at the Israel365 store.
