On the ridge where the prophet Zechariah said God’s feet will one day stand, more than 1,000 Christian leaders from 117 countries gathered on Tuesday to stand with Israel on the eve of the third anniversary of October 7. Israel’s foreign minister met them there with a mission and an invitation.

The Friends of Zion Ambassadors Summit opened on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem, organized in cooperation with Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The participants, Christian leaders, community heads and social media influencers, came to mark October 7 and to hear firsthand from released hostages, survivors, bereaved families and ordinary Israelis. About 200 of them are young people between 18 and 29.

Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar opened the summit by putting the visitors on Israel’s front line. “Our soldiers and security forces stand on the front line against terror. You stand with us on the front line for truth. Your voice matters,” Sa’ar said. “When they lie about Israel, tell the truth. When they attack Jews, fight antisemitism. Make your voices heard!”

Sa’ar then announced a new project aimed squarely at the Christian world. “I have instructed the Foreign Ministry to begin preparations for 2030, marking 2,000 years since the baptism of Jesus,” he said. “So from the Mount of Olives, I invite Christians everywhere: Come to Israel! Come to Jerusalem. Come to the Galilee. Come to the Jordan River. Walk in the land of the Bible. Israel will welcome you with open arms.”

“My friends, from this holy mountain, take one message home: Stand for truth. Stand with Israel!” he concluded. “God bless you. God bless Israel. And may God bless Jerusalem with peace.”

The cost of speaking out

During the opening ceremony, Dr. Mike Evans, founder of Friends of Zion, presented the organization’s “Here Am I Award” to Australian journalist and broadcaster Erin Molan.

Since October 7, Molan has become one of the loudest voices in the world defending Israel and fighting antisemitism, and she has paid for it. In December 2024 she was dismissed from Sky News Australia, where she hosted a prime-time program. She received repeated death threats, including threats against her young daughter. Molan kept talking. She launched her own independent media platform and has used it to bring the story of Israel, the hostages and the fight against antisemitism to audiences around the world.

The week ahead

The main international event marking October 7 takes place Wednesday at 5:30 PM at the Davidson Center in Jerusalem, at the foot of the Temple Mount, with about 2,000 participants from 121 countries, including released hostages, bereaved families, Holocaust survivors and wounded Israelis. Released hostages Agam Berger, Sagui Dekel-Chen, Bar Kupershtein and Evyatar David are scheduled to appear.

Evans will present a second “Here Am I Award” at the event to Yaniv Hayun, the passenger who fought the terrorist during the attempted attack aboard the Flydubai flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv. The award, according to Friends of Zion, honors people who answered the call to act in a moment of danger.

The Davidson Center event is a partnership between Evans and Sylvan Adams, president of World Jewish Congress Israel. Bishop Robert Stearns, president and founder of Eagles’ Wings, will attend with a delegation of about 550 Christian leaders. The event anchors a continuous 24-hour international broadcast from Jerusalem, linking events from Austria, Fiji and New Zealand through Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas, and is expected to reach tens of millions of viewers.

Summit participants will also meet President Isaac Herzog at the President’s Residence, visit Yad Vashem, and travel to the site of the Nova festival massacre to meet survivors and hear the stories of released hostages Romi Gonen, Noa Argamani and Elkana Bohbot. The program includes a conference with The Jerusalem Post at the Friends of Zion Museum for ambassadors and diplomats, and a prayer event in Shiloh, where the Tabernacle stood for 369 years.

Evans called the arrival of more than 1,000 Christian leaders an extraordinary expression of the bond between Christian communities and the Jewish people, coming at a moment when solidarity with Israel carries special weight.

Hineni

What does it take to answer when God calls?

The Bible gives the answer in a single Hebrew word, hineni, “here am I.” It is the word Abraham spoke when God called him to Mount Moriah, the same mountain where the Temple would later stand, a short walk from where the summit opened. It is the word Moses spoke from beside the burning bush. And it is the word the prophet Isaiah spoke when he saw the Lord sitting on His throne in the Temple.

“And I heard the voice of the Lord, saying: Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then I said: ‘Here am I; send me.'” (Isaiah 6:8)

Rashi, the great 11th-century commentator, explains Abraham’s hineni as the answer of the righteous, a word of humility and of readiness. The one who says hineni claims no rank. He announces that he is present and that he is prepared to go wherever he is sent. Abraham said it to God and then climbed the mountain. Isaiah said it and then carried an unpopular message to a people that did not want to hear it.

Erin Molan gave that answer when she lost her prime-time show and kept talking. Yaniv Hayun gave it in the aisle of an airliner in flight. The more than 1,000 Christians who flew to Jerusalem from 117 countries in the week of October 7, while much of the world marks the date with protests against Israel, gave it with their presence.

The prophets saw this gathering coming, and they placed it on this mountain. The final chapter of Zechariah opens with God’s feet standing on the Mount of Olives, and closes with the nations making the climb to Jerusalem every year.

“And it shall come to pass, that every one that is left of all the nations that came against Jerusalem shall go up from year to year to worship the King, the LORD of hosts, and to keep the feast of tabernacles.” (Zechariah 14:16)

The Friends of Zion delegates arrived days after the Feast of Tabernacles, Sukkot, ended. Isaiah adds that the ones leading the nations up to Jerusalem will be their leaders. “And nations shall walk at thy light, and kings at the brightness of thy rising,” the prophet wrote (Isaiah 60:3). The summit drew exactly that crowd: pastors, bishops, broadcasters and community heads, the people their own congregations and audiences follow.

Earlier in the same book, Zechariah describes how those nations will treat the Jewish people.

“Thus saith the LORD of hosts: In those days it shall come to pass, that ten men shall take hold, out of all the languages of the nations, shall even take hold of the skirt of him that is a Jew, saying: We will go with you, for we have heard that God is with you.” (Zechariah 8:23)

The Talmud (Shabbat 32b) does the math. Ten men from each of the seventy nations take hold of the corner of a Jew’s garment, the kanaf, where the fringes of the tzitzit hang. A garment has four corners, so 2,800 people from the nations hold on to every single Jew. They grab the tzitzit, the sign of a Jew bound to God’s commandments, because they have heard that God is with him.

From this mountain

Three years ago, Hamas terrorists crossed into Israel to murder as many Jews as they could reach, and much of the world spent the following months explaining why the Jews had it coming. On Tuesday, more than a thousand Christians from 117 countries climbed the Mount of Olives to say the opposite, and Israel’s foreign minister told them they were standing on the front line.

Zechariah promised that the nations would go up to Jerusalem year after year, holding on to the Jew. Friends of Zion named its award for the answer the prophets gave when God called. This week on the Mount of Olives, the prophecy and the answer arrived together: hineni, here we are.