Friends of Zion Summit Opens With Appeals for Unity, Moral Clarity, and Global Advocacy
Israeli officials and Christian leaders emphasize shared values, strategic cooperation, and the need to counter rising extremism and misinformation
More than 1,000 evangelical pastors and Christian leaders have traveled to Israel for the Friends of Zion Ambassador Summit 2025. On Wednesday night, a group of those delegates gathered at the Friends of Zion Museum in central Jerusalem for an opening ceremony that set the tone for a weeklong effort to turn them into pro-Israel “ambassadors” at a time of war, hostage anguish, and a surge in antisemitism worldwide. The event, organized together with Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, brought together Israeli President Isaac Herzog, US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, Friends of Zion founder Dr. Mike Evans, and senior Israeli diplomat Dr. Yacov Livne.
FOZ host Lidar Gravé-Lazi opened the evening by telling participants they had arrived “at a moment when Israel is still healing, still standing tall after one of the darkest tragedies in its history.” She praised them for choosing “to stand with Israelis, to listen, to learn, and to carry their story forward,” saying their presence signaled that “truth matters, that solidarity matters, and that Israel is not alone.”
Delegates watched a polished video presenting the Friends of Zion Museum not only as a high-tech institution honoring non-Jews who supported the Jewish people, but as a base for media outreach, support for Holocaust survivors, programs for orphans and widows, and educational initiatives for Israel’s security forces. “Friends of Zion doesn’t just celebrate the past,” the narrator said. “It continues to take tirelessly action in the present to ensure a brighter future for the people of Israel.”
Evans then introduced Herzog and Huckabee as “two giants in the room,” recalling a sign he once saw on President Ronald Reagan’s desk: “A man can become too big in his own eyes to be used by God, but never too small.” Turning to Herzog, he added, “In spite of your influence, you stay small.”
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Addressing the pastors as “dear friends,” Herzog thanked them “for your support and for your friendship. And it’s not taken for granted.” He called their gathering in Jerusalem “especially symbolic” at what he described as “a very significant and challenging time for Israel,” noting that the country was still waiting to identify “the body that is now being returned by Hamas” and wanted “to see all of them brought to dignified burial.”
“We here are defending the free world. We are defending Europe,” Herzog said, describing Israel as “at the frontier of the clash of solutions.” The October 7 attacks, he added, were carried out by “cruel, brutal people who went and broke all rules possible” through “burning, abducting, raping, taking hostage, and killing mass murder.”
In a later segment, the president referred to the White Rose Award recently presented in Atlanta to Pastor O.S. Hawkins and Huckabee, named for the German student resistance group executed in 1943. He then told a story about President Harry Truman weeping when Israel’s chief rabbi, Yitzhak HaLevi Herzog, presented him with a Bible and said, “God has placed you in your mother’s womb so that you will rescue the people of Israel.” Rabbi Herzog was the Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of the fledgling state and the grandfather and namesake of today’s president. Herzog said he believes current allies are “destined to keep the nation of Israel strong, flourishing.”
Evans used his speech to link FOZ’s mission directly to Israel’s information battles. He recalled advice from the late President Shimon Peres, who warned that “the new wars of the 21st century are going to be ideological wars, media wars, economic wars, and proxy wars” and that a small country like Israel “is going to have to have friends.” The Friends of Zion ambassador program, Evans said, is part of a “hundred-year plan” to recruit “ambassadors with an S, not one or two or five or 10.”
Huckabee, a former Arkansas governor and a prominent voice in the American evangelical community, followed with a personal account of watching Israel change since his first visit in 1973, when he described it as “pretty much Third World” with “a struggling economy.” Surviving repeated wars, he argued, showed that “God showed up and he did.” He urged pastors to challenge claims that Israel is an apartheid or genocidal state by bringing congregants to see hospitals and daily life firsthand, quipping, “Now folks, if that’s apartheid, Israel is really, really bad at doing it.”
Livne, the Foreign Ministry’s deputy director for public diplomacy, closed the formal program by calling the delegation “ambassadors of truth” and thanking them for coming “to the Holy Land in times of trouble.” Israel, he said, is fighting not only on physical fronts “in Gaza, Syria, Iran, and other places,” but also against “blood libels, daily attacks against us, against the state of Israel, just for being ourselves.” He drew a line from the 1975 UN resolution equating Zionism with racism to today’s “radical Islamic forces, the forces of jihad,” which he described as seeking to destroy Israel “as a first step of destroying Western civilization.”
“Thank you for your support. Thank you for your friendship,” Livne told the pastors, sending them out into Jerusalem with a mission that organizers hope will echo far beyond the summit.
