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by Cnaan Liphshiz
U.S. Evangelicals fund Druze academy
A new right-wing Evangelical organization last week pledged to help fund the military academy in Dalyat al-Carmel, following a first official visit by a Christian Zionist delegation to Israel's only Druze city last month. The project, if completed, would be the first such contribution by Evangelicals to the Druze community.
Prominent Druze figures praised the nascent relationship, but anti-conscription activists argue that in courting donors, the Druze leadership needs to divert charity to more pressing needs.
The delegation of 120 Evangelicals from Florida, New York, Texas, Britain, France, Kenya and Sierra Leone came to Dalyat al-Carmel at the initiative of Joel Bell, a self-described "bible believer" who recently founded the Worldwide Biblical Zionist movement - a local nonprofit associated with Likud. Last week, the donors and recipients met to work out the final details.
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In town, U.S.-born Joel Bell and his wife, Pamela, took the delegates to meet former Likud MK Ayub Kara, who helped organize the trip, and other Druze dignitaries. The Bells, who moved to Israel from the U.S. four years ago "to help build Zion," said their organization would try to raise NIS 400,000 for the military academy - a boarding house founded last year.
Although they speak Arabic and practice a variation of Islam, the majority of Israel's 120,000 Druze view themselves as a distinct ethnic group. Like all Druze male citizens, the institution's 30 students are subject to mandatory service in the Israel Defense Forces.
"We must turn the tables on how the Druze are truly being treated as third-class citizens in Israel," Bell told Anglo File this week at the Knesset, where he, his wife, his brother and an associate came to lobby on behalf of Christian Zionists.
Drawing parallels between the Druze and Zionist Evangelicals, Bell said: "If we help the Druze, who have set a standard of how to become a friend of the Jewish people, then the Jewish people will see them as one of their greatest assets."
Prominent Druze figures have also been in contact before the visit with another Evangelical institution - the International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem. According to the Embassy's Canadian-born media director, David Parsons, the organization has donated to the social needs of the Druze community "both directly and through social workers."
Kara, the delegation's host in Dalyat al-Carmel, said he had approached the Bells - whom he describes as "personal friends" - about two years ago. "I explained the Druze were an underprivileged society and asked if they would like to help. They chose to fund the military academy. I think it was wise. It could become our flagship," he says. Jihad Sa'ad, founder of the Druze Initiative Committee - an organization working to reverse mandatory conscription for the Druze - disagrees. "Charity's fine, but why promote this willful enslavement and love of killing machines?" he said in reference to military service.
According to Sa'ad, Druze towns are in need of "proper roads," sewerage, social programs and elementary education. "The last thing the people need is a military academy. It is just political interests of Likud activists like Kara, which happen to coincide with the interests of people who know nothing about the Druze - the Evangelicals."
Former Knesset member Amel Nasereldeen, who is one of the community's most revered political figures, countered by describing the academy as "a vehicle for Druze equality."
The academy, he said, "also gives courses for soldiers after they are discharged, which then helps them get accepted to universities." Nasereldeen added: "We need the Evangelicals to help us keep the academy running, because we don't know where to get the money. Let those who complain do something for the Druze for once instead of just talking and talking."
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