Prayer is where CUFI summit really begins, organizer says
Pro-Israel event kicks off Monday with Netanyahu, Pence.
By BENJAMIN GLATTMembers of Christians United for Israel march to show solidarity with Israel, in Jerusalem, in 2008.(photo credit: REUTERS)
All eyes will be on the Christians United For Israel annual summit on Monday and Tuesday, but the real show gets started at the prayer conference on Sunday, one of its organizers said.“[At the CUFI summit] you learn all sorts of things about Israel, you get inside information, but let me tell you, what happens on the Sunday before is where the real inside information comes,” said Terri Copeland Parsons, the Daughters For Zion’s Texas prayer director. “We see and hear things... that those other guys will still be catching up on on Monday and Tuesday.”In a preview for the Daughters For Zion National Prayer Conference, Parsons said it was not only imperative that the summit-goers pray for Israel, but also for the US and her relationship with Israel.“Let it remain godly and in line with His plan, that He has. That’s where the blessing for our nation lies,” she said.Following Sunday’s prayer events, the summit kicks off Monday morning, with a special emphasis on the 50th year of Jerusalem’s reunification after Israel’s victory in the Six Day War, as well as the centenary of the Balfour Declaration, a November 1917 letter by Britain’s foreign secretary, which endorsed a Jewish home in Israel.Opening the summit on Monday will be CUFI founder and national chairman John Hagee, who will honor an IDF paratrooper who helped liberate the Eternal City in 1967 and who will discuss Israel’s eternal right to have Jerusalem as its undivided capital.Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is also scheduled to give his thanks to Hagee and the more than a million members of the pro-Israel organization via a live satellite feed later in the day.Following a Middle East briefing with influential voices in Israeli and American foreign policy, including former US representative Col. Allen West and former US ambassador to the UN John Bolton, CUFI will hold the summit’s annual Night to Honor Israel with US Vice President Mike Pence and Israeli Ambassador to the US Ron Dermer speaking.Under a completely different administration from the one that presided in Washington during last year’s summit, Hagee and CUFI members still have work to do to stop the anti-Israel crusade in the US. Speaking at a pro-Israel event in May in Nevada, Hagee noted that by the end of the year, CUFI expects more than half the states in the US to have advanced anti-BDS measures.“I’m delighted to report that CUFI has crushed BDS in Texas, Arkansas and Minnesota,” he said. “We are going to financially punish those trying to financially punish Israel.” Hagee was speaking the evening before the Government Affairs Committee of the Nevada State Assembly was set to hold a hearing on legislation that would prohibit the state from contracting with or investing in entities that boycott Israel. Speakers at the Night to Honor Israel rallied attendees to continue grassroots efforts to pass the legislation. The state passed the bill the following month.
