Palm Sunday, Jerusalem, March 29, 2026

On March 29, 2026 — Palm Sunday — Israeli police prevented Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, from celebrating Mass at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the documented site of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The gathering was below the permitted 50-person limit. France formally condemned it. Emmanuel Macron wrote: 'The free exercise of worship in Jerusalem must be guaranteed for all religions.' Italy summoned Israel's ambassador to Rome. Israel reversed course the following day. [C1 — CNN; PBS News]

Three months earlier, 1,000 American pastors had traveled to Israel on a trip partially funded by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where they were trained as official advocacy ambassadors for the State of Israel. The same government that blocked a Cardinal from the holiest Christian site on Palm Sunday was simultaneously spending hundreds of millions of dollars to recruit American evangelical pastors as domestic advocates. That is not an editorial argument. It is the documented record.

What FARA Shows Us

A Foreign Government, American Churches, and a Registered Influence Campaign

[C1] The Foreign Agents Registration Act requires anyone acting as an agent of a foreign government in the United States to register with the Department of Justice and disclose their activities. Failure to register is a federal crime. In the fall of 2025, an obscure California public relations firm called Show Faith by Works, LLC quietly registered with the DOJ as a foreign agent for the government of Israel. Its mission: use sophisticated geofencing technology to digitally target millions of Americans at their houses of worship with pro-Israel messaging — funded by a foreign government. The targets: evangelical Christian parishioners, reached through their phones while sitting in church. [C1 — DOJ FARA database; C2 — Washington Spectator]

[C2] Geofencing creates a virtual boundary around a physical location and delivers targeted digital messaging to phones inside that boundary. When you sit in a church that has been geofenced by a registered foreign government agent, you may receive targeted pro-foreign-government messaging without knowing the source is a foreign government, without knowing you have been specifically targeted, and without any disclosure that the content is foreign-government-funded advocacy. This is a documented gap in FCC and FTC political advertising disclosure requirements that Congress has not addressed.

The Huckabee Dimension

[C2] The American Renewal Project, which organized the North Carolina pastor trip, is dedicated specifically to mobilizing evangelical pastors to run for political office. Its director, David Lane, stated: "We believe in the Abrahamic covenant. God said to Abraham, I give you my word that I'm going to give you the land. So the land is the Jews', and because we're evangelicals, we have been grafted in." This is the theological framework that makes Israeli government advocacy campaigns theologically resonant with the specific pastoral community being recruited. It is also the framework that makes those same pastors constituencies for American military policy decisions — as Huckabee's "listen to the heavens" message to Trump documented.

The Palestinian Christians

The People the 1,000 Pastors Did Not Meet

Of all the documented responses to the 1,000-pastor trip, the most powerful came not from a political critic but from a Palestinian evangelical pastor.

[C2 — Christian Daily International; Come and See] Rev. Munther Isaac — a Palestinian evangelical pastor — wrote an open letter to the visiting Americans: the delegations "walked where Jesus walked" but did not walk "alongside His followers who are struggling to survive here. You prayed at stones — but ignored the living stones who bear witness to Christ today." He concluded with a call for repentance for "selective compassion." His closing: "The doors of repentance are open. The witness of this land still calls out. The Spirit still convicts. And Christ still weeps over Jerusalem."

This is a theological statement from a Christian pastor who lives in the land where Christianity began, addressed to Christian pastors who were trained by a foreign government to advocate for that government's policies — without being introduced to, or asked to hear from, the Christian community that has lived continuously in that land since the first century. The Israeli-government-funded trip included a visit to the Nova Music Festival massacre site. It did not include a meeting with Palestinian Christian leaders. These are documented choices about whose suffering is visible and whose is not. [C2]

The Fracture: When Christian Zionism Meets Its Own Base

[C2 — Word&Way; Washington Spectator; Pew Research] The operation is encountering structural headwinds. A March 2025 Pew poll found half of Republicans under 50 have a negative view of Israel — up 15 points from 2022. Tucker Carlson has publicly criticized Christian Zionism. A shouting match over Israel eclipsed programming at Turning Point USA's AmericaFest in December 2025. Southern Baptist pastor J. Chase Davis stated he resents "the intrusion of global politics into theology." Multiple pastors told Word&Way they were unaware the trips were partially government-funded.

[LI] A foreign government spending $630 million to influence a domestic religious community whose own members are increasingly skeptical of the program's goals is investing in an operation running counter to its base. Whether that investment changes the political trajectory of evangelical attitudes toward Israel — or accelerates the fracture — is a question the 2026 midterms will help answer.