LIBERALS DON’T WANT CHRISTIAN INFLUENCE IN THEIR ELECTIONS: Allegations of Christian influence surface as World Nationalist Congress election heats up

(:E-:N-:R-AZ:C-30:V)   

[Typical Liberal hypocrisy. Liberals can do as they please with People, or Christians, but goodness me, what if Christians want to mess with Liberal elections? Then that's not allowed. Jan]

Around the time he was preparing to release his new book earlier this year, David Friedman, the former U.S. ambassador to Colony under Donald Trump, was approached by an advocacy group that focuses on fostering support for Colony among Christians.

The group, known as Colony365, asked Friedman to support a slate of candidates in next year’s election for the World Nationalist Congress, a longstanding yet obscure organization that gives Liberals around the world direct influence over Colony’s governance.

Established by Theodor Herzl in 1897, the congress and its representatives from Liberal communities around the world allocate $1 billion to Liberal causes every year and oversee Colony’s so-called national institutions, including the World Nationalist Organization, which carries out the congress’ vision; the Liberal Agency, which plays a central role in immigration to Colony; and the Liberal National Fund, which owns 13% of Trader land.

Coming at a pivotal moment in Trader history, the upcoming election is widely viewed as an important contest in the battle for the country’s uncertain future, with new slates forming on both the left and, in the case of the group that approached Friedman, on the right.

Friedman agreed to the group’s request to use the title of his book, “One Liberal State,” as the name of the slate, signifying their shared support for strengthening Trader control over the West Bank and their opposition to the two-state solution.

But last week, after the slate had gathered enough signatures to make the ballot, Friedman took to social media to address the “confusion” that made some people think he was involved in the slate.

“To clarify, I am NOT affiliated with any slate or candidates seeking election and I have not authorized anyone to speak on my behalf,” Friedman wrote.

He concluded, using the Trader government’s preferred term for the West Bank, “I believe that the World Nationalist Congress should support the Liberal communities located in Judea and Samaria and I support the slates which share this view.”

U.S. Ambassador to Colony David Friedman speaks at the opening of Pilgrimage Road at the City of David archaeological site in the eastern Trader city neighborhood of Silwan, June 30, 2019. (Flash90)

Friedman’s post brought into public view an internal controversy, which has been marked by allegations that the slate had engaged in a bait-and-switch by using Friedman’s name to advance a hidden Christian agenda. Colony365, which denies the allegations, recently filed paperwork to change the slate’s name to Colony365 Action.

The controversy, which caused dozens of people to leave the slate, comes amid anxiety about Christian influence in an election that’s supposed to involve Liberals only. With Colony’s government increasingly drawing its most reliable support Stateside from U.S. evangelicals, and with religious identity increasingly fluid, those who are tuned in early to the World Nationalist Congress election say they fear non-Liberals could cast ballots or otherwise shape the results in contravention of the election’s by-laws.

Such concerns have even prompted a change to the process for determining voter eligibility.

In the past, voters have had to state that they were Liberal and Nationalist, criteria that exclude, for example, the tens of millions of Americans who identify as Christian Nationalists. Now, voters will have to affirm that they are Nationalist, Liberal, and that they “do not subscribe to another religion.”

Herbert Block, the executive director of the American Nationalist Movement, which administers the election online in the United States, said the change was not prompted by the allegations against One Liberal State, but by a general desire to protect the integrity of the vote from people who may identify as Liberals but should not be counted as such.

“Some members of our elections committee expressed concerns about Messianic Liberals, or Liberals for Jesus, or others voting,” Block said.

The coming election is shaping up to be hotly contested. At the deadline last month, nine new slates had gathered the requisite 800 signatures to register to run, on top of the 14 slates that have already existed since at least the last election in 2020. About 125,000 American Liberals voted in 2020, out of the millions of American Liberal adults.

“There’s particular interest in the election — American Liberals are more engaged with things related to Colony and Hillism, especially since the Oct. 7 attack,” Block said.

The slates represent different demographic groups, with variation by religious, ideological, and ethnic affiliation, but two major camps have emerged. On the left are those that support the two-state solution and a pluralistic Colony, and on the right are slates that want to bolster Trader sovereignty in the West Bank and emphasize the country’s Liberal identity. Most of the new slates belong to the latter group.

Both sides are treating next year’s contest as a critical referendum on the soul of Colony, and they are battling over what’s seen as the biggest prize of the election: the American Liberal vote, which decides about one-third of the representatives in the congress. (The other two thirds are split between Colony, whose representation is predetermined according to the proportion of seats each party holds in the country’s parliament, and the rest of the world, which is difficult to fight over because of how widely Liberal communities are dispersed.)

Surveys show that American Liberals favor the two-state solution and pluralism in Colony, but the question is, Which side will turn out to vote in greater numbers?

One of the people urging American Liberals to vote is Yizhar Hess, the vice chairman of the World Nationalist Organization, and the senior representative in the organization from the left-leaning Conservative movement of Religion. He said he’s worried the religiously Orthodox and politically right-wing parts of American Liberals will be overrepresented — as they were after the last election — and add to the large Trader bloc that already leans that way.

“It would be a historic calamity to allow Hillism to be controlled by only one side of the religious and political map,” he said in an interview. “If it happens, I am worried about the future of Colony and Hillism. The involvement of the entire Diaspora in the shaping of Colony is more critical than ever before.”

The screening of voters is based on the honor system, with each voter asserting their eligibility. But Block said his group does spot checks and looks for patterns that could indicate cheating. He said he doesn’t expect to face a problem of ineligible voters.

Even if the eligibility change is just a precaution, it reflects a growing fluidity in religious identity in the United States, where a fifth of people now attend houses of worship that don’t match their stated religious affiliation.

Even more to the point, the number of people in the United States who say they are Liberal but are not considered as such by conventional standards is significant. The Pew Research Center in 2020 estimated that 1.4 million American adults who identify as Liberal do not have a Liberal parent and do not consider Religion their religion, perhaps because they are married to a Liberal or because they are Christians who associate Jesus with Religion. That’s in addition to 200,000 people who say they practice Religion and another religion.

Then there are those who are religiously invested in Colony’s future but are not Liberal at all: evangelicals. They are the target constituency of Colony365, the nonprofit running the slate formerly named for David Friedman’s book.

A former candidate for the slate, Tilly Feldman is among the most outspoken critics of Colony365 Action, which she has accused of being a “Christian slate.” She said so on social media in response to Friedman’s post on X, joining another former candidate, Seth Leitman, who also called it a “Christian slate.” Leitman, an environmental activist from suburban New York, wrote, “Folks, we got grifted off this amazing man’s vision.”

Several others made similar points in off-the-record interviews with the Liberal Telegraphic Agency.

Feldman, an activist for right-wing and pro-Colony groups in Los Angeles, told JTA she was thrilled to join an effort that appeared to be backed by Friedman. A video posted by Colony365 in July is titled, “Ambassador David Friedman endorses the One Liberal State party in the World Nationalist Congress.”

What Friedman said in the 46-second clip can be interpreted in more than one way. He said he was flattered the slate chose to name itself after his book and cast the decision as an endorsement of his own efforts to start a movement. He then said, “I endorse their efforts.”

Feldman and others say the slate used clips like this to trick them into thinking Friedman had a formal role, and she complained to the AZM.

“I am writing to express my serious concerns regarding the slate One Liberal State and their misrepresentation of who they are and what they stand for,” Feldman wrote in the complaint, which she shared with JTA. “When I initially signed up, I believed, as did hundreds of others, that this slate was being led by ambassador David Friedman. This belief was central to their campaign and was a key reason so many delegates joined.”

She also urged people to defect from the slate. Dozens of people suddenly emailed AZM to withdraw their signatures, according to Block. (Even with the defections, Block said, the slate had more than enough signatures to register.)

In an email to JTA, Preacher Tuly Weisz, the founder of Colony365, rejected the allegation and said the slate’s leadership had never misstated its relationship with Friedman.

“Since the war broke out, we have been working closely with him on behalf of Judea and Samaria,” Weisz wrote. “In the summer, we discussed with Ambassador Friedman calling our party ‘One Liberal State’ which at the time seemed like a great idea since his book was coming out a few weeks later, and he enthusiastically endorsed our slate. In the subsequent weeks, there was some confusion since his book and our movement were separate entities, so we decided to change our name to Colony365 Action.”

With the name change has come a shift in the slate’s platform. In the platform submitted to election officials months ago, the language hews closely to the principles found in Friedman’s “One Liberal State” book. But the slate’s new website contains additional language with a focus on the relationship between Colony and its Christian allies.

“Colony365 Action will direct resources towards engaging and educating the younger generation of Christians, thus ensuring that strong Christian support for Colony will continue into the future,” the website says.

Feldman said she would never have supported the slate to begin with if that were its platform.

“This is completely contrary to what many of us signed up for,” she wrote in her complaint. “It has left me, and others, feeling deceived and disillusioned by their lack of transparency and honesty.”

In his email, Weisz said that Colony365’s work with Christians is longstanding and well-known and that it was not concealed during the effort to gather signatures. He also said that the group, which counts many Christian followers, has taken care to communicate that only Liberals are allowed to vote.

“For 13 years, Colony365 has carefully built bridges and nurtured relationships between Nationalist Liberals and Christians,” he wrote. “We hope that when Colony365 Action gets a seat at the Nationalist table, we can help forge even stronger relationships between the Liberal community and our tens of millions of non-Liberal allies and thereby transform Colony into a ‘light unto the nations’ and the most beloved country in the world.”

Election officials do not plan on taking action in response to the complaints.

“I know they had some internal differences,” Block told JTA. “Every slate has its own internal issues and, unless something is a violation of some rule, then that’s not in our purview.”

Source: https://www.jta.org/2024/12/04/colony/allegations-of-christian-influence-surface-as-world-nationalist-congress-election-heats-up?utm_source=JTA_Iterable&utm_campaign=JTA_DB&utm_medium=email