NES AMMIM
MEMORANDUM TO THE ISRAELI GOVERNMENT
1960

1. Principle.
The investment project proposed would be featured by an
International Christian Settlement in Israel.
The project is sponsored by businessmen and industrialists in America, Germany, Holland and Switzerland, with the prospect of other countries participating at a later stage.

2. The project.
The venture would be carried out as a business proposition. E.g. as an investment project undertaken by an International Company Ltd.

An area of 100 ha. (1000 dunam) of land, which has already been offered from private ownership, would be acquired and a settlement of the moshav type established on it.

The aim would be to achieve a healthy economical basis in a mixed agricultural-industrial enterprise, producing mainly for export.

The direction of, and responsibility for, the settlement would be in the hands of experienced executives as well as highly-specialised experts in agricultural and industrial production.

It is intended that Christians of different backgrounds and nationalities would form the body of the settlement, with the participation of other specialists and unskilled workers without discrimination as to their creed and nationality.

3. Motivation.
The unhappy history of the relationship between Christians and Jews during the centuries of Israel’s Exile, as well as the heavy responsibility which Christianity bears – directly and indirectly – for the immense Jewish suffering, have created a gulf between Jews and Christians which only a most determined moral and spiritual effort can heal. The ways and methods usually adopted in the past by Christians to bring about a so-called “rapprochement” (i.e. the missionary efforts to convert the Jews) have only deepened the gulf and increased the suspicion, particularly as the missionary preaching contrasted so lamentably with the reality presented by the Christian world.

As a result of all this, and taking into account that the Jewish people firmly established in its own land no longer needs to fight shy in suspicious self-defence of the Christian fellow-countries, a number of Christians have come to the conclusion that a radically new departure is necessary. The Christians’ duty is not only to help the young State, by way of amends for the past, with empathy and financial aid from afar, but also to work towards mutual goodwill and understanding on the concrete level of human relationships.
Inspired by the genuine desire to turn over a fresh leaf in Jewish-Christian relations, the aim of the sponsors is a Christian community, serving Israel by investment, economic initiative and technical know-how. The desired outcome of this project, in human and moral terms, should be:

 a) the experiences of Israelis that there exists a genuinely Christian attitude of goodwill, service and profound respect for
     Jewry and Judaism.
 b) a more concrete experience of Christians of the realities, values and problems of Jewish life and creative effort in Israel.

These Christians, in their turn, will have to become the “missionaries” of the new Christian attitude to Jewry, in their own countries, churches and congregations.

Considering the depth of the abyss between the two groups and the extent of Christianity’s moral failure, the initiators of the project believe that an attitude of more distant co-existence without genuine human contact and cooperation in practical, constructive tasks would be unworthy of the moral and religious traditions of the two groups.

The initiators have chosen the proposed settlement-scheme as the most promising plan for directly contributing to Israel’s general economic development in a way which would make this contribution also serve their essential moral and religious ends.

4.
After a long period of preliminary surveys, planning and preparation, the initiators now feel that the time has come to discuss the possibility of the practical implementation of the project.

An international delegation is intended to visit Israel the last week in November of this year to meet authorities and to invite frank discussion on the implications of the plan.

A detailed plan of the investment project would be presented to the competent authorities in the course of the next year.

5.
The Government’s support and cooperation is being sought for the scheme and the initiators will be grateful for any advice that might help towards its realization.


Sense and task of Nes Ammim – 1982.
Nes Ammim is a Christian settlement in the State of Israel, founded by Christians from different countries and churches.

The Christians who are working in and for Nes Ammim believe in Jesus from Nazareth as their Lord. They have recognized: it is against His will that Christianity has for centuries treated the Jewish people, from which it descended and amongst whom He lived, as being rejected by God, and has therefore persecuted it. Therefore they stand up for it that Christians learn to see the Jewish people in a different way then they did up till now.

They testify, in conformity with the Holy Bible, God has not rejected His people Israel; His covenant with it continues; His promise to Israel is still in force. Therefore Christianity can work neither against nor without Israel, but just with it in the service of working God’s righteousness in the world and in living together in the common hope of God’s coming Kingdom.

Nes Ammim wants:
• to meet the Jewish people in their land and live and work there with them.
• to contribute to getting to know and to understand each other better and to the learning form each other.
• to further the dialogue between Jews and Christians in the State of Israel, by which each respects the identity of the other.
• therefore to refrain practice and in principle from missionary activities.

Nes Ammim wants to contribute to:
• the understanding and realization by Christians of the new relation towards Israel.
• the making visible of who is the Jewish people, what sense its life has in the land, promised to its fathers by God and what this means for
   the living, thinking and acting of the Church, by the Church.