The Arab world's perception of Israel is undergoing a seismic shift, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the Christian Media Summit on Sunday.
"Something very big is happening: the transformation of Israel in the minds of many in the Middle East. It's no longer being perceived as an enemy. We've become an indispensable ally against the enemy of militant Islam," he claimed.
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Netanyahu cited the lack of violence after US President Donald Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and then later its sovereignty over the Golan Heights as evidence for this development.
"People said there would be a tremendous convulsion. But what happened? Nothing," Netanyahu said.
Israel's Prime Minister delivered his comments at the Friends of Zion Museum in Jerusalem - an interactive facility that harnesses Christian support to combat the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement and anti-Semitism.
The first night of the summit also kicked off the opening of the museum's new state-of-the-art media center.
Video: GPO
Netanyahu was among friends – some 200 Evangelical Christians – as he spoke about the Arab world beginning to band together with Israel to combat Iranian attempts at regional hegemony.
In fact, he said Israel's main goal is "to make sure that Iran does not develop nuclear weapons and that its march toward an empire and conquest has stopped."
Praising US President Donald Trump's decision to level hefty economic sanctions on Iran, Trump revealed that "If Israel was not here, Iran would already have nuclear weapons."
"The Arab states recognize that this militancy is a danger to them, no less than it is a danger to us ... so they've made a common cause with us to defend a common foe," he said.
This normalization, he said, has spilled over to areas that go beyond security and diplomacy and has seeped into technological and economic collaboration.
"There's a clear shift, this is the way peace will ultimately be achieved."
He did caution, though, that common goals don't translate to common values. "These aren't Western Democracies," he said, plainly. "But they also understand that unless we cooperate we could be threatened by a great evil power."
Sharing common values, he posited, existed among Israel and the audience – a large delegation of Evangelical Christians. He hailed them as "great believers in the Judeo-Christian tradition. We have no better friends in the world than our Christian friends."
He recalled Theodore Herzl's early supporters who were not fellow Jews, but Christian Zionists who believed in his cause.
Netanyahu further vowed that Israel will continue to be a bastion of religious freedom, while other countries in the Middle East have tragically failed to protect its Christian minorities.
"We have a common cause to protect Christians, Yazidis, Muslims, and Jews everywhere and to protect our view of civilization which protects individual rights and guarantees freedom," he said.
Netanyahu also dismissed anti-semites who mask themselves as anti-Zionists and advocated for exposing them for the bigots that they are.
"Who do they stand with? They stand with Hamas – who shoot people in the back of their head in Gaza. They stand with ISIS who beheads people. They stand with Iran," he said accusingly, adding that Israel and its friends must "delegitimize the deligitmizers."
