A pro-Israel conference hosted by Christians was forced to cancel at the last minute after credible terror threats were directed towards the venue in Texas.
The Israel Summit, organized by the pro-Israel nonprofit HaYovel and The Israel Guys podcast, was expected to draw more than 1,000 attendees from June 9 to 11. The event was originally scheduled to take place in Dallas, but organizers switched venues due to “heightened threat levels and an overwhelming security burden estimated in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.”
The new venue outside Dallas initially agreed to host the event and implement necessary security protocols, but backed out after facing direct and indirect threats from American pro-Hamas and jihadist groups that called for targeting the private conference, according to organizers, who were reportedly working with the sheriff’s department, Texas state Rangers, and the FBI.
Now, the summit’s organizers are questioning whether it’s even possible to safely host pro-Israel events in the United States.
“This isn’t just about our event being shut down — it’s part of an alarming trend that’s escalating,” Israel Guys host Joshua Waller told The Daily Wire. “The threats against our Summit were direct, coordinated, and credible. When over 1,000 people can’t safely gather in Texas to stand with Israel, something is deeply wrong.”
Waller cited the recent murder of two Israeli embassy staffers, Sarah Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky, who were attacked while leaving a pro-Israel event in Washington, D.C., as well as a firebomb attack in Boulder, Colorado, where a man threw Molotov cocktails at participants in a walk raising awareness for the 56 hostages still held in Gaza, injuring 15 people.
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“This should be a wake-up call for every American who still believes in truth, freedom, and the biblical mandate to stand with and support Israel,” Waller added.
Scheduled speakers included former U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman, Israeli Knesset members, former members of Congress, media figures, rabbis, and survivors of the October 7 Hamas massacre. Some speakers only learned the event had been canceled after landing in the United States from Israel.
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The event was planned to be “a bold and timely declaration of solidarity with Israel.”
Canceling “was not a decision made lightly,” the organizers said. “While the desire to stand with Israel was overwhelming, so were the threats. Every option was explored — yet ultimately, no safe path forward remained, a reality organizers never imagined possible in the United States.”
Last year, personal finance expert Dave Ramsey rescued The Israel Summit from cancellation after a Nashville hotel backed out from hosting because of alleged threats by anti-Israel activists. Ramsey hosted the event at the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions and helped the conference have a larger attendance.
“Dave Ramsey reached out and said, ‘You’re going to have it at my place and we’re going to take this event to a whole new level and make it 10x what it was before,’” Waller told The Daily Wire at the time. “All of the details have come together, and the event is skyrocketing in numbers.”
Despite the issues with last year’s conference, the Israel Summit organizers said they were caught off guard but hope to reschedule in the future.
“We are not backing down,” they said. “Plans are already underway to take the Summit to a new level — bigger and bolder than ever.”
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The Israel Summit bills itself as the first gathering of pro-Israel supporters who “unconditionally support Israel’s right to be sovereign in the entirety of the land of Israel, including Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, and the Gaza Strip.”
HaYovel, which Waller’s family started over 20 years ago, brings Christians to volunteer at farms in Judea and Samaria. The group went viral after Hamas’s brutal October 7 attack for bringing a group of American cowboys to help Israelis in need of labor as foreign agricultural workers fled and men were called up to fight in the war.
