Usman Harun
The Republic of Indonesia is made up of thousands of Islands, speaking hundreds of languages, with its people numbering in the hundreds of millions. Indonesia’s large population, its unique archipelagic landscape, and the sheer diversity of its people may become its strength, as it appears that a single narrative is insufficient to convince the population to agree with the Israeli Occupation’s genocidal narrative.
Hasbara is a Hebrew word translated variously as “explanation,” “interpretation,” and “propaganda.” In essence, it is propaganda intended to wash out the reputation of the Zionist entity, and especially their armed forces, the so-called “Israel Defense Forces”. One may think that in a Muslim-majority country with rising digital literacy levels and high internet penetration rates, such as Indonesia, it would appear unlikely for Zionist propaganda to penetrate the masses. However, the reality is, as always, more nuanced and complex to say the least. This series of articles will explore the various ways Zionist propaganda tries to convince various demographics of Indonesia to bend to its will.
Indonesia is known to most of the world as having one of the largest populations of Muslims worldwide. However, it is less well known that it also has among the highest populations of evangelicals in Southeast Asia. Christians make up roughly 10-11% of the Indonesian population, with a high proportion being Protestant. Roughly 15 million people in Indonesia are estimated to belong to the various evangelical churches, with their population mostly centered on several localized ethnicities through ethnic churches with various networks.
To the evangelicals, the message of Hasbara is not so far different from what is fed to Western Christians. They claim that the Israeli Occupation is the same as the one in the Bible, and that the land is promised to the Jews by divine will. Zionist evangelicals often have their ideas spread through so-called religious pilgrimages to the occupied territories, which are unfortunately facilitated widely in the tourism industry of Indonesia in forms such as “Holy Land tours”.
Zionist churches in Indonesia often have direct ties with their counterparts in the United States. Political and economic lobby groups in the United States likewise often have their ties stemming from this very same connection. Just as in the United States, Evangelicals outnumber Jews, both in the general population and when comparing the proportion of Evangelical and Jewish Zionists.
Among the famous evangelicals in support of Zionism is Monique Rijkers, an individual who has a long history of Zionist activism, who, not too long ago, attended the so-called Christian Media Summit in Jerusalem, hosted by the Israeli Occupation government and the US-based “International Fellowship of Christians and Jews”. Monique Rijkers had proposed relocating Palestinians from Gaza to Indonesia to form a 35th province named “Gaza”, which was ironically somewhat entertained by the Indonesian government in the form of a refugee island in the Riau Islands province, in accordance with the same initiative with Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu.
The narrative brought by evangelicals often extends to the ethnic sphere. Aside from believing that the Jews were a so-called “chosen people”, Monique Rijkers also claims that the Batak people of Sumatra are “the same” as the Israelites in the mentality of migrating and adapting. There is also this increasingly unhinged conspiracy theory claiming that the Batak people are one of the lost tribes of Israel, similar to the case of the so-called Hebrew Israelites in the United States. One stark difference, however, is that unlike in the case of the Hebrew Israelites, the Batak people, who claim they are “Israeli” descendants, vehemently support the so-called “State of Israel.”
Monique Rijkers
Batak Zionists such as Flemming Pangabean have also lived in occupied Palestine and promoted Indonesian work and travel to the occupied territories. The Arava International Center of Agriculture Training in Negevhas actively recruited people from the Tapanuli, Siantar, Dairi, Simalungun, Karo, Tobasa, Samosir, and Sidikalang regionsto enroll in their university, despite a lack of diplomatic recognition.
North Sulawesi, the place where Indonesia’s Jewish community is known to come from, is also infested by some of Indonesia’s most Zionist evangelicals. The Gereja Masihi Injili di Minahasa (GMIM) church openly flies the Israeli flag in their marches. In Manado, the so-called saying “blessed are those who bless Israel, and cursed are those who curse Israel” remains popular. This is to the extent that we see people having funerals being draped in Israeli Occupation flags. The Occupation flag, though illegal to fly under ministerial regulation, is often displayed alongside the Indonesian and US flags in the province. In 2023, a peaceful Palestinian rally was violently attacked by Zionist mobs in Bitung, North Sulawesi. The resulting clashes caused the death of one individual and serious injuries to another. Unsurprisingly, the clashes were very sectarian, with muslims on the pro-Palestinian side and evangelicals on the Zionist side. It was this civil conflict that caused the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to reiterate its ban on the Israeli Occupation’s flag. In North Sulawesi, Zionist sentiment is often also tied with pro-Americanism and Minahasa separatist sentiment.
In Papua, the entire provincial government had declared support for Israeli recognition and diplomatic ties. Henry Dosinaen, past regional secretary for Papua, believed that the Israeli Occupation is a religiously tolerant multicultural state, and wishes to spread this tolerance of the Zionist entity to Indonesia. In 2022, the International University of Papua claimed that they are ready to cooperate with Ariel University, a university located in an illegal Zionist settlement in the West Bank of Palestine. This is despite the lack of diplomatic relations between Indonesia and the Zionist entity, and despite Ariel University being subject to various academic boycotts due to its blatant illegal location and its normalization of Zionist settlement. Samuel Tabuni, founder of the International University of Papua, was said to be inspired by Agus Suherman, an Indonesian businessman who had previously sent Indonesian agricultural students to study in the Arava International Center of Agriculture Training (AICAT) in Negev. Tabuni had already signed a memorandum with Ariel University’s international relations head, without any comment from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In 2025, a Papuan contestant to the Miss Indonesia pageant, Merince Kogoya, was disqualified due to openly having pro-Occupation views and openly waving the Israeli flag.
Papuan and Manadonese netizens quickly defended Merince, and Merince herself was very defensive on the topic. Her religious movement “Sion kids” defended her flag raising as being religious, as they are part of a Protestant sect called “Messianic Judaism”, which, although it consists mainly of Jewish people who accept Jesus (Prophet Isa [as]) as messiah, still openly collaborates and defends the Zionist entity “State of Israel”. In 2023, the Papuan regional government funded 51 people, including state employees, for a “pilgrimage to Israel”. In 2024, the number of “pilgrims” funded by the state budget increased to 83.
The tide of Zionism within the Indonesian evangelical community is not entirely unopposed, however. There are indeed many Protestants in Indonesia who openly reject Zionism and accept the stance of the Republic of Indonesia, which is not to recognize the so-called “State of Israel”, and thus to oppose conflating the modern Zionist entity with the biblical subject. The Indonesian Bethel Church (GBI) mentions in detail about the “relations of the church and Israel” in article 10 of their book of statements, that theologically, the “Israeli” people are no longer “the chosen people”, as they believe God has now chosen the church. The Bethel Church also states that the modern “State of Israel” has no special relation with the Church and sees the matter in the framework of international relations rather than religion. They have also denied that Holy Land pilgrimages are religious. The Communion of Churches in Indonesia (PGI) has, in the past, denied the legitimacy of Trump’s move to recognize Jerusalem (Al Quds) back in 2017 as the capital of the “State of Israel”. Although the PGI regrettably mentions the Zionist occupation as an “Israel-Hamas conflict” in their 2023 statement, they have also condemned the US-Israeli attack on Iran in 2026.
The socialization of the reality of the occupation, the fate of the Palestinian Christians, and the factual difference between the so-called “State of Israel” and the biblical subject, as also believed by many Jews, is something that is impeccably needed in the theological discourse of the Indonesian church. Truth and factual clarity regarding Palestine and the plight of Palestinian Christians are desperately needed to be understood, as opposed to myths and conspiracies which Zionists rely on to spread their message of hate and occupation to Indonesian Christians.
Seeing the severity of bigoted views of evangelical Zionists in Indonesia, dialogue between pro-Palestinian activists in Indonesia from various backgrounds with Indonesian Christians and evangelicals should be emphasized. A son of a famous Pastor known for having more Zionist-leaning stances made news when he broke ranks and decided to speak with the Palestinian ambassador, immediately asking what to do to help Palestine.
Theological critique of Zionism is also desperately needed from a Christian perspective and should be added to the Indonesian mainstream discourse. Decisions from churches such as PGI and GBI should be made more known, and so should the various Christian movements in the world criticizing Zionism, such as the pro-Palestinian stances of some church clergy from the Dutch PKN Church, be shared more in the discourse. The Zionist occupation must stop being conflated with becoming a religious conflict between Islam and Christianity. If Indonesian national media understood enough about the horrible crimes of Zionism, then the least they can do is to de-platform the Zionists and put them out of national TV and national media.
As the hero Ghassan Kanafani said, there is no use in talking with those who put their knife to your neck. It would also be beneficial to track the influence of foreign Zionist churches and lobbies in Indonesia and to advocate for their boycott, both through organic mass efforts and political lobbying. Much is to be done within the evangelical Christian community to counter the tide of Zionist heresy among its believers, starting small, however little, would still have potential to bring a glimmer of light in the dark sky.
Usman Harun is a lifelong Indonesian patriot, a born and practicing Muslim but “with his entire nation in mind.”
