"Messianic Zionism, Settler-Colonialism, and the Lost Jews of Kaifeng"

"Notwithstanding these setbacks, there was clearly a space for cautious non-state groups and actors to tap into such aspirations and re-direct them as they saw fit. In 1999, a group of Finnish Christian Zionists–connected to the International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem that has assisted some 115,000 Jews to emigrate to Israel from the early 1990s–facilitated the entry of the first Kaifeng family into Israel. The family’s head, in fact, was one of the individuals connected to the 1996 incident. This was accomplished in cooperation with Shavei Yisrael, a “Lost Jews” organization founded in the late 1990s by Michael Freund, an American-Israeli pundit with connections to both the messianic settler movement and the right-wing Netanyahu-linked political establishment in Israel. He had originally worked with Amichav, a pioneering “Lost Jews” organization that had emerged following the 1967 war and which has sought to forward the goals of the Gush Emunim bloc by bringing in “Lost Jews” as settlers."