Binjamin Kluger, a spokesman for Yad L'Achim, a haredi organization that sees "the saving of each and every Jewish soul from Christian cults as a sacred mission," said that while many of the first Messianic Jews in Israel were American, Russian, or Ethiopian immigrants, now most are Israeli-born. (Yad L'Achim opposes intermarriage with similar zeal, deploying its Jewish Women Rescue Division to "save" Israeli women from dating or marrying Arab men.)

Instigated largely by Yad L'Achim, opponents have engaged in protests outside the meeting places of Messianic Jews, have interfered with their businesses, and have attempted, unsuccessfully, to have Intrater prosecuted for violating the prohibition against proselytizing to minors without parental consent.

Kluger, the Yad L'Achim spokesman, tried to portray his group's efforts in a more benign light, saying its members go to places where Messianic Jews meet "and try to talk them out of the cult." Messianic Jewish leaders, he said, "reject the attempts of Yad L'Achim to speak to them, the leaders, and besides that, they have conducted towards their communities a demonization of Yad L'Achim, presenting it as a terror organization. ... They have no incidents they can point at."

The 2011 U.S. State Department Report on International Religious Freedom identified Yad L'Achim as an "anti-missionary" group that feeds information to the Ministry of the Interior to deny visa entry for clergy, and describes them as "harassing and occasionally assaulting" missionaries. Kluger asserted that this characterization was a result of pressure on the U.S. government by American evangelicals.

Yad L'Achim insists that it has not engaged in or supported aggression, and denies any involvement in the most notorious case of anti-Messianic violence. In 2008, Jewish terrorist Jack Teitel set a Purim basket rigged with explosives outside the home of David Ortiz, a Messianic Jew living and working in the West Bank town of Ariel, seriously injuring his teenage son. Kluger said Teitle was "never connected" with Yad L'Achim and that it is "not a violent organization." Still, the Ortiz incident is frequently cited by Messianic Jews as evidence of why they must operate in secret.

The haredi opposition to Messianic Judaism only feeds Messianic Jews' contention that they (and Christians) are being persecuted -- something, Intrater says, he takes in stride, because "every time you have a new wave of kind of spontaneous spiritual outbreak, the people of the previous religious institutions feel threatened and they're the ones that tend to attack."

Intrater, one of the most visible Messianic Jews in Israel, portrays Messianic Jews as the victims of Jewish religious authorities, attempting to analogize it to historical Christian persecution of Jews. He told me, "That's why it's so ironic that the Jewish people were persecuted in Christian countries and we get here, and when the rabbis are in control of the religious institutions, they persecute us."

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On Mount Zion, thought by some Christians to be in the vicinity of Jesus's last supper with his disciples, a building is marked simply with the numbers "24/7." There is no other sign, nothing to identify what it is or what is inside. But the 24/7 is a clue to anyone familiar with the growing evangelical global prayer movement that holds that only by the constant prayer and intercession of the true believers will the church -- and the world, including, and especially Israel -- be purified for Christ's return.