American conservaties, Christian Zionism and the politics of Israeli military actions against civilians
American conservaties, Christian Zionism and the politics of Israeli military actions against civilians
Here are two views on the current situation with Israel’s military actions in Gaza. This first is essentially a defense of war crimes. The second is a criticism of them. These two positions are not equally valid.
Callousness toward military targeting of civilians and toward Palestinians in particular
This is former US diplomat Dennis Ross giving a diplomatic version of what is essentially his full backing for an Israeli military assault directly not only at the Hamas infrastructure but the civilian population of Gaza, as well.1
This is why we have laws of war, to at least limit the damage and deaths of noncombatants that takes place during wars.
How Ross’ position here is anything but an endorsement of Israel deliberately targeting the civilian population of Gaza is hard to see. Despite the title of the video, he doesn’t seem to think there anything problematic about backing a war by the authoritarian-minded Benjamin Netanyahu’s government against Palestinian civilians.
In this one, Sven Kühn von Burgsdorff, a former EU ambassador to Palestine, expresses the necessity of following the laws of war and opposes direct and deliberate targeting of civilians.2
The latter report also includes a clip of EU President Ursula van der Leyen in 2022 speaking on Russia’s war against Ukraine: “Targeted attacks on civilian infrastructure with a clear aim to cut off men, women, [and] children of water, electricity and heating with the winter coming: these are acts of pure terror. And we have to call it as such.”
Yes, if we support actual international humanitarian law, we do have to call it what it is. Labeling everything evil and violent as “terror” is a well-established habit. What Van der Leyen is describing in that comment, though, is criminal and deliberate mass punishment of civilian populations.
Do Palestinians lives matter in US politics?
In American politics, the kind of raw disregard of the humanity of Palestinians and Muslims - most American code Palestinians as Muslim though a portion of them are Christian - is compounded and encouraged by the Christian Right, which is a core popular constituency of the Republican Party, arguably the most important one.
There is a bizarre phenomenon in American politics in which Christian fundamentalists who think that Jews are literally going to Hell if they don’t convert to Christianity support hardcore Zionist ethno-nationalism in Israel, including Netanyahu’s theocratic authoritarianism. These people generally hate Jews. They back policies like those of Netanyahu because they think it will lead to massive killing of Jews in an apocalyptic war.
Samuel Goldman relates the background of Christian Zionism in America, which was given a boost by Billy Graham, a conservative evangelical star who was widely admired by conservative Protestants who didn’t consider themselves fundamentalists. Despite his positive public rhetoric about Israel, the notorious Nixon Tapes showed him displaying a not-entirely-positive attitude towards Jews:
“A lot of Jews are great friends of mine,” Graham told Nixon in 1972. “They swarm around me and are friendly to me. Because they know that I am friendly to Israel and so forth. But they don’t know how I really feel about what they’re doing to this country, and I have no power and no way to handle them.”
Graham also said that the Jewish “stranglehold” on the media “has got to be broken or this country’s going down the drain.”
In 2002, Graham apologized for the remarks, and Jewish community leaders accepted his apology — but the relationship would never again be the same.
“We knew that Nixon was an anti-Semite,” Abraham Foxman, then the Anti-Defamation League’s national director, told JTA at the time, whereas Graham is “a guy we all felt comfortable with … And he was so infected with this virulent anti-Semitism.”3
In this 2018 video, Goldman defines Christian Zionism, which is based on various readings of the Christian Scriptures and their references to the End Times, as "the idea that Christians have a religious responsibility to support, defend, protect, encourage - or virtually any other verb you might care to insert - the establishment of a Jewish state in some portion of the Biblical Holy Land." 4
Goldman stresses that the Six-Day War of 1967 played a particularly important role in how conservative Christians in America viewed Israel.
In the video he describes how American Christian Zionists conflate a mythic vision of Israel’s divine mission with their notion of the divine mission of the American nation. He also explains that not all Americans who he counts as “Christian Zionism” are fundamentalists. But he adds that a significant risk of Christian Zionism in general is that it tends to promote a division of Jews in the world into “good Jews” (those who follow their divinely assigned role of moving to Israel) and “bad Jews” (those who don’t.)
I would add that the fundamentalists not only tend to promote a particularly toxic version of it, but also have significant political clout through today’s Republican Party.
Israel’s victory in June 1967 astonished the world. In six days and without foreign intervention, Israel destroyed forces widely regarded as superior and gained control of territory far beyond the armistice lines. The acquisition of the Golan Heights and the Sinai Peninsula was regarded as the most important strategic consequence of the war. But the most dramatic event from a religious perspective was Israel’s capture of the Old City of Jerusalem. In a report on the events of June 7, the New York Times described a scene out of a Hollywood epic as Israeli troops marched through the Mandelbaum Gate blowing shofars. The actual situation was more fraught. Shlomo Goren, head rabbi of the Israel Defense Forces, had to be talked out of a plan to inaugurate the messianic age by blowing up the mosques on the Temple Mount.
This turn of events electrified conservative Christians. Like Rabbi Goren, they were inclined to believe that Israel’s success was not just a feat of arms but reflected God’s guidance of history. [Willard] Skousen declared the war nothing less than a “rendezvous with destiny.” In a survey of the recent developments, Christianity Today [an important evangelical magazine] reminded readers that the “Christian can best understand the imbroglio in the Middle East through his knowledge of prophetic Scriptures.”5 [my emphasis]
(Willard Cleon Skousen (1913-2006) was a Mormon fundamentalist whose ideology has been influential among the American Right, including Ben Carson and Glenn Beck.6)
Billy Graham [declared] that “Jews are God’s chosen people,” [and] he expressed approval for the outcome of the war and support for the annexation of parts of Jerusalem. Hesitant about making religion a political wedge, Graham did not recommend that the United States adopt a specific policy regarding the territories occupied by Israel. But he did insist that American Christians “cannot place ourselves in opposition to Israel without detriment to ourselves.”7 [my emphasis]
The marriage of conservative evangelicalism with conservative politics after 1967 that in a few years would become known as the Christian Right was not only influenced by the identification of the government of Israel with Christian prophecy and conservative values. It was also influenced by the racist “white backlash” against the end of segregation and voting rights for African-Americans. White American Christians, especially but not only in the South, have always find it too easy to reconcile their religious belief in love for one’s neighbor with white racism.
In a brief for the Palestinian Policy Network, Halah Ahmad and Mimi Kirk describes this alliance as follows:
Christian Zionists’ support for Jewish settlement in Palestine is a precursor to their own (the Church’s) salvation, not that of Jewish people; they actively seek an end of times in which Jews and other non-Christians will be destroyed while they ascend to heaven. Their support for Jews and Israel is a superficial pretense for Christian salvation at the expense of Jews. Still, this ideological commitment aligns Christian Zionists with Israeli governments and their colonial and belligerent policies toward Palestinians, Iran, and other adversaries of the Israeli regime. Ironically, the right-wing ethnoreligious nationalists who support the present Netanyahu government have also increased their belligerence toward Christians, Palestinian and otherwise, making this alignment even more perplexing.
Moreover, Christian Zionist views of Jewish people are characteristically antisemitic. For example, they rely on belief in a singular, internationally-connected, and powerful population of Jews, and the modern Israeli regime as the embodiment of the biblical nation that represents Jews everywhere. Such beliefs mimic the conspiratorial elements of antisemitism in Europe and blend support for Jewish settlement in Palestine with antisemitic notions of international Jewry. In so doing, Christian Zionists cynically enmesh themselves with white supremacists, who fear being “replaced” by Jews or people of color—and who feel threatened by antisemitic notions of Jewish people’s power and influence.8 [my emphasis]
Annika Brockschmidt stands out among German political analysts in her well-informed and nuanced of the American Christian Zionist phenomenon9:
Palestinian Lives Matter?
That combination of anti-Semitism and “support for Jews and Israel” also affects Christian Zionists’ political stance on matters like Israeli actions against Palestinian civilians. A lot of white Americans in 2020 needed to hear the message that Black Lives Matter, because for too many whites they don’t matter much. I’ve seen the concept of Palestinian Lives Matter mentioned over the last week or so, although I don’t know if any particular political group has adopted it.
Trumpistas were quick to condemn the “Black Lives Matter” slogan as meaning that white lives don’t matter. They didn’t actually think that’s what it meant. But that’s how white racists roll.
Similarly, advocates for unequivocal support for any actions against the Palestinians that the Netanyahu government might take are quick to claim that any expression of the need for restraints, or criticism of attacks on civilians that violate international humanitarian law, are equal to support for Hamas terrorism that does the same thing but to Israeli Jews. This is ridiculous. But that’s how Netanyahu and his authoritarian supporters roll, too. Including American Christian Zionists.
The segregationist strain in conservative American Christianity has, at least since the 1967 war, identified with Israelis by imagining them as white people fighting against dark-skinned Arab Muslim barbarians. This emotionally-charged identification is something we see playing out when American conservatives declare their admiration for ruthless Israeli treatment of Palestinians. The Christian Zionist narrative allows them to tie that enthusiasm with deeply anti-Semitic attitudes.
Recognizing this phenomenon doesn’t make callousness on the part of Americans right somehow less malign. On the contrary. But it’s important to understand the political context in which they are operating.
Israel Faces "Excruciating Dilemmas" in Fighting Hamas, Says Amb. Dennis Ross. Anampour and Company YouTube channel. 10/14/2023. (Accessed: 2023-16-10).
Former EU Envoy: Israel’s Forced Transfer of Palestinians in Gaza Would Be a War Crime. Democracy Now! YouTube channel 10/13/2023. (Accessed: 2023-16-10). The Van der Layen quote begins just after 4:00 in the video.
Kampeas, Ron (2018): Billy Graham’s difficult legacy: Pro-Israel in public, deriding Jews in private. Times of Israel 02/21/2023. <https://www.timesofisrael.com/billy-grahams-difficult-legacy-pro-israel-in-public-deriding-jews-in-private/> (Accessed: 2023-16-10).
Sam Goldman Lecture: "Christian Zionism". Providence Magazine YouTube channel 05/14/2018. He gives the definition after 2:35 in the video. (Accessed: 2023-16-10).
Goldman, Samuel (2018): God's Country: Christian Zionism in America, 147-172. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Miller, Bruce (2015): A crackpot ghost helping to run the Republican asylum. Contradicciones (Original) 10/06/2023. <https://oldhickorysweblog.blogspot.com/2015/10/a-crackpot-ghost-helping-to-run.html> (Accessed: 2023-16-10).
Goldman, op. cit.
Ahmad, Halah & Kirk, Mimi (2023): The Dangerous Exceptionalism of Christian Zionism. Informed Comment 10/17/2023. <https://www.juancole.com/2023/10/dangerous-exceptionalism-christian.html> (Accessed: 2023-17-10).
Also in: Al-Shabaka (Palestinian Policy Network) 10/03/2023.<https://brucemillerca.substack.com/publish/post/138004153?back=%2Fpublish%2Fposts%2Fdrafts> (Accessed: 2023-17-10).
Brockschmidt, Annika (2022): X (Twitter) 07/22/2022. <https://twitter.com/ardenthistorian/status/1550460714946527232> (Accessed: 2023-17-10).