Israel Is Not a “Normal” Nation, but a Core Element in Christian Eschatology
By Jay Willoughby
Nov/Dec 2024
On Oct. 7, 2023, Christian Zionism once again raised its ugly head in the U.S., this time in the guise of the Biden administration. A self-professed, life-long, practicing Catholic, he seems to have concluded that he can remain as such while violating its core values, such as “love one another as I have loved you” (John 15:12), “Be merciful” (Luke 6:36), and “Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other” (Ephesians 4:32).
As of November 2024, Al Jazeera reports that Israel has killed 41,000+ people, including 11,000+ children. According to Bragi Guðbrandsson, Vice Chairperson of the Committee on the Rights of the Child, “The outrageous death of children is almost historically unique. This is an extremely dark place in history. . . I don’t think we have seen before a violation that is so massive as we’ve seen in Gaza.” There is surely a staggeringly high number of even more dead in the omnipresent rubble.
Perhaps Biden believes that no Palestinian Christian children exist, or that if they do they are “less-than” and therefore unworthy. One wonders if he has even heard of Bethlehem-born Rev. Munther Isaac (academic dean, Bethlehem Bible College), who pastors Bethlehem’s Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church and Beit Sahour’s Lutheran Church. He states that at times the Christians were a majority; however, many of them left, either willingly or not, during the final days of the Ottoman Empire; the British didn’t allow them to return. Israel has only followed London’s example.
Rev. Isaac relates that, from what he has read, the Palestinian diaspora contains 500,000 or more Christians, and that close to 170,000 or 180,000 more live within historic Palestine – close to 130,000 of them in Israel; close to 45,000 in the Occupied Territories and West Jerusalem, and 900 to 1,000 in Gaza. He notes that 17 years ago there were maybe 3,000, but that the blockade made life so tough that they left whenever they could.
Biden and the rest of us should watch the “Rev Munther Isaac says Palestinian Christians are under attack; that the West Bank is not livable” and “Christian Palestinian delegation describe ordeal of living under Israeli military occupation.” Christian Zionists and perhaps Western Christians in general appear to be unfazed that Jesus’ birthplace and Christianity’s homeland might one day contain no Christians. This unconcern might be generational, but it also reveals the power of ideology over the world’s largest religion.
Definition and a Little History
In her book, “Christian Zionism: Navigating the Jewish-Christian Border”, Faydra Shapiro, founder and executive director of the Israel Center for Jewish Christian Relations, writes, “In [Christian Zionists] reading of the Bible, God has decreed a special role and status for the Jews sealed in an eternal covenant, together with a promise to restore them to their land. Thus, Christian Zionists see their own solidarity with the Jews and the modern nation of Israel to be paying homage to the God of Israel.”
Genesis 12:3 records Yahweh as saying that He will bless/curse those who bless/curse Israel. Christian Zionists contend that this statement is eternal and unconditional. In short, Israel can ignore its supposedly divine mission or not. Denise Bruno’s Aug. 22, 2024, article for the Times of Israel summarizes Israel’s mission as “to help the world see who God truly is: loving, just, merciful, and holy.”
According to Richard D. Land, writing for www.christianpost.com/ on March 23, 2015, “we are also admonished to support the Jews if we want to be blessed individually and collectively as a nation.” Just an aside to the Biden administration, Land also states that “If we really care about Israel, we are compelled to tell her when we believe she is acting wrongly or contrary to her self-interest.”
Palestinian-Israeli History Didn’t Begin on Oct. 7, 2023
In fact, according to Netanyahu, it bean thousands of year ago. “You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible. And we do remember.” According to Exodus 17:8-16, the Amalekites ambushed the Hebrews after they left Egypt. An enraged Yahweh swore, “I will completely blot out the name of Amalek from under heaven” and “Because hands were lifted up against the throne of the Lord, the Lord will be at war against the Amalekites from generation to generation.”
One should ask who the Amalekites are today, for “Forty-seven percent of Israeli Jews said in a poll conducted last month that Israel should ‘not at all’ consider the ‘suffering of the civilian Palestinian population in Gaza’ in the next phase of fighting. Casting the enemy as Amalek reinforces that attitude.” Reporter Noah Lanard uses the following formation as his subheading: “His [Netanyahu’s] recent biblical reference has long been used by the Israeli far right to justify killing Palestinians.”
Rabbi Jill Jacobs (head of T’ruah, a rabbinical human rights organization) notes that “rabbis generally agree that Amalek no longer exists, and that references to it do not provide a morally acceptable justification for attacking anyone.” She further asserts that historically it has been seen as a metaphor commonly understood as to “stamp out evil inclinations within ourselves.”
And yet, she continues, “it remains common for Israeli extremists to view Palestinians as modern-day Amalekites.” For example, in 1980, “Rabbi Israel Hess wrote an article that used the story of Amalek to justify wiping out Palestinians. Its title has been translated as “Genocide: A Commandment of the Torah,” as well as “The Mitzvah of Genocide in the Torah (Ibid).
Washington’s Blindspot
According to the Jewish Virtual Library, from 1949-2023 the U.S. has given Israel $160,552.96 billion, $112,277.10 billion of which has been for “military” – the chart’s category – aid. Of course that figure has now increased by a quite a few more billions.
The Biden administration announced Friday that it was “reasonable to assess” that Israel violated international law using U.S. weapons in its military campaign in Gaza. Perhaps the administration also believes that the best way to “mow the grass,” à la the Zionist entity, is to kill off the mothers so they can’t produce the next generation and to slaughter as many children as possible before they have a chance to reproduce.
Or maybe this is Netanyahu’s version of the Great Replacement theory so beloved by certain Americans. After all, as Arnon Soffer (professor of geography, Haifa University), points out in the Times of Israel, “When the number of non-Israeli nationals is taken into consideration, it leaves the Jewish proportion at between 46% and 47% of the total.”
Maybe they’ve taken Josep Borrell’s (foreign policy chief, EU) Oct. 13, 2022, comment – since apologized for – to heart, “Most of the rest of the world is a jungle, and the jungle could invade the garden. The gardeners should take care of it, but they will not protect the garden by building walls. . . A nice small garden surrounded by high walls in order to prevent the jungle from coming in is not going to be a solution. . . The gardeners have to go to the jungle.”
Stanley L. Cohen, an attorney and human rights activist who has done extensive work in the Middle East and Africa, identifies an often overlooked fact: “In accordance with international humanitarian law, wars of national liberation have been expressly embraced, through the adoption of Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions of 1949, as a protected and essential right of occupied people everywhere.” Israel has not signed it; the U.S. has signed but not ratified it.
As University of North Texas professor Elizabeth Oldmixon remarks, “When we talk about the Holy Land, God’s promise of the Holy Land, we’re talking about real estate on both sides of the Jordan River. So the sense of a greater Israel and expansionism is really important to this community.”
Bump mentioned another interesting statistic found by The LifeWay poll: 80% of evangelicals believed Israel’s creation of Israel was a fulfillment of biblical prophecy that would bring about Christ’s return. A 2003 Pew Research Center poll revealed that about a third of Americans hold this view, while more than 60% evangelicals agreed.
Moreover, “What kick-starts the end times into motion is Israel’s political boundaries being reestablished to what God promised the Israelites according to the Bible,” Pastor Nate Pyle told Newsweek in 2018. The previous month, President Trump had recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and ordered the embassy moved there, much to the delight of countless Evangelicals.
A Major Christian Zionist Voice
Evangelical pastor John Hagee (founder, John Hagee Ministries; founder and chairman of Christians United for Israel), is “America’s most prominent Christian Zionist [known] for his controversial and violent views.” After all, how could he not be after making such a sensational statement [recorded by NBC] during the Nov. 14, 2023, “March for Israel” on the National Mall as “‘God sent a hunter’” and that Jews were killed “’because God said my top priority for the Jewish people is to get them to come back to the land of Israel.’”
This was not just an off-the-cuff remark spoken in a moment of enthusiasm, for in a 1999 sermon he declared, “God sent Adolf Hitler to help Jews reach the promised land” (He apologized almost a decade later, saying that “I grappled with the vexing question of why a loving God would allow the evil of the Holocaust to occur…I regret if my Jewish friends felt any pain as a result.”)
These comments reveal what really drives Christian Zionism: “Evangelicals believe that the rebirth of Israel is hastening not just the second coming of Christ, but a particular kind of second coming, one that includes fire, fury, and war that will consume the Jewish people … Evangelicals support Israel to hasten the apocalypse, while Israelis … humor the Evangelical community and milk that support for tourist dollars and political power.”
Jay Willoughby, former Islamic Horizons copyeditor, has retired to the Virginia Home for the Permanently Bewildered.