Why 9 in 10 American Zionists Are Actually Christians
Israel boasts an army of 30 million racist Christian Zionists who actively support Israeli efforts to exterminate Palestine and establish Greater Israel
As pro-Palestine, anti-genocide demonstrations continue to spread across America and the world, Israel and its minions in the mainstream media are reflexively condemning the students as “antisemitic”. They trot out Jewish students who look with anguish into the camera and repeat the mantra, “I don’t feel safe”.
The student demonstrators, they argue, are actually antisemitic Jew-haters.
Anti-Semitism on campus: a distraction
Earlier this year, the Anti Defamation League (ADL) “graded” 85 American universities for their policies to protect Jewish students from antisemitism on campus. Not surprisingly, the ADL gave Harvard and 12 other schools an “F.” Just two schools got an “A.”
Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu even issued a direct admonition to Americans:
“Antisemitic mobs have taken over leading universities. They call for the annihilation of Israel. They attack Jewish students. They attack Jewish faculty…This is reminiscent of what happened in German universities in the 1930s. It’s unconscionable. It has to be stopped.”
US House Speaker Mike Johnson echoed Netanyahu’s rhetoric during a visit to Columbia University in New York:
“We just can’t allow this kind of hatred and antisemitism to flourish on our campuses, and it must be stopped in its tracks. Those who are perpetrating this violence should be arrested.”
It is obvious that for Netanyahu and all the other Israel supporters, saying anything against Israel — or even saying something that is overtly pro-Palestinian — is considered to be anti-Semitic hate speech,
US Congress says anti-Zionism is antisemitism
Netanyahu and Mike Johnson feel they are on firm ground in equating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism, because the US House of Representatives passed a resolution last December establishing that equation officially.
The Congressional resolution was designed to put an end to a debate that had been raging for years, but was also meant to suppress any criticism of Israel and its genocidal bombing campaign in Gaza.
But how valid would that resolution be if the vast majority of Zionists in America were not even Jewish?
Christian Zionists: Israel’s hidden army
Christian Zionism is the belief that the Jewish people have a right to return to Israel. It sees Jews as the descendants of biblical Israelites and heirs to the covenant between God and Abraham. In America, the vast majority of Christian Zionists are Evangelicals Christians.
The term ‘Christian Zionist’ was first used by Theodor Herzl at the First Zionist Congress in 1897 (Hedding 2010).
According to Dr. Tristan Sturm of Queen’s University, Belfast, there are over 30 million Christian Zionists in the USA, located mostly across the so-called “Bible Belt” of the South.
The Jewish population of the United States is only around 7 million, of which only 58% identify as Zionists, according to the Pew Research Center.
That means there are around 4 million Jewish Zionists in America, which, when combined with the Christian Zionists, makes for 34 million total US Zionists, of which about 11% are Jewish.
The Christian Zionist movement has been around for decades, but started to grow rapidly in the wake of the 1967 war:
“Contemporary Christian Zionists believe that Israel’s creation in 1948, its expansion in 1967, and its flourishing are all evidence that God continues to have a special relationship with the Jewish people.”
Israel’s “amazing” victory in 1967 indicated to the Christians that the Jews still had that “special relationship” with God — especially in war.
Militarism is baked into Christian Zionism
Christian Zionists believe in the End Times and the Second Coming of Christ. Most importantly, they are zealous proponents of the re-establishment of the Jewish nation. The return of the Jews to the Holy Land is viewed by Christian Zionists as being the prerequisite for Christ’s return to earth.
Moreover, as Christian Zionist leaders constantly affirm, Jesus will return not as a saviour, but as a warrior, to “begin his final clean-up”.
John Hagee is a Texas televangelist and founder of Christians United for Israel (CUFI), an influential Christian Zionist advocacy group. He calls the founding of Israel “the greatest miracle since the Resurrection of Jesus Christ”.
In October last year, Hagee preached at Free Chapel, a megachurch in Gainesville, Georgia. Hagee thundered that the epic battle at Armageddon, or the Mount Meggido in Israel, will be “the most bloody battle ever recorded in the history of the world.”
Hagee declared that for armies that “come against Israel” from China, Russia or Iran, “God is going to wipe them out.” After that, he predicted, “there will be 1,000 years of perfect peace, no presidential elections, no fake news, none of all of this nonsense.” Instead, there will be “one king, and one leader, Jesus Christ the Son of God. One law, it will be his law.”
The Rapture and the Second Coming
Because of that “special relationship” between God and the Jews, Christian Zionists believe that it is their duty as Christians to support and protect Israel as much as possible, whatever it takes. This fanatical support takes the form of political lobbying and financial donations, as well as providing moral — and even physical — support for the Zionist Project of establishing Eretz-Israel, or Greater Israel.
Christian Zionists believe that Israel’s establishment is part of a series of events that will lead to large-scale war, which will in turn result in the battle of Armageddon and the return of Jesus.
When Jesus returns, he will herald what Evangelical Christians call “the Rapture” — the direct lifting up to heaven of all living believers. All dead Christian believers will be resurrected and, joined with Christians who are still alive, together will rise “in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air.”
This is how the two faiths are reconciled. As Tristan Sturm writes: “Jews are seen as the Chosen People of Earth and are, therefore, to be unwaveringly supported as God’s army soldiering toward the apocalypse. Protestant Christians, on the other hand, are understood as the Chosen People of Heaven and a post-millennium Earth”.
Jews and Arabs are “collateral damage”
One part of their eschatological “End Times” faith that Christian Zionists don’t talk about as much is the fact that when Jesus returns, it spells the end of both the Jewish and Muslim religions:
“What happens to the Jews and Palestinians is, to put it very mildly, collateral damage…Only those who accept Jesus as their saviour will benefit from these events that Christian Zionists claim the Bible predicts will happen. Nonbelievers — including Jews and Muslims — will not survive them.”
United in Racism
No wonder, then, that Christian Zionists are among the most radical proponents of Eretz-Israel (Greater Israel). As racists themselves, they are quite comfortable with the genocides and ethnic cleansing it will take to make Greater Israel a reality as foretold in the Bible.
In short, Christian Zionists are already accustomed to a “supremacist” ideology.
Like Zionists, they have little respect for Palestinian life, as they know that the End Times are coming, and the Palestinians, as Muslims, are destined to die anyway. For this reason, they maintain strong alliances with far-right Jewish and Israeli leaders, reinforcing anti-Palestinian, anti-Muslim, and anti-Arab agendas.
In fact, Christian Zionists have actively lobbied not just for the return of Jews to modern-day Israel but also for an end to the existence of the territories administered by the Palestinian Authority. They “oppose the Middle East peace process because they oppose a physical division of Jerusalem or of Israel”, according to Dr Clifford Kiracofe, a former adviser to the US Senate.
“At the center of the dispensational system was the belief that before any of the prophesied end times events could take place, Jews would have to reestablish their own state in the Holy Land,” wrote Timothy Weber in his 2004 book, “On the Road to Armageddon: How Evangelicals Became Israel’s Best Friend.”
Christian Zionists believe that support of Israel is necessary to avoid the wrath of an angry God:
“Christian Zionists maintain that the Book of Genesis says that God will bless those who bless Israel, and curse those who curse it. They insist that if America, as a country, does not “bless” Israel (that is, offer its government its unconditional support), God will curse America. Conveniently, those who Christian Zionists claim are insufficiently supportive of Israel are usually Democrats.”
Indeed, the Christian Zionist movement is incredibly powerful within the Republican Party. In fact, whereas the Democrats may be in thrall to the financial sway of AIPAC and the ADL, the sheer voting numbers of Christian Zionists means that no Republican candidate can win an election without taking the most radically extreme position of support for Israel.
And so, for the Christian Zionists, political partisanship is a matter of faith:
“Christian Zionists were among the fiercest critics of the Obama administration, whom they argued was putting Israel in existential danger and, therefore, inviting divine punishment on the United States. Conversely, Christian Zionists, as a subset of evangelicals, were among Donald Trump’s biggest supporters”
Indeed, they have exercised that power to coerce President Donald Trump to move the US Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem — a highly inflammatory move, but one that fits in perfectly with Christian Zionist “End Times” theology.
The Christian Zionist movement is incredibly powerful within the Republican Party, and they have exercised that power to coerce President Donald Trump to move the US Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem — a highly inflammatory move, but one that fits in perfectly with Christian Zionist “End Times” theology.
Christian Zionists in the United States have historically maintained strong alliances with Israeli Religious Zionist groups, such as the Jewish Power Party of Itamar Ben Gvir and the Religious Zionist Party of Bezalel Smotrich. These parties are known for arming settlers and encouraging the violent theft of land and property from Palestinians in the West Bank.
For their help in hastening the expulsion of the Palestinians, Christian Zionist groups that fund Israeli settler communities have been criticised by the United Nations Security Council for providing support to settlement communities that are considered illegal under international law.
In fact, the Israeli news outlet Haaretz reports:
“Christian groups have invested up to $65 million in projects in the ‘Biblical Heartland’ over the past decade. That doesn’t include services they provide free of charge, like volunteer labourers.”
The Israelis could not invent a more rabid, full-throated ally than the Christian Zionist movement. For whereas Israeli Zionists see the re-establishment of biblical Israel as the fulfilment of a prophesy and their destiny, the Christian Zionists see it as just one step closer to being “raptured up” into everlasting life with their “Lord and Saviour”.
And they can’t wait!!
Christian Zionists on the march today
We should not be surprised to see Christian Zionists taking to the streets as counter-protesters amid the pro-Palestinian demonstrations blazing across college campuses. For example, on April 25, Christian Zionist activists staged a “United for Israel March” at Columbia University.
“It’s time to take a stand against the rampant antisemitism that is plaguing our nation,” said self-described “worship warrior” Sean Feucht in a social media post announcing the counter-demonstration. “Columbia has been taken over by radical Pro-Hamas protestors. On April 25, that changes.”
Pro-Israel “counter-protesters” have attacked pro-Palestinian demonstrators, often viciously, as they did at UCLA, where rabid Zionists sent 35 students to the hospital. Many of the attackers were expat IDF veterans and Iranian monarchists who support Israel’s cold war with the Islamic Republic and a return of the Shah. But we can also assume that Christian Zionist “worship warriors” were among the crowd.
We should also not be surprised to learn that the Christian Zionists are the most virulent in their support for the Gaza genocide.
Invalidating the charges of antisemitism
So there we have it: 90% of Zionists in America are Christian. When you say you oppose Zionism, you are actually “attacking” 30 million white, Southern, mostly gun-toting Evangelical Christians who see it as their sacred duty to help eradicate the Palestinians from the land so that the ancient, biblical nation of Israel can be established.
Moreover, a large part of the groups “counter-protesting” the pro-Palestinian encampments are not Jewish, and are in fact, Christians.
These facts punch holes in all the “antisemitism” arguments being brought forth by the government, the media and the school administrations.
But we always knew the antisemitism argument was a canard, didn’t we?
#End.
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My parents' house was literally a long block down the street from Hagee's first Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas, when it was built in 1975 when I was 16.
It was on a spot of wooded, vacant land where we had hung out as kids, so that made us ill-disposed towards the church from the beginning. The type of church didn't help, either.
Hagee opened up his new church the same year of his divorce from his first wife of 15 years or so, whom he left with two underage children amid whispers of an affair or affairs. At least that's what the Catholics, Episcopalians, Methodists, AND Baptists said, so there's probably something to the rumors since those four hardly agreed on anything.
Hagee's people were evangelical, proselytizing Bible-thumpers in the SEVENTIES. Of course we teenagers messed with them. This was at the time "trenching" was in teenage fun vandalism vogue. That consisted of driving a vehicle, preferably a heavy one, across the lawns of whoever drew our ire or just on a stupid whim.
Cornerstone Church got trenched so many times they had to put up concrete barriers to block off the church from my residential street, which was the back way in, and more along the sidewalks by the parking lots next to the front entrance, which was off the westbound access road of I-410.
Yup. I did that a couple of times. The statute of limitations expired long, long ago, and I WAS just 16. So that means I've despised that millionaire religious carnival barker going on 50 years now, and I see no reason to stop.
"Christian Zionists... have little respect for Palestinian life, as they know that the End Times are coming, and they, as Muslims, are destined to die anyway". Good take on the danger of fringe groups growing through totalitarian alliances. 📢🙏🏻