End Times Antisemitism (Why Republicans & the Christian Right love Israel)

[Nevilledog]

https://politicalresearch.org/2020/07/09/end-times-antisemitism


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Yes, the Christian Right supports Israel. They see the establishment of the modern State of Israel as fulfillment of prophecies they believe to be necessary to the Second Coming of Jesus. They want to see the Temple rebuilt and for Israel to expand to control all of the territory described in Scripture. They believe a tiny minority of living Jews will, in the End Times, convert to Christianity and the rest will be damned to hell for their disbelief. They are, on those grounds, no friends of Jews.

I was making a point that is increasingly relevant in the Trump era: that untempered support for Israel’s most reactionary policies is no bulwark against antisemitism, just as criticism of Israeli policy is no indication of such. Many in the room nodded their agreement. Even the man who’d asked the question seemed, if not exactly satisfied, to have something to think about.

But even then, I recognized that it was a partial response, because Christian Zionism is much more than a set of beliefs about the role of Israel and the Jews in the Second Coming, beliefs that are all too easy to trivialize for those who don’t share them. Rather, Christian Zionism is part of a set of interlocking, theologically grounded beliefs about how Christians should engage with the political world.

Today, President Trump’s administration is staffed by Christian Zionists at the highest levels, including Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.[6] And adherents of the belief system form a key component of Trump’s electoral base. Up to 81 percent of White evangelicals voted for him in the 2016 elections.[7] Of that number only a slim majority, about 53 percent, unequivocally supported his recognition, in 2019, of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, but it would never be a make-or-break issue for doubters.[8] For full-throttle Christian Zionists, however, the embassy move prompted comparisons of Trump to Cyrus the Great, the Persian king celebrated as a friend of the Jewish people for his decision to allow those in exile to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the Temple.[9]

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[enid602]

1. Evangelicals

And evangelical churches provide much of the financial support to keep people like Netanyahu in power. Their ‘late at night’ programs that ask for donations for food for holocaust victims really fund the moves of conservative Jewish families from Russia and the East to Israel, in an effort to make Israel more conservative. They think this will hasten the Lord’s second coming.