Challenging Christian Zionism

On August 4th, Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Mike Johnson (R-LA), made an official visit to an illegal Israeli colony in the Occupied West Bank. At a gathering with residents of Ariel “Settlement”, many of whom are Orthodox Jewish Americans, Johnson told the colonizers that Israel was “the rightful owner” of Palestine. He declared that “the mountains of Judea and Samaria are the rightful property of the Jewish people.” He proclaimed that the West Bank was “the front line of the State of Israel, and must remain an integral part of it.” Johnson reportedly also said that the United States should use the 250th anniversary of its independence in 2026 “to remind the American people of its Judeo-Christian foundations that were formed here in the land of Israel.” To the untrained ear, it may sound like harmless religious rhetoric. But it is vintage Christian Zionism - a dangerous mixture of heretical Christian theology and supremacist, colonizing politics, and it is being enacted before our eyes.

Speaker Johnson’s visit occurred less than a month after the Israeli Knesset passed a resolution supporting the annexation of the West Bank. Speaker Johnson’s comments were received by the Israeli extremist government as a green light to annexation. During the early August visit, annexation was a free-ranging topic of conversation between Johnson and Netanyahu, including Netanyahu showing the Speaker maps Israel has already developed. It is clear that Johnson fully intended to send a message of full support to Israel’s annexation plans. This message is supported by U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, also a Christian Zionist, and it has been a major emphasis of Miriam Adelson, widow and heir to the monetary fortune of casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, one of Trump’s largest donors and a frequent visitor to the Oval Office. Unsurprisingly, the annexation of the Occupied West Bank has the full backing of the Trump administration. So, when Speaker Johnson declares that the Occupied West Bank belongs to Israel, he is pushing a biblical fantasy based on bad theology. But he does so as the third-in-line to the President of the United States, which is a flagrant mixing of faith and politics, church and state.

The annexation of the Occupied Palestinian Territories by Israel fits right in with the Christian Zionist vision. Christian Zionism promotes the Zionist settler-colonial project of displacing the indigenous Palestinian population and replacing them with Jews from around the world. Why? Because they believe that before Christ returns to earth, the Jews of the world have to gather in Palestine. They see the colonizing of Palestine as a fulfillment of biblical prophecy. Jewish Zionists have their own reasons for wanting a Jewish state. They believe (mistakenly) that a majority-Jewish supremacist state is the only way Jews can be safe in a dangerous world. Christian Zionists want a Jewish state, too, but, as we’ve seen, for their own reasons. Actually, the Israeli colonizers and the Christian Zionists are a mutual exploitation society; they use each other for their own ends. The Israeli colonizers ignore the evangelical fever-dreams of the end of the world, but they are glad to take their millions and their political support. The Christian Zionists see the Israeli dispossession of the Palestinians as accelerating the Second Coming of Christ. So, supporting Israel’s annexation, apartheid, genocide, and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians makes perfect sense to them because it fits the larger plan of their flawed, idiosyncratic version of “salvation history.” The irony is that for all its “Stand With Israel” rhetoric, the Christian Zionist vision is profoundly antisemitic. According to Christian Zionism, when Christ returns, the Jews of the world will have an opportunity to convert to Christianity. They believe those who do not convert are condemned to hell. It's difficult to say which version of Zionism – Jewish or Christian – poses the greatest danger to the Palestinian people. They feed off each other, for different reasons, to dehumanize, kill, starve, and exterminate the Palestinians.

There is one unintended consequence, which may redound to Palestine’s favor. If Israel annexes the West Bank and imposes full sovereignty on it, it will have three million Palestinians on its hands. It will have full responsibility for their lives. It must either grant them citizenship and the right to vote and have a say in their future. Or, if it denies them citizenship and the full panoply of human and civil rights, it will again expose itself to the world as an apartheid state. In any case, lovers of a free Palestine and the good of the Palestinian people must challenge Christian Zionism in all its forms, disrupt its conventions as Christians for a Free Palestine have done the last several years, and repudiate Christian Zionism’s racist, dehumanizing, and antisemitic messengers.