| by Jonathan Kuttab Last week, right-wing journalist Tucker Carlson conducted an interview with Mike Huckabee, a former Baptist minister and the current US Ambassador to Israel, at Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv. The lengthy interview is well worth watching, especially for evangelicals and Christian Zionists. It generated a lot of interest in the wider media about Christian Zionism and its influence on US support for Israel. The interview led to a major political firestorm and a heated discussion among conservative Republicans regarding support for Israel. One Israeli newspaper described it as representing a serious fight for the soul of Republicans/conservatives on this issue, with Huckabee basing his support for Israel on “biblical grounds” and Tucker Carlson opposing it on the basis of American interest, isolationism, Christian sectarianism, and perhaps a dose of antisemitism as well. There was actually nothing new about the views expressed by Ambassador Huckabee, but it was indeed jarring to hear them proclaimed so brazenly by such a central figure in the context of a real-life political discussion on current realities in the Middle East. Huckabee reiterated the view, common among Christian Zionists, that God promised the land to Jews and that these promises grant legitimacy to the creation of Israel and its claims to the land. Carlson pointed out that such a claim, based on Genesis 5, would therefore apply to all of the land between the Nile and Euphrates Rivers, encompassing Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and portions of Egypt, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia, and he asked Huckabee whether it would be legitimate for Israel to take all that land. Huckabee said it would be fine with him if Israel took all that land, though there were no plans to do so at this time. This statement alone led to a wave of outrage and protests by 14 Arab and Islamic countries, who saw this claim as being even more extreme than the fantasies of most extreme Israeli politicians. Carlson then asked who the “descendants of Abraham” are to whom this promise supposedly applies and whether it applied to Jews as a religion or as an ethnicity. He pointed out that most modern Israelis, including Netanyahu, could not trace their lineage to Abraham. He suggested that maybe DNA testing should be undertaken for Israelis to find if they indeed qualified as descendants of Abraham. He also asked Huckabee whether that claim applied to converts to Judaism (who were not blood descendants of Abraham), to Jews who did not believe in God, or to Jews who converted to Christianity, whom Israel does not acknowledge as worthy of the Right of Return (on the basis of Israeli High Court decisions). On all these issues, Huckabee dithered and was not able to respond. The most telling blows, however, came as Carlson pointed out that Huckabee’s views made him take positions more favorable to Israel than the US, the country he is supposed to represent: by hosting Jonathan Pollard, a traitor and a spy at the US Embassy, by repeating Israeli arguments that have nothing to do with US interests, by claiming Israel’s behaviour in Gaza was more moral than the US behavior, and on other issues of concern where Israeli and American interests clearly diverge. The challenges to Christian Zionism offered by Tucker Carlson, while being accurate and forming a powerful critique, had more to do with his America First worldview than with biblical concerns. He correctly points out that Israel was behind pushing America into the Iraq War and that Israel is now feverishly pushing America for a war on Iran. Yet, his concern in both cases seems to be less with antipathy towards war itself than to American geopolitical interests. What business, he says, do we have with Israel’s “problems in Lebanon” when no American interests are involved? FOSNA also has its own serious theological and moral problems with Christian Zionism, but we hope they have much more to do with being faithful to the message of the Gospel than with any desired political outcome. The influence of Christian Zionism on the political situation in Palestine/Israel has been catastrophic, but it is also bad theology. FOSNA continues to fight Christian Zionism by placing tools for education in the hands of those who wish to seriously study the question, as well as by engaging in respectful discussion with those who, like many of us, grew up assuming Christian Zionist positions, often without much reflection. It is frightening to think how these views have such catastrophic real-life consequences for Palestinian Christians and other people living in the Middle East today, and that they may very well be responsible for a new attack on Iran in the coming days or weeks. Such an attack would make no logical sense for America or the world, merely resulting from the cynical manipulation of religious support for Israel in order to wage wars against the peoples of the Middle East on Israel’s behalf. Those interested in the issue of Christian Zionism may wish to explore the following links and tools regarding this important issue: |
