They literally want to end the world.
Jul 01, 2025
Interfaith imperialism Image: Jewish News Syndicate
People think Zionism is a Jewish thing. Israel’s backers claim anti-Zionism (opposing the Israeli state) is the same as antisemitism (hating Jewish people.) In reality, Christians created Zionism in the 17th century and have been its biggest promoters ever since.
The largest Zionist organization in the world is called Christians United for Israel (CUFI,) which claims ten million members, nearly all of them American evangelicals. By comparison, there are fewer than eight million Jews in the US, not all of them Zionists. Europe is full of Christian Zionists, which makes sense, because that is where it started.
In the early 17th Century, the Puritans in England started preaching Jewish return to Palestine. Thousands of Christian European intellectuals and politicians have followed their lead. Zionist Protestants have been pushing Jews to leave Europe for Palestine for hundreds of years, an idea that many Jewish historians say was met with hostility by Jews until World War 2.
Why were Christians advocating Jewish return to the Holy Land? There are three main threads in Christian Zionist thought.
Getting Jews Out of Their Way
Some Christian thinkers actually seemed to sympathize with Jewish suffering under European antisemitism. They believed Jews and Christians would both be better off once Jews were out of Europeans’ hair.
The Zionist solution to Jewish oppression was quite convenient for European Christians, since they would not have to change their attitudes or their behavior. More sinister is the second thread, spreading European culture and economic dominance to West Asia.
Image: CBN Israel
Redoing the Crusades
I think it’s useful to consider Zionism as a continuation of the Crusades, the Christian wars of conquest that killed over a million people in Eastern Europe and West Asia in the 11th — 13th Centuries, mostly Jews, Muslims, and pagans. A number of popes called on Christians to violently displace Muslims from the Holy Land and reclaim it for Christ.
Thousands of young Christians joined the Crusades to escape the poverty of medieval Europe, and they won a lot of battles, but the Muslims eventually drove them out. Zionism can be seen as using Jews to do Christians’ fighting for them.
This crusader mentality is called political Zionism, an extension of imperial power into the oil lands of the Middle East, a pathway for Western capital to the vast riches of Asia. That’s what we’ve been seeing since Israel’s founding, with American and British weapons killing millions in Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Libya. It’s what we’re seeing right now in Iran.
Many in Israel, such as Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, envision occupying and incorporating into Israel parts of those countries, plus all of Jordan, a project they call Greater Israel or Eretz Yisrael.
These conquests show Christians and Jews working together on behalf of Western corporate profits, but that’s not a good look to present to the world. Creating a home for Jewish people in the land God gave them is a better PR spin.
The love is not mutual. Image: Foreign Policy in Focus
Political Zionism is the kind of Zionism a Christian like Joe Biden means when he says, “You don’t have to be Jewish to be Zionist. I am a Zionist.” It is nothing but the identification of Judaism with Western Empire against the Islamic world. It’s not good for the world, but the main thread of Christian Zionism is no better.
Bringing on the end times
A large number of Christian Zionists worldwide believe that the founding of the State of Israel in 1948 was fulfillment of biblical prophecies. They think the re-establishment of Jewish sovereignty in southwest Asia will bring about the second coming of Christ. When Jesus comes, God will, in the words of historian Roger Chapman “pour out his just and holy wrath against unrepentant sinners led by Satan, in a literal end-of-the-world final confrontation.”
As the story goes, when the Jews take over southwest Asia and rebuild their Temple in Jerusalem, God will wipe out this current evil world in the colossal Battle of Armageddon and cast those who don’t believe in Jesus into Hell, including the Jews who helpfully re-conquered the land for Him.
This eschatological (study of the end times) belief system characterizes such Christian schools of thought as dispensationalism and millenialism. It is naturally not shared by Jewish Zionists, and hasn’t been shared by most Christian Zionists historically. Even CUFI’s web site now de-emphasizes eschatology in favor of claims to be ‘fighting antisemitism.’
But CUFI leaders like Texas pastor John Hagee have been preaching Israel’s role in the Second Coming for decades. His personal website proclaims, “In the last days, Iran, Russia, China and Turkey will come after Israel. At the Battle of Armageddon, these armies fully intend to wipe out Israel completely, but angels will protect them.”
How nice that America’s enemies are God’s enemies, too! It’s worth watching this short video of Hagee’s preaching. It’s frightening.
Apparently, we’re in the last days now, or at least the last days of the American empire. The Jewish leaders of Israel have embraced their role as lead brigade in the battle of Armageddon, which they call ‘Israel defending itself.’ They probably laugh at their Christian Zionist allies’ religious fantasies, but they are on the same team. The government of Israel has given official encouragement to Christian Zionism, and CUFI’s executive officer for its first ten years was a Jewish Israeli American, while Christian Zionists have raised funds to assist Jewish Zionist groups in establishing illegal Jewish settlements in the West Bank.
Who is the theocracy here?
Our leaders sometimes condemn the Islamic Republic of Iran as a “theocratic state,” meaning one controlled by religion. Well OK, but both Jewish and Christian Zionism are defined by belief in the Old and New Testaments and their prophecies. Rational people don’t think God gave out land deeds to any religious group or that Israel is going to bring back Jesus after 2000 years. This is theocracy in the service of imperialism, and we shouldn’t go along.
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