The Christian Case for Standing with Israel
Yesterday’s newsletter mentioned a recent speech, laced with anti-Semitic and anti-Israel invective, delivered by the media personality Tucker Carlson. This was but the latest installment of Carlson’s turn to hatred of Israel, anti-Semitism, and anti-Americanism, which has come alongside more frequent signaling of his own religiosity. All of this was also on display in his recent interview with Senator Ted Cruz, whose pro-Israel views are fairly typical of conservative evangelical Christians.Rightwing Anti-Semites Seek to Undermine America’s Moral Authority on the World Stage
In response, a few prominent right-leaning American Protestant leaders jumped into the fray, with some, like Rich Lusk, attacking Cruz. Lusk argued, on theological and scriptural grounds, that Old Testament promises to Israel have since been transferred to Christian believers.
It’s not the place of Jews to tell Christians what to believe about salvation or how to read their sacred texts, but two lines in Lusk’s article jumped out at me. First:
The modern nation of Israel is a secular state that rejects the gospel. . . . As Paul says, “Concerning the gospel, they are enemies” (Romans 11:28)—enemies with a future, yes, but still enemies for now.
If Israel is a secular state, then it is neutral about the gospel and other religious doctrine. But Lusk needs to make this leap to demonstrate that modern Jews are “enemies.” Then, in the very last paragraph, there is this:
The true Israel of God is not located on a strip of land in the Middle East. It is not launching missiles at Iran or hiding behind an Iron Dome.
It’s subtle, but Lusk seems to be implying that Israel (the country) is somehow cowardly because of its technological genius and efforts to protect its citizens, and at the same time aggressive by “launching missiles at Iran”—although the missiles were fired from planes flying over enemy territory. Lusk could have said, “the true Israel of God isn’t busy fixing roads and holding elections.” But instead he invokes popular anti-Israel slurs. Thus he pretends to make an argument that Christians should see the Jewish state as a state like any other, but is in fact arguing that they should see it as evil.
In response to this exercise in anti-Semitism, the Anglican theologian Gerald R. McDermott offers a learned and vigorous rebuttal. He concludes:
Does this mean the state of Israel is a direct fulfillment of biblical prophecy, as Cruz suggested? No. Nor does it mean Christians must ratify every policy of the Israeli government. But the last two centuries have shown that God’s covenanted people need a state to protect them from those who would destroy them.
In other words, it’s McDermott, not Lusk, who is open to the possibility of taking the Jews simply as they are, without invoking divine prophecy. In a separate takedown aimed at a different anti-Semitic preacher, McDermott adds:
Christians should denounce this new anti-Semitism among their own. . . . If we do not call out this unbiblical ignorance and hatred, future generations will ask us what we ask about the churches of Europe in the first half of the 20th century: how could they not see? Why did they not speak up?
Last week, at a major gathering of young American conservatives, the Internet talk-show host Tucker Carlson complained of undue Israeli influence over U.S. foreign policy, made insinuations about Jewish disloyalty, and averred that the deceased investor-cum-procurer Jeffrey Epstein was a Mossad agent. Such rhetoric is typical of Carlson, who is also a sharp critic of American support for its Middle Eastern allies against Iran, for Ukraine in its war with Russia, and for Great Britain in its war with the Axis. And he represents a growing segment of opinion on the American right that is no longer confined to the fever swamps.
Rebeccah Heinrichs examines the worldview behind Carlson’s anti-Americanism, which she dubs the “1939 Project” in an analogy to the series of New York Times articles arguing that America’s original sin occurred in 1619:
Carlson’s views might seem outlandish, but he isn’t dumb. He is among the savviest operators out there. And he is well aware that anti-Israel invective and conspiracy thinking attracts attention in a culture that has lost trust in expertise and institutions—and is hunting for a scapegoat for America’s very real challenges.
But if the 1939 Project people are right, and Winston Churchill was in fact the warmonger, and if Hitler really wanted peace and perhaps had a point about the outsize and nefarious impact of Jewish people, and if the United States was wrong to drop the atomic bombs, then NATO was a mistake, the ties to the nation of Israel is a mistake, and none of the post-World War II international order is worth maintaining today, let alone restoring or defending.
[The goal is] to loosen the affection and support Americans feel for and have for our allies in Europe and Israel. This is necessary to weaken the American people’s support for U.S. statecraft in the world, whether in the form of sanctions, military deployments, or military action in defense of its allies and stated and official interests. Their increasingly casual anti-Semitism is not simply evil—it is strategic. It has become the glue that binds the various strains of the insurgent ideology.
