Netanyahu's Exploitation of the U.S. Christian Right Is Blowing Up in His Face - Opinion
For many years, Benjamin Netanyahu – with the help of a well-oiled machine of organizations, donors and advisers – oversaw the formation of an artificial alliance between the Christian right (mainly, though not exclusively, in the U.S.) and the Jewish right.
Creating this unholy alliance was a complex, roundabout task, because at its theological foundation lies an unpleasant truth: The evangelicals seek the fulfillment of the apocalyptic prophecy in which Israel and the Jewish infidels burn in hell in the war at Armageddon, while the Jewish right – especially its very religious precincts, willfully turn a blind eye to the second part of the prophecy in order to exploit Christians' enthusiastic support for its first part, in which Jews from all over the world return to Israel to live in peace and security until Gog and Magog come to destroy it.
From the last pennies of America's poorest Christians, thrown in the collection plates of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, to the biggest political donors – who influenced, for example, the relocation of the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem – the vested-interests glue used by the prime minister and his supporters to hold together these contradicting theological narratives from the two parties was enough to forge a courageous friendship that greatly advanced the Israeli settlement enterprise.
The main victims of these religious politics were the Palestinians – among whom there is, ironically, an actual Christian population. Over the past two years, since the start of the war that some evangelist preachers have called the war of Gog and Magog that they had been yearning for, we have seen the collapse of this alliance of extremists.
First, the American Christian right began to question it ever more vociferously; while in Israel, religious Zionist factions, which have become very powerful thanks to the type of governing coalition formed by Netanyahu, have been venting their restrained anger – with its deep, complex and bloody historical-theological roots – with actual violence against Christianity and Christians; and the ugly truth has been bubbling and spilling over from the boiling cauldron of the Middle East.
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It should be noted that there have always been violent attacks by devout Zionist ("Hardali") Jews against Christians and Christian holy places, but their number, intensity and visibility are on the rise. Such was the case in the recent smashing by an Israeli soldier of a statue of Jesus in Lebanon and the assault of a nun in Jerusalem.
In both cases, the Israeli "establishment," headed by Netanyahu, strongly denounced the wrongdoing and acted against the offenders. But the prime minister had his own charged encounter with the Christian world recently, when he criticized Jesus' seminal instruction to "turn the other cheek." This was an awkward mistake on his part that, in other times, may not have attracted much attention. However, in such sensitive times when the alliance is unraveling, this incident enlarged the wound.
And from all this pus, another complex truth emerges – which is that the enemy against which this Judeo-Christian alliance supposedly stands, the Muslims, is not really an enemy.
In the latest war of Armageddon, America and Israel heightened their open cooperation with the Muslim world, especially Arab countries in the Persian Gulf that also came under attack from Iran.
This fact – along with the old alliances with Jordan and Egypt and new alliances, such as the Abraham Accords, further complicates the racist rationale of the Judeo-Christian religious right, revealing how more complex the geopolitical reality is than childish, simplistic religious preaching that paints the world in black and white. It turns out that we do live in an age of miracles, when human interests overcome divine ones.