From the perspective of serious Judaism or Christianity, Zionism can’t be considered anything other than heresy. According to Judaism, Israel cannot be restored until the Messiah comes, and the “kingdom of Israel” is a spiritual kingdom, not a political one. According to Christianity, Jesus Christ was the Messiah, and the “kingdom of Israel” happens when Jesus returns for the second time.
Jewish Zionism is a 19th-century idea rooted in the liberal-nationalist currents of the time, and Christian Zionism is a heresy that developed in Europe in the early modern period, mostly among bourgeois Protestants who were more interested in Judaism for political and economic reasons than for religious ones.
I’m widely considered to be an anti-Semite (itself a historical misnomer) by leftists and Republicans alike. But I’ve never had anything against Jews as either a religion (which is multi-ethnic) or as any specific ethnic group (Ashkenazics, Sephardics, Mizrahis, Ethiopian Jews, etc). I oppose Zionism the way I would oppose the Irish saying, “We’ve been historically oppressed. Let’s go ethnically cleanse Iceland.”
By Whitney Webb, Mintpress News
The largest pro-Israel organization in the United States is not composed of Jews, but of Christian evangelicals, with a total membership of 7 million, more than 2 million more members than the entirety of the American Jewish community.
Members of this organization, Christians United for Israel (CUFI), met in Washington on Monday, attracting thousands of attendees and featuring speeches from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Secretary of State and former CIA Director Mike Pompeo, Vice President Mike Pence, and National Security Advisor John Bolton. CUFI’s leader, controversial evangelical preacher John Hagee, has met with President Donald Trump several times and was recently part of an exclusive White House meeting in March on the administration’s upcoming “peace plan” for Israel and Palestine.
CUFI is but one of many organizations throughout American history that have promoted the state of Israel and Zionism on the grounds that a Jewish ethnostate in Palestine is a requirement for the fulfillment of end-times prophecy and necessary for Jesus Christ to return to Earth — an event Christians often refer to as “the Second Coming.”
While organizations like CUFI and its predecessors have long seen the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, and the later Israeli victory and conquest of Jerusalem in 1967, as the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy, there is one prophecy that this sect of evangelical Christians believes is the only thing standing between them and the Second Coming. There are estimated to be more than 20 million of these Christians, often referred to as Christian Zionists, in the United States and they are a key voting bloc and source of political donations for the Republican Party.
