This article was written by Andrew Gan, First Year student at the LSE and Academic Associate at the LSE Undergraduate Political Review.

Introduction

Throughout the timeline of the Israel-Hamas war, from Hamas’ murdering of 1200 Israelis and kidnapping of 250 others on the October 7th attacks to Israel’s brutal suppression of the people of Gaza via measures such as aid blockades and indiscriminate bombings leading to an approximate death toll of 47,000, one country seems to remain steadfast in its support for Israel: the United States. As of January 2025, Israel’s response is being categorising as a genocide by Amnesty International and the world saw the  signing of an Israel-Hamas ceasefire on the 19th of January (a deal that Israel has already began to renege on). 

The United States’ affinity towards Israel is evident by its vast sums in aid committed to the country (over 300 billion dollars cumulatively since 1946, more than double 2nd place Egypt), to its vetoing of UN rulings to provide Palestine full-UN membership and a Gaza ceasefire resolution last November. Official relations between the two countries run decades deep (President Truman recognised the state of Israel only 11 minutes after the Israeli government proclaimed statehood on the 14th of May, 1948) and are largely bipartisan; administrations from both sides of the political aisle from Reagan to Biden have been consistent in their support for Israel. However, one has to wonder why the US has been such an unwavering supporter of Israel, even as it becomes a more tenuous position given the growing backlash towards Israel’s treatment of the Palestinian people.

Many elements are at play in keeping Israel in America’s good graces. One factor is Israel’s willingness to protect American interests in the Middle East. Having Israel as a strategic military and political ally allows for the promotion of US hegemony in a region otherwise often hostile to the superpower, a practice that dates back to the Cold War. Also, Israel has collaborated with the United States in developing military applications, such as the Sling counter-rocket and Arrow missile defence systems, that strengthen America’s military power. Such collaboration also extends to the strong intelligence-sharing between the two nations for counterterrorism purposes, a practice that has drawn criticism for its usage to target Palestinian civilians despite former President Biden forbidding Israel from using US intelligence other than to retrieve October 7th hostages. Another reason is the extremely powerful pro-Israel lobbying organisations with deep ties within the US government. For example, AIPAC,one of the most prominent,has  over 5 million members nationwide and is largely bipartisan, with its annual conference previously attended by all four of the most recent major party presidential candidates. 

However, I believe there is another factor at play. While less discussed, it is no less important, and particularly relevant for the Trump administration: evangelical Christians.

Evangelical Christian Zionism

The Christian Zionist movement in America can trace its roots back to the late 1800s, with some of the earliest historical evidence coming from Protestant evangelist and author William E. Blackstone’s call to action for the Jews to return to the Holy Land in his best-selling book Jesus Is Coming. Blackstone would later start a petition drive entitled the Blackstone Memorial – which was eventually presented to President Benjamin Harrison in 1891 – where he cites Jewish deportations in Russia to the Pale of Settlement and their expulsion from Sephardim in order to highlight the necessity of a Jewish homeland in the Levant. The movement would continue growing in prominence throughout the 20th Century, passed on by American Institute of Holy Land Studies founder and evangelical George Douglas Young to John Hagee, founder and chairman of the lobbying organisation Christians United For Israel (CUFI), now also extremely powerful. Notably, Christians United for Israel, with a membership count of over 10 million, outnumbers the aforementioned  AIPAC and the United States’ Jewish adult population of approximately 5.8 million. Former presidents such as Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush have directly cited their Christian faith as a direct motivator for their support for the Israeli state. Meanwhile, many Israeli political figures have sought to curry favour from American evangelicals, from former PM Menachem Begin’s establishment of a special liaison for evangelical Christians during his tenure and his friendship with Baptist pastor Jerry Falwell, as well as current PM Benjamin Netanyahu espousing Evangelical Christians as being one of Israel’s greatest allies at CUFI’s 2017 annual policy conference.

Now, what makes Christian Zionism particularly unique is its motivations, which lie in the success of a social group that is separate from its members. In fact, University of Michigan professor and political scientist Ronald R. Stockton characterises it as “quite possibly the only case on record where the fulfilment of another nation’s destiny is the centre of a widespread national folk ideology.” Representatives from such organisations often tout their reasons for support as mere solidarity with the Jewish people, empathy for the Zionist cause and wishing for them to carve a nation-state of their own (controversially, at the expense of the people already living there). However, this altruistic lens doesn’t appear entirely convincing, given the anti-semitism that proliferates throughout the movement, from CUFI founder John Hagee stating that God sent Hitler to carry out the Holocaust and “help Jews reach the promised land” to the aforementioned Jerry Falwell propagating the myth of a Jewish Antichrist in 1999. Instead, as evangelicals often adopt a literal and fundamental approach when interpreting and applying the teachings of Abrahamic religious texts, it is imperative to analyse the Old and New Testaments to better understand this political movement’s motivations. 

Biblical Prophecy

One of the core theological frameworks for US Christian Zionism is premillennialism, which, according to Trinity College Dublin professor Dr Carlo Aldrovandi, is “by far the most influential apocalyptic belief system in contemporary America.” In his 2014 book Apocalyptic Movements in Contemporary Politics, he refers to premillennialism as “a shorthand for a catastrophic understanding of the Christian redemptive process holding that Jesus Christ’s return in glory will precede and actually inaugurate the 1000-year period of peace, bliss and holiness.” A crucial religious text for better understanding premillennialism is the Eschatological Discourse as reported in Matthew 24, Mark 13, and Luke 21. As described in Ronald R. Stockton’s “Christian Zionism: Prophecy and Public Opinion”: 

In all three versions Jesus pointed to the majestic temple [The Temple in Jerusalem] and told his disciples that a time would come when the building would be no more when not a single stone would stand on top of another. Later some disciples came to him in private and asked “when is this going to happen and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the world?” (Matt. 24:3). […] Near the end of the Lukan Discourse Jesus refers to the liberation of Jerusalem and the end of “the time of the gentiles” (King James Version). Those alive then will see “nations in agony … men dying in fear … they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory” (Luke 21:26-28). Jesus concluded this description with powerful words: “I tell you solemnly, before this generation [those who saw the liberation of Jerusalem] has passed away all will have taken place” (Luke 21:32).

(Stockton, 1987)

In this case, a Jewish homeland will bring about an apocalypse which shall befall the Earth (as evoked by the “nations in agony … men dying in fear)” and Redemption will be provided, but only to “those who accept Jesus Christ, the Son of God, as their personal saviour,” bringing about an “end of the gentiles’” (Aldrovandi, 2014; Stockton, 1987). Finally, then, and only then, will the “1000-year period of peace, bliss and holiness” occur. It is also implied that God had selected the Jewish people as God’s “chosen agents”; without their return to the Levant, biblical prophecy cannot and will not occur. Thus, as God’s chosen people, evangelicals feel a theological duty to uphold and protect Israel, as implied in Genesis (12:13), “I will bless those that bless you and curse those that curse you.”  The previously mentioned Southern Baptist preacher Jerry Falwell has echoed similar sentiments in the past, declaring that “God deals with nations in relation to how nations deal with Israel” and that “to stand against Israel is to stand against God.” To evangelicals, the return of Jesus to Earth necessitates the Jews to return and live in the Holy Land – a vision complicated by the estimated 5 million Palestinians living in Gaza and the West Bank and would necessitate their expulsion – to fulfil Armageddon and Jesus Christ’s eventual return to Earth. However, one could argue such a theory is fundamentally anti-Semitic, as it essentially calls for the destruction of all non-believers of Christianity and allows Jewish people little agency or self-determination. To quote American historian David Hummell, the story of the Jewish people “gets transposed into this Christian key […] so that all of it then points to Christian authority.”

Furthermore, as it pertains to American evangelicals, this mission is further intensified. After returning from a trip to Palestine in 1889, impressed by the recent wave of Zionist immigration in British Palestine, Blackstone highlighted Americans’ distinctive role in delivering “God’s plans for humanity: that of a modern Cyrus, to help rest the Jews to Zion. God has chosen America for that mission on account of its moral superiority over other nations, and will judge America according to the way it carries out its mission.” Thus, not only do American evangelicals have religious motivation to aid Israel, but they are also further compelled to act because of a sense of theologically tethered patriotism. Such rhetoric might explain why American Evangelicals are 50% more likely to oppose any restrictions on US military aid to Israel, as well as twice as likely to believe the state’s actions in Gaza are justified. 

The Trump Administration

Given the arrival of President Trump’s second term, we can likely expect further evangelical influence within the United States policy towards Israel, as evident by his new political appointees. For example, Mike Huckabee – Baptist minister, former Arkansas governor and Trump’s ambassador to Israel – has denied that there is “such thing as a Palestinian” and considers the term a “mere political tool to try and force land away from Israel,” condemning the possibility of a 2-state solution and the right of Palestinian self-determination. Another Trump ambassador pick (this time to the UN), Elise Stefanik, was even more upfront about his administration’s strong ties with the evangelical right, declaring Israel as having a ‘biblical right’ over the West Bank, a policy that violates both Palestinian sovereignty and international law. Meanwhile, the 47th president’s views don’t appear to be any better, his recent statements reading as inflammatory at best and downright genocidal at worst. This rhetoric highlights the new Trump’s rejection of the Palestinian people’s right to life and self-determination, viewing the 5 million Palestinians living in Gaza and the West Bank as mere obstacles for eventual Biblical prophecy Prime Minister Netanyahu’s agenda for Israel to subsume all Palestinian territory. 

Now, this is not to absolve the culpability of the previous administration. Former President Biden, while any measures his administration established to curtail Israel’s human rights abuses were often too little to contribute to much meaningful improvement for the lives of Palestinians, such as his executive order to sanction Israeli settlers in 2024 (only about out of an approximate 700,000 illegally residing in the West Bank). However, this is not an attempt at equating both administrations; the new Trump administration and his new appointment for US ambassador to Israel has the likelihood of making the region much more volatile. Whatever safeguards that were in place under previous presidents are about to be pulled out. Given Trump and his cabinet’s personal beliefs, his closeness to the Israeli and evangelical far-right, and his recent motions within just weeks of entering office all represent a horrific foreshadowing for what will befall Gaza and the West Bank over the next four years.As Trump greenlights the the Israeli far-right’s plan to destroy Gaza and the West Bank, a 77-year legacy of brutal persecution of the Palestinian people is set to continue.

Cover Image: Florida Governor Ron DeSantis with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Government of Florida (Public Record)