Christian Zionism and the Continuing Nakba
The Palestinian Christian Alliance for Peace (PCAP) is launching a series of articles aimed at linking Christian Zionism to the intensifying belligerence of the Israeli apartheid regime and in its ghettoization and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. This series of articles is not meant solely for providing information on Christian Zionism, but also for growing our movement’s support for the Palestinians who are resisting Israeli Apartheid, as they call on the world to boycott, divest, and sanction Israeli Apartheid.
Christian Zionists today are among the leading supporters of Israeli Apartheid, not only in North America, but also in Latin America, Africa, and around the world. PCAP aims to expose the colonial roots of Christian Zionism and show how its adherents play a major role in supporting racist and militarist policies and politicians in the U.S. and elsewhere. We are inviting our allies—Christians, Muslim, Jewish, and secular— to participate in this effort by contributing ideas and materials to help us in producing this series of articles, and also by republishing the articles in their communications’ media.
Advocacy for colonial settlement of Palestine by European Jews preceded Theodore Herzl’s launch of modern Zionism by at least several decades. Both France and England, the leading colonial powers of Europe at the time, had influential voices who called for the “restoration” of a Jewish State in Palestine as part of a strategy of extending colonial control over the “Near East” possessions of the failing Ottoman Empire. The English Lord Shaftsbury, who put forward his idea for the establishment of a Jewish State in 1939, later coined the phrase “a country of no people for a people with no land,” a phrase which was echoed by the Zionists’ mantra, “a land of no people for a people with no land.”
The land was never devoid of people, and by ignoring the indigenous people on the land, the 19th century political ideology of Zionism operated with racism at its core. It was also an extension of the equally racist Christian Doctrine of Discovery, based on papal decrees dating back to the Fifteenth Century. This Doctrine promoted the conquest, colonization, and exploitation of non-Christian territories and peoples in the name of Christianity. The original Papal Bull of Pope Nicholas V, issued in 1455 exhorted Catholic rulers to conquer even those "in the remotest parts unknown to us.". The Pope gave Catholic rulers permission "to invade, search out, capture, vanquish, and subdue all Saracens [Muslims] and pagans," take their possessions, and "reduce their persons to perpetual slavery." As late as 1823, Chief Justice John Marshall’s opinion in a unanimous Supreme Court decision declared "that the principle of discovery gave European nations an absolute right to New World lands."
The theme of “New Jerusalem” and “Zion” has permeated the ideologies of European colonialists who eventually committed genocide in the Americas, Africa, Australia, and elsewhere. As settler colonialism is at the heart of western and European land acquisition, it is no wonder that a western supremacist ideology has played a primary role in establishing the State of Israel as a settler colonial state. Western powers continue to provide crucial support for Israeli Apartheid even as some of their leaders apologize to indigenous peoples for the atrocities they committed against them.
According to an editorial in Indian Country Today, “the Christian Doctrine of Discovery and Zionism [are] ideologies that begin with the same biblical exceptionalist concept of ‘the chosen people’ and ‘the promised land.’ [Both] endorse genocide, ethnic cleansing and dispossession of indigenous lands based on religious exclusion. And both demonize the Saracens-- Muslims and Arabs.’
Today, Christian Zionists not only play a leading role in propping up the most Islamophobic, racist, and militarist political leaders in the U.S. and beyond, but they are also directly participating in the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. A 2009 National Public Radio story stated that “evangelical Christian groups across America… are raising millions of dollars for the [Israeli] settlements.” Sondra Oster Baras, then director of Israel's branch of the Christian Friends of Israeli Communities was quoted saying “more than half of the Jewish settlements in the West Bank receive direct or indirect funding from Christian communities.” Today, so-called Christian charities and church organizations essentially support the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians— Christians and Muslims— through tax deductible donations, which probably dwarf levels only a decade back. Christian Zionism is not only dominating large segments of Evangelical Christianity, it is also very much alive in mainline Protestant churches, where it is used to suppress criticism of Israeli abuses of the Palestinian people.
PCAP intends to cover all of the above topics and more over the next twelve months, through a series of articles in our newsletter. We call on our Christian, Muslim, Jewish, and secular allies to help us in this project by providing ideas and supporting research materials as well as by disseminating the articles in the series as widely as possible.
The ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from places like Sheikh Jarrah, Silwan, the South Hebron Hills, and elsewhere is proceeding at breakneck pace with the help of millions of misguided American Christians. The same is true for the repression of free speech in the U.S. and the ascendancy of racist right-wing forces both in the grassroots and in the halls of power in state capitals and in Washington, D.C.. We must join forces to resist this dangerous racism together.
Rev. Don Wagner, Glory to God in the Lowest, Olive Branch Press, www.interlinkbooks.com, 2022, p. 267, and Rev. Stephen Sizer, The Road to Balfour: The History of Christian Zionism | Balfour Project, Nov 24, 2012.
THE DOCTRINE OF DISCOVERY (uidaho.edu)
The Doctrine of Discovery, 1493 | Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History