Christian nationalists believe in the ingathering of Israel and see the war on the Palestinians as a biblical prophecy that must be supported to realize the idea of the focal point of the Kingdom of the Messiah, where Jews fulfill their calling as a holy nation when fully gathered under the Messiah King in the Messianic Era
When US President Donald Trump picked Fox News commentator and military veteran Pete Hegseth as his secretary of defense, much focus remained on his disdain for the woke policies and opposition to women in combat roles. Hegseth was expected to keep Trump’s campaign promise of ridding the US military of generals pursuing progressive policies on diversity in the ranks that have riled conservatives. Hegseth called the US army the enemy within and pledged a war against it and to replace generals disloyal to Trump.
Beyond American shores, Trump’s nominations signaled he was unlikely to keep his promise of ending all wars. The pledge held out hope for Palestinians at the receiving end of Israel’s genocidal campaign on Gaza that has left over 60,000 people, mostly women and children, dead and flattened much of the besieged strip.
Weeks before he was elected, Trump reached out to Arab American and Muslim voters amid anger among these communities over the US support for Israel’s relentless bombing of Gaza and Lebanon. He visited Dearborn, often referred to as the Arab American capital, to speak to Lebanese Americans. He talked about peace in the Middle East during his first administration and promised to ensure it again.
Trump pledged to address the problems his predecessor, Joe Biden, caused and to stop the suffering and destruction. He claimed he wanted to see the Middle East return to lasting peace. But Trump was never likely to walk the talk given his nominations of extreme pro-Israel Christian nationalists such as Hegseth, who back the expansion of illegal Israeli settlements into Palestinian territory.
How Evangelicals See Gaza and Israel Through Biblical Prophecy
Christian nationalists believe in the idea of the ingathering of Israel. They see the Israeli war on the Palestinians as a biblical prophecy that must be supported for Christendom. Israel is supposed to be the focal point of the Kingdom of the Messiah for Christian nationalists, who believe that Jews will fulfill their calling to be the kingdom of priests and a holy nation when they are fully gathered in Israel. Israel will then be a holy nation under the Messiah King in the Messianic Era.
Israel is presently seen to partially fulfill biblical prophecies about ingathering. It does not amount to complete redemption since Israel has a secular government that lacks control over key areas, notably the remaining Palestinian territories, and many Jews remain scattered. Christian nationalists believed the Messiah would sound the shofar, gather the Jews, and establish his kingdom. Israel is, in its present form, seen as the first blossoming of redemption. Scripture is seen to have predicted the dispersion and return of the Jews to Israel.
Trump, Greater Israel, and the Religious Right’s Plan for Palestine
Trump has, since taking office, pressed for permanently displacing Gazans under his plan for the US to take over Gaza despite the Saudi Arabia-led pushback for what is a fresh attempt to ethnically cleanse Palestinians. Trump’s plan involves moving Gaza’s scarred residents and transforming the territory into what he calls a ‘Riviera of the Middle East’. He has said Palestinians would not be able to return to their homes under his proposal in violation of the Geneva Conventions, which consider arbitrary and permanent forcible transfer of populations a crime.
Trump’s insistence on executing the plan despite global opposition comes against the backdrop of fresh calls for Greater Israel echoing Christian nationalists, who believe Israel is meant for God’s chosen people. The idea of Greater Israel encompasses the remaining Palestinian territories, the former Emirate of Transjordan, and the Sinai Peninsula.
Christian nationalists have consistently opposed a two-state solution to resolve the Palestine-Israel conflict and even backed the demolition of one of Islam’s holiest sites—the Al-Aqsa Mosque—in line with the goal of ultranationalist Israelis and evangelical Christians.
Evangelical Denial of Palestine and the Politics of Annexation
Mike Huckabee, another Christian nationalist and Trump’s ambassador to Israel, has advocated for Israel’s annexation of the occupied West Bank and Gaza. In 2008, Huckabee declared that there is no such thing as a Palestinian. Huckabee visited an illegal Israeli settlement in 2017 and said Israel has the title deed to ‘Judea and Samaria’, or the entire West Bank, under Israeli occupation since 1967. He said there is no such thing as a West Bank and Israeli occupation.
Christian nationalist assertions fly in the face of facts. The UN has declared the Israeli occupation of the remaining Palestinians illegal. Israel occupied the Palestinian territories and the Golan Heights in 1967, two decades after it was created with the expulsion of Palestinians. An influx of Jews from Europe swelled their proportion in Palestine from 9% in 1922 to 32% in 1947, when the UN partition plan was announced for Israel’s creation. The Jews were allocated 56% and Palestinians 42% of their land as per the plan, while Jerusalem was to be UN-administered.
The denial of Palestinian existence represents evangelical beliefs. Trump’s evangelical support base prompted his move of the US embassy to Jerusalem, which Bible literalists and conservative Christians believe has to be under Jewish control for Christ’s return, during his first term. The evangelicals cheered the move as a righteous deed.
Trump’s evangelical support base sees him as another Cyrus the Great, the Persian king who helped Jews reclaim the promised land, and supports Israel’s genocidal campaign against Palestinians to be part of divine work. The evangelical support for Israel enjoins the Jewish-Christian solidarity. Israel counts evangelicals committed to the divine provenance of the Jewish homeland among its most fervent supporters.
A 2006 Pew Forum survey found that 70% percent of white evangelicals agreed that God gave Israel to the Jews. The percentage rose to 82% in 2013. Sixty-three percent said yes in 2005 when asked if Israel had fulfilled Biblical prophecy. Israel is the largest recipient of conservative evangelical funding, estimated to range between $175 and $200 million annually.
Israel’s fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecies entitles it to exclusive divine privileges that Trump’s nominations comply with. Some evangelicals conflate biblical Israel with modern Israel. Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, an atheist like the father of Israeli Zionism, Theodor Herzl, studied and used the Bible to justify Israel’s divine claim to Palestine.
Huckabee, Hegseth, and the New Christian Fundamentalism in US Policy
Jeff Sharlet, an expert on the rise of far-right extremism in the US, told Amy Goodman of Democracy Now that Huckabee sees Israel as in a battle not so much between Israelis and Palestinians but between Christendom versus the real enemy:
[Huckabee] is as fully fundamentalist as even the furthest-right element of the Israeli government right now, and sees this as a holy war — and again, kind of like Hegseth — in which any step is justified. You are fighting for God, and that’s the end of the story for him.
Jeff Sharlet, author, The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War.
Huckabee, who has led pilgrimages of Christians to Israel since 1973 and whose daughter, Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders, was the spokesperson for the first President Trump White House, brags about his special relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Right-wing Israeli governments see Christian Zionists such as Huckabee and Hegseth as better allies than American Jews.
Hegseth flexes his biceps on Instagram, showing off his white supremacist tattoos. He first got a cross with a sword running down the middle tattooed as a tribute to one of his favourite biblical verses—Matthew 10:34. Sharlet noted this is taken by those wanting a war religion, and where Christ says, ‘I come to bring not peace, but the sword.’ Hegseth has also spotted tattoos of a Jerusalem cross, a symbol of the Crusaders, and ‘Deus Vult (God Wills It).
Sharlet underlined that the Jerusalem cross is not a symbol of spiritual struggle, just like ‘Deus Vult’. He added that the imagery comes into popular culture not through a deep study of history, but through a 2005 Ridley Scott movie, The Kingdom of Heaven. Sharlet said the right was now emulating this movie and the idea of this crusader knight who wages a holy war against Muslims and Jews.
From Bush to Trump: America’s Modern Crusades Against Islam
George W Bush, who believed his presidency was part of a divine plan, also spoke about a Crusade. He told a friend that he believed God wanted him to run for president. He was convinced he was following God’s will as the leader of a global war against evil. He wanted the US to lead a liberating Crusade in the Middle East and believed this call of history had come to the right country.
Columnist James Carroll in a salon.com piece argued that Bush’s use of the term Crusade in 2001 was not a stumble but a ‘crystal-clear declaration of purpose that would soon be aided and abetted by a fervent evangelical cohort within the US military, already primed for holy war.’ Bush invaded Iraq in 2003 on the pretext of non-existent weapons of mass destruction, leaving, directly and indirectly, half a million Iraqis dead.
Carroll wrote that Bush did not answer 9/11 by ‘calling on international law enforcement to bring the perpetrators to justice’ but by a declaration of cosmic war aimed at nothing less than the ‘elimination of Islamist evil.’ Carroll, underlined, labeling it a crusade, underscored the subliminal but potent message: a self-avowed secular nation was now to be a crusader, ready to display the profoundly Christian character. Carroll wrote that Bush wreaked comparable havoc, leading to almost unimaginable mayhem abroad and a moral collapse at home that Trump personified.
The Crusades were not just any other wars or ordinary events, but theologically justified attempts to erase Islam and Islamic Civilisation through the subjugation of natives via settler colonialism. The West’s wars in the Middle East and support for Israel have drawn parallels to the Crusades. It has long insisted its policies on the region were not determined by religion. The denial is increasingly becoming untenable.
Trump’s nominations of people like Hegseth and Huckabee for his second administration signal the strengthening of the US’s unconditional support for Israel’s expansionist policies, including the annexation of Palestinian territories driven by Christian nationalist ideologies that view Israeli control over Palestine as a fulfillment of biblical prophecy. The consequences could be far-reaching, fuelling Islamophobia and anti-Muslim violence.
