[News] Why do evangelical Protestants hate Palestinians?
Anti-Imperialist News
news at freedomarchives.org
Wed Jul 16 02:39:42 EDT 2025
middleeasteye.net
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/evangelical-protestants-hate-palestinians-why>
Why do evangelical Protestants hate Palestinians?
Joseph Massad
July 15, 2025
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Since April 2025, Mike Huckabee
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/video/who-mick-huckabee-us-christian-zionist-ambassador-israel>,
a white evangelical American Protestant and Baptist minister, has served
as the US <https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/us> ambassador to
Israel <https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/israel>.
A right-wing religious fanatic and former Republican presidential
candidate, Huckabee previously served as governor of Arkansas.
He believes
<https://edition.cnn.com/2024/11/12/politics/mike-huckabee-palestinian-comments-trump-israel-ambassador/index.html>,
as part of his Protestant zealotry, that "there is no such thing as a
Palestinian", and that Palestinian
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/palestine> identity is merely
"a political tool to try and force land away from Israel".
Most recently, the ambassador described
<https://allisraelnews.com/uncivilized-savages-gaza-can-flourish-like-singapore-but-hamas-will-never-rule-again-amb-huckabee-tells-all-israel-news-because-they-are-wicked-savages>
Palestinians in Gaza as "wicked, uncivilised savages" - in keeping with
the tradition of missionaries, colonists and other "civilising" forces.
Huckabee opposes
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/us-mike-huckabee-deep-doubts-palestinian-state-muslim-neighbours-could-give-land>
Palestinian statehood and dismisses Israeli settler-colonialism on
Palestinian land as nothing more than urban development.
Countering even Israeli claims that what Jewish colonists build on
stolen land are "settlements", Huckabee insists
<https://edition.cnn.com/2024/11/12/politics/mike-huckabee-israel/index.html>
they are simply "communities", "neighbourhoods" and "cities".
Huckabee has been religiously obsessed with Israel and Jews since his
youth, and has visited
<https://www.jns.org/mike-huckabee-tells-jews-to-take-antisemitism-as-a-badge-of-honor/>
the country more than 100 times since 1973.
He is not alone. Earlier this month, Christians United for Israel
(CUFI), which claims more than 10 million members as the largest
pro-Israel group in the US, held its annual summit
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fu-j0z5GDX0> near Washington, DC.
Huckabee has been religiously obsessed with Israel and Jews since
his youth, and has visited the country more than 100 times since 1973
The conference, which attracts senior government officials and lawmakers
each year, has been described
<https://nypost.com/2025/07/12/us-news/christians-united-for-israel-offers-support-where-many-fail/>
as a "three-day lovefest" for Israel that culminates in lobbying at the
Capitol.
CUFI has applauded
<https://cufi.org/press-releases/cufi-welcomes-huckabee-senate-confirmation/>
Huckabee's confirmation and praised
<https://cufi.org/issue/rubio-vows-pro-israel-moves-including-lifting-sanctions-on-israelis/>
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who vowed this would be "perhaps the
most pro-Israel administration in American history".
Far from fringe, this is the dominant religious current
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/30/us-evangelical-christians-israel-hamas-war>
shaping US policy on Israel - one with theological and imperial roots
that long predate the state itself.
Its modern champions, like Huckabee, follow a long line of evangelical
Christians whose lineage can be traced back to the Protestant
Reformation and the Millenarian movement it spawned in the 16th century.
That movement supported the "restoration" of European Jews to Palestine
and their conversion to Protestantism, in the hope of expediting the
so-called Second Coming of Jesus Christ.
Imperial foundations
Evangelical Protestant Zionism preceded Jewish Zionism by 300 years, and
it was this Protestant Zionism that laid the ideological foundations of
the Jewish settler-colony that would become Israel.
A surge of Protestant missionary zeal swept through England at the end
of the 18th century, coinciding with the emergence of the Eastern
Question and the Jewish Question.
This reignited the Crusades' erstwhile project of ending Muslim control
of the "Holy Land". It likewise revived Protestant Millenarian and
"Restorationist" projects aimed at converting European Jews and
"returning" them to Palestine. This was also the era of the flourishing
of British imperialism.
Two British missionary societies took an interest in Palestine and the
wider region: the Church Missionary Society for Africa and the East
(founded in 1799), or CMS, and the London Society for Promoting
Christianity amongst the Jews (founded in 1809), popularly known as the
London Jews Society
<https://www.google.jo/books/edition/British_Mission_to_the_Jews_in_Nineteent/xOiQAgAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Yaron+Perry,+British+Mission+to+the+Jews+in+Nineteenth-Century+Palestine+(London:+Frank+Cass,+2003)&pg=PR3&printsec=frontcover>
or LJS.
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/trumps-mission-recolonise-palestine-revives-failed-19th-century-american-efforts>
Trump's plan to colonise Gaza echoes failed 19th-century American missions
The latter was founded by two German Jewish converts to Protestantism.
It was established under the auspices of the evangelical Anglican group
the British Bible Society, the missionary arm of the Clapham Sect,
founded by William Wilberforce.
As part of its missionary activity, the Clapham Sect invited a German
Jewish convert, Joseph Samuel Christian Frederick Frey (1748–1827) -
born Joseph Samuel Levy - to move from Berlin to London to proselytise
among British Jews, a task that led to the establishment
<https://www.jstor.org/stable/29777973> of the LJS.
Both the CMS and the LJS were sponsored by the elite of English society
and politics, including British Foreign Secretary Lord Palmerston and
his evangelical son-in-law, Lord Shaftesbury (previously known as Lord
Ashley), among others.
Palmerston even approached
<https://www.google.jo/books/edition/The_Zealous_Intruders/p50WAAAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=The+Zealous+Intruders:+The+Western+Rediscovery+of&dq=The+Zealous+Intruders:+The+Western+Rediscovery+of&printsec=frontcover>
the Ottoman sultan to request permission for the "return" of European
Jews to Palestine.
Palmerston, who became Britain's foreign minister in 1830, was a strong
advocate of Jewish "restoration" to Palestine. The LJS converted many
Jews in Britain, 250 of whom became Anglican clergymen - many of them
former rabbinical scholars
<https://www.google.jo/books/edition/The_Zealous_Intruders/p50WAAAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=The+Zealous+Intruders:+The+Western+Rediscovery+of&dq=The+Zealous+Intruders:+The+Western+Rediscovery+of&printsec=frontcover>.
By 1841, the position of patron of the LJS was conferred upon the
Archbishop of Canterbury
<https://www.google.jo/books/edition/British_Mission_to_the_Jews_in_Nineteent/xOiQAgAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Yaron+Perry,+British+Mission+to+the+Jews+in+Nineteenth-Century+Palestine+(London:+Frank+Cass,+2003)&pg=PR3&printsec=frontcover>,
the head of the Anglican Church.
'Peaceful' crusaders
Fanatical evangelical Americans, Germans, Swedes and others joined this
new "Peaceful Crusade
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/nakba-palestinian-catastrophe-began-19th-century-and-continues-day>"
to convert Jews and take over Palestine throughout the 19th century.
The evangelical Zionist current did not abate in the 20th century;
on the contrary, it intensified after the establishment of Israel
By World War One, all the British leaders in office - including Prime
Minister David Lloyd George and Foreign Minister Arthur Balfour
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/balfour-declaration-imperial-academia-devastation-palestine>
- were fanatical evangelical Christians who supported Jewish
"restoration" to Palestine, which in 1917 took the form of the "Balfour
Declaration".
In the US, Zionist evangelical Christianity manifested in the
establishment of several colonies
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/nakba-palestinian-catastrophe-began-19th-century-and-continues-day>
in Palestine during the mid-19th century, intended to convert Jews and
expedite the Second Coming.
This current did not abate in the 20th century; on the contrary, it
intensified after the establishment of Israel, and especially after the
1967 war
<https://politicstoday.org/why-do-evangelical-christians-support-israels-genocide-against-palestinians/>.
Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson were among the leading Protestant
fanatics who supported Israel, as did American presidents who claimed an
evangelical upbringing, most notably Bill Clinton
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/anti-semitism-highest-stage-zionism>.
It is to this tradition of evangelical fanaticism that US President
Donald Trump' <https://www.middleeasteye.net/topics/trump>s ambassador
to Israel subscribes.
Divine mandate
Huckabee's conviction that God
<https://www.jns.org/mike-huckabee-tells-jews-to-take-antisemitism-as-a-badge-of-honor/>
is on the side of Israel is one he shares with most evangelical Christians.
He argues that Israelis did not win their wars of conquest against
Palestinians and neighbouring Arabs "because they had superior military,
artillery capacity or air power."
Not at all: "They won them because they fought as if they knew that if
they lost, they didn't lose some real estate," but rather "the land that
God had given them 3,500 years ago. Because they did, I am convinced
that God, Himself, intervened on behalf of His people in His land", he
proclaims.
At a dinner hosted by the Israel Heritage Foundation, Huckabee affirmed
<https://www.jns.org/mike-huckabee-tells-jews-to-take-antisemitism-as-a-badge-of-honor/>
to his audience that his support for Israel is grounded in faith: "We
believe that we put our knee to God. We didn't create Him; He created
us. And we are obligated to follow His law rather than to invite Him to
follow some law that we have foolishly created for ourselves."
Huckabee's support for Israel has embarrassed even many of its
staunchest backers in the US.
In 2015, while running for president, he responded to then-President
Barack Obama's announcement of the Iran nuclear deal
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/topics/iran-nuclear> by accusing
<https://www.politico.com/story/2015/07/mike-huckabee-holocaust-comment-jewish-reaction-iran-deal-120710>
him of marching Jews "to the door of the oven".
Even the diehard pro-Israel Anti-Defamation League and Ron Dermer,
Israel's ambassador to the US at the time, rebuked
<https://www.timesofisrael.com/israels-envoy-to-us-rejects-huckabees-iran-deal-holocaust-jab/>
him for the remark.
But Huckabee remains undeterred
<https://www.facebook.com/rightwingwatch/videos/538503475689489/>. He
cites scripture that commands believers to bless Israel in order to be
blessed, quoting: "those who curse Israel will be cursed."
The new crusaders
Huckabee is not the only Protestant fanatic weaponised by the Trump
administration in support of Israel.
The US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/gaza-humanitarian-foundation-israels-new-model-weaponised-aid>
- now participating in the ongoing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/topics/israel-war-gaza> - also has an
evangelical zealot as its chairman: Rev Dr Johnnie Moore
<https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/us-backed-gaza-aid-group-names-evangelical-chairman-2025-06-03/>,
a former adviser to the White House during Trump's first term.
Gaza Humanitarian Foundation: Israel's new model for weaponised aid
Amira Nimerawi
Moore supports Trump's vision of a Gaza "Riviera
<https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/us-backed-gaza-aid-group-names-evangelical-chairman-2025-06-03/>".
His "personal journey <https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-860601>
has included studying Theodor Herzl's diaries and exploring lesser-known
Christian contributions to early Zionism".
A former assistant
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/liberty-universitys-johnnie-moore-speaks-the-language-of-young-evangelicals/2011/09/26/gIQAvWC3mL_story.html>
to Jerry Falwell, Moore has received numerous awards from Zionist
institutions in recognition of his unwavering commitment to Israel.
Figures like Moore, Huckabee and Rubio
<https://web.archive.org/web/20120301073459/http:/religion.blogs.cnn.com/2012/02/23/sen-marco-rubios-religious-journey-catholic-to-mormon-to-catholic-to-baptist-and-catholic/?hpt=hp_t3>
- yet another evangelical Christian
<https://www.ncregister.com/news/marco-rubio-to-become-nation-s-top-diplomat>
who shuttles between Catholicism and evangelical Protestantism
<https://www.timesofisrael.com/marco-rubios-big-jewish-backer-and-7-other-things-to-know-about-him/?__cf_chl_tk=Igq2rT.3HuEopH6SXe607AD2QkTlCKBFaUDR5KnKzeA-1752224049-1.0.1.1-vVNk6J0sNMgL66nGCr8VkrwyUQW7Cars6GcabVoNe8U>
- are not aberrations. They are the contemporary face of a deeply
entrenched evangelical Zionism that now operates through official posts,
state policy and well-funded political networks
<https://cufi.org/summit-2025/>.
Imperial convergence
The rise of Protestant evangelical Zionism in the late 18th and early
19th centuries - especially in Britain - coincided with the ascent of
European, and particularly British, imperialism.
This was hardly coincidental: British imperialism provided a far wider
world for the Protestant fanatics to missionise beyond Britain's shores.
Activists protest at the Rayburn House cafeteria on Capitol Hill during
Christians United for Israel’s lobbying day, 1 July 2025 (Alex
Wong/Getty Images via AFP)
Activists protest at the Rayburn House cafeteria on Capitol Hill during
Christians United for Israel’s lobbying day, 1 July 2025 (Alex
Wong/Getty Images via AFPimage.gif
image.gifIndeed, these missionaries were often dispatched ahead of
conquest, preparing the ground for later imperial domination.
Whether in Kenya, New Zealand, Sierra Leone or Palestine, the role of
evangelical Protestantism was always complementary to British imperialism.
It is not only the pro-Zionism of evangelical Christians that is
mandated by their religious fanaticism, but also their hatred of
Palestinians
In the case of Palestine and the Jews, this amalgamation took on a
particular significance, given that Palestine is the land where both
Christianity and Judaism were born.
The surge in support for Israel among American evangelicals after 1967,
when the US became its primary imperial sponsor, was also no coincidence.
It is not only the pro-Zionism of evangelical
<https://politicstoday.org/why-do-evangelical-christians-support-israels-genocide-against-palestinians/>
Christians that is mandated by their religious fanaticism and
pro-American jingoism, but also their hatred of Palestinians, cast as
enemies of both the evangelicals' "chosen people" and of US imperial
interests in the Middle East.
That their support for a genocidal state stems from religious conviction
- not in defiance of it - is what keeps American evangelical Christians
faithful to both their biblical and nationalist creeds.
/The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not
necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye./
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