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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">Why do evangelical
Protestants hate Palestinians?</h1>
<div class="gmail-credits gmail-reader-credits">Joseph
Massad</div>
<div class="gmail-meta-data">
<div class="gmail-reader-estimated-time">July 15, 2025</div>
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<p>Since April 2025, <a
href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/video/who-mick-huckabee-us-christian-zionist-ambassador-israel"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">Mike
Huckabee</a>, a white evangelical American
Protestant and Baptist minister, has served as the <a
href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/us"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">US</a>
ambassador to <a
href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/israel" target="_blank"
moz-do-not-send="true">Israel</a>.</p>
<p>A right-wing religious fanatic and former
Republican presidential candidate, Huckabee
previously served as governor of Arkansas.</p>
<p>He <a
href="https://edition.cnn.com/2024/11/12/politics/mike-huckabee-palestinian-comments-trump-israel-ambassador/index.html"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">believes</a>,
as part of his Protestant zealotry, that "there is
no such thing as a Palestinian", and that <a
href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/palestine" target="_blank"
moz-do-not-send="true">Palestinian</a> identity is
merely "a political tool to try and force land away
from Israel".</p>
<p>Most recently, the ambassador <a
href="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"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">described</a>
Palestinians in Gaza as "wicked, uncivilised
savages" - in keeping with the tradition of
missionaries, colonists and other "civilising"
forces.</p>
<p>Huckabee <a
href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/us-mike-huckabee-deep-doubts-palestinian-state-muslim-neighbours-could-give-land"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">opposes</a>
Palestinian statehood and dismisses Israeli
settler-colonialism on Palestinian land as nothing
more than urban development.</p>
<p>Countering even Israeli claims that what Jewish
colonists build on stolen land are "settlements",
Huckabee <a
href="https://edition.cnn.com/2024/11/12/politics/mike-huckabee-israel/index.html"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">insists</a>
they are simply "communities", "neighbourhoods" and
"cities".</p>
<p>Huckabee has been religiously obsessed with Israel
and Jews since his youth, and has <a
href="https://www.jns.org/mike-huckabee-tells-jews-to-take-antisemitism-as-a-badge-of-honor/"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">visited</a>
the country more than 100 times since 1973.</p>
<p>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 <a
href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fu-j0z5GDX0"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">annual
summit</a> near Washington, DC.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Huckabee has been religiously obsessed with
Israel and Jews since his youth, and has visited
the country more than 100 times since 1973</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The conference, which attracts senior government
officials and lawmakers each year, has been <a
href="https://nypost.com/2025/07/12/us-news/christians-united-for-israel-offers-support-where-many-fail/"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">described</a>
as a "three-day lovefest" for Israel that culminates
in lobbying at the Capitol.</p>
<p>CUFI has <a
href="https://cufi.org/press-releases/cufi-welcomes-huckabee-senate-confirmation/"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">applauded</a>
Huckabee's confirmation and <a
href="https://cufi.org/issue/rubio-vows-pro-israel-moves-including-lifting-sanctions-on-israelis/"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">praised</a>
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who vowed this would
be "perhaps the most pro-Israel administration in
American history".</p>
<p>Far from fringe, this is the dominant <a
href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/30/us-evangelical-christians-israel-hamas-war"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">religious
current</a> shaping US policy on Israel - one with
theological and imperial roots that long predate the
state itself.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<h3>Imperial foundations</h3>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 <a
href="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"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">London Jews
Society</a> or LJS.</p>
<div>
<p><a
href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/trumps-mission-recolonise-palestine-revives-failed-19th-century-american-efforts"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true"><img
src="https://www.middleeasteye.net/sites/default/files/styles/read_more/public/images-story/2025-02-05T122321Z_1881022740_MT1SOPAJHK250205006_RTRMADP_3_SOPA%281%29.jpg.webp?itok=sm0rO6D8"
width="400" height="250" alt=""
class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img"
moz-do-not-send="true">
</a></p>
<p>Trump's plan to colonise Gaza echoes failed
19th-century American missions</p>
</div>
<p>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.</p>
<p>As part of its missionary activity, the Clapham
Sect invited a German Jewish convert, Joseph Samuel
Christian Frederick Frey (1748\u20131827) - born Joseph
Samuel Levy - to move from Berlin to London to
proselytise among British Jews, a task that led to
the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/29777973"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">establishment</a>
of the LJS.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Palmerston even <a
href="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"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">approached</a>
the Ottoman sultan to request permission for the
"return" of European Jews to Palestine.</p>
<p>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 <a
href="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"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">rabbinical
scholars</a>.</p>
<p>By 1841, the position of patron of the LJS was
conferred upon the <a
href="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"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">Archbishop
of Canterbury</a>, the head of the Anglican
Church.</p>
<h3>'Peaceful' crusaders</h3>
<p>Fanatical evangelical Americans, Germans, Swedes
and others joined this new "<a
href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/nakba-palestinian-catastrophe-began-19th-century-and-continues-day"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">Peaceful
Crusade</a>" to convert Jews and take over
Palestine throughout the 19th century.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The evangelical Zionist current did not abate in
the 20th century; on the contrary, it intensified
after the establishment of Israel</p>
</blockquote>
<p>By World War One, all the British leaders in office
- including Prime Minister David Lloyd George and
Foreign Minister <a
href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/balfour-declaration-imperial-academia-devastation-palestine"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">Arthur
Balfour</a> - were fanatical evangelical
Christians who supported Jewish "restoration" to
Palestine, which in 1917 took the form of the
"Balfour Declaration".</p>
<p>In the US, Zionist evangelical Christianity
manifested in the establishment of <a
href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/nakba-palestinian-catastrophe-began-19th-century-and-continues-day"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">several
colonies</a> in Palestine during the mid-19th
century, intended to convert Jews and expedite the
Second Coming.</p>
<p>This current did not abate in the 20th century; on
the contrary, it intensified after the establishment
of Israel, and especially after the <a
href="https://politicstoday.org/why-do-evangelical-christians-support-israels-genocide-against-palestinians/"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">1967 war</a>.</p>
<p>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 <a
href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/anti-semitism-highest-stage-zionism"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">Bill
Clinton</a>.</p>
<p>It is to this tradition of evangelical fanaticism
that US President <a
href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/topics/trump"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">Donald
Trump'</a>s ambassador to Israel subscribes.</p>
<h3>Divine mandate</h3>
<p>Huckabee's conviction that <a
href="https://www.jns.org/mike-huckabee-tells-jews-to-take-antisemitism-as-a-badge-of-honor/"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">God</a> is
on the side of Israel is one he shares with most
evangelical Christians.</p>
<p>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."</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>At a dinner hosted by the Israel Heritage
Foundation, Huckabee <a
href="https://www.jns.org/mike-huckabee-tells-jews-to-take-antisemitism-as-a-badge-of-honor/"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">affirmed</a>
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."</p>
<p>Huckabee's support for Israel has embarrassed even
many of its staunchest backers in the US.</p>
<p>In 2015, while running for president, he responded
to then-President Barack Obama's announcement of the
<a
href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/topics/iran-nuclear" target="_blank"
moz-do-not-send="true">Iran nuclear deal</a> by <a
href="https://www.politico.com/story/2015/07/mike-huckabee-holocaust-comment-jewish-reaction-iran-deal-120710"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">accusing</a>
him of marching Jews "to the door of the oven".</p>
<p>Even the diehard pro-Israel Anti-Defamation League
and Ron Dermer, Israel's ambassador to the US at the
time, <a
href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/israels-envoy-to-us-rejects-huckabees-iran-deal-holocaust-jab/"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">rebuked</a>
him for the remark.</p>
<p>But Huckabee remains <a
href="https://www.facebook.com/rightwingwatch/videos/538503475689489/"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">undeterred</a>.
He cites scripture that commands believers to bless
Israel in order to be blessed, quoting: "those who
curse Israel will be cursed."</p>
<h3>The new crusaders</h3>
<p>Huckabee is not the only Protestant fanatic
weaponised by the Trump administration in support of
Israel.</p>
<p>The US-backed <a
href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/gaza-humanitarian-foundation-israels-new-model-weaponised-aid"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">Gaza
Humanitarian Foundation</a> - now participating in
the ongoing genocide against Palestinians in <a
href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/topics/israel-war-gaza"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">Gaza</a> -
also has an evangelical zealot as its chairman: <a
href="https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/us-backed-gaza-aid-group-names-evangelical-chairman-2025-06-03/"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">Rev Dr
Johnnie Moore</a>, a former adviser to the White
House during Trump's first term.</p>
<div>
<p>Gaza Humanitarian Foundation: Israel's new model
for weaponised aid</p>
<p>Amira Nimerawi</p>
</div>
<p>Moore supports Trump's vision of a Gaza "<a
href="https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/us-backed-gaza-aid-group-names-evangelical-chairman-2025-06-03/"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">Riviera</a>".
His "<a
href="https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-860601" target="_blank"
moz-do-not-send="true">personal journey</a> has
included studying Theodor Herzl's diaries and
exploring lesser-known Christian contributions to
early Zionism".</p>
<p>A former <a
href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/liberty-universitys-johnnie-moore-speaks-the-language-of-young-evangelicals/2011/09/26/gIQAvWC3mL_story.html"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">assistant</a>
to Jerry Falwell, Moore has received numerous awards
from Zionist institutions in recognition of his
unwavering commitment to Israel.</p>
<p>Figures like Moore, Huckabee and <a
href="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"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">Rubio</a> -
yet another <a
href="https://www.ncregister.com/news/marco-rubio-to-become-nation-s-top-diplomat"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">evangelical
Christian</a> who shuttles between Catholicism and
<a
href="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"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">evangelical
Protestantism</a> - 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 <a
href="https://cufi.org/summit-2025/"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">political
networks</a>.</p>
<h3>Imperial convergence</h3>
<p>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.</p>
<p>This was hardly coincidental: British imperialism
provided a far wider world for the Protestant
fanatics to missionise beyond Britain's shores.</p>
<div>
<p><img
src="https://www.middleeasteye.net/sites/default/files/063_2223089876%281%29.jpg"
width="467" height="263"
alt="Activists protest at the Rayburn House cafeteria on Capitol Hill during Christians United for Israel\u2019s lobbying day, 1 July 2025 (Alex Wong/Getty Images via AFP)"
class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img"
style="margin-right: 25px;"
moz-do-not-send="true">
</p>
Activists protest at the Rayburn House cafeteria on
Capitol Hill during Christians United for Israel\u2019s
lobbying day, 1 July 2025 (Alex Wong/Getty Images
via AFP<span><img
src="cid:part1.P7UVECX0.OxNxtMtR@freedomarchives.org" alt="image.gif"
width="15" height="15" class=""></span>
</div>
<p><span><img
src="cid:part1.P7UVECX0.OxNxtMtR@freedomarchives.org" alt="image.gif"
width="15" height="15" class=""></span>Indeed,
these missionaries were often dispatched ahead of
conquest, preparing the ground for later imperial
domination.</p>
<p>Whether in Kenya, New Zealand, Sierra Leone or
Palestine, the role of evangelical Protestantism was
always complementary to British imperialism.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It is not only the pro-Zionism of evangelical
Christians that is mandated by their religious
fanaticism, but also their hatred of Palestinians</p>
</blockquote>
<p>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.</p>
<p>The surge in support for Israel among American
evangelicals after 1967, when the US became its
primary imperial sponsor, was also no coincidence.</p>
<p>It is not only the pro-Zionism of <a
href="https://politicstoday.org/why-do-evangelical-christians-support-israels-genocide-against-palestinians/"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">evangelical</a>
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.</p>
<div>
<p>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.</p>
<p>
<em>The views expressed in this article belong to
the author and do not necessarily reflect the
editorial policy of Middle East Eye.</em></p>
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