Zionists or Zealots?, Part I

Written by Evan Goldstein

Why Are Christian Evangelicals Adopting Israeli Settlements in Gaza and the West Bank?

A few clicks in, the picture of the children appears. They’re huddled around a computer monitor, entranced—two little boys in kippot, one fingering the keyboard, the other with his hand on the mouse, blond peyos dangling by his ear. Behind them stands a girl in pigtails, watching, perhaps waiting for her turn. Beside her, the wall is plastered with colored paper butterflies.

The photograph of the children is surrounded by web links: "Computers for the regional library in Alon Shvut," "An improved day care center for Elei Sinai," "A playground for the children of Dugit." Clicking on the latter brings up a page written in the standard language of charitable solicitation, the kind of appeal familiar to American Jews from so many Jewish National Fund, New Israel Fund, and B’nai B’rith fundraising letters.

"When the first families arrived on Dugit’s shores, there was only one child among them. Today, the community numbers over 40 children, and the community hopes and prays that this number will continue to grow….Dugit’s parents hope to give their children a good and solid beginning. By helping them construct their first playground you are showing the parents and young children of Dugit that their future is important to you…."

Safeguarding that future will cost only $12,800, a small price to pay for a people so deeply concerned about continuity. But in this case, the intended audience is not Jewish. The appeal comes from a group called the Christian Friends of Israel Communities (CFOIC) and it is being made, not to Jews, but to Christian evangelicals.

CFOIC’s mission is to rally the support of "Christian Zionists"—people who believe that the bible is the literal word of God, that the contours of Israel mapped out in its pages represent his absolute will for the birthright of the Jews, and that the "ingathering of the exiles" is preamble to the second coming of Christ. Dugit, situated as CFOIC’s web site describes it, "on the sands of the northern end of the Gaza Coast, facing the crystal blue water of the Mediterranean," lies within those Biblical boundaries, but not within the borders of Israel recognized by international law.

In fact, all the "Israel communities" for which CFOIC solicits are Jewish settlements in Gaza and the West Bank, territories occupied by Israel after its victory in the Six Day War in 1967 and claimed by Palestinians as their own land. Through the organization’s innovative "Adopt-A-Settlement" program—proudly heralded as "the first of its kind in the history of Christian–Jewish relations"—Christian congregations "adopt" a community in those disputed territories by taking on financial responsibility for specific initiatives, be it a playground, a watchtower, or a bulletproof bus. They do it, says CFOIC North America Director Kimberly Troup, "because G-d says to bless the children of Israel."

There is nothing new about the partnership between Jewish nationalists and evangelical Christians, who have long found common cause advocating for a reconstituted Jewish polity in the Middle East. What is new about this peculiar relationship is the unprecedented intensity of Christian advocacy since the dawn of the Oslo era, and the increase in its perceived legitimacy since the Al Aqsa Intifada erupted in September of 2000.

In the past nine years, CFOIC claims to have distributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to Israeli settlements, its "Adopt-A-Settlement" program providing direct financial support to Jewish settlers "fulfilling prophecy" on "Israel’s frontline." Donations from congregations such as Faith Christian Center in Salem, Indiana for a library in Har Bracha, and from Johnston Federated Church in Ohio for security cameras in Itamar, are all distributed through CFOIC’s center of operations in the West Bank, under the guidance of the group’s executive director for Israel—an Orthodox Jew named Sandra Oster Baras.

For Israelis on the right—those who support the notion of a Greater Israel and oppose ceding any land either for religious reasons or on grounds of security—the fruits of allying with organizations like CFOIC are tangible and significant. As well as providing funds, the evangelical community in America is vast and well organized within the ranks of the Republican Party. In an interview with Prospect magazine, Professor John Green of Akron University, who monitors the influence of religious groups on American politics, estimated that 10-15 million of the approximately 30 million evangelical Christians who nominally support the Republicans are "people who think that it is contrary to God’s will to put pressure on the Israeli government."

With the American and Israeli pro-peace camps still in disarray thanks to the Intifada, Christian Zionists’ leaders in Washington, D.C. have become an increasingly dominant voice in pro-Israel advocacy. "It is my belief that the Bible Belt in America is Israel’s only safety belt right now," Rev. Jerry Falwell told 60 Minutes in June, 2003. "There are 70 million of us, and if there’s one thing that brings us together quickly it’s whenever we begin to detect our government becoming a little anti-Israel."

Set to full crisis mode, American Jewish groups have welcomed this support, despite their traditional wariness of the Christian Right. In 2002, the Christian Coalition’s Pat Robertson was awarded "The State of Israel Friendship Award" by the Zionist Organization of America. That same year, Jerry Falwell was invited to lead a prayer breakfast at Israel’s embassy in Washington. As Israel faces its "greatest crisis in years," Anti-Defamation League Director Abe Foxman declared in a recent press release, "American Jews should not be apologetic or defensive about cultivating Evangelical support."

The question for Jews, and for anyone else who cares about the future of the Jewish state, is whether the actions and motivations of fundamentalist Christian Zionists help or hinder the prospects for a prosperous and democratic Jewish Israel living at peace with its neighbors. What do Christian Zionists want Israel to be and what vision do they have for its future? In other words, how good a friend to Israel is a group like the Christian Friends of Israel Communities?

These questions have become all the more pressing in light of recent events. In December, 2003, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon—known his fellow Israelis as "Arik"—announced his intention to withdraw from Gaza and dismantle all settlements there. Sharon also said he would pull out of certain areas of the West Bank, requiring the evacuation of four more settlements.

Sharon’s plan is to "disengage" Israel from the Palestinians, whom demographic studies suggest will become a majority between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea within five to ten years. The prime minister and his colleagues fear that if they do not act soon, Palestinians will eventually give up the dream of their own state, and simply demand the right to vote in a bi-national one, meaning the end of a Jewish Israel.

But Arik’s way will mean the end of Dugit. When the time comes, the settlers have sworn they will resist. And waiting patiently in the wings for Sharon and his policy to fail is Israel’s finance minister, Binyamin Netanyahu—a former prime minister, darling of the hard-liners, and the man most likely to replace Sharon if an opening emerges.

With Netanyahu looming and Sharon’s more hawkish coalition partners threatening to stage their own withdrawal should he go through with disengagement, the corpulent Arik is vulnerable on his ample right flank. More than ever, he needs the support of America’s government, and so of the people who can influence its actions. Yet it seems unlikely that the Christian friends of Dugit would encourage their fellow evangelical George W. Bush to help Sharon dismantle their adopted settlement.

"God says he will bless those who bless them," reads an often-repeated slogan on CFOIC’s web site—a paraphrase of God’s promise to the Jews in Genesis 12:3: "I will bless them that bless thee and curse them that curse thee, and in thee shall all the nations of the earth be blessed." But what if the settlements are more a curse than a blessing? If what’s good for the Jews turns out to conflict with CFOIC’s interpretation of scripture, what then?

One month after publishing his influential tract The Jewish State, Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern-political Zionism, was paid a visit by Rev. William H. Hechler, the Anglican chaplain at the British Embassy in Vienna, Austria. Fourteen years earlier, in 1882, Hechler had published a pamphlet titled The Restoration of the Jews to Palestine (According to Prophecy), in which he lamented the tortured plight of the Jewish people and proclaimed the imminence of their messianic redemption. Upon reading The Jewish State, Hechler deemed Herzl an instrument of God—though perhaps an unwitting one—tirelessly working toward the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy.

Herzl regarded Hechler as a "naïve enthusiast" who also exhibited a "touch of anti-Semitism." "He wants to place my movement to be a Biblical one," Herzl wrote in his diary, "even though I proceed rationally in all points." Nonetheless, Herzl was a pragmatist. He immediately recognized the potential benefits of enlisting Rev. Hechler, an extremely well connected man in European centers of power, as an ally of the nascent Zionist cause —theological motivations aside.

Hechler took his theological cues from the teachings of John Nelson Darby (1800-1882), a British clergyman who advocated the End of Days dogma of pre-millennial dispensationalism. Darby argued that the return of the Jewish people to the Holy Land is a fundamental prerequisite to the second coming of Christ, the conversion or death of all non-believers, and the dawning of the Messianic Age.

For those who subscribe to dispensationalist belief, there can be no apocalypse, no battle of Armageddon, and ultimately no salvation without the "ingathering of the exiles" to the land of Israel. As the pre-millennialist writer Randall Price, founder and president of World of the Bible Ministries, puts it in his 1998 book Jerusalem in Prophecy, Jews are the essential "players…for the prophetic drama," whose collective "curtain call" signals that "The End" must be near.

The founding of the modern state of Israel in 1948 gave fuel to these millennial yearnings. But it was the Six Day War of June 1967 that profoundly transformed and accelerated the Christian relationship with Israel. The hostilities that erupted that summer sent the theological soothsayers into a frenzy of wild predications that the End of Days was imminent.

"That for the first time in more than 2,000 years Jerusalem is now completely in the hands of the Jews gives the student of the Bible a thrill and a renewed faith in the accuracy and validity of the Bible," wrote L. Nelson Bell, Billy Graham’s father-in-law, in July, 1967. "My Mom was crying when she heard about the soldiers who entered the old city in 1967," writes one CFOIC representative by e-mail. "She always told her children, that one day Jerusalem would be in the hands of the Jewish people according to the prophets. From that day on I started to read the Bible, especially the prophets, and so I became a believer."

The biblical awakening within certain Christian denominations in America coincided with a significant rightward shift in Israeli politics. In 1977, the Likud’s Menachem Begin, a politician whose career was based on an uncompromising commitment to Jewish sovereignty over the entire Land of Israel—and so to annexing the territories captured in the Six Day War—was elected prime minister. On a post-electoral tour of America, Begin informed an aide that he would meet with evangelical Christians to explore firsthand the depth of their sentiments. Later that year a group of evangelists identifying themselves as "Christian Zionists" began taking out full-page advertisements in major newspapers across the United States, declaring their unbridled support for Israel.

Long before Begin came to America, Ted Beckett had already become convinced that his life’s work was "doing deals for the Lord." The Colorado real estate developer had come to this conclusion as a young man, through a religious experience that—like many details of his life—remains vague to outsiders. Yet whatever their exact source, Beckett’s efforts proved formidable.

In 1991, President George H.W. Bush threatened to suspend U.S. loan guarantees to Israel. His goal was to pressure then- Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir into freezing Jewish settlement growth in the occupied territories, hoping that such a move might open the way for negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, and an eventual land-for-peace agreement. Beckett responded by helping to organize a massive rally in support of Shamir. There, 700 American evangelicals extolled their "Bible-believing brothers and sisters to not vote for any presidential candidates whose policy concerning Israel would be contrary to the mandates of God." Bush’s effort collapsed, as did his support among the Christian Right, contributing to his electoral defeat at the hands of Bill Clinton.

But much to the chagrin of Beckett and his allies, Clinton pursued the vision of land-for-peace even more aggressively than his predecessor did. Worse still, Shamir’s Likud party fell to Labor in Israel’s 1992 elections, allowing Yitzhak Rabin’s new government to broker the Oslo Accords with the Palestinian Liberation Organization. Sealed with a now-famous handshake between Rabin and Yasir Arafat on the White House Lawn, the Accords prompted Israel to halt building plans in the disputed territories and sharply reduce the levels of preferential funding for the settlement enterprise. As one settler lamented, Rabin froze "everything but the birth rate." Most importantly, Oslo stipulated that Israel transfer sovereignty over pockets of territory to the newly formed Palestinian Authority.

Many Christian evangelical leaders were dismayed, warning that any withdrawal ran counter to God’s plan for the Jewish nation and would only weaken Israel in future confrontations with her enemies. In 1995, on one of his frequent visits to the disputed territories, Beckett met Ron Nachman, the mayor of Ariel, a settlement deep inside the West Bank. Nachman was seeking help from America for the beleaguered settlers. Beckett had an idea.

Returning to the states, he arranged for the "adoption" of Ariel by the Faith Bible Chapel, an Aurora, Colorado evangelical church, which showered the settlers with gifts. Soon Ariel had a new library and a new health clinic, and Beckett had become a matchmaker. By 1998, Mayor Nachman was boasting to the Christian Science Monitor that two-thirds of settlements in the West Bank and Gaza had received aid from Christian supporters.

Today, CFOIC is an international organization with headquarters in the West Bank, a full-time director of operations for North America, and volunteers as far afield as Holland and Germany. But the premise of the Adopt-A-Settlement program remains the same: linking cash-strapped Israeli settlements with Christian congregations eager to act on their dispensational zeal. "This is a Biblical issue," Beckett has said. "The Bible says in the last days the Jews will be restored to the nation of Israel."

In 1998, Pastor Javier Francisco Rodriguez and his congregation decided to adopt. They wanted to be part of that biblically-mandated restoration, to link Johnston Federated Church of Johnston, Ohio "in a meaningful way," says CFOIC’s literature, "with the fulfillment of biblical prophecy taking place in modern Israel." Itamar, a town situated on the hilltops of Samaria—or, to some, on West Bank land unjustly appropriated from Palestinians—became their charge. "First we did a little courtyard play yard for the children, a kindergarten area," says Eric Yoder, director of Missions and lay leader for Johnston Federated.

In January of that same year, President Bill Clinton had summoned then-Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to the White House in an effort to resuscitate a comatose peace process. A little over two years before, Yitzhak Rabin had been assassinated by Yigal Amir, a settler desperate to prevent Israel’s government from handing over any more land to the Palestinians. In the subsequent election, Netanyahu, the right-wing Likud candidate, had squeaked by Oslo architect Shimon Peres, benefiting from a wave of Hamas suicide bombings that struck fear into Israeli voters.

"Bibi," as he is both affectionately and contemptuously known, had spent those first two years in office obstructing the implementation of the Oslo accords by any means at his disposal. Although Clinton insisted publicly that he had "high hopes" for the talks, Netanyahu’s diplomatic stonewalling had fostered bitterness between his government and the Clinton administration, and personal animosity between the two leaders.

Nonetheless, Netanyahu arrived in Washington very much at ease. His first meeting was not with any official of Clinton’s administration but with the controversial evangelical leaders Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, who huddled with a thousand of their acolytes to hail Netanyahu as "the Ronald Reagan of Israel."

To Yoder and his fellow evangelicals, the settlement of the disputed territories by Jews is a literal, not metaphorical, fulfillment of biblical prophecy. "The prophets foretold the ingathering of the exiles and the rebuilding of the Land in the latter days," reads CFOIC’s web site. But while CFOIC insists that Judea and Samaria were given "forever" to the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as an "everlasting" gift from God, its members still speak blithely of the "last days."

Crucially, Jewish settlement in biblical Israel is not a prophetic end in itself, but part of God’s larger plan, not only for Jews but for all existence. "We do believe that Israel plays an important role in the End Times," says Ulric Druze, pastor of the Word of Life Ministry of Florida and New York, another CFOIC congregation. "We believe the bible literally." As self-proclaimed dispensationalists, the members of Johnston Federated and World of Life subscribe to a specific eschatology—an End Times scenario.

Yet while they freely admit that, to them, the Jews’ restoration to the Holy Land is a crucial sign of the End Times being near —"that is in line with scripture and is being fulfilled," says Yoder —CFOIC’s members are far more coy about what happens next. CFOIC’s literature says that "The regathering of Israel is a key condition to the full flowering of the Messianic age." But what does that flowering entail? What happens to the children playing in Itamar’s sandlot when the apocalypse comes?

Nobody can say," replies Eric Yoder when pressed on the specifics of the Messianic Age. "You can’t pin this thing down because God is sovereign and he’s going to do it whenever and however he wants to." So convinced of the essential role of settlements in the fulfillment of God’s will, Yoder and other members of CFOIC become far more reticent when confronted with the question of the Jews’ ultimate fate.

"I personally do not know what His plan for the Jews are in the end days," writes Kimberly Troup, CFOIC’s North American director, choosing her words carefully. "My answer to those Jews who feel uneasy about Christian end time scenarios is to remind them that the G-d of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob has never yet forsaken His people, and He always manages to get His purposes accomplished no matter what devises [sic] your enemies have tried to use to deter, derail, or destroy His people."

Indeed Yoder believes that God will be a great champion of the Jews, "fighting and defeating the enemy" in the "last battle." Then, God will bring the Jews together and deal with them "as a father with a family." And when the Messiah returns and the Jewish people realize that "the one they had rejected is the real one…then the mourning process will take place, but then the joy will take precedence over that because it’s going to be much bigger than the sorrow they will experience."

Troup refuses to go even this far. Raised in an evangelical Christian household in Kentucky, Troup often heard her father refer to Israel as "God’s hour hand and Jerusalem as His minute hand in the countdown of the ages." She, like Yoder and other dispensationalists, is utterly confident that Jewish settlement in Israel is part of God’s plan and a harbinger of apocalypse, but swears off any knowledge of the details.

"We have a tendency to think we know what God’s end time plan is," Troup writes by e-mail. "When in reality we do not know how He is going to unveil and play out His plan in the world of mankind." Her own attitude is more "wait and see."

Other evangelicals are not so reticent. The dispensationalist author Tim LaHaye’s wildly popular Left Behind series, a touchstone of popular eschatology, presents a gory picture of the End Times drawn from scripture. LaHaye catalogues the gruesome details of the Tribulation, when committed Christians around the world are "raptured" up to the heavens and non-believers are left on earth to face stinging hordes of winged beasts, avenging angels, and the bloodthirsty minions of Satan.

And while the likes of Troup and Yoder may not subscribe to LaHaye’s pulp eschatology, they are self-professed biblical literalists. Jews need only scan the pages of Revelation to see what awaits them should they choose not to accept Jesus Christ as their messiah: scourging of the flesh by scorpion-tailed locusts, death by the sword, and eternal torment in a lake of fire.

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Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved.