"Israel, you are not alone," was the message broadcast on one of the giant screens in Times Square, New York, in November 2023, in a video produced by Christians United for Israel. Demonstrations, fund-raising, equipment donations, sending volunteers there to help rebuild the affected kibbutzim: This powerful organization of evangelical Christians, which boasts ten million members, has been stepping up its support for Israel since the Hamas massacres, along with others. This phenomenon is not restricted to the US, either, as was recently seen in Brazil, where a vast pro-Israel demonstration that included many evangelicals was held on February 25.
How can such fervor be explained? "It's an act of faith. Many evangelicals support Israel just as they oppose the right to abortion: It's perceived as being in keeping with God's will," explained political scientist Célia Belin, the author of Jésus est juif en Amérique: Droite évangélique et lobbies chrétiens pro-Israël ("Jesus is Jewish in America: Evangelical right wing and pro-Israel Christian lobbies").
This belief is based in part on a literalist reading of certain passages in the Bible, starting with Genesis 12:3, where God tells Abraham: "I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you." According to many evangelicals, this passage would today apply to all Jews and to the State of Israel, which are perceived to be the heirs of the patriarch's descendants. "There's this idea that the divine promises made to the Jewish people are for all eternity. States that, like the US, support Israel will enjoy prosperity, while those that oppose it will suffer a fate as dramatic as that of Nazi Germany," said Belin. "There is confusion between Medinat Yisrael, the State of Israel, and Eretz Israel, the sacred land of the Jewish people," added historian Stéphanie Laithier.
Eschatological vision
Other books of the Bible have been updated by evangelical theorists, such as the Book of Jeremiah, which was composed during the Jewish people's exile in Babylon, around the 6th century BCE. A contemporary Zionist interpretation has been applied to passages such as this one: "I myself will gather the remnant of my flock out of all the countries where I have driven them and will bring them back to their pasture" (Jeremiah 23:3). According to such a reading, the divine promise of the complete return of the Jews "to their land" would still hold. John Hagee, an 83-year-old Texan pastor, even declared on American television in 2008 that God had "sent Adolf Hitler to help Jews reach the promised land."
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