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As Israel continues its assault on Gaza, enables settler violence in the West Bank, and launches strikes on Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen, American conservatives are taking special note of one form of Israeli belligerence: attacks on Christians in the Holy Land.
An Israeli tank last week shelled the only Catholic church in Gaza, killing three and gravely wounding several. Over in the West Bank, settlers in recent weeks have intensified their attacks on Christian communities, including in the town of Taybeh, where they set cars aflame and erected a sign that read “there is no future for you here,” among other indignities.
Many American Christians, including high-profile MAGA influencers, have had enough—jeopardizing one of Israel’s most vital bases of Western support.
The former congressman Matt Gaetz, host of a popular show on One America News, has used the platform to put Israel on blast. In one segment this week, Gaetz highlighted the harassment of Christians by Israelis, including the desecration of holy sites. The Times of Israel last week noted other criticisms of Israel that Gaetz has leveled, depicting them as “a sign of a change in right-wing public opinion in the US surrounding Israel’s actions against Palestinians.”
The Times was right to see Gaetz’s escalating rhetoric as part of a broader shift. The podcaster Michael Knowles of the Daily Wire said last week that his support for the Jewish state was waning, and he questioned Israel’s claim that the recent church attack in Gaza was an accident. “I’ve been broadly supportive of the state of Israel, not really as an ideological matter, but as a matter of prudence, and you’re losing me, you’re losing me,” said Knowles, a devout Catholic.
Even the U.S. ambassador to Israel and former Baptist minister Mike Huckabee—“as strong a supporter of the state of Israel as there is,” Knowles observed—has lambasted Israeli mistreatment of Christians.
After the settler rampage in Taybeh, Huckabee toured the Christian Palestinian town and spoke with community leaders, who told him of an arson attack two weeks ago that imperiled a historic church in the area. The ambassador seemed to take their message to heart. “Desecrating a church, mosque or synagogue is a crime against humanity & God,” Huckabee wrote on X Saturday.
In another post days earlier, Huckabee reacted to brutal murders outside the West Bank village Sinjil, where settlers beat to death two Palestinians, including an American citizen who had been visiting family and friends in the occupied territory. “There must be accountability for this criminal and terrorist act,” Huckabee wrote.
The ambassador has directed his ire not only against Israeli settlers but also Israeli officials. In a letter to the interior minister, Huckabee warned, citing Israel’s systematic denial of visas for evangelical missions, that he could declare the Jewish state no longer welcomes Christians. He even threatened to order reciprocal measures targeting Israelis travelling to America.
Israel can’t afford to lose the ambassador. Following Huckabee’s pushback, the visa dispute was swiftly resolved, meaning American Christians can resume their Holy Land tours.
And soon, many MAGA influencers will get the chance to see the land where Jesus walked. “The Israeli Foreign Ministry will fund a tour of Israel for U.S. social media influencers affiliated with the Make America Great Again and America First brands of conservatism,” reported Haaretz, an Israeli newspaper, on Sunday.
It’s no surprise that the Israeli government sees a growing need to launch a new influence campaign. Pro-Israel voices, including Jonathan Greenblatt of the Anti-Defamation League, have expressed alarm about the precipitous decline in support for Israel around the world, including in America. The purpose of the new initiative, Haaretz noted, will be to encourage MAGA influencers “to disseminate messaging that aligns with the Israeli government’s policy.”
The PR strategy isn’t new. Israel has long courted America’s Christian conservatives, hosting tours of cherished Biblical sites. Since at least the premiership of Menachem Begin in the 1970s, the Israeli government has viewed American evangelicals as a strategic asset and sought to keep them onside. America’s pro-Israel lobbying groups have followed suit, cultivating relationships with evangelical leaders.
Historically, Israeli outreach has paid off, helping evangelicals and American conservatives broadly become perhaps the most vocal non-Jewish supporters of Israel in the Western world. But Israel’s “Hasbara”—public diplomacy intended to polish its image abroad—may be losing force.
Scholars at Northeastern University last year found a stark generational gap in Americans’ support for the Jewish state. A Pew Research survey published this April corroborated that research, finding that a slim majority of U.S. adults express an unfavorable opinion of Israel, with Americans under 50 markedly less supportive of the country than Baby Boomers. Both studies noted that the generational divide showed up in both parties.
During the first Trump administration, the Washington Post was already reporting that younger Republicans, including evangelicals, were more wary of Israel than their older counterparts.
You don’t need to pore over polling crosstabs to detect the change in opinion. Earlier this month, the podcaster and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson delivered a rousing speech to an audience of young, largely Christian conservatives. When Carlson declared that Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted sex offender and disgraced financier, had been an Israeli intelligence asset, the crowd applauded.
Some Protestant Gen-Xers and Millennials have continued defending Israel, but they are meeting increasingly fierce pushback. A Twitterstorm erupted over the weekend after Joel Berry, managing editor of the Babylon Bee and a pro-Israel Protestant, seemed to rationalize the church attack in Gaza. “This won’t be easy for people to hear, but there are only about 200 professed Catholics still living in Gaza and they all support Hamas,” Berry wrote. Other Christians pounced, and the post was promptly “ratioed,” receiving more comments than likes.
While the ensuing clash seemed to pit Catholics against Protestants, not all of Berry’s critics were members of the Roman church. “Joel’s takes on this have been horrific but they are his own ideology, please do not attribute his beliefs to evangelicals,” wrote Auron MacIntyre of the Blaze. “As an evangelical I don’t think Israel gets a blank check to destroy Catholic churches or kill their parishioners.”
Of course, social media doesn’t always reflect public opinion in meatspace, and right-wingers on X tend to be more Israel-critical than normie conservatives in the suburbs. But harsh criticisms of Israel by both Huckabee and another Mideast envoy, America’s Ambassador to Syria Thomas Barrack, show that the recent backlash hasn’t been the exclusive purview of online influencers.
White House officials who view the region from afar have also lost patience. “Bibi acted like a madman. He bombs everything all the time,” one official told Axios, using Netanyahu’s nickname. According to a second White House official, President Donald Trump called Netanyahu after the shelling of Gaza’s only Catholic church to demand an explanation.
As cracks emerge on the American right over Israeli militarism and mistreatment of Christians, the Jewish state faces a harrowing situation, one that is largely of Netanyahu’s making.
Ever since the Barack Obama years, Netanyahu has reacted to America’s intensifying polarization by siding with the red team—a tactic that many Israelis have criticized for alienating Democrats. Throughout the Gaza war, which Netanyahu has treated as a chance to hold onto power, the GOP has remained a vital partner of the Jewish state amid a rapid decline in its popularity worldwide. But even here, the trend lines don’t look good for Israel.
Over the next few years and decades, as the old Republican guard gives way to younger MAGA leaders, America’s “greatest ally” may find itself friendless on the world stage. If that day comes, Israelis will look back on Netanyahu not as “Mr. Security,” as he now is known, but as the prime minister who led Israel into a perilous geopolitical predicament.