At Christian Zionist gathering in Texas, Trump is God’s Cyrus, and Bill Maher is ‘stupidest Jew in Hollywood’
Judith Norman on May 17, 2019
Michele Bachmann at the Jerusalem Prayer Breakfast, Jerusalem, 2018. (Photo: Jerusalem Prayer Breakfast)
The Democratic-leaning American Jewish community is becoming increasingly queasy about a U.S.-Israel relationship in the form of a Trump/Netanyahu alliance. The U.S. is now unabashedly aligned with the far-right, rabidly militaristic, anti-democratic elements in the Israeli government (as opposed to the more acceptable, Obama-style tut-tutting, which purported to distance itself from the more embarrassing Israeli atrocities). The American Jewish community was apparently only willing to tolerate fascism at a distance, where orientalist tropes enabled the human rights violations to be justified in the “rough neighborhood” of the Middle East. But Donald Trump has brought home what that looks like domestically, and the American Jewish community can no longer fail to notice who they are in bed with.
Israel’s plan B for shoring up U.S. support is to cultivate a much more natural alliance with the white Christian evangelical Zionist community, who don’t need to be mollified with the fantasy of an eventual two-state solution. San Antonio, Texas, is home to the traditional bastion of white Christian Zionism, Rev. John Hagee’s Cornerstone Church, which runs the organization Christians United for Israel. But new initiatives are appearing.
When the Jerusalem Prayer Breakfast, a self-described “prayer movement” announced it would be coming to San Antonio, April 11 to 12, several members of the local chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace decided to attend. The
annual event in Jerusalem is hosted by the Israeli government and brings hundreds of evangelicals to the Holy Land. It was founded by the
Israeli Knesset in 2017 and spearheaded by Israeli member of Knesset Robert Ilatov with former Congresswoman Michele Bachmann. The sister
event in Texas that we attended is also co-chaired by Ilatov and Bachmann, and was hosted by
the Justice Foundation, a conservative legal action group that files cases aimed at limiting access to abortion and expanding Christian prayer in Texas public schools.
A Facebook page for the event was made by a digital marketing consultant for the Trump 2016 campaign, Adam W. Schindler. It was a merger of the conservative to reaching-far-right end of political life in both Israel and the U.S. We wanted to learn what we could about the group itself, and about Christian Zionism as it continues to gain political traction.
Robert Ilatov, a member of the Israeli Knesset with a far right party.
At the “Jerusalem Prayer Breakfast Texas” we heard a lot of familiar themes from the Christian Zionist playbook at the founders dinner: the use of the Bible as a roadmap for a political agenda.
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by Zippyjuan
Connect With Us