Christians, Conservatives and Israel

Now more than ever we need some clear thinking on this:

It used to be that secular leftists were the main ones hating on Israel and the Jews, demonising and denigrating them at every turn. But sadly now some folks calling themselves conservatives and Christians have been hopping aboard this ugly bandwagon.

Yes, the issues are quite detailed and there can be some room to move. In a piece I wrote 15 years ago, I said this in part:

At the very least, it must be said that these political and geo-political matters are complex and not easily sorted out. Indeed, the entire Middle East quandary is one involving numerous difficult layers, and it seems that no mere human can readily untangle the mess that is the Middle East.

 

So that is one set of questions, and Christians can and do differ on many issues here. Some always support Israel, some always support the enemies of Israel, some see truth and justice – as well as lies and injustice – on all sides of the conflict; some have no clue where they stand; and some would rather not even think about all this at all!

 

As should be clear by now to readers of this site, I tend to side with Israel on a number of occasions. It is far from perfect and makes many mistakes. But unlike almost every other nation in the world, it is fighting for its very existence. It is surrounded by enemies which have vowed to drive Israel into the sea, and which claim Israel has no right to exist.

 

Indeed, Israel has many enemies, ranging from the secular left, to the entire Islamic world, to most of the mainstream media. I find it hard to get fair and even-handed commentary on Israel from most of the MSM, so I often have to rely on the alternative media for more balanced treatments.

 

The other set of questions are equally complex, multi-faceted, and far from unanimously agreed upon by Christians. In fact, there are numerous positions believers have held on a number of theological and biblical aspects, not least of which are the many options involved concerning biblical prophecy and the end-times. https://billmuehlenberg.com/2010/06/03/christians-and-israel/ 

But with the rise of the alt-right and increased antisemitism, even from those claiming to be Christians, I am getting even more concerned about the way things are heading. I really tire of these folks recklessly claiming that Israel is the bad guy here, is committing genocide in Gaza, and is full of war criminals, and so on.

The truth is, Hamas absolutely thrives on civilian deaths for all the PR gains to be had. That is the only thing that keeps them going. Brainless Western media outlets will lap it up. Never mind that these lives could have been saved if Hamas were booted out of Gaza, and the people there were allowed to rule themselves.

Just as there were plenty of Western “Christians” singing the praises of godless communism and the USSR during the Cold War, so too today there are plenty of folks who pretend to be Christians promoting ‘Palestine’ and Hamas while condemning Israel and the West. It is no different – too many are utterly blind and deceived dupes.

Thus I have been writing quite a lot on these matters of late. But I am not alone in these concerns. Many others have been also raising their voices, worried about how Western conservatives and Christians seem so very eager to lap up all the lies and misinformation being said about Israel and the conflict in Gaza.

One of them is pastor Daniel Darling, an Assistant Professor of Faith and Culture at Texas Baptist College. He just wrote a piece called “Conservatives Shouldn’t Believe the Lies Out of Gaza” which is very good indeed. Here are parts of it:

The situation in Gaza is heartbreaking. There is significant food insecurity and humanitarian needs. But while the world would have you believe that it’s completely the fault of Israel, the truth is that much, if not all, the fault lies with the controlling government of Gaza: Hamas. Lest you forget, Hamas is a bloodthirsty terrorist organization whose sole desire is the destruction of Jewish people everywhere. Financed by Iran, they killed the most Jewish people in a single day since the Holocaust. This is the organization whose tales many Western media outlets are merely repeating. This is the organization that just released a video of an Oct 7th hostage, emaciated and digging his own grave in one of their terror tunnels. 

 

What’s more, Israel, while fighting a terrorist organization bent in its destruction, is also expected to feed them. Yet Israel is doing this, airlifting food and creating an entire organization, Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, funded jointly with the United States. GHF director Rev. Johnnie Moore explained recently on Fox News Sunday that the org, while fighting media lies and Hamas threats, has served over 100 million meals. This a new attempt to feed Gazans as the primary method of humanitarian assistance, the UN World Food program, distributed by The United Nations Relief and Work Agency (UNWRA). UNWRA has been criticized by US and Israeli leaders for its deep ties to Hamas, including 19 employees who participated in the October 7th attacks. This UN method is highly ineffective, with most of its aid stolen by Hamas and resold for billions of dollars. Yet, the United Nations, rather than working to improve its model and stop using Hamas as a distribution conduit, attacks and slanders the new Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. GHF has offered to work with the UN to get people fed, but is routinely rebuffed. 

His closing words are these:

But it’s not merely the left that has abandoned Israel. While President Trump and Republican leaders have maintained steadfastly in support, loud voices on the Right are starting to echo their left-wing counterparts. Tucker Carlson has platformed many of the most dishonest anti-Israel voices and has repeated some of the debunked same media narratives around genocide. U.S. Representative Margorie Taylor Green has issued similarly dishonest bromides. And Joe Rogan, Theo Vonn and others have articulated the anti-Israel position to their large audiences. Thankfully a significant majority of Republicans support Israel, with the strongest support coming from evangelical Christians. But there are signs of this waning, especially among younger conservative evangelicals, many of whom imbibe the content from these anti-Israel influencers. 

 

The situation in Gaza is terrible. War in the Middle East is complex. But while the peace process is complicate, the moral calculus is not. You are either with the genocidal terrorist organizations or with the Jewish people who, in every generation, face threats of ostracization, marginalization, and death. The head of Hamas even admitted this, when he said that, in his view, the heinous acts of Oct 7th have achieved their goal: a world caving to their whims and opposing Israel. 

 

Faithful Christians should care deeply about the plight of the Palestinian people, many of whom are our brothers and sisters in Christ. We should not let that concern keep us from seeing the truth about Gaza. Israel, like any other nation in human history defending its right to survive, is not perfect in its conduct of this war. Yet we must admit that many of the critiques are falsehoods, ugly antisemitism cloaked as empathy. 

 

We should pray for this war to end. We should pray for the destruction of Hamas. We should pray for the survival of Israel. And we should pray for Jews and Palestinians to live in peace. https://allisraelnews.com/blog/conservatives-shouldnt-believe-the-lies-out-of-gaza  

Absolutely. If all the critics and haters of Israel and the Jews spent as much TIME praying for them as they are demonising them, we would be getting much better outcomes here. As I said 15 years ago, the modern secular state of Israel is far from perfect and can often get things wrong.

But being the sole genuine pluralistic and democratic nation in the region, it at least has self-correcting features. These include various players that can and do differ, be they the leaders, or government organisations, or opposition parties, or even Mossad, the IDF, and so on. There is plenty of debate and quarrelling here among the various groups. That alone makes Israel a much superior nation morally and politically speaking than most of its neighbours.

We expect Christians to know better. But even conservatives need some mental and moral clarity here. James Allan just wrote this:

As the great Douglas Murray often says, ‘starting a war has consequences’. Similarly, parking your fighters in schools, hospitals, mosques – which even the Nazis didn’t make a habit of doing – also has consequences. So does gleefully raping babies (and filming and bragging about it online, something again absent from even the Nazi playbook). So just what is it that we expect of an Israel under constant attack and surrounded by countries and peoples who simply want to see it and them obliterated? To just give up? To speed things up and kill themselves? Leave aside the trite, obfuscating abstractions and why don’t all you ‘Free Palestine’ types tell us in specific terms what Israel should do. And how what you suggest is compatible with its continued existence. I’ll be honest. I admire the fighting spirit and patriotism of Israelis. I admire their resolve in being the only island of liberal democracy in a surrounding sea of authoritarian, illiberal theocracies and military juntas. (Quick question: would you rather be an Arab in Israel or a Jew in Gaza/Palestine/Syria/Iran?) https://www.spectator.com.au/2025/08/grave-mistake/

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