Transcription
Thank you, Dagmar. Good afternoon, everybody. Thank you again for joining us here today. My name is Mohammed Mohammed. I'm the executive director here at the Jerusalem Fund and Palestine Center. It's always a pleasure to have you here, and it's a pleasure to have everybody watching online.
As always, please, if you could silence your cell phones so we could avoid any interruptions. Before we get started, before I introduce our distinguished speaker, I just wanted to point your attention. You might have seen some of these flyers on your chairs. Next week, on Friday, November 2nd, the Jerusalem Fund here is hosting a conference for the Holy Land Christian Economic Foundation, which is co-sponsored with the Organization of Islamic Cooperation. And it's going to be a great event. There are many speakers, many great speakers that are going to be attending, and there is a $15 registration fee. But for everybody here today, we're waiving that. So if you're interested, we would love to have you here. It's Friday and Saturday. So you'll see the registration forms on your chairs. If you're interested, please come out and join us. Where's if we add back there is Carol Monica Burnett. If you have any questions about that conference, she'll be more than happy to help you. And then please give the registration forms to her, and we would love to have you here, and we hope to see you here. Yep, and you can see the program is one of them is the program, so you could see the speakers. And again, it would be great to have you here.
So, of course, it's an honor to introduce today our distinguished speaker, the Reverend Dr. Stephen Sizer, who'll be giving a talk today titled "The Historical Roots of Christian Zionism, Its Theological Basis, and Political Agenda." Today, Dr. Sizer will discuss how the movement of Christian Zionism preceded Jewish Zionism by at least 50 years and facilitated the establishment of the State of Israel. His presentation will explore how Christian Zionism has solidified the neo-colonial political agenda of Jewish Zionism since that time. With around 100 million devotees, it is, he argues, both the dominant and most destructive expression of Zionism today.
So I just wanted to give a little bit of background and information about Dr. Sizer. I think it's impossible to give justice to Dr. Sizer's qualifications and good works without taking up half of the time here today. I consider him one of the top faith-based advocates in solidarity with Palestinian rights anywhere in the world. He's also a leading expert on Christian Zionism, which is the subject of his books, numerous articles, academic work, and speeches. Dr. Sizer is the founder and director of Peacemaker Trust, a registered charity in the UK, which is dedicated to peacemaking, especially where minorities are persecuted, where justice is denied, human rights are suppressed, or reconciliation is needed. Dr. Sizer was ordained in the Church of England in 1983. He was appointed the Vicar of Virginia Waters, Surrey, in 1997, where he served for 20 years until 2017. For over 25 years, he was a trustee of Biblical Europe International Bible Society and served as a trustee, director, and committee member of Friends of Sabeel UK, Livingstone, also Livingstone's of the Holy Land Trust, Christ at the Checkpoint conferences, and the Balfour Project. An indication of Dr. Sizer's effectiveness as an advocate for justice is how severely he has been maligned by supporters of and apologists for Israeli apartheid, and he has paid a price for that. So we thank you for all of your work. Thank you very much. And please join me in giving a very warm welcome to Dr. Sizer.
It's a real delight to be with you today. Thank you for coming. As Mohamed said, we're going to be looking at the historical roots, theological basis, and political consequences or political agenda of Christian Zionism. And I'm going to be major on the political agenda because I think that's what we are going to be most concerned about. But I'd like to give you a little bit of an introduction to its origins and the basis of its beliefs.
The question is, why is there such a close relationship between the United States and Israel? Why is the United States the target of so much criticism, has put it mildly, in much of the Middle East and the wider world? Why is the United States seen as, in many ways, the enemy of Islam? Well, the Arab-Israeli conflict has been the longest-running dispute in the hands of the United Nations. It's been the most frequently debated UN issue. About 60% of UN resolutions have had something to do with Israel or its interests. It's the most pervasive religious conflict in the world. It brings Jews, Christians, Muslims, Druze in conflict with each other and has done so for decades. It is the most dangerous military conflict. We have chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons loose in Israel-Palestine today. And it's the most controversial media story. You don't need me to convince you that. And it's being perpetuated by misguided Christians, and that's why we're here.
Give you a definition. And there are a number we could do, but this is a helpful one from Professor John Wagner in his book "Anxious for Armageddon." He says that Christian Zionism is a movement within Protestant Christianity that views the modern State of Israel as the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy that's deserving our unconditional economic, moral, political, and theological support.
Well, where does this movement come from? The roots of Zionism lie in the Puritan and the Puritan movement and the consequences of the Reformation. Puritan views of the world included the conviction that the Jewish people had a place in God's purposes, that they would come to faith in Jesus and be returned to the land of Palestine as a Christian nation. People like Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield were leading exponents of this belief that the gospel would triumph against evil in the world, and that God's blessings of peace and prosperity were related to the conversion of Israel prior to the return of Christ.
In the beginning of the 19th century, the first proto-Christian Zionist movement was formed. We would call it Restorationism. It was called the London Jew Society, founded in 1808 with the purpose of relieving the suffering of Jewish people, particularly in London, in East London, hence the London Jew Society. But alongside that was the conviction that it was the destiny of the church to identify the Jewish community around the world and assist their return to the land. And so Joseph Wolfe was one of the early missionaries of the London Jew Society, and he traveled extensively in Asia searching for the Lost Tribes of Israel. He was a little eccentric, but you may like to explore that further. But alongside that, we have leading evangelicals in Britain, people like Charles Simeon, convinced that the Jewish people would be restored to the land, but in union with the church, meaning one people of God made up of Jews and Gentiles. This was the dominant view within evangelicalism in the early 19th century.
Now, several things happened that knocked that aspiration. And the first was the rise of Napoleon and the growth of the French Empire right across Europe, from Egypt up to Russia, blockading the British seaports and calling himself the King of Kings. He was seen as an Antichrist figure. But in 1799, Napoleon was the first world ruler in 2,000 years to promise the Jews a homeland. Napoleon saw the return of the Jews to the land as of strategic significance in his own attempt to control the world, and he thought that a compliant Jewish community back in the land would assist his expansionist plans for the world. Now, Napoleon was unable to deliver, but his proclamation became the barometer to the extent to which the European atmosphere was charged with messianic expectations. And where Napoleon failed, Britain succeeded. And the movement really began to take hold through a group of Christian politicians and church leaders called the Albury Circle. They met in Albury in Surrey in the home of, I've had a momentary senior moment, Henry Drummond. He was a High Sheriff of Surrey, he was an MP, and he called together a group of politicians and senior church leaders to speculate about what was going to happen. Clearly, Napoleon had ruffled the feathers of politicians in Britain and other countries, and this group of church leaders and political leaders were convinced that Britain had a manifest destiny that included controlling the Middle East and returning the Jews to Palestine in the belief that they would assist Britain in its colonial endeavors. And out of that group, we find some notable individuals. John Nelson Darby was the founder of the Brethren, and in his particular theological framework, he saw the church and Israel as separate peoples. He believed that the Jewish people back in the land would become God's earthly people, and that the church would be raptured to heaven as God's heavenly people. And so he took promises from the Hebrew Scriptures and applied them to the Jews. Passages that related to the church were seen as separate. Indeed, Darby argued that the church was a parenthesis to God's continuing purposes for Israel.
Now, one of the politicians who took these views seriously was Lord Shaftesbury. Lord Shaftesbury founded a Palestine Exploration Fund, which was used by British army officers to map Palestine in preparation for the return of the Jews to the land. He helped to plant a bishop, an Anglican bishop, in Jerusalem. It had to be Jewish, in the belief that he would be the bishop of the church among the Jews when they were restored to the land as good Anglicans. Now, Shaftesbury, forgive me for my British satire, Shaftesbury was very influential in furthering this cause. In 1839, 1840, he was lobbying extensively among other senior British political figures for the return of the Jews to Palestine because it, for the expedient reason that it furthered and assisted Britain in its colonial plans for the Middle East. And when Lord Palmerston married Shaftesbury's widowed mother-in-law, he saw this as a providential sign that he had access to Lord Palmerston. He said he's been chosen by God to be an instrument for good to his ancient people, to do homage to their inheritance and to recognize their rights without believing their destiny. Certainly, Shaftesbury thought he knew what that destiny was. And they took out, he took out page adverts in the London Times in 1840 calling for the restoration of the Jews and calling upon European leaders to assist in this endeavor. Indeed, Theodore Herzl's phrase, "a land without a people for a people without a land," was actually coined by Shaftesbury 50 years earlier when he naively said, "a country without a nation for a nation without a country."
And at the first World Zionist Congress in Basel in 1897, there were three Christian leaders who were representative of the fledgling Christian Zionist movement. And one of them was William Hechler. He was the Anglican chaplain at the Embassy in Vienna, clearly a strategic location. And he wrote "The Restoration of the Jews to Palestine" two years before Herzl's "The Jewish State." And in Herzl's own diary, he concedes the assistance and the influence William Hechler had upon his own ideas. In his diary for 1896, March 10th, he says, "The Reverend William Hechler, a chaplain of the English Embassy, came to see me. A sympathetic, gentle fellow with a long gray beard of a prophet. He's enthusiastic about my solution for the Jewish Question. He also can visit my movement, a prophetic turning point which he had foretold two years before." Ashley was convinced the Jews would go back to the land in 1897 based on his eccentric reading of Daniel and other books of the Old Testament. But this is the key point I want to make. Herzl admits that William Hechler said, "We Christians have prepared the ground for you." Ashley said triumphantly, "I take him as a naive visionary. He gives me excellent advice, full of unmistakable genuine goodwill. He is at once clever and mystical, cunning and naive, everything you look for in a good Anglican priest." Now, Ashley kept his word because Hechler facilitated opportunities for Herzl and his colleagues to have access to the Grand Duke of Baden, a German Kaiser, William, and the British political establishment. And it was through that that Herzl, and along with Chaim Weizmann, were introduced to leading British politicians. So that when the Balfour Declaration was published in October 1917, the reality was that Balfour had actually asked the Zionist movement to prepare the draft, and the draft was prepared in July 1917. Balfour was a disciple of this movement. He was convinced that it was Britain's destiny to return the Jews to Palestine. And you can see the difference between the two versions. Britain, Balfour amended the Jewish draft because he regarded Britain as having the prerogative. So the distinctive difference was that Britain was promising the Jewish people "a home in Palestine," not "Palestine as the home." And there's a significant difference between the definite article and the absence thereof. And you'll see in the Zionist version, they felt that it was the responsibility of Britain to achieve what they were expecting.
Well, Britain did not deliver on that promise. And the reason for that is because Britain had another agenda. Britain had agreed with the French, even before the end of the First World War, that they were going to carve up the Middle East between their two empires. And this is actually one of the most honest statements by a British politician ever, but it was in a letter, so it was never made public until somewhat later. But this is what he said in a letter to Lord Curzon: "For in Palestine, we do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of that country. That four great powers are committed to Zionism, and Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long traditions, in present needs, in future hopes of far profound import than the desires or prejudices of the present inhabitants of that ancient land." And then he said this: "So far as Palestine is concerned, the powers have made no statement of fact which has not admittedly wrong, and no declaration of policy which, at least in the letter, they haven't always intended to violate." Okay, duplicity. And that's because we'd agreed with the French we were going to split the Middle East between our two empires. We needed the Zionists to help us achieve an end to the First World War. Chaim Weizmann was a chemist at Manchester University. David Lloyd George said he was Weizmann's proselyte. "He converted me to Zionism." Weizmann was working on synthetic TNT, which he gave to Britain to help defeat the Germans, and Zionism was the payback for that.
But when Britain was unable to fulfill the aspirations of the Zionists, as well as maintain their promise to the Arabs that their rights would be respected, the Peel Plan was Britain's attempt at an exit strategy, giving three parts of Palestine to the Jews and three parts to the Arabs. The Arabs had been given half of what they already had; they rejected it. The Jews, being offered half of what they didn't have, accepted it. And as they say, the rest was history.
I'm not going to go into a lot more detail about the history, but I want to bring us up to date. And acknowledge that in 1976, in the election of Jimmy Carter, we have the first born-again president, explicitly so, convinced that the return of the Jews to the land was the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy. A year later, Menachem Begin was elected, and you have this coalition emerging between the Christian Right and the Zionist Right, brokered by Jerry Falwell. For 50 years, between 1967 and 2017, he becomes the leading advocate within the Christian community on behalf of Israel, promising to mobilize 70 million conservative Christians and 200,000 church leaders for Israel. When Ronald Reagan was elected, when Carter vacillated over the settlement program, I think he used the word Armageddon about eight times in his campaign speeches. He was convinced the end of the world was coming, and that what was happening in his lifetime was the fulfillment of prophecy. George Bush Jr. had very similar convictions. The guy was telling him what to do, and he was convinced that he would be the one to bring about a resolution of the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis. But each of them consistently have always taken the Zionist line. Even Barack Obama, on his first day in office, he attended an AIPAC meeting to reassure the Israel lobby that Israel's security was sacrosanct. And to bring it up to date, your present president, seen by evangelicals as their dream president, reuniting Israel and America. Jerry Falwell last week said, to try and explain his commitment to the president's second service, "When Christians need to stop electing nice guys. They might make great Christian leaders, but the US needs street fighters like real Donald Trump at every level of government because the liberal fascist domes are playing for keeps, and many Republican leaders are a bunch of wimps." This is a Christian leader talking about, rather disrespectfully, of your politicians.
Now, the Pew Forum for Religion says that we're dealing with 20 to 40 million active members. My point is really here that Zionism is predominantly a Christian political movement, not a Jewish one. I would argue that nine out of ten Zionists today are Christians. The Unity Coalition for Israel, I'm still have 40 million active members. And John Hagee has access to over 19 million Christian Americans on a weekly basis. The Pew Forum for Religion found that 25% of American Christians believe it's their responsibility to support Israel. And when you look at white evangelicals, it's over 60%. Now, there are three different strands. There are the Messianic Christian Zionists, whose primary objective, as it was for Charles Simeon and the early Restorationists, is to assist the sharing of the good news of Jesus with Jewish people, so hence Jews for Jesus. But on their own website, they talk about signing the Zionists. And then we have the problematic ones, I would call them the apocalyptic Christian Zionists. They're the ones that sell the books, and they have a very apocalyptic and destructive view of the future. And then we have the pragmatic political Zionists, Christian Zionists who operate here on the Hill among your politicians and seek to lobby on behalf of Israel. So there are at least three different strands of this movement. It is complex, it is volatile, and I'm going to be majoring on those I regard as the most influential.
And we get to their political agenda, very briefly. Their theological basis is based on a very literalistic view of the Bible. Every reference in the Bible to Israel has a literal fulfillment. And if it has not yet been fulfilled, then it will be fulfilled. Hence, the promises relating to the extent of the land and the return of the Jews to the land. Their exclusive claim to Jerusalem and the Temple are applied to today, almost as if the coming of Jesus was irrelevant, because the promises apply because they have not yet been fulfilled. On the basis of that, the Jews are regarded as God's chosen people. And when either has a subtle dual covenant theology that says God has two chosen peoples, Israel and the church, and some parts of the Bible or later the Jews, some perhaps relate to the church. Or here in the States, dispensationalism argues that the church will disappear, will go to heaven, and the Jewish people will be God's chosen people on earth through the millennium and on into the future. In fact, Darby argued that never the twain shall meet in eternity, two eternal peoples with a different destiny. Jerusalem, their eternal capital, the Temple, convinced it's going to be rebuilt. There's a strong antipathy theologically toward Arabs and toward Islam, and this conviction that there will be a final battle, an apocalyptic war in the future, in the imminent future, in which God will obviously be on the side of the church and Israel.
Now, we're going to unpack that in my third part of this morning's presentation, which looks at their political agenda. And I want to begin by looking at Christian Zionists from a Jewish perspective. And here's a good quote from 2012 from Benjamin Netanyahu. He said this: "I don't believe that the Jewish state and modern Zionism would have been possible without Christian Zionism. We value our friends and we never forget them, and we think that you have helped establish here a powerful memorial to our friendship and our common ideals." And I think this is the reason why, as Israel's friends are so antagonistic toward those who challenge their agenda, because they realize they depend heavily on the Christian Zionist lobby.
Two influential politicians, and to pay the bills, John Hagee founded Christians United for Israel. And he has taken over from Jerry Falwell. He's the pastor of Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas, 20,000 members on a weekly basis, and as I said, access to 90 million or more Christian Americans on a weekly basis for radio and TV. He said this recently: "The sleeping giant of Christian Zionism was awakened. There are 50 million Christians standing up and applauding Israel. Think of our future together. 50 million evangelicals joining in common cause with five million Jewish people in America on behalf of Israel. It's a match made in heaven."
What is their political agenda? Well, it follows closely their theology, and it begins here in Washington with a strong emphasis on lobbying your senators and congressmen and the White House and in the State Department. These are some of the organizations that are active here on the Hill: Christian Friends of Israel, International Christian Embassy, Bridges for Peace, Jerusalem Prayer Team, Christians United for Israel. Over 200 different Christian Zionist organizations were founded since 1980. There is a plethora of these organizations, and they are zealous and diligent in lobbying on behalf of Israel.
Now, I know that over the last 20 or 30 years, there have been US presidents who challenged the lobby. George Bush Sr. and he came under such attack. He said this, and remember, this is the President of the United States. He said, "There are a thousand lobbyists up on the Hill today lobbying Congress for loan guarantees for Israel, and I am one lonely little guy down here asking Congress to delay the consideration of loan guarantees for 120 days." He was just asking for a freeze for three months, but he felt, he may be exaggerating, but he certainly felt isolated. And I suspect every single president you've had will feel the same. These are just a couple of examples. You're well very familiar with the Washington Report, but I commend "The Israel Lobby" if you want to know more about their activities here in influencing US foreign policy.
The second element of their strategy, out of the conviction that the Jews are God's chosen people, is that international Christian organizations are active in assisting Jewish people from Russia and Eastern Europe and other parts of the world, Africa, to return, as they see it, make Aliyah to Israel. And the International Christian Embassy, for example, has funded over 50,000 Jews from Russia to make Aliyah and to return to Israel. And the process they go through is that they'll visit remote regions of the former Soviet Union. They'll identify Jewish communities. They will show them idyllic videos of life in Israel. They will help them identify themselves as Jews, help them get the documents they need. They will then transport them, feed them, clothe them, ship them, and help them settle back, as they see it, in the occupied territories and the settlements. And the International Christian Embassy is just one of a number of organizations that are active in doing this. Ebenex, founded in 1991, is majoring on work in the Ukraine. They work in 13 countries and they are transporting over a thousand Jews on a monthly basis back to Israel.
Third element of their strategy is that they are active in supporting the illegal Jewish settlements. The entity key organization in this regard is Christian Friends of Israeli Communities. Their use of language, "Israeli communities," was founded in 1996, and they have been active initially in encouraging churches to adopt settlements. And although you may think that's a bit eccentric, if your church has got 20,000 members and you're adopting a settlement of a hundred members, you can see where the power lies, the influence, and the money, and the prayers, and the visits. Here's another example of a tour you can go on in March if you wish with Christian Friends of Israeli Communities and encounter and meet with the settlers. They're also active in raising money for the settlements. You're invited to join Gideon's Army, one of their initiatives, for example, was providing a bulletproof bus for the Efrat settlement to help ship their settlers in and out of the settlement. They raised £150,000 for an armor-plated bus. It's just one example. You can give to this organization and help them plant trees in the settlements. Why? I don't know, because there are plenty of trees they uproot from the Palestinian communities. And you can buy extra virgin olive oil from the settlements and help defeat BDS. Another of the organizations involved here in the States is the Messianic Jewish Israel Fund, raising money to buy properties or to build properties for settlers to take more and more of Palestine.
Probably the most controversial, the most recent, has been their campaign to move the US Embassy to Jerusalem. The International Christian Embassy was founded in 1980 with the express purpose of campaigning for the move of the US Embassy to Jerusalem. And the building that they purchased to achieve that was Edward Said's family home. And you can visit the International Christian Embassy today, and here they are, well, eulogizing for what they do on behalf of the church. But the campaign, as you know, has succeeded, and now the US Embassy is in Jerusalem and not in Tel Aviv. And the consulates in East and West, in effect, have been closed. That was supported by a number of other countries, very small countries, perhaps compliant on US aid. But the third category here are the ones that are most vulnerable. Canada is considering moving its embassy, and Australia in particular. And the fact is that it's probably going to happen. And as more countries move their embassies to Jerusalem, in effect, the pressure is on others to do the same. Either the carrot or the stick will be used to achieve that. And in a sense, it ends any notion of there might be a two-state solution.
More controversial still, Christian Zionists are active in supporting the rebuilding of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem. Gershon Salomon is a guest of honor at many churches in the United States. His movement is committed to rebuilding the Jewish Temple in place of the Dome of the Rock. And on an annual basis, in July, on the Jewish day of the year when they remember the destruction of the Temple, Tisha B'Av, they bring to the Temple the cornerstones to lay for the new Jewish Temple. He said this recently: "The mission of the present generation is to liberate the Temple Mount and remove, I repeat, remove the defiling abomination there. The Jewish people will not be stopped at the gates leading to the Temple Mount." And in the London Times, in an interview, he said, "The Israeli government must do it. There'll be many nations against us, but God will be our general, and I am sure this is a test that God is expecting us to remove the Dome with no fear from other nations." And he said this: "The Messiah will not come by himself. We should bring him by fighting." It is the logic of the Zealots of the first century. And here are the cornerstones for Tisha B'Av, the Day of Remembrance and Mourning. This articulated lorry with the four cornerstones goes through Jerusalem to the Temple Mount. And the Israeli Supreme Court has given them permission to lay the stones on the Temple Mount. And it's only the police, the Muslim police, who control the, what have refused to allow them in each year. But that is their agenda.
Another colleague of theirs is Yehuda Glick. There was a Knesset member, and he is committed to ensuring that the Knesset approves equal rights for Jews to pray on the Temple Mount. He regularly takes large numbers of Israeli Jews and settlers in particular onto the Temple Mount to assert their right to pray. His Temple Mount Heritage Foundation is a very controversial movement, but popular within right-wing circles in Israel. This is just a picture to show you how Christians United for Israel perceive the Temple Mount. You'll notice a certain building is missing from the middle. And these authors, Randall Price and Thomas Ice, have written numerous books about the coming Temple that will be rebuilt. It's a question of when, not whether. And the summon book is the absence of, if you know your Book of Leviticus, the absence of the red heifer bit, because Leviticus insists before you can start to offer animal sacrifices, you have to purify the high priest, the altar, and the utensils. And therefore, for the last 2,000 years, they have been looking for a perfect red heifer. And there are a group of farmers in Mississippi. Clyde Lott is one. He founded the Cain and Restoration Incorporated with the express purpose of breeding a perfect red heifer. And at the moment, there is speculation that in the Galilee region, there is a perfect red heifer. But we will wait to see. If you see a red heifer on the front of Time or Newsweek, you'll know what's going to happen next. But I bought this picture in the Jewish quarter of Jerusalem. That is the aspiration. As you may know, Jewish people, Orthodox Jews, pray three times a day that the Temple will be rebuilt in their lifetime. And it's largely being driven by Christians.
There is, sadly, a strong antipathy to Islam and a peace price, post-peace process within Christian Zionism. These are just examples of some of the books that sell very well in Christian bookshops that demonize Islam and Arabs. And you may remember in 2008, in 70 newspapers, this video was distributed. 28 million copies were distributed in the swing states, the states that they were afraid might go to the Democrats, to ensure that a Christian Zionist agenda was fulfilled. Just a couple of quotes from Franklin Graham, son of Billy Graham. He said this in the Charlotte Observer: "The Arabs will not be happy until every Jew is dead. They hate the State of Israel. They all hate the Jews. God gave the land to the Jews. The Arabs will never accept that." And then more recently, in the last couple of weeks, he said, "Islam is a threat to our very life," and calling for a halt to all immigration of Muslims to this country if they come here from a country that has Islamic fundamentalist terrorist cells. Hence, the campaigning to restrict the access to the United States by Muslims.
And finally, they are fermenting an apocalyptic war. This is why it gets serious. And there are, it's a mannequin view of the world, the good guys and the bad guys. And of course, America's on the good side. And so you find books by people like Mark Hitchcock and Mike Evans claiming that the destiny of the world is in the hands of the United States because God is blessing America, and America is destined to fulfill a role. If you go to the Amazon review of "The American Prophecies," you'll find a rather enigmatic review of the book in which it's acknowledged that the number of biblical references are rather sparse in a book about the American prophecies in the Bible. But not to be outdone, he's now written a book called "The Presidents in Prophecy," suggesting that your presidents are mentioned in the Bible. That's one side. The other side is attempts to read into contemporary history the Bible. So, for example, during the first Gulf War, Saddam Hussein was seen as the Antichrist, the successor to Nebuchadnezzar, the only Arab leader who'd ever defeated the Jews in history. And on the back cover of the book, it says, "They even look the same." During the second Gulf War, slight tweak, Saddam looks ahead, but my Harris. But then after his demise, the book gets a new cover, and if you look very carefully, you'll see that Osama bin Laden has replaced Saddam Hussein. And when Saddam, when Osama bin Laden was removed, Al-Qaeda took his role. There must be a demonic figure, an Antichrist figure, to scare the children at Halloween. And I'm being sorry, I'm not being very serious. I'm sorry. The problem for me is that too many people take this book seriously. That's the problem.
And probably the most influential, where's Tim LaHaye? "The Left Behind" movies, not just a novel, eight novels, not just eight novels, but the children's versions, PlayStation games, you know, his PlayStation games were sent to US military in Afghanistan and Iraq. The belief that there will be a number of people left behind after the church is raptured. They'll become Christians, and they will take on the enemy. And the enemy is the United Nations. The enemy is the United Nations in New York. Hence the film "Left Behind" with Nicolas Cage. Thankfully, it was a flop. But these are the books that sell in Christian bookstores. They are as great health saucers forcing God's hand. That's why I use an Apple and not Microsoft. It's decided to restart for some reason. Can we getting Windows ready? Don't turn off your computer. Here we go. I've almost finished. And I think because this is going to take a while, I'm going to just close with a couple of quotes that were on there that you'll have to take my word for, or in part, on my PowerPoint. This is a quote from Pat Robertson. He said he warned that if the United States wants to interfere with Bible prophecy and wants to move in and wrest East Jerusalem away from the Jews and give it to Yasser Arafat, this was in 2002, "Having helped this nation of ours, if the United States takes East Jerusalem back and makes it the capital of the Palestinian state, we are asking for the wrath of God." And this is a quote from John Hagee. He said, "The United States must join Israel in a preemptive military strike against Iran to fulfill God's plan for both Israel and the West. A biblically prophesied end-time confrontation with Iran, which will lead to the rapture, tribulation, the second coming of Christ." They are pathological about believing in the end of the world because they're going to be raptured to heaven, and all hell will break loose for the rest of us who are left. The danger of this theology, in my view, is that it is not just fatalistic, but it's just like the Chicken Little story, it's contagious. Thank you very much for your patience.
Thank you, Dr. Sizer. Thank you so much for a great presentation. We're going to take questions now. Please, if you could keep it to an actual question and brief and to the point. Anybody that's online, you could tweet your questions to @PalestineCenter. Thank you so much.
I'm Mimi Kirk, I'm with the organization of Palestinian think tank, Al-Shabaka. I wanted to ask you about young evangelicals, and what I've read lately is that there is some movement in terms of questioning these kinds of documents and rhetoric, ideology. Do you have that sense as well? And what are some ways in which that's happening, and that we can encourage that too? Thank you.
I think social media is the key. You know, until maybe 10, 20 years ago, we were heavily dependent on the mainstream media and TV programs that were largely controlled by significant individuals who use their money and their influence to shape public opinion. Younger generations are much more savvy with Twitter, with Facebook, with other social media. And therefore, they have friends in Palestine, they have friends in Israel, other countries. They're receiving daily updates on what's happening on the ground, on the street. And therefore, they're much more savvy and much more skeptical of what they're fed by leading politicians and these so-called Christian leaders. So I'm hopeful that a change is occurring. And I think the best way to achieve that is to encourage folks to go and see for themselves, get out there and meet the people and have their opinion formed by first-hand experience and personal encounters. So there is a change. And I think that's why some of our Christian Zionist leaders are becoming more desperate in their rhetoric and more antagonistic and more apocalyptic. They realize time's running out. The Sojourner blog site is covering this issue with statistics and good insight into the people they work with.
I'm Tom Getten, a former soldier and a board member. Thank you. Thanks for a great presentation. I'm wondering how these Christian Zionists, how do they actually view the Christian Palestinians? How do they, do they just ignore them or pretend they don't exist, or just pretend that because they are Palestinian, that they're, I mean, yeah, how do they deal with their existence, basically? Thank you.
It depends if they are aware that they exist. They see themselves as God's chosen people, and therefore they look to the Palestinians with deep mistrust. They assume all Palestinians are Muslim. That's a typical response. But to be charitable, I see the comparison with the way that church ministry went hand in hand with colonialism here in the States, as it did in South Africa. And they're quite comfortable with sharing the Christian message with the Native Americans, or with blacks, or with whoever, the Chinese, however, as long as it didn't interfere with their political agenda. And so they may acknowledge a Palestinian church, but it's subservient to what they believe is God's destiny for the Jewish people in the land. So they are, they would be regarded as subservient people to God's chosen people. They're not seen as equal. They're not seen as having the same rights.
Thank you very much. My question is about the tension between rhetoric and political reality and national interest. You mentioned that early on in the 19th century and going into the 20th century, the British thrust, before that Napoleon, but the British thrust and support for Zionism was based on their colonial enterprise and to advance it and so on. Similarly, that would seem to apply to the United States. And we could take as an example, Jimmy Carter, a born-again evangelical Christian and so on. You put up the quote from him, but when he became president, he took into consideration the national interest and actually succeeded in advancing some kind of reconciliation between the Arabs and the Jews, and since has been called anti-Semitic and so on, you know, because of his disorder. Similarly with George Bush. Now, let's take Donald Trump. He says many things at different times, but ultimately he's trying to seek the national interest, whether it's America First or whatever. So if he were at some point to turn somewhat and say that there has to be a two-state solution, put pressure on Israel, it seems to me that a lot of his evangelical followers would follow him in this regard because, in the end, and this is an important fact that you saw cited large numbers, but the question is, in terms of their priorities, where does the Zionism thing stand? Is it more important than church-state issues in the United States, abortion rights, Judge Kavanaugh, and so on and so forth? And the fact that Trump is a charismatic leader for these people, and they will figure out a way to support him, whatever he does.
I don't think that will happen. I am not as optimistic, perhaps, as you. On that, I think that the Zionist lobby is more permanent than your US presidents and the influence they can have. And therefore, I think if they detected a minuscule shift in Trump's agenda, they will be putting pressure on him in the same way they put pressure on Clinton, and George W. Jr., and some, and Barack Obama. They would be putting pressure on them through people like John Hagee, as they did with Jerry Falwell. When Netanyahu fell out with Clinton, Netanyahu came to the States and met with Jerry Falwell first, who then lobbied the President to twist his arm to comply with what Netanyahu wanted. So I don't have great optimism that your president will be able to do anything constructively. But in the national interest, it must surely be to uphold international law and to work with multilaterally with other nations to bring about a just and lasting settlement that respects the rights of Palestinians. My reading is that the lobby has been trying to draw the United States into a war, first in Syria, and now likely with Iran too. It will fulfill an agenda that may comply with what Saudi Arabia wants or Israel wants, but it certainly is not in the national interest of the United States. I think I'm not in charge.
Thank you. My name is Haydar Ed, I'm a Palestinian journalist. I have a very quick question. You talked about the rise of Christian Zionism here in America, and you know, how omnipresent it is. What about other European countries? Let's say in England, in France, and Germany, and other places? How is that taking place now? Thank you.
Thank you. The Christian Zionist movement is very influential in other European countries, South Africa, and Sweden, and in Germany particularly, and in the UK, but clearly not as influential as it is over here in the States. But I think that's because you have a preponderance of independent churches, television evangelists, you have people who have significant influence through the media within church circles, and you have a much higher proportion of people that attend church on a weekly basis than we do in Europe, or somewhat. We're a much more secular society. And so they, the lobby has worked, probably working much more closely with political groups than it is with churches. But they've certainly neutralized the mainstream denominations from expressing much in the way of criticism of Israeli policy. There are very, very few clergy that I'm aware of in Europe who speak out on this subject. I've been, have survived speaking out on this subject, but it's that way. I had, I had well, two very brief questions.
Well, all right. When you mentioned that Zionism was predominantly Christian, can you tell me, can you go over what the context was for that statement?
I was making the statement purely based on demographic figures that are asserted by Christian Zionist leaders. And one has to ask, why on almost any issue, you'll find leading US politicians take different viewpoints, but on the issue of Israel, there is a deafening silence from congressmen or senators who were willing to speak out on Israel-Palestine. So that, to me, suggests that the lobby is very influential. And we can't blame it on the Jewish minority in this country. It's predominantly the Christian community who have shaped this movement historically and in its contemporary format.
Thank you. Another question. Yes. Yes. Uh, my name is Ronald Wilson, with Harvard University. My question is, do you, uh, what do you see as the ultimate resolution in the Palestinian issues that are currently being negotiated on, or that Palestine is embroiled in right now? Can you just repeat that, please?
Yes, how do you see the ultimate outcome of the Palestinian problem? Thank you.
I use a simple analogy, which I use with children in schools when we talk about this. Imagine you've gone to see your grandmother. You're a child, you've gone to the grandmother. She spoiled you rotten, and she gives you the sweet jar, and she set a cookie jar, if that's what you call it. And she says, "Have a sweet, dear." And you stick your hand in that jar. You're a greedy little kid, and you take three sweets. And the problem is, you can't get your hand out of the jar. You've got your hand in the jar, and you've got three sweets, and what are you going to do about it? You've got your hand stuck, you've got three sweets, you can't eat them, you can't enjoy them. What are the three sweets? Israel's got his hand in the cookie jar, and he wants three things: it wants to be a democracy, a Jewish state, and have the land, the West Bank, the Golan, Gaza. Wants to be a democracy, a Jewish state, and have the land. And it can only have two of the three. Okay? Only two of the three. I'll come back to this quote. It wants two of the three, and it can only have two to get its hand out and enjoy them. It can be a Jewish state and a democracy by giving up the West Bank. Two-state solution, international law, 1967 borders, sovereign, contiguous, independent Palestinian state. But it would have to give up the settlements, have to reverse the annexation of East Jerusalem, annexed settlements. So will Israel give up the settlements? No way. So the two-state solution is dead. What's the alternative? Give up being a Jewish state, equal rights for Palestinians and Israelis, one state, or a federation, equal rights, full democratic, civil, legal, social rights. The one-state solution would mean giving up being a Jewish state. Is it willing to give up being a Jewish state? Not at the moment. So what's the alternative? Well, it's not a democracy. It's in all the land, and it wants to be a Jewish state, giving preference to Jewish people. So it's not.
A democracy, and that's why BDS is so important because it's a non-violent civil rights way individuals and groups can exert pressure on Israel to choose one of the other two. One state or two. So obviously, it's got to be shared. It's obviously got to be by agreement with the Palestinians. But that's the dilemma. It's got its hand in the jar and it won't choose, in the hope that the choice will be made by other people. But your funding that keeps the enterprise going, and in the hope that the Palestinians will give up and leave.
Let me just give you a couple more quotes because I wanted to bring it to a crescendo. This is a quote from John Hagee. He said this recently: "It is 1938. Iran is Germany. Ahmadinejad is the new Hitler. We must stand. We must stop Iran's nuclear threat. And soberly, with Israel, Iran is a clear and present danger to the United States of America and Israel. It is time for our country to consider a military preemptive strike against Iran if they were not yield to diplomacy." So these Christian leaders are pushing your, your president and your, your government into an apocalyptic war with Iran.
And now, notwithstanding that, you may or may not have Ann Coulter on your fan list, but she is a New York Times best-selling writer and she's very influential. She said this after 9/11: "We should invade their countries, kill leaders, and convert them to Christianity. We weren't punctilious about locating and punishing any Hitler. We carpet-bombed German cities. We killed civilians. That's war, and this is war." I wanted to end with that because that, to me, epitomizes where Christian Zionism is leading your country and mine. And that, I believe, is the, if you like, the political agenda of this movement. It began in Britain and is now being perpetuated here, largely in the United States.
More questions? That was just my way of ending. Had the machine not, I, I write a gent imposed. It's a form of literary peace through justice activism. Do you have, have you posted on the net or written a synopsis of what you presented here that I could disseminate with a poor word?
Yes, of course. Everything I've ever written is on, on the web. And, and the lobby doesn't tend to challenge or tackle what I say. If you don't like the message, you shoot the messenger. And so you'll find some very nasty things that about me on the internet that are not true, but they very rarely challenge what I've actually written and what I say.
I'll just give you the website where you can access this material. It's basically StephenSizer.com. And there we are: StephenSizer.com. My PhD thesis, you can access on Amazon, or you can access most of the text from my website on the books. Christian Zionism was my PhD thesis. If you're interested more in the theology of how to deconstruct Christian Zionism, then my book, "Christian Soldiers," is what I would recommend. And it's available on Amazon in Kindle format because they put pressure on my publisher who decided not to publish my books now, but you can access it on Kindle. And again, you can access it entirely from my website for free. Anyway, and if you are interested in a summary, I was speaking at some Mark's Church last night and there is a very short summary of the theological distinctives of Christian Zionism which is available too. So you can access what I've written on the internet.
Okay, my name is Mary Knows Nick and I have a question, maybe for the audience. To what extent is what Hagee's doing actually theology versus actually being a voice? Those feel like the Israeli playlist to me, what he's saying. And to what extent is he functioning not as a preacher, but as a voice of a foreign entity? And to what extent is there even a Mike Evans who writes these books? Are these real people or are they part of a psyops because they really feel that real people? There's real, there really isn't.
Mike Adams? Oh, yeah. No, I've met some of them and I wouldn't necessarily want to meet them again. We put this film together with GodOnOurSide.com, and it's a brilliant film in which some of these individuals are interviewed and they tell you what they think. You know, John Hagee talks about the wall and he says, "Sure, it's a pain to get through if you're a Palestinian." Like, you know, you really empathize, don't you? So I'd recommend the film, "With God On Our Side." You can get that on YouTube, I assume.
People believe what they say. I assume people that Hagee believe what they're saying. I assume they have a measure of integrity. My understanding of their theology is that it has come out of a misunderstanding of the promises God made to Abraham that are applied to the Jewish people today. "I'll bless those who bless you, curse those who curse you. All nations on earth will be blessed through you." They take promises like that and say, "God is blessing America because we look after the Jewish people, so don't knock it." And they believe that their prosperity and their health and their their destiny, their future, is written not in the stars, but in the Bible. And therefore, they believe that is their worldview. So they're in that bubble, if you like. They are, they are secure. They never have to engage with Iran. They never have to visit Palestine. They can make pronouncements that they believe are biblical and, and are obviously popular.
Pardon? They deliver votes. Yes, they do.
My name is Tom Lou and I have a political question, if that's okay. Several of the quotes from early Christian Zionists mentioned Protestants as if Catholics don't matter, or Eastern Orthodox, for that matter. And Jerry Falwell even goes to the extent of implying that only Republicans matter, that Democrats are a lost cause. Yes. Is there a recognition within the Christian Zionist movement that Christian Republicans are a minority in the US and in the world? And is there some effort within the movement to establish a broader tent, to reach out to more groups?
You mean Christian Zionists? Yes, yes, definitely. They are working hard with the black churches. They are working with Catholics, with other, with other denominations to convince them that Israel has as a right to what it's doing. Where they use different, different methods, different strategies. With, with the Catholic Church, it has a lot to do with guilt, with with the denial the Jews exist. This was the view before the Reformation. The church has replaced Israel. Even within the Church of England, in the after the Reformation, on Good Friday, they would read the story of the crucifixion of Jesus then and go out and beat up the Jews. You know, there was a strong element of anti-Semitism within British society during the Middle Ages and, and in the centuries after. But within Catholicism, in my view, in terms of Italy, Germany, and so on, it was guilt for the Holocaust. It was either guilt or fear. Or, you know, guilt's a negative motivation for not criticizing Israel. And so the Israeli leadership has worked hard to, to influence the Catholic leadership. The Pope was very controversial recently when he visited Bethlehem and he insisted on giving his presentation next to the wall. The Israelis tried to move him, you know, find another venue, but it became a very high-profile event. But it's easily forgotten, you know. It's individual statements or acts often get, get forgotten. So they, so that the Zionist lobby is influential in other denominations. It's simply, as you've observed, that their main support comes from the white evangelical right.
I have time for one more question. This is basically just a follow-up on that. When we've been in the Middle East, in Jerusalem, we've seen a lot of Asian Christians, the Chinese church is growing, and Latin American. And do you think the same is true there that they tend to be principally Zionists? And, and African? You know, South Africa, we talked about, but you work a lot in African churches. Tell us about that.
I think that the Zionist lobby is recognizing that, as as our friend here observed, a younger generation of Americans are much more savvy and critical and, and streetwise when it comes to what's happening in the Middle East, and they are turning their, their efforts abroad. And so it's true in China. There is a whole Zionist movement among the churches. "Return to Jerusalem" movement is called. That they're playing one off against the other. So, for example, in Malaysia, where you have a strong Muslim community, they're working with the church to, to bond with the church. So it's us against the Muslims. So a lot of the rhetoric I've explained that you find in, in, in, in bookstores here in the States, those books, they will be the kind of books translated and used in, in the Far East and in Africa. So they are working, working to maintain their power base through other denominations and other nations. Yes. And of course, our fundamentalist telly evangelists have international ministries. So they themselves have worked in other countries. International Christian Embassy was working in, in Central America and South America, for example. Their work in 40 or 50 countries.
Doctor Sizer, thank you so much for a great presentation on a very important topic. [Applause]