This week, Donald Trump’s pick for ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, a notorious Islamophobe and Christian nationalist, had his first nomination hearing. Previously governor of Arkansas, Huckabee said on the campaign trail in 2008, “You have Arabs and Persians, and there’s such complexity in that. But there’s really no such thing [as a Palestinian]. That’s been a political tool to try and force land away from Israel.”
We hear about Jewish Zionism all the time, for good reason — it’s Israel’s ideological justification for decades of settler colonialism and ethnic cleansing in Palestine. But there’s another form of Zionism that reigns in the United States: Christian Zionism, a political ideology driving much of the Trump administration’s current crackdown on Palestine activism on campuses and its backing of Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
The foundation of Christian Zionism is the belief that Israel today is a continuation of the biblical land of Israel. Palestine will be “returned” to the Jews, then Christ will return to the Holy Land and initiate the end of times. What happens after is subject to several different interpretations, but the consensus among Christian Zionists is that only those who are Christian are saved from hell. In other words, Christian Zionists support the state of Israel as a means to an end — one that isn’t exactly hospitable to the Jewish people.
Donald Trump’s pick for US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, is likely to be the newest addition to a growing list of Christian Zionists in Trump’s cabinet. During his Senate hearing on Tuesday, he reaffirmed the roots of his connection to Israel and Zionism: “We ultimately are people of the book. We believe the Bible. And therefore, that connection is not geopolitical. It is also spiritual.”
In a 2017 speech during his visit to settlements in the occupied West Bank, he said:
There are certain words I refuse to use. There is no such…
Auteur: Sumaya Awad
