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The group in America that I’d say is most fervently urging President Trump to crush Palestinian hopes for a state is not the Jewish community but rather evangelical Christians.
“We have no greater friends than Christian supporters of Israel,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu once told the conference of Christians United for Israel, which with 10 million members is twice the size of the much better known American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
Evangelical leaders have been calling on the White House to “reject all efforts” to constrain Israeli control over the West Bank, in the words of a group called American Christian Leaders for Israel. These evangelicals often cite God and the Bible as authorities for their position that Israel should annex Palestinian lands.
I couldn’t reach God for comment, but I suspect that the divine press office would have referred me to the Eighth Commandment, “Thou shalt not steal.”
Trump’s ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, a Baptist minister and former governor of Arkansas, has favored Israel’s annexing the West Bank and has said, “There is really no such thing as a Palestinian.”
In the face of this American Christian enthusiasm for crushing Palestinians while saying it is God’s will, I wondered what Palestinian Christians thought. So I visited Bethlehem and asked them.
