Christian Zionism, a variant of Christian fundamentalism,
is today a major global force to reckon with. Christian Zionists are a key
player in American (and to a lesser extent, Western European) politics.
Firm backers of Zionism, Israel and Israeli expansionism, they are also
one of the principal fountainheads of Islamophobia on the global scene.
The origins, development and politics of Christian Zionism are brought out
in considerable detail in this well-researched, balanced and very timely
book by the noted activist scholar Dan Cohn-Sherbok, himself a Jew and
professor of Judaism at the University of Wales.
Approximately a tenth of the American population is a
devoted member of the cult of Christian Zionism, the author observes. "It
is the fastest growing religious movement in Christianity today," he notes
(p. xi). Many followers of the cult are from the middle and upper middle
classes, followers of televangelists who wield enormous political and
economic clout. Christian Zionists are impelled by an imperialistic vision
of Jesus’ impending arrival on earth when he shall, so they believe, wipe
out all his enemies (all non-Christians, presumably) and establish his
global dominion, with his capital at Jerusalem. Meanwhile, Christian
Zionists believe that they, as allegedly god’s chosen people, will be
spared the horrors of the global war that shall precede Jesus’ advent and
will be miraculously wafted up to heaven where they shall watch the final
destruction of the world.
Christian Zionists believe that Jesus can only return to
the world once the Jews colonise Palestine. This belief is based on the
contentious claim that god had granted this land to the progeny of Abraham
through Isaac, that is the Jews, for eternity. This land is not restricted
to the present borders of the state of Israel. Instead, Zionists, both
Jewish and Christian, believe that a vast swathe of land, stretching from
the Nile to the Euphrates, today inhabited by millions of Arab Muslims and
Christians, belongs rightfully to the Jews and so must be ethnically
‘cleansed’ of non-Jewish presence. Hence the justification they offer for
their genocidal project aimed at the Arabs. Hence too their consistent
backing of Israel, their generous funding of Jewish settlements in
Palestine and their enormous pressure on successive American governments
to adopt rigorously pro-Israel and anti-Palestinian policies.
The author traces the origins of Christian Zionism to the
changing attitude of Christian groups towards the Jews following the
Protestant Revolution. The early Catholic church justified the witch-hunt
of the Jews, labelling them as alleged Christ-killers. However, numerous
Protestant sects, while equally vehemently anti-Jewish, believed that the
Jews needed to colonise Palestine before Jesus would reappear in the world
to save it. This was, and still is, by no means a generous acceptance of
the Jews. Rather, they believed, as Christian Zionists today do, that only
those Jews who accepted Jesus as the Messiah would be saved. The rest
would ally themselves with the Antichrist and would be defeated by Jesus
and his forces and, consequently, would be sent off to eternal damnation
in the fires of hell.
From the 17th century onwards, the author shows, numerous
European, and later American, Protestant churches began evolving schemes
to settle the Jews in Palestine. This was also seen as a convenient way of
getting rid of the Jewish presence in Europe. They petitioned various
European powers to back this scheme. By the early 19th century numerous
British administrators had been won over to this idea, impelled, no doubt,
also by a motive to undermine the Ottoman Empire, which at that time
controlled Palestine, and by a deep-rooted aversion to Islam.
Increasingly, the author shows, Christian Zionists began
to join hands with secular Jewish Zionists whose plans to settle Jews in
Israel had nothing to do with any messianic hopes but rather arose as a
response to the centuries old persecution of Jews by European Christians.
(In contrast, the author rightly notes, "In Arab lands, Jews had
flourished for centuries […] [while] in European countries Jewry had been
subject to oppression and persecution" (p. 44).
Ties between secular Jewish Zionists and Christian
Zionists to pursue the common project of Jewish colonisation of Palestine,
the author writes, were strengthened by the support given to Theodore
Herzl (b. 1860), the Hungarian Jew who is regarded as the father of
modern-day Zionism. The author traces the course of this close
collaboration down to the present day, describing the strong political and
financial links between Christian and Israeli/Jewish Zionists and also the
enormous clout of the Zionist lobby in American political circles.
The author clearly indicates that Christian Zionism, based
on a virulently anti-Islamic agenda, is a major hurdle to peace not just
in West Asia but globally too. Indeed, some Christian Zionists even
ardently wish (and work for) a final global war in the belief that this
would accelerate their hoped-for wafting up to heaven and the subsequent
arrival of Jesus. At the same time, and this gives some cause for hope,
the author also discusses critiques of the Zionist imperialist project by
progressive Christian and Jewish groups and also by orthodox Jewish rabbis
who are opposed to Zionism on the grounds that, as the author puts it, "It
[is] forbidden to accelerate divine redemption through human efforts".