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This Post Is A Summary Of Chris Hedges Most Recent Article On Gaza.
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Christian Nationalists, a key pillar of Donald Trump’s support base—80% of whom backed him in the last election, per an Associated Press survey—have launched a vigorous campaign urging the White House to support Israel’s annexation of the West Bank and Gaza. This effort includes high-profile visits to Israel by leaders like Ralph Reed, Tony Perkins, and Mario Bramnick, petitions to the White House, lobbying Congress, and resolutions at conservative gatherings. At the recent Conservative Political Action Conference, attendees endorsed Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank. Similarly, the National Religious Broadcasters (NRB) Convention in Dallas in March collected over 200 signatures from pastors and right-wing religious figures advocating annexation of “Judea and Samaria”—the biblical term for the West Bank—while dismissing the two-state solution as a “failed experiment.”
The American Christian Leaders for Israel, claiming to represent over 3,000 leaders including the NRB, endorsed this resolution and sent it to Trump. Meanwhile, Congresswoman Claudia Tenney and five colleagues from the “Friends of Judea and Samaria Caucus” wrote to Trump, urging recognition of Israel’s right to claim the occupied Palestinian territories, citing the “Judeo-Christian heritage” foundational to the U.S. Trump, who reversed a Biden-era order sanctioning West Bank settlers for human rights abuses, pledged on February 4, 2025, to announce a decision on annexation within four weeks. This follows his earlier call for Gaza’s ethnic cleansing, threatening Palestinians with death unless Israeli hostages are freed. “We’re talking about probably a million and a half people, and we just clean out that whole thing,” he told reporters aboard Air Force One.
This agenda unites Zionist extremists and Christian Nationalists—often labeled fascists—who hold sway in Trump’s administration. Their rhetoric leans heavily on biblical imagery, but their alliance is political, not theological. I explore this convergence of American Christian fascism and Jewish fascism in my book, American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America.
Trump’s appointees amplify this stance. Mike Huckabee, nominated as U.S. ambassador to Israel, denies Palestinian identity, calling it a “political tool” to wrest land from Israel. He rejects the two-state solution as “irrational” and suggests relocating any Palestinian state to Egypt, Syria, or Jordan, citing Genesis 12: “Those who bless Israel will be blessed; those who curse Israel will be cursed.” John Ratcliffe, Trump’s CIA director, backs Israel’s aggressive posture against Iran, while Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ties Zionism to Americanism, claiming the Hebrew Bible—written 4,000 years ago—justifies modern borders. On Fox News last November, he argued that God granted Abraham this land, tracing Jewish sovereignty from King David to the post-World War II state, despite on going efforts to erase Jewish ties to Jerusalem.
Televangelist Paula White-Cain, a militant Christian Zionist and senior advisor in the new White House Faith Office, equates opposing Trump with defying God. Meanwhile, Zionists smeared U.S. universities as Hamas allies after the October 7, 2023,attack—before campus protests even began. Universities responded by banning protests, stifling free speech, and punishing students and faculty opposing Israel’s actions. Columbia University, for instance, banned Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace months before its encampment emerged, later authorizing police raids and expelling students. The Trump administration slashed $400 million in federal grants to Columbia, citing “persistent harassment of Jewish students.”
This crackdown isn’t about anti semitism—it’s about silencing dissent and enforcing far-right ideology. Christian Nationalists twist Christianity to sanctify white supremacy, U.S. imperialism, and capitalism, demonizing opponents as satanic. As a divinity school graduate, I see this as a perversion of the Gospels, mirroring how Jewish fascists distort the Torah. Their eschatology even predicts Jews in Israel will convert or perish in the “End Times,” revealing deep antisemitic under tones rooted in Nazi thinkers like Carl Schmitt and sympathizers like Rousas John Rush doony.
Israel flouts international law, committing genocide in defiance of the 1948 UN Genocide Convention and enforcing apartheid under its 2018 Nation-State Law, which reserves self-determination for Jews alone. Christian Nationalists admire this model, aiming to “cleanse” America of “contaminants” like minorities, immigrants, and dissidents—echoing colonial justifications for Native American genocide. Their enemies—journalists, intellectuals, liberals, Muslims, and the poor—face repression via a compliant judiciary and tools like the State Department’s AI-driven “Catch and Revoke” visa program. On March 8, 2025, federal agents detained Columbia activist Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian legal resident, under Trump’s anti-antisemitism orders, signaling a chilling precedent.
Fascism, whether Jewish or Christian, thrives on grievance and promises messianic redemption—Israel’s via Palestinian expulsion, America’s via a white ethno-state rolling back civil rights and social protections. Authoritarianism is rising globally, from Putin’s Russia to Modi’s India, crushing dissent with laws and police. In the U.S., a supine Democratic Party and institutions like Columbia offer no shield. Only a militant counterforce—akin to the 1930s communists and anarchists—can resist. Uncompromising, ready for repression, and fueled by civil disobedience like strikes, it’s our last hope against subjugation.
