“Israel, you are not alone”, we heard, in November 2023, in a spot broadcast on one of the giant screens in Times Square, in New York, produced by Christians United for Israel. Demonstrations, fundraising, donation of equipment, sending volunteers on site to help rebuild the kibbutz… This powerful organization of evangelical Christians, which claims ten million members, is increasing, with others, actions of support towards the Jewish state since the Hamas massacres. And the phenomenon is not unique to the United States, as we recently saw in Brazil in a large pro-Israel demonstration on February 25, which included many evangelicals.
How can we explain such fervor? “It’s an act of faith. Many evangelicals support Israel as they oppose the right to abortion: this is seen as consistent with God’s will.deciphers the political scientist Célia Belin, author of Jesus is Jewish in America (Fayard, 2011).
This belief is based in part on a literalist reading of certain biblical texts, starting with Genesis 12:3, where God said to Abraham: “I will bless those who bless you, and those who curse you I will curse; and all the families of the Earth will be blessed in you. » For many evangelicals, this passage applies today to all Jews and to the State of Israel, perceived as heirs of the descendants of the patriarch. “There is this idea that the divine promises made to the Jewish people are from all eternity. States which, like the United States, support Israel will experience prosperity, while those which oppose it will experience a fate as dramatic as that of Nazi Germany.summarizes Célia Belin. “There is then a confusion between Medinat Israelthe State of Israel, and Eretz Israel, the sacred land of the Jewish people »continues historian Stéphanie Laithier.
Eschatological vision
Other biblical texts are updated by evangelical theorists, like the book of Jeremiah, composed during the exile of the Hebrew people in Babylon, around the 6th centurye century BC. A contemporary Zionist interpretation is then applied to passages such as this: “I myself will gather the remnant of my flock from all the countries where I have banished them; I will bring them back to their domain” (Jeremiah 23). According to such a reading, the divine promise of the complete return of the Jews “on their land” still holds. John Hagee, an 83-year-old Texan pastor, even declared on American television in 2008 that God had “created Hitler to help Jews reach the Promised Land”.
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