Washington Report, March 2006, pages 60-61

Israel and Judaism

Romance Between Christian Right, Jewish Establishment Seems to Be Cooling Off

By Allan C. Brownfeld

FOR SOME time the strange alliance between America’s Christian right and the Jewish establishment has attracted a good deal of attention. But that romance, it seems, now is coming to an end—despite the fact that the Christian right maintains its steadfast support for Israeli control of the West Bank, arguing that God gave that land to the Jews and that their control is necessary to pave the way for the second coming of Christ.

Evangelical Christians believe in biblical prophecies of the second coming of Christ followed by the deaths of most Jews on the battleground of Armageddon and conversion of the survivors to Christianity. But first they want to preserve undisputed Jewish control of Jerusalem and the Biblical Land of Israel because, they say, that is what is described in Scripture.

It is because of their yearning for the end of the world that many American fundamentalist leaders have embraced the most extreme positions regarding the Holy Land and opposed efforts at achieving a peace settlement between Israelis and Palestinians.

Jewish organizations once viewed the Christian Coalition, the Rev. Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and others on the Christian right as potential adversaries, if not narrow-minded bigots. Indeed, in 1994 the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) issued a report making precisely such charges.

Slowly, however, all that changed. At its annual Salute to Israel dinner in 2002, Robertson was honored by the Chicago chapter of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) for the “pro-Israel slant of his Christian Broadcasting Network and his television show ‘The 700 Club,’ as well as Robertson’s personal support for Israel.”

When Binyamin Netanyahu visited Washington in January 1998 to meet with President Bill Clinton, the Israeli prime minister first met with evangelical Christian leaders. Reported The Washington Post of Jan. 22, 1998: “Chanting ‘Not One Inch,’ the crowd of more than 500 gave Netanyahu a standing ovation, as he was greeted by the Rev. Jerry Falwell…”

Pressing Israel to withdraw from the West Bank, Falwell said, “would be like asking America to give Texas to Mexico to bring about a good relationship. It’s ridiculous.”

At a 1980gala dinner in New York, Falwell was given the Vladimir Ze’ev Jabotinsky medal by Menachem Begin. Jabotinsky, the founder of Revisionist Zionism, held that Jews settling in Palestine should not be held accountable to the laws of men, and sought the creation of a Jewish state “on both sides of the Jordan River.”

The coalition between Israel’s Jewish and Christian Zionist supporters has had an important influence upon U.S. Middle East policy. The Christian right’s vocal support for Israel “is having far-reaching consequences,” reported The Wall Street Journal of May 23, 2002. “More than any other single factor, it explains why there has been so little pressure from a Republican White House on Israel to curb its crackdown on the Palestinians. President [George W.] Bush, himself a born-again Southerner with far more instinctive sympathy for Israel than his father displayed, has taken advantage of a new climate by repeatedly expressing understanding for Israel’s tactics in response to terror attacks.…In large part, this new alignment of forces represents an unanticipated consequence of the rise of religious conservatives within the GOP.”

Now, however, Jewish leaders are moving away from their allies on the Christian right. On Nov. 3, 2005, ADL national director Abraham Foxman told a New York meeting that, “We face a better-financed, more sophisticated, coordinated, unified, energized and organized coalition of groups in opposition to our policy positions on church-state separation than ever before. Their goal is to implement their Christian worldview. To Christianize America. To save us.”

On Nov. 19, Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, compared the religious right to Nazis: “We understand those who believe that the Bible opposes gay marriage, even though we read the text in a very different way. We cannot forget that when Hitler came to power in 1933, one of the first things he did was ban gay organizations.”

In 2002, Foxman had written “Evangelical Support for Israel Is A Good Thing” for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Apparently, however, 2004 Republican electoral successes and President Bush’s faith-based initiatives have made some Jewish groups increasingly concerned about evangelicals’ ultimate aims. “It’s absolutely an issue,” said Rabbi Arthur Waskow, director of the Shalom Center in Philadelphia. “They aren’t using outright violence themselves,” he said of the religious right. “But they are one step down from people who are ready to use the coercive powers of the state to impose their own religious outlook.”

In December 2005, Jewish leaders held a summit at the ADL’s Manhattan office to ascertain whether the religious right plans to “Christianize” the nation. Among those participating were ADL director Foxman; Rabbi Yoffie of the Union for Reform Judaism; Nathan Diament of the Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America; Marc Stern, assistant executive director of the American Jewish Congress; and Steven Gutow of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs.

Discussing the meeting, Stern said, “It was not a ‘damn the evangelicals and full speed ahead’ sort of meeting. Everyone was agreed that we’re not dealing with a monolithic evangelical community. Some of what’s said there is for PR purposes and doesn’t necessarily translate into political action.”

According to Stern, the Jewish leaders agreed that “there are elements of the evangelical community that, if unchecked and the trends continue, raise disturbing issues for the Jewish community.” He cited the recent controversy over overt Christian practices at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs as an example of what concerns Jews.

“There’s a tone deafness in the [evangelical] community about religious freedom,” he said. “There seems to be among them a lack of awareness as to how they’re crowding out others. Abe’s [Foxman] not saying there’s an imminent pogrom from evangelicals; everyone agrees on that. It was intended to see if there’s enough common ground to go further. I think the answer is yes.”

Also of concern to Jewish leaders was the war against the “war against Christmas” engaged in by religious conservatives and others. America’s largest retailers were accused of consciously removing any mention of Christmas from ad campaigns and store decorations. “All of a sudden, about three or four years ago, ‘Merry Christmas’ began disappearing,” said Fox News commentator Bill O’Reilly. According to Mark Pelavin of the Union for Reform Judaism’s Religious Action Center, the campaigns were triggered by the renewed aggressiveness of the Christian religious right.

The Ties That Bind

Those on the Jewish right, who oppose Israeli concessions and the establishment of a Palestinian state, express continued support for their Christian right allies. Said Don Feder, president of Jews Against Anti-Christian Defamation, “Foxman loves to whine about the religious right and how they’re destroying religious liberty in America. Is wanting to keep God in the Pledge of Allegiance Christianizing America? Is efforts to keep public displays of the Ten Commandments Christianizing America? If so, Moses was a Christianizer.”

Rabbi Yeckiel Eckstein, founder of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (IFCJ), pointed out that evangelicals are Israel’s best U.S. friends. His group raised $44.9 million for pro-Israel causes in 2004, mostly from evangelicals. In 2002, the IFCJ commissioned a poll of 1,200 Americans that found that “conservative church-going Christians” had the highest rates of support for Israel (62 percent) among non-Jewish religious groups.

What has caused the Jewish establishment to take a step away from its developing alliance with the Christian right is less than clear. It may be that church-state relations have become more important than Middle East politics, as the attachment of American Jews to Israel appears to be waning. Or perhaps the willingness of the Sharon government to withdraw from Gaza, and the increasing support in Israel for a withdrawal from most of the West Bank and the establishment of a Palestinian state has caused Jewish groups to hesitate to continue an alliance with those who so strongly disagree with Israel’s current posture. Most likely, it is a combination of the two.

Israelis who support a peace settlement have long opposed the Jewish alliance with the Christian right. “Rather than support for Israel, this is support for hard-line policies that endanger Israel in the name of fundamentalist theology,” noted Jerusalem Report columnist Gershom Gorenberg. “Israeli and Jewish interests are better served by working with politicians and religious groups that champion renewed American diplomatic efforts to end bloodletting in the Holy Land. Seeing negotiators sit down and talk peace—now that would give me a warm tingle.”

Where the relationship between the Christian right and the Jewish establishment is headed is uncertain. That there is tension brewing between these strange bedfellows, however, is now clear.

Allan C. Brownfeld is a syndicated columnist and associate editor of the Lincoln Review, a journal published by the Lincoln Institute for Research and Education, and editor of Issues, the quarterly journal of the American Council for Judaism.

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