Post-Trump priorities (7): fixing Israel policy

The seventh of the ten points that Dan Froomkin (1) has proposed as guidelines for a restoration of democratic governance is:

Condition Israeli aid on humane treatment of Palestinians.

I would phrase that priority more emphatically: stop giving aid to Israel or any other government committing genocide.

We’ve seen during the last two years how important a role Israel plays in US politics. The discontent of much of the Democratic base over Biden’s support of the Netanyahu government war and genocide policies cost the Democrats votes and suppressed turnout.

However difficult it may be for the Democrats, they need to get themselves on the side of stopping this. The Republicans should, too, but under “Peace President” Trump that appears impossible. And Christian Zionists are a key constituency for the Republicans. Which was a weird sort of logic, since it was Protestant Christians in the 19th century who first developed what became Zionism. As Yaakov Ariel explains:

The roots and early beginnings of Christian Zionism can be tracked to the seventeenth-century Protestant messianic groups. It was already at this stage that one could notice characteristics of Christian interest in the Jewish return to Palestine. … Israel. In their messianic scenarios, the return of the Jews to Palestine was the first step in the advancement of the messianic timetable. Such Christians often envisioned the Jews and their role in history without encountering Jews and with no knowledge of the realities of Jewish life and Jewish aspirations.

Christian Zionism resurfaced with much vigor in the early decades of the nineteenth century, with the rise of the evangelical movement in Britain and a new wave of fascination with prophecy and the prospects of the arrival of the messianic times. … [A variety of End Times belief known as dispensationalism] has become part and parcel of a conservative evangelical creed, serving as a philosophy of history for conservative Christians because it meshes well with their outlook on contemporary culture. It has also served to provide hope and reassurance in the face of uncertainty, for example, during the 1950s–1980s, when a threat of a nuclear war between the two global powers seemed very plausible. …

Beginning in the nineteenth century, premillennialist [End Times believing] Christians have come up with a series of initiatives intended to bring about or promote the national restoration of the Jews in Palestine. Such efforts predated the rise of political Zionism. A number of evangelical Christians in Britain came out with initiatives to restore the Jews to Zion, trying to persuade the British government to intercede with the Ottoman Turks and propose the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine. [my emphasis] (2)

An ugly irony in this is that nominally philosemitic dispensationalist view in most its variations assumes that the glorious return of Jesus can’t take place until the world finally gets rid of Jews by mass killing in war and by conversion. Republican Christian Zionists call for support of Israel. But that shouldn’t be mistaken for any kind of ecumenical appreciation of the Jewish religion or flesh-and-blood Jews.

Israeli-American historian and genocide expert Omer Bartov explained the seriousness of the situation of the Palestinians in this August interview: (3)

It needs to stop. The US has a moral and legal obligation to stop supporting it.

Middle East Eye provides this commentary to the interview:

Omer Bartov, a professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Brown University, said that Israel’s war on Gaza passed the threshold of genocidal intent by May 2024.

“My view has become that the war goals that Israel declared -which were to destroy Hamas and to free the hostages, by the spring of 2024, turned out not to be the actual war goals,” he told Middle East Eye.

Bartov cites evidence, including statements by Israeli leaders, as well as the “pattern of operations that indicated both intent and the implementation of that intent”.

He also believes that Israel’s destruction of homes, educational buildings, hospitals, museums and places of worship fits the definition, since these are “the places that could make for the existence of a group: for its health, for its education, for its collective memory”.

The course of events after May 2024 has also reinforced Bartov’s opinion that genocide was occurring, including the forcible removal of the population of northern Gaza to the south and starving whoever is left, as part of the controversial General’s Plan.

Notes:

(1) Froomkin, Dan (2025): Is it time to start planning a post-Trump restoration? Heads Up News 06/30/2025. (Accessed: 2025-03-08).

(2) Ariel, Yaakov (2006): An Unexpected Alliance: Christian Zionism and its Historical Significance. Modern Judaism 1:2006, 74-100.

(3) Holocaust scholar Omer Bartov: Israel’s campaign in Gaza is genocidal. Middle East Eye YouTube channel 04/20/2025. (Accessed: 2025-25-08).