As polls suggest that American opinion of Israel is declining, Christian leaders and political officials met outside Washington this week to reaffirm their commitment to the Jewish state and the Jewish people at the Christians United for Israel summit.
Pastor John Hagee, chairman of CUFI, told the roughly 3,000 attendees in National Harbor, Md., on Monday night that his group believes that the United States should back Israel “today, tomorrow and forever.”
“The question before us concerning Israel is not Republican or Democrat. It’s not red state or blue state. It’s not left or right. It’s a matter of right and wrong,” Hagee said. “Christian support for Israel is not a political fashion. It’s a biblical conviction.”
Sandra Hagee Parker, chairwoman of CUFI Action Fund and the pastor’s daughter, told JNS that the group’s warnings about Jew-hatred have unfortunately proven prescient.
“Everybody has been saying since we started that we don’t need this organization, because antisemitism doesn’t exist,” Parker said. “Noah did not wait for the flood in order to build the ark.”
“We have not been surprised,” she told JNS. “Our surprise is that people are surprised.”
Where support for Israel once united broad swaths of the American electorate, it is now a defining dividing line in Democratic politics and an increasingly important area of dispute among Republicans.
Parker cited the commentator Tucker Carlson as an example of a once-popular conservative voice who has turned on Israel.
“When Tucker Carlson uses the words ‘as a Christian,’ that offends me,” Parker said. “He’s usurping the label of our religion in order to legitimize his Jew-hatred.”
“If you believe what Tucker Carlson says, you’re not a Christian,” she told JNS.
The changing nature of support for Israel in the United States has also called into question the viability of U.S. military aid to the Jewish State.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in January that the $3.8 billion that Israel receives each year should “taper off” within a decade, so that Israel no longer relies on the changing whims of the White House and Congress to receive arms.
Parker said that she would prefer to see U.S. aid to Israel be “longer and stronger,” and finds calls from some politicians to cut off funding for Israeli missile defense programs “disgusting.”
“It’s one thing if you say, ‘I don’t want to help you get a bomb or a bullet.’ It’s quite another to say ‘I’m not going to give you a shield,’” she told JNS. “Missile defense protects all people, not just Israelis and Jews.”
Summit speakers, which included Israeli Ambassador to the United States Yechiel Leiter and Yehuda Kaploun, a rabbi and U.S. special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism, repeatedly warned about the threat Iran poses to both Israel and the United States.
U.S. President Donald Trump told reporters on Wednesday that he thought the memorandum of understanding that he signed with Iran was “over” and that Iranian leaders were “scum.”
He said so after the Islamic Republic repeatedly fired on commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz, prompting retaliatory strikes and the reimposition of oil sanctions from the United States. The U.S. military said on Wednesday night that it was striking Iran again.
Parker told JNS on Monday that CUFI’s members were already deeply concerned about the deal and would share those concerns with their members of Congress.
“We’re going to call balls and strikes fairly, no matter who’s at bat,” she said. “If we were really upset in 2015 about the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action and the fact that an agreement was signed without congressional approval that lifted sanctions and gave Iran access to $30 billion, then equally we’re going to take umbrage with the fact that there may be an agreement signed that potentially gives Iran access to $300 billion.”
“But we’re also going to let it play out, and I think that President Trump has earned that with respect to how forceful he has been in the region and his willingness to do what other administrations have not in terms of confronting Iran directly,” she said.
Regardless of what happens with the memorandum of understanding, Parker believes that Israel and the United States achieved victory by destroying Iran’s nuclear infrastructure and by sending a message to Israel’s enemies.
“If you want to hate Israel and the Jewish people, may God have mercy on your soul,” she said.
“But if you care about America, if you care about national security and if you care about remaining safe and remaining strong, then rationally you should continue to stand with our only ally in the region that’s fighting our shared enemies and defending our shared values,” she told JNS.
