Donald Trump has surrounded himself with the most anti-Palestinian team in the history of the United States. This administration has proven even more hostile to the fundamental rights of the Palestinian people than during Trump’s first term from 2017 to 2021, due to the promotion of particularly fanatical “Christian Zionists.” These messianic evangelicals are convinced that their salvation depends on the fulfillment of prophecies, which in their view means the establishment of a single Jewish state over what they consider to be the “Holy Land.”
While the American Jewish community can be highly critical of Benjamin Netanyahu (and in fact votes overwhelmingly Democratic), this fundamentalist movement has supported the current Israeli government unreservedly in its war against Gaza. Even before Trump’s re-election, Christian Zionists lobbied Congress to intensify US military support for Israel’s ground offensive in Gaza, even as they suspended aid to the Ukrainian resistance for several months in 2024.
Pastor with little ‘humanitarian’ spirit
The US president appointed his business and golf partner Steve Witkoff as special envoy to the Middle East, but he also tasked him as a personal emissary to Vladimir Putin, thereby distracting him from the Israeli-Palestinian issue. Furthermore, although a ceasefire went into effect in Gaza on January 19, on the eve of Trump’s return to the White House, Witkoff failed to prevent Israel from resuming hostilities on March 2, and has not succeeded in negotiating a suspension of fighting since.
These repeated failures by Trump’s main Jewish adviser have left the field open to Christian Zionists whose messianic convictions align them more closely with Netanyahu’s supremacist allies than with the Israeli prime minister himself. Pete Hegseth, who Trump managed to install at the head of the Pentagon, previously invoked “the miracle of the re-establishment of the temple,” echoing Israeli messianic figures who dream of destroying Muslim holy sites in the occupied part of Jerusalem to build the Third Jewish Temple on top of the ruins.
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