Here is the real story behind last week’s House vote to condemn anti-Semitism and all bigotry. It begins with Christian evangelicals’ frustration at their…
Here is the real story behind last week’s House vote to condemn anti-Semitism and all bigotry.
It begins with Christian evangelicals’ frustration at their failure to divide Jewish voters from Democrats and bring them to President Trump .
After all, the president moved the U. S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem against the advice of his own national security team.
The president also pulled the U. S. out of the Iran deal, at the urging of hardline Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He did so despite the deal’s success at keeping Iran, Israel’s enemy, from developing nuclear weapons.
And don’t forget, Trump abandoned the longstanding, bipartisan U. S. policy calling for a two-state solution to bring peace between the Israelis and Palestinians.
The problem for American evangelicals is that, having pushed Trump to make those political moves, they see no jump in Jewish support for Trump.
At best, the president’s policies have helped him maintain support among white evangelical voters — 80 percent of whom voted for him in 2016 — despite credible allegations of extramarital affairs and pay-offs to a porn star and a Playboy model.
Evangelical leaders, from Pastor Robert Jeffress to Rev. Jerry Falwell Jr., seem less concerned with finding an Israeli-Palestinian peace plan than in asserting Jewish control of the region as a necessary precondition for their vision of the second coming of Jesus.
And they have no problem leaving a distorted impression that the only Americans supporting Israel are Trump Republicans.
On Friday, Trump put it succinctly: “The Democrats have become an anti-Israel party.
