Christian Zionism

Rachel Tabachnick has a good article out on The New Christian Zionism and the Jews: A Love/Hate Relationship The Public Eye Winter 2009-10 edition. It contains a number of points she has made in articles at Talk2Action.org. She has a good analysis of how old-fashioned fundamentalist Christian anti-Semitism can not only co-exist with "support for Israel" and even makes a weird kind of extremist logical sense in doing so. She writes:

Camouflaged in love and an exuberant support for Israel, [Rev. John] Hagee and other Christian Zionists openly teach narratives that parallel the story lines of overt anti-Semitism in which Jews are portrayed not as ordinary people, but as superhuman or subhuman. With almost no challenge (and often endorsement) from Jewish leadership, Christian Zionists are stripping away the hard-won humanity of Jews with a broadcast capacity and international reach that overtly antisemitic organizations could never match. Their belief that they are saving Jews from themselves allows them to proceed with a sense of self-righteousness and to draw in millions of well-meaning people. History demonstrates that once this humanity has been stripped away, the door is opened for unconcealed hatred, fear, and even genocide of these perceived superhuman/subhuman beings.

Tags: christian right, christian zionism,radical right