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Home » Religiosity and support for israel

Religiosity and support for israel

The New Neo Posted on by

Support for Israel seems to be correlated with degree of religiosity, whether the religion is Christian or Jewish.

Obviously, the same would not be the case if the religion is Islam.

Here’s more:

The political arm of Reform Judaism is publicly opposing Huckabee [for the post of ambassador to Israel]. So too are the left-wing lobby J Street and the Jewish Democratic Council of America. The Jewish Council for Public Affairs, an umbrella group of Jewish community relations councils around the country, didn’t condemn the nomination outright but made clear its disdain for him with comments deprecating him as a “Christian nationalist.”

These views were summed up in an op-ed published in The Hill by Lily Greenberg Call, a veteran Democratic operative who had worked for the campaigns of former President Joe Biden and former Vice President Kamala Harris and resigned from a post at the Department of the Interior because she felt the Biden-Harris administration was too supportive of Israel after the Oct. 7, 2023 massacre. “Unconditionally supporting Israel actually makes Jews unsafe” and the Jewish state is “antithetical” to “Jewish values,” Call asserted.

On the other side of the issue, more mainstream, liberal Jewish groups like the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee said that they looked forward to working with Huckabee. More ardently pro-Israel groups like the Zionist Organization of America and the Orthodox Union endorsed him enthusiastically.

The opposition to Huckabee – and to Israel itself – is from leftist people of Jewish background, who are leftists first. Leftists do not, for the most part, like religion. In fact, leftism has often been described (not by leftists, however) as a replacement for religion and a type of godless quasi-religion. The reason leftists seem to have a soft spot in their hearts for Moslems is the exception, but that is based on Moslems supposed status as oppressed peoples, not their religiosity.

The leftists I know, some of whom are Jewish but not the majority, detest religion and look down on those who practice it or believe in it as irrational troglodytes. But I’d never heard the phrase “Christian nationalism” prior to reading the linked article. Here’s how it is explained by the author:

Przybyla condemned political conservatives and Trump backers as “Christian nationalists,” because they believe that the rights of all Americans “don’t come from any earthly authority,” she said “They don’t come from Congress or the Supreme Court. They come from God.”

That is something that Huckabee believes. But that belief was shared by all of America’s Founding Fathers, not least a non-denominational Deist like Thomas Jefferson. It was, after all, the man who would eventually become the third president of the United States who wrote in the Declaration of Independence that it was “self-evident” that all Americans were “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.”

It’s either abysmal ignorance on the part of Przybyla, or refusal to accept the stance of the Founders. It hardly matters which; it’s a common notion, that of the negation of what’s known as “natural rights” and their religious basis in the beliefs of the Founders. It’s something I discussed previously in this post about Allan Bloom and his book The Closing of the American Mind, written in 1987. The following is a quote from the book:

But the unity, grandeur and attendant folklore of the founding heritage was attacked from so many directions in the last half-century that it gradually disappeared from daily life and from textbooks. It all began to seem like Washington and the cherry tree—not the sort of thing to teach children seriously. What is influential in the higher intellectual circles always ends up in the schools. The leading ideas of the Declaration began to be understood as eighteenth-century myths or ideologies. Historicism, in Carl Becker’s version (The Declaration of Independence: A Study in the History of Political Ideas, 1922) both cast doubt on the truth of the natural rights teaching and optimistically promised that it would provide a substitute. Similarly Dewey’s pragmatism—the method of science as the method of democracy, individual growth without limits, especially natural limits—saw the past as radically imperfect and regarded our history as irrelevant or as a hindrance to rational analysis of our present. Then there was Marxist debunking of the Charles Beard variety, trying to demonstrate that there was no public spirit, only private concern for property, in the Founding Fathers, thus weakening our convictions of the truth or superiority of American principles and our heroes (An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution, 1913). Then the Southern historians and writers avenged the victory of the antislavery Union by providing low motives for the North (incorporating European critiques of commerce and technology) and idealizing the South’s way of life. Finally, in curious harmony with the Southerners, the radicals in the civil rights movement succeeded in promoting a popular conviction that the Founding was, and the American principles are, racist…

Students now arrive at the university ignorant and cynical about our political heritage, lacking the wherewithal to be either inspired by it or seriously critical of it.

I repeat: that was published in 1987. In the nearly forty years since then, it has only gotten worse.

But back to the issue of support for Israel:

As a Gallup poll published last June suggested, support for Israel in the United States is primarily a function of religious faith. And declining religiosity is directly linked to growing hostility to Israel.

The survey, which tracked opinions about the Jewish state and the Palestinians over the last quarter-century, demonstrated that support for Israel was far more prevalent among those who attended religious services regularly, and it declined among those who did not attend a church or a synagogue.

The poll notes that Protestants have generally been most supportive of Israel and remain so, but the percentage of Protestants in the population has declined. Meanwhile, those with no religious identity have increased, and they are the group most likely to be sympathetic to the Palestinians – an embrace which is rather ironic, considering that fundamentalist Islam is a huge part of what motivates the Palestinians. But it’s not about logic.

More:

The percentage of Catholics in the U.S. population has remained about the same over time, but Catholics have shown a somewhat more significant increase in sympathy for the Palestinians in the past five years than is the case for Protestants.

I’m not sure what that’s about; perhaps the current Pope? Despite this increase in pro-Palestinian sentiment among Catholics, the majority are nevertheless supportive of Israel.

In general:

If younger Americans are less supportive of Israel than older ones, it is to some extent the result of their being less religious than their elders. The fact that people 29 or younger are also more likely to have been indoctrinated in the toxic neo-Marxist ideas of critical race theory, intersectionality and colonial-setter ideology that brands Israel and the Jews as “white” oppressors—and which is antithetical to traditional faith—is also part of this depressing trend.

As for Jews, the poll doesn’t tell us much for two reasons: the first is that the number of Jews was so small as to be susceptible to large margins of error, and the second is that religiosity among Jewish respondents wasn’t measured in any way. But we already know from other polls that, among Jews, the more religious the greater the support for Israel. The definition of “Jew” is, of course, different than definitions for other religious groups, because being Jewish also represents an ethnicity and does not require any religions belief at all. And yet nevertheless, according to recent polls, support among American Jews for Israel remains extremely high:

Comments

Religiosity and support for israel — 35 Comments

  1. OK.
    Now let’s do, “Religiosity and Support for the US” amongst American citizens….

  3. A smart evangelical I correspond with offered that “Christian nationalism” is a term that has gained currency on the left as a way for them to slam white evangelicals while avoiding insult to black evangelicals. It’s dishonest, as leftoid discourse is nowadays. You see it most often used among Vichy protestant publicists like the clown who runs the ‘Interfaith Alliance’.

  5. Art Deco,

    That’s my impression also. “Christian Nationalism” is a term being used more frequently by those who want to discredit a “MAGA” attitude and scare groups who view themselves as marginalized into thinking the “Handmaid’s Tale” is imminent.

  6. If one looks at U.S. support for Jerusalem and Israel with no regard for Torah or Biblical prophesy the next question is, what is best for America’s interests? If one looks at the region since 1948 there is no question its existence has been a positive for the U.S.

    So even non-religious Americans should have a strong argument for supporting Israel.

  7. The only groups which should credibly be called “Christian nationalists” are those, few in number, who call for specifically Christian sectarian rule in the U.S. General recognition of the existence of God and the importance of Judeo-Christian ethics are not the same thing.

    The thing which has always struck me over leftist antagonism to Israel and to Jews is that Jews have been the epitome of an oppressed group for 1800 years or so, culminating in modern times in the horrors of the Nazi extermination camps. More “oppressed” would be hard to find. And prominent among the oppressors, for the past 1400 years, has been Islam. Yet leftists typically pretend that Muslims are an “oppressed” people. Islamic supremacy and Islamic nationalism are integral to the religion.

    The mystery is why people who practice either Judaism or Christianity are more likely to see these historical facts. Secularists should have no trouble, if they look honestly at history, in finding that Jews have been treated badly almost everywhere and want their own country as a result.

  8. I’ve regarded the Left as a Christian heresy since I was a teenager. I think the shared ideals are one of the main attractions for young people and not so far from the mainline culture. Where the differences become apparent is in politics and the will to power, and it is there that the ideals become corrupted. Science and history do not impart ideals, even if good practice requires them, and attempting to find them there is a sterile endeavor.

  9. I’m more comfortable with being called a Christian nationalist perhaps because I use a wider & “softer” lens through which I see it. Far from the “sectarian” accusation I’ve had raised often “Whose Christianity do you want the nation built on? Catholic? Baptist? Methodist? etc…” And anyone who says “Handmaid’s Tale” is worth being laughed at.

    In a nutshell…Something has to lay a foundation for public life. Who sets the boundaries for mores, values, taboos…Who can marry whom & when? What sort of public behaviour is acceptable? Can women vote, drive, raise children on their own or go out in public unsupervised? You get the picture.

    The Founders chose to make Biblical faith that foundational well from which they drew approaches & answers to those kinds of questions. I’d much rather accept that Christianity made Western Civilisation possible & we need to go back to the roots of that tree for how we might recast a vision for the future to steer away from one that sometimes looks pretty apocalyptic, if you don’t mind me using a Biblical image.

  10. Opus Dei wore out. Need a New Thing with which to scare to scare the chumps.

  11. So even non-religious Americans should have a strong argument for supporting Israel.

    Yes, except for Barry Meislin’s point that non-religious Americans are less likely to support America.

  12. “It’s dishonest, as leftoid discourse is nowadays.”

    “Leftoid discourse” has been dishonest since at least 1917 if not 1848.

  13. “So even non-religious Americans should have a strong argument for supporting Israel.” – Rufus T.

    Yes, anyone who has looked at the history of Israel with an open mind, should recognize that Isarel is not a stolen or unlawful nation.

    The Jews began moving back to the area in the early 1900s. They bought the land from the Bedouins who lived there and settled in. It was a British protectorate at the time. However, the Balfour Declaration (“The Balfour Declaration was a statement issued by the British government in 1917, expressing support for the establishment of a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine.”) gave recognition to the Zionist movement and their cause.

    Then, after the discovery of the Holocaust horrors by the Nazis during WWII, it became quite clear that the Jews deserved to return to their homeland as described in the Bible. Of course, the Muslims were opposed to this, but the Ottoman Empire was finished and the small area that Israel would occupy was a mere traction of the Muslim dominated lands in the Middle East. Ad most of the land was owned by the Jews.

    The UN declared Israel an independent nation in 1948. They have been under attack militarily, with terror, and with propaganda ever since. They have fought back courageously and brilliantly. Against all odds, they are still an independent nation today.

    Although knowledge and belief in the Bible lends itself to support for Israel, IMO, it only takes an open-minded observation of the history to be supporter.

  14. Art Deco on March 29, 2025 at 2:20 pm said:

    A smart evangelical I correspond with offered that “Christian nationalism” is a term that has gained currency on the left as a way for them to slam white evangelicals while avoiding insult to black evangelicals. It’s dishonest, as leftoid discourse is nowadays. You see it most often used among Vichy protestant publicists like the clown who runs the ‘Interfaith Alliance’.
    ____________________________________________________

    Here, I’m in agreement with Art Deco and his correspondent. My brothers and I have an informal agreement to avoid topics with even a hint of politics. Despite that, one of them recently started yammering about “Christian nationalism,” and I had to ask him to respect our ban.

    By the way, I’m going to steal the phase “Vichy protestant.”

  15. “Christian nationalism” is being used as a slur against any Christians who are traditional or conservative in their beliefs.

  16. I must be an anomaly as an atheist who strongly supports Israel.

    I obviously don’t see my view as influenced by religion. I see Israelis as a non-evangelical people who just want to practice their faith in private and be left in peace. But Palestnians are generally one of most hateful and destructive people in the planet.

    In other words, my views are influenced by their (Israelis and Palestinians) actions not my religious beliefs.

  18. I’m Eastern Orthodox and, based on interactions in person and online, I think a significant part of Orthodoxy is antisemitic.

  19. Well , Orthodox ought to remember what happened to Constantinople. That wasn’t the Jews. First it was the Western Crusaders and then the Muslims.

    And how long was Greece under the thumb of Islam?????

    I like pointing out to people that about 75 years ago there were still vast numbers of Hindus in what is now mostly Muslim Pakistan. Where are they now?
    A little over a century ago there were still millions of Christians in what is now mostly Muslim Turkey. Where are they now?
    We could probably do that for some other places.
    And who is driving non Muslims out of parts of North Africa right now – village by village…?

  20. It is probably no accident that modern Americans are generally not brought up learning about the Ottoman Empire.
    The Ottomans were arguably Western Civilization’s greatest, most dangerous foe for generations and responsible for the litteral enslavement of so many Europeans.

  21. I think that hardly anyone heard of the phrase “Christian Nationalism” before Rob Reiner’s documentary “God & Country” in 2024. This is clearly a far-left attempt to create fear of something that is so barely existent that it doesn’t even seem to have a significant presence in the far-left news media.

  22. The Jews began moving back to the area in the early 1900s. They bought the land from the Bedouins who lived there and settled in. It was a British protectorate at the time. However, the Balfour Declaration (“The Balfour Declaration was a statement issued by the British government in 1917, expressing support for the establishment of a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine.”) gave recognition to the Zionist movement and their cause.
    ==
    There was a Jewish population in the eastern Mediterranean. Specifically Zionist settlement began around 1897. The area was under Ottoman rule at the time. The Bedouin were transhumant, so the Jews would not have been purchasing land from therm. Local sedentary populations and absentee landlords were the previous owners.
    ==
    The Ottoman Empire entered WWi in 1915 and British and French forces conquered the Fertile Crescent and points adjacent in 1918. In early 1920, the British government assembled three Ottoman subprefectures, made some adjustments in its exterior boundaries, and called the territory the Mandate of Palestine.

  23. Thanks to Art D. for pointing out all the specifics of my generalized comment. My intent was a quick summary of the history, not to write a learned treatise. Fortunately, I can count on you to set things right.

  24. Constantinople was an outpost of Western Christendom against the onslaught of islamic invaders for seven hundred years. It fell and moslem armies advanced into Europe all the way to Vienna. Had not Sobieski and his Winged Hussars not been victorious, Europe might have been subsumed into the islamic ummah. Point being, the Christian West has been under assault by islam since islam’s earliest days and now, somewhat ironically, the Christian West finds itself allied with the contemporary Jewish national state in a mutually supportive defense pact. Israel is our contemporary Constantinople and its defense is crucial to the effort to restrain islam in its hegemonic tendencies. Thus, anyone currently living in Western civilization ought, rationally to support Israel, regardless of one’s individual feelings about Jews. It is more logical for a Western anti-Semite to support Israel than to belong to the abjectly stupid “gays for palestine” crowd. I personally find many reasons to support Israel, but then, I am an ardent supporter of Western Christendom, so that should come as no surprise.

  25. and no one saw that Reiner documentary,

    this was the dog whistle let loose after January 6th,

    there are so many ridiculous premises, proferred by foolish people, ut doesn’t appear to me that Reform school of Judaism, seems theologically sound, much like Mainline Christianity, that is weak in the World,

    J street that is still around, sigh, we know these people by their works, who does Miss Call work for now, I imagine Qatar,

    she broke with AIPAC (which I find has had a relatively mild status, in terms of standing with Israel

    she uses the word Nakbah which is the way they minimize the Holocaust, the term was around in 1948 but not wildly used

  26. I am a Christian and I guess a nationalist, i.e. I support America First. So I am a Christian Nationalist, without apology!
    PS – So were most of our Founding Fathers!

  27. Back in the 80s there really were fire-breathing, anti-semitic, white-supremacist, KKK, Christian Nationalists. Here’s one.

    –Glenn Miller, leader of the White Patriot Party
    https://www.gq.com/story/the-herald-of-the-far-right

    To the left of Miller you can see Steve Miller in dark glasses, his second-in-command and chaplain of the White Patriot Party. Steve was also my surfer buddy when we were in high school.

    Note the crosses on their berets. They were both in Special Forces.

    Anyway, the government busted up the WPP severely and new laws were written on the WPP’s account.

    My friend went to prison for ten years. Apparently he really was trying to buy a rocket launcher to use on the Southern Poverty Law Center.

    Glenn Miller became a stoolie but also kept his hand in white supremacy. He served some time. Then became a trucker.

    In 2014 he decided to go out in a blaze of glory by shooting up a Jewish Community Center. He killed three Christians. He died in prison before his execution.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Overland_Park_shootings

    That whole KKK world was sued and prosecuted into oblivion. Today’s Democrats wish us to believe there is some vital racist Christian Nationalist movement like the WPP bubbling away.

    But there isn’t.

  28. huxley,
    “To the left of Miller you can see Steve Miller in dark glasses…”
    Your link only shows Glen Miller.
    Two musical names. Were they brothers?
    PS – Archie Bunker was right about Meathead!

  29. The KKK was NOT white nationalist: they hated plenty of white people, especially Jews and Catholics. “White Protestant Nationalist” would be more accurate, except it is still probably too inclusive.

  31. Capt. Obvious here again, but the (probably overwhelming) majority of Christians reject racism and antisemitism.

  34. “To the left of Miller you can see Steve Miller in dark glasses…”
    Your link only shows Glen Miller.

    Dax:

    To the left of Glenn Miller in the photograph is a guy with dark glasses. That’s Steve.

    https://www.gq.com/story/the-herald-of-the-far-right

    Yes, it is weird that they both had musical names. It made it hard to google them. I went deep into neo-nazi sites like “Stormfront” to put together a picture of my old surfer buddy.

    From what I could tell, Steve was something of a legend in those circles in those days. On condition of getting out of prison Steve had to forego all the bad associations from his past. By report he now lives quietly on a farm in Georgia.

  35. interesting one of glenn miller’s bandmates for a time, was miles copeland referrred above, who would become famous or infamous as the story goes in the CIA’s middle east section, playing court to the coup in Syria, in 1949, that upset the apple cart, as well as aiding Nasser and all the downstream events that sprung from there, including the alliance and subsequent banning of the Brotherhood, which would lead to Al Queda in a round about way,

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