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What Would Jesus Do?

George D. O’Neill. The American Conservative, Sat, 19 Apr 2025

And is there anything particularly Christian about Christian Zionism?

When did Jesus say it was acceptable to starve the poor, slaughter women and children while turning a blind eye to the suffering of the weak? The answer, of course, is never. Yet for years, a vocal strain of American Christian Zionist leaders have supported policies that do precisely that — enabling the starvation and slaughter of Palestinians while underwriting broader wars that have decimated ancient Christian communities across the Middle East. How did we arrive at a place where those who claim to follow the Prince of Peace justify such unchristian horrors.

The Biblical call for compassion is clear: Leviticus 23:22 commands, “When you harvest the crops of your land, do not harvest the grain along the edges of your fields, and do not pick up what the harvesters drop. Leave it for the poor and the foreigners living among you.” This is a divine directive to care for the vulnerable, not an optional gesture. James, the brother of Jesus, is yet more emphatic: “Pure and genuine religion in the sight of God the Father means caring for orphans and widows in their distress and refusing to let the world corrupt you” (James 1:27). What kind of religious leaders cheer the bombing of Gaza’s widows and orphans, left destitute by policies supported by American and Israeli leaders? Decades of war propaganda have numbed many Americans to the atrocities committed in their name. Yet a growing awareness is stirring both here and abroad.

American Christian Zionist leaders often frame their support for Israel as a divine mandate, dismissing Palestinian suffering as collateral damage in a prophetic plan. Pastor Robert Jeffress declares, “The Bible says this land belongs to the Jewish people — period… God has pronounced judgment after judgment in the Old Testament to those who would ‘divide the land,’ and hand it over to non-Jews.” Likewise, Pastor John Hagee insists, “You’re either for the Jewish people or you’re not.” But where in the Gospels do we find Jesus exalting land rights or ethnic loyalty over human lives? Why did Jesus tell his fellow Jews to be like the Good Samaritan if not to call all people out of their tribalism? The only time He spoke of snakes was to call the Pharisees a “brood of vipers” (Matthew 23:33), condemning their ethnonationalism that blinded them to His message of nonviolence and forgiveness of enemies. He urged, “I desire mercy, not sacrifice” (Matthew 9:13), a rebuke to those who prized vengeance and power over compassion. Did He not say, “Blessed are the peacemakers,” and instruct us to “turn the other cheek”? How do religious leaders who celebrate military might over mercy square with the Messiah who dined with sinners and healed the outcast?

The fruits of this ideology are death and destruction. For decades, some American Christian Zionist leaders have backed Israel’s destructive actions, often at the expense of the very people Jesus called us to protect. They support the decades-long blockade of Gaza, where malnutrition haunts the population, and the wider wars in Iraq and Syria, which have all but erased Christian communities dating back millennia. In Syria, America’s decade-long support for “moderate insurgents” — coupled with the theft of Syrian oil, much of it shipped to Israel — helped topple the government. Now, Al Qaeda affiliates hold sway in parts of that land. Who benefited? Not the Syrian Christians and other religious minorities who are being killed, displaced, and fleeing for their lives.

And then there’s the inconvenient truth about Hamas. For years, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu facilitated funding to Hamas through channels like Qatar, a policy aimed at keeping Palestinians divided and weakening the Palestinian Authority. The State of Israel, with American Christian Zionist leaders’ applause and U.S. support, has trained, equipped, and empowered Hamas to serve its own strategic ends. Decades of this cynical game have propped up a terrorist group that Israel and its allies now use as a pretext to justify slaughtering Gazan children by the thousands. How can Christians reconcile killing innocents for the actions of a monster they helped enable? Worse still, many believe Netanyahu’s government may have had foreknowledge of Hamas’s October 7 attack plan yet allowed it to proceed, amplifying the tragedy to justify further escalation of the abuse of Gazans.

God made a covenant with Abraham, promising his descendants a legacy (Genesis 12:2-3). But the Apostle Paul clarifies this promise in Galatians 3:16: the covenant finds its fulfillment in Jesus. Many well-meaning Christians, however, were misled into believing otherwise by the questionable biblical interpretations of Cyrus Scofield. In certain circles, his 1917 edition of the Scofield Reference Bible was very influential.

What would Jesus do if asked to condone the terrorist actions involved in Israel’s founding? The 1946 bombing of the King David Hotel by the Irgun, killing 91 people under the guise of a “liberation” struggle, or the 1948 Deir Yassin massacre, where Zionist militias slaughtered over 100 Palestinian villagers to terrorize others into flight — would He bless such bloodshed? And what of the Nakba, the catastrophic expulsion of over 700,000 Palestinians from their homes that same year, leaving them refugees in their own land? Israel’s first prime minister David Ben-Gurion himself acknowledged in 1918, “We have no reason to assume that the inhabitants of the country who remained after the destruction of the Second Temple were uprooted. On the contrary, the Jewish farmer, like his neighbors, clung to the soil and continued to live in the land, eventually adopting Christianity and later Islam.” If even Israel’s founding father recognized the deep roots of Palestine’s people, how can Christians justify their dispossession? Jesus, who wept over Jerusalem and called for mercy, would surely mourn the dispossessed, not celebrate their displacement.

With countless lives lost and trillions of dollars spent since, can anyone claim this is a policy God has blessed? America’s veterans from our Christian Zionist-supported Middle East wars face high suicide rates, their families shattered by the toll of endless conflict. Our witness to the region lies in ruins, as America plays Israel’s enforcer — destroying Israel’s enemies while partnering with Al Qaeda in Syria and enabling ISIS in Libya and Iraq. Would God bless us and Israel for intentionally putting radicals like Hamas in power over Gaza, sidelining moderate voices from other Palestinian groups? How does any of this reflect faithfulness to Christ? As we approach Easter 2025 — the celebration of Christ’s sacrifice and triumph over death — shouldn’t we reflect on whether our actions honor the One who died for all, not just a favored few?

Jesus Himself opposed violent religious zeal for Israel’s sake. When the Zealots pressed for rebellion, He chose nonviolence. Even Peter, His disciple, was rebuked for cutting off Malchus’ ear in the Garden of Gethsemane. “Put your sword back in its place,” Jesus told him, “for all who live by the sword will die by the sword” (Matthew 26:52). Where is that spirit being promoted by leading Christian Zionists?

The American political class enables this madness, funneling billions in aid to Israel each year — more than to any other nation — often bypassing Congress entirely. Much of the non-Israel foreign aid is used to bribe neighboring countries into compliance or to destabilize regimes deemed insufficiently pro-Israel. You know them by their fruits, and these fruits are war and suffering.

What would Jesus do? He would likely overturn the tables of this unholy alliance, as He did the money-changers in the temple. He would call us back to the edges of the field, where the poor and the foreigner await the compassion we’ve withheld. He would remind us that true faith is measured not in bombs dropped or wars waged, but in the love we show to the least of these. So I ask: If caring for orphans and widows is the mark of pure religion, what does it say of Christian leaders who justify their death and destruction?

About the author

George D. O’Neill, Jr., is a member of the board of directors of the American Ideas Institute, which publishes The American Conservative, and an artist who lives in rural Florida.

April 21, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Gaza, Israel, Religion and ethics | Leave a comment