Jennifer Kelly on Christian Zionism, Tourism, and the IHRA Definition

Transcript

Jennifer Kelly on Christian Zionism, Tourism, and the IHRA Definition

Welcome to Battling the IHRA definition, a new podcast by the Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism. I’m Yulia Gilich, your host and a member of the founding collective of the Institute.

In today’s episode, we’ll hear from Jennifer Kelly speaking at our October 2023 conference titled Battling the IHRA Definition: Theory and Activism. Dr  Kelly is a founding collective member of the Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism and a professor of Critical Race and Ethnic Studies at UC Santa Cruz. Her talk is titled Christian Zionism, Tourism, and the IHRA Definition.

The talk is divided into three parts. Dr Kelly first details some of the narrative logics of U.S. Christian Zionism. She then explores the role that Christian Zionist travel plays in entrenching Israeli state violence, focusing specifically on the King David Theme Park in Jerusalem and the planned and in-progress displacement of 130 Palestinian families (approx 1,500 people) in Silwan for its construction. Finally, she connects this Christian Zionist travel and displacement to Christian Zionist support for the IHRA Definition. 

On our website, criticalzionismstudies.org, you can access the transcript and a video recording of this talk, as well as many more conference videos, transcripts, and papers, with new materials being regularly added. You can also find more resources about the IHRA definition and how to resist. Check out the episode notes for more details.

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I am going to preface my remarks today with a note. As we know, we are witnessing a genocide and the war mongering rhetoric of everyone from politicians to administrators to celebrity influencers. They want Gaza leveled and speech about Palestine silenced. It’s an impossible ask to expect those subjected to this violence to formulate thoughtful research-based responses, yet that’s what Palestinians, everywhere, are doing, as always: constantly educating everyone else while the death toll rises. And it’s up to everyone who cares about any of this–colonialism, racist state violence, genocide, liberation–to do this work. This work is also study. As the Critical Race and Ethnic Studies Department wrote in our statement of support for the Institute’s work against the sea of attacks: 

In this moment—when we are grieving lives lost, fearing the many more to come, and witnessing Israel once again retaliate against a trapped Palestinian population in Gaza—we want to underscore the need for study. What we are witnessing needs to be understood in the context of 75 years of settler colonial displacement, military occupation, and enclosure. As in the past, racialized media coverage dehumanizes Palestinians, delegitimizing their aspirations for freedom from militarism, colonial rule, and incarceration. We are again witnessing the circulation of technologies that are weaponized against Palestinians first, and, subsequently, our most vulnerable populations in the United States, on our borders and globally. It is for this reason that we support the critical study of Zionism. The study of Zionism in the context of power is more imperative than ever.

The study of Zionism in the context of power is more imperative than ever, as a spectrum of actors, including right wing racists, craven–and, as Dylan points out, not just craven–administrators, liberal Zionists, and many who very publicly position themselves as pro- Palestine, yet balk at the suggestion that Israel is a racial settler-colonial state and that Zionism needs to be studied transnationally–have made every effort to silence the study of Zionism in the context of power. Ever since we launched the Institute, we have been met with: harassing, racist hate mail; defamatory public smear campaigns full of misinformation and entirely fabricated quotes; condescending demands from colleagues to cancel our programming, rewrite our points of unity, and/or dissolve the Institute; attempts to malign us and our work by the usual suspects like AMCHA and Stand with Us, and beyond. We’ve also experienced UCSC’s efforts to distance themselves from work they celebrate in every other context in order to appease outside (and inside) demands to censor our work and intimidate us into silence. While this panel is on the global right, I want to take a moment to underscore two things. First, these are not (all) right wing campaigns. Liberal Zionists—even/especially those who profess to be in solidarity with Palestine and Palestinian freedom struggles—have been at the helm of the most harmful campaigns against us and our work. I also want to say that these campaigns are meant to distract us from the work. Yet, we will not be distracted. We remain committed to doing the work, however partial and piecemeal it is, having been done in moments stolen away in between crises.

What I will share with you today is divided into three parts. I first detail some of the history and narrative logics of U.S. Christian Zionism. I then explore the role Christian Zionist travel plays in entrenching Israeli state violence, focusing specifically on the King David Theme Park in Jerusalem and the planned and in-progress displacement of 130 Palestinian families (1,500 people) in Silwan for its construction. Finally, I connect this Christian Zionist travel and displacement to Christian Zionist support for the IHRA Definition, revealing the entrenchment of Christian Zionism in global right discourse. Christians United for Israel’s—which most progressives would denounce as a far-right organization—entire platform is predicated on stamping out any/all criticism of Israel, quashing international pressure on Israel to comply with international law, and opposing the BDS movement as “economic antisemitism.” Central to this is their support of the IHRA Definition: CUFI boasts that they have worked to see the IHRA definition adopted at the federal level and targets each state capitol to see it adopted across the country. In this way, through a focus on Christian Zionist organizing in the U.S., its use of tourism to both galvanize its followers and simultaneously displace Palestinians, and its support of the IHRA definition, I argue that Christian Zionism is a central player in the displacement of Palestinians in Palestine and the suppression of academic freedom in the U.S.

Christian Zionism has a deep and pervasive U.S. history. In the early 20^th century, Christian Zionism began to have a strong purchase in the U.S. through the American dispensational movement, and became ubiquitous within evangelical denominations. The core theological belief was this: following the work of nineteenth century Christian dispensationalist Cyrus Ingerson Scofield, Christian dispensationalist premillenialists that there will be a Rapture in which God will physically remove all of his true believers, alive and dead, from earth and they will immediately ascend to heaven.  After said Rapture, the Anti-Christ will reign throughout the seven-year period of tribulation, during which all of the biblical prophecies of the Book of Revelation will be fulfilled.  After the period of tribulation, we will witness the Second Coming of Christ, who will do battle with his Chosen People (Christians and converted Jews) against the Anti-Christ in Israel.  Premillenialist theology also maintains that after the Rapture, “144,000 Jews will convert to Christianity and this conversion will reveal to them the true intentions of the Anti-Christ.” After seven years of tribulations, Jesus Christ will return and, with the help of converted Jews, “defeat and imprison Satan and establish a Messianic Kingdom on Earth for a period of one millennium.”  The pre- in premillenialism thus designates the belief that the Rapture takes place before the millennium of Christ’s rule, while dispensationalism refers to distinct dispensations, or periods in history, each of which marks a separate moment in the relationship between humans and God.

Politically, after the 1967 war, and in tandem with—and of course with many of the same actors as—Falwell’s Moral Majority in the 1970s and 1980s, evangelical Christian political mobilizing took the shape of what Susan harding calls a “window of progressive history” in the unfolding of end-times, wherein Christian premillenialists maintained that “World history is hopelessly regressive, careening pell-mell into Satan’s maw, and it may seem as if America is plummeting down that same dark tunnel, but, not necessarily, not if Christians act now.”

For the purposes of such a short paper, I’ll need to gloss over five decades of Christian Zionist mobilizing that has only entrenched U.S. discursive and material support for Israeli state violence. But what I will say is that Israel’s landgrabs in 1967 gave Christian Zionists a renewed faith in biblical prophecy with U.S. evangelicals thrilled that “for the first time in more than 2,000 years Jerusalem is now completely in the hands of the Jews,” delivering “a renewed faith in the accuracy and validity of the Bible.” For decades, the calls for war, the drum beating for violence, the desire to see Palestinians fully displaced is situated the intersection of exhilaration at biblical prophecy coming to life—through death—and the virulent racism of the Christian right.

A central tenet of Falwell’s Moral Majority, founded in 1979, was unequivocal support for Israel and by 1983 he began his first of many “Friendship Tours to Israel,” which included “meetings with top government officials, tour[s] of Israeli battlefields and defense instillations.” (On Grace Halsell’s narration of these tours in 1983 and 1985, she wrote that “for every hour they heard of Christ’s teachings, they heard thirty hours of Israeli political and military achievement”). Today, Christian Zionism tours follow this template, pairing pilgrimage with celebrations of Israel’s sustained displacement of Palestinians.

I will share with you just one example. Currently, there is a biblical theme park—run by settlers—that is planned for Silwan in the Eastern part of Occupied Jerusalem comprises a cable car, a seven story Jewish cultural center on Wadi Hilweh land, and shopping centers and homes for settlers. The park, even in its “incomplete” iteration as an archeological park, attracts hundreds of thousands of tourists per year. Arabic street names have of course been turned into Hebrew, streets have collapsed under Palestinian homes because of the tunnels dug underneath them for tourist paths. One reporter writes: “It wasn’t until the parking lot caved in that locals were able to look into the hole below and discover what the state had been excavating for many years without disclosing to residents: a first-century “Pilgrim’s Path” leading from the Pool of Siloam up to the Old City, directly beneath the homes of Wadi Hilweh.” The settler group Elad, funded by the late Sheldon Adelson, runs these excavations and—with state support—has worked to exile Palestinian families from their homes since the early 90s. Adelson, too, was one of the largest donors to Taglit-Birthright (state-sanctioned Zionist tourism initiatives—free for Jewish youth—that erase Palestinian presence and celebrate Israeli military violence), and a regular stop on Birthright trips is the City of David Park. 

In June 2021, amidst Israel’s last bombing campaign against Gaza, Leila Sackur described the demolition orders given to residents of al-Bustan, in Silwan, across 100 properties (1,550 people), with plans to repopulate the entire Silwan neighborhood with 25,000 settlers. As always, residents were told to demolish their own homes or pay a fine of $6,000. She writes:

The plan for the replacement of al-Bustan is Gan Hamelech Park, billed as a new biblical theme park for the city of Jerusalem, which is to be linked to the pre-existing City of David national park. The development plan includes archeological excavations culminating in the ‘restoration’ of the park, the planting of a ‘blooming garden’, a touristic zone complete with restaurants, galleries and museums, as well as a new residential neighbourhood for settlers.

She notes, in particular, that the narrative peddled to tourists through this architecture is one of continuity. She writes, “From the visitor centre to tours of the land, international tourists are presented with a history that is exclusively biblical, erasing a long Palestinian heritage and contemporary urban life, and implying a shame that the Holy land is being used and possessed by non-Jews,” both “projecting a narrative of linear continuity” and “museumizing the area,” making it “easier to imagine ‘a land without a people.” 

In this way, tourism is never a thing apart from colonial state violence. As countless scholars in colonial studies have shown, tourism often follows the path of colonial state violence or precipitates it, paving the way for the justificatory logic of colonialism. This archeological site is not only a tourist attraction for Christian Zionist tourists; it is also an extension of Sheldon Adelson’s other investments in Christian Zionism. Indeed, Sheldon Adelson, who funneled money into Elad and who famously said he’s a “one-issue person and that issue is Israel,” donated $4.6 million to Christians United for Israel (CUFI) between 2012 and his death in 2021. CUFI, the flagship Christian Zionist organization in the U.S., was founded by conservative evangelical pastor John Hagee. I started writing about Christians United for Israel as a baby graduate student writing a master’s thesis on U.S. Christian Zionism in 2008 shortly after CUFI’s inception in 2006. There, I wrote:

Through its Exodus II program alone, CUFI writes that it has “donate[d] $19,981,240 to various causes that support the Jewish people. These causes include education, helping orphans, the end–gathering of exiles from around the world who wish to relocate to Israel and many other humanitarian causes.”  Hagee’s use of the word “end-gathering” here clearly connotes his profoundly eschatological support for Israel, which supports the state predominantly for the role it will play in end-times.  Hagee also stresses that these causes also “include education, repatriation, rebuilding and relocating [Israeli] children to safe zones, as well as providing medical equipment and supplies for the Jewish people injured in terrorist attacks.”  Thus, in keeping with Christian Zionists’ consistent solicitation of donations specifically within the context of the “War on Terror,” Hagee ever reminds his American audience of the “enduring threat of terrorism” they share with Israel.

This is strikingly resonant now, fifteen years later, as the drums of war beat, as this weekend is being called Israel’s 9/11, as Israel is reigning terror on Gaza and blaming them for it, and the Western media is justifying this state violence through Islamophobic tropes, fabricated reporting, and rampant dehumanization of Palestinians.

Since its inception, CUFI—in step with scores of other Christian Zionist organizations—have beat the drum for war. In March 11, 2007 in speech to the AIPAC (a speech made possible by the then two-decade old alliance between the Christian Right and AIPIAC), CUFI founder John Hagee referred to the United Nations as a “political brothel” and called for a preemptive strike on Iran.^] In November 2007, they sent out a congratulatory Action Alert missive that CUFI activists sent over 14,500 e-mails to the White House and placed thousands more calls asking President Bush not to pressure Israel to make territorial concessions at Annapolis.  “We are pleased to report,” they wrote, “that the Annapolis Summit ended without any such pressure being placed on Israel.  In fact, the Summit was little more than an extended photo opportunity.”

This calls to mind the moment when, at the first Christian Zionist Congress held in Basel in 1985, Christian Zionists urged Israel to annex the West Bank and an Israeli Jew in the audience protested that “an Israeli poll showed that one-third of the Israelis would be willing to trade territory seized in 1967 for peace with the Palestinians.” Immediately, International Christian Embassy of Jerusalem (which, for 20 years, was housed in Edward Said’s stolen family home), founder Willem van der Hoeven, exclaimed, “We don’t care what the Israelis vote! We care what God says! And God gave that land to the Jews!,” after which the Christian Zionists nearly unanimously passed the resolution. Here again is Christian Zionist adamant opposition to any concession of occupied land to Palestinians and their readiness to overwrite national and international policy in favor of their interpretation of Divine Providence and in order to facilitate the Second Coming of Christ. My grandmother, a Christian Zionist southern Baptist who would never have the terms to call herself that, whose license place read “in case of rapture, this car will be unmanned,” when alive would shrug and say “Peace in Palestine? There will never be peace until Jesus comes.” These are not ineffectual actors to shrug off and roll our eyes at. They are warmongering zealots with an enormous amount of political power in the U.S. In the words of our conference co-organizer Sheryl Nestel, from Independent Jewish Voices, we ignore Christians United for Israel at our peril.

Finally, to connect this history of political power, embedded tourist initiatives, central to CUFI’s organizing has been the IHRA definition. Christians United for Israel—which boasts 10 million members and has now adopted the mantle “The Fight Against Antisemitism”—claims outsized responsibility for having influenced ten US states to adopt the IHRA definition. In January 2022, the states that issued proclamations in support of the IHRA definition were Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Utah, West Virginia, Wyoming and Nevada, with Virginia (then) on the way. Multiple news outlets reported that “The proclamations are a result of a joint advocacy effort by Christians United for Israel (CUFI), Jewish Federations of North American (JFNA), the American Jewish Committee and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.” In January 2021, in CUFI’s press release on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, CUFI Action Fund Chairwoman Sandra Parker spoke:

As one cannot defeat that which they are unwilling to define, we are working with states across the country to ensure that the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) definition of antisemitism is acknowledged and appropriately utilized. In addition, we are working with educators to address the woeful state of Holocaust education in many school districts across the country. We will not stop until every child in America has a firm and personal understanding of the genocide by which all others are measured.”

This pairing of the IHRA definition and with educational political program that positions the holocaust as the genocide by which all others are measured and, the subtext is, position Israel as the antidote to antisemitism. It is in the arena of education that CUFI mobilizes their 10 million members to join Stand with Us and AMCHA in, for example, policing K-12 education in California to make sure there is no mention of Palestine. Indeed, an “IHRA” search and an “ethnic studies” search on their website yield many paired campaigns, with each working squarely to formalize and institutionalize the suppression of speech on Palestine.

In 2008, I wrote “The alliance of the Christian Right and the Israeli Right is an undertheorized site of U.S. imperialism, a site wherein past and present Christian American vested interest in the Holy Land amounts to theological, political, and fiscal support for what has now become a seemingly endless colonial military occupation.”  Fifteen years later, this remains true and the death count in the interim is staggering. However, what I would underscore today is that these actors are not limited to the Christian right or the Israeli right, but include many actors and organizations who define themselves as liberal and progressive—in large part to peddle the perception that there is a diversity of perspectives in each of their direct-action campaigns—nor do these silencing campaigns stop as we move leftward in our analysis. Indeed, the normalization of the rhetoric and policies that the global right entrench is pernicious and ubiquitous and both sanctions and facilitates the unbridled enthusiasm for warfare, the devastation we are witnessing, and as the silence that condones it.

Thank you.