A small but growing number of American evangelical Christians have criticized their movements’ pro-Israel stance, and there is even a George-Soros-funded organization that supports them. Mark Tooley gives the background and points the way forward:

A new generation of evangelical leaders is more reluctant to wade into the [Israeli-Palestinian] controversy. Some old religious-Right figures were believers in dispensationalism, a 19th-century movement . . . stressing various end-times events, including the restoration of Israel, before Christ’s return. . . . [M]illions of sincere Christians adhere to some version of [dispensationalism]. Critics of Christian Zionism often critique dispensationalism as apocalyptic and imply it is the main force for evangelical support for Israel. They also claim that dispensationalism is on the decline, with little pull among young evangelicals.

But most pro-Israel Christians, including evangelicals, have never been full-throttle dispensationalists. They instead focus on sympathy for world Jewry after the Holocaust, the ongoing threat of anti-Semitism, nasty anti-Israel regimes like theocratic Iran, Israel’s thriving democracy, Israel’s alliance with America, and more recently, Israel as an oasis of protection for Middle East Christians, under siege nearly everywhere else.

Many evangelicals and other Christians also mystically believe . . . in an ongoing organic, familial tie between Christianity and Judaism, of which the land of Israel is a not insignificant part. . . .

Neither providence nor the Bible is neutral between a people striving to survive [and those] many others who hope for their elimination. Effectively explaining why requires both good political and theological judgment.

Early Friday morning, Israel attacked military installations near the Iranian cities of Isfahan and nearby Natanz, the latter being one of the hubs of the country’s nuclear program. Jerusalem is not taking credit for the attack, and none of the details are too certain, but it seems that the attack involved multiple drones, likely launched from within Iran, as well as one or more missiles fired from Syrian or Iraqi airspace. Strikes on Syrian radar systems shortly beforehand probably helped make the attack possible, and there were reportedly strikes on Iraq as well.

Iran itself is downplaying the attack, but the S-300 air-defense batteries in Isfahan appear to have been destroyed or damaged. This is a sophisticated Russian-made system positioned to protect the Natanz nuclear installation. In other words, Israel has demonstrated that Iran’s best technology can’t protect the country’s skies from the IDF. As Yossi Kuperwasser puts it, the attack, combined with the response to the assault on April 13,

clarified to the Iranians that whereas we [Israelis] are not as vulnerable as they thought, they are more vulnerable than they thought. They have difficulty hitting us, but we have no difficulty hitting them.

Nobody knows exactly how the operation was carried out. . . . It is good that a question mark hovers over . . . what exactly Israel did. Let’s keep them wondering. It is good for deniability and good for keeping the enemy uncertain.

The fact that we chose targets that were in the vicinity of a major nuclear facility but were linked to the Iranian missile and air forces was a good message. It communicated that we can reach other targets as well but, as we don’t want escalation, we chose targets nearby that were involved in the attack against Israel. I think it sends the message that if we want to, we can send a stronger message. Israel is not seeking escalation at the moment.