As a guest at the 80th General Convention of the Episcopal Church, Yehuda Kurtzer observed its legislative committee vote on nearly 200 resolutions, eight of which involved “criticism of Israeli policy with regard to the Palestinians.” A separate resolution was advanced to criticize Christian Zionism. Kurtzer, who offered testimony in opposition to an amendment accusing Israel of engaging in “apartheid,” was surprised by the intensity and frequency of anti-Israel rhetoric.

Jewish-Christian relations are in real trouble, more than would seem obvious at a moment in Jewish history when American Jews are freely at home as citizens and stakeholders in a majority-Christian country, and when the Jewish state is the most popular cause célèbre of that Christian majority. The Episcopalians are hardly the only Christian denomination that has been seized by this kind of anti-Zionist fervor. On Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, the stated clerk of the Presbyterian Church released a brief statement centering the Palestinian struggle as the central issue of concern, depicting the Jews as a people of “humble beginnings” to contrast an essentialized [powerless] version of Jews and Judaism with the [political] power held today by Jews in Israel, and implicitly characterizing the Jews as the enslavers—rather than as the redeemed—in the Exodus story.

These are just two examples, and they both witness a slippage in Christian liberal rhetoric back toward the forms of Christian anti-Judaism that, for much of the past two millennia, subsumed actual Jews into metaphorical and mythical renderings of the Jew for the purpose of Christian theology and the construction of a moral conscience for the West. These new Christian expressions of anti-Israelism replace “the Jew” with “the Israeli” toward the same end: a form of dehumanization of Jews, layered on very particular forms of political language and activism that claim themselves as “allyship” with Palestinians.

Alone, these represent political challenges, especially for those inside the church more sympathetic to the Israeli position or at least those who do not want to see church theology used so nakedly to paper over political programs. But the larger concern here is that these efforts are also eroding the enormous progress in Jewish-Christian dialogue and reconciliation achieved over several decades, which was prompted by the post-Holocaust moment and a recognition by the church of the need to reckon with a history of anti-Semitism.

For some time, opponents of U.S support for Israel have been urging the White House to end the war in Gaza, or simply calling for a ceasefire. Douglas Feith and Lewis Libby consider what such a result would actually entail:

Ending the war immediately would allow Hamas to survive and retain military and governing power. Leaving it in the area containing the Sinai-Gaza smuggling routes would ensure that Hamas can rearm. This is why Hamas leaders now plead for a ceasefire. A ceasefire will provide some relief for Gazans today, but a prolonged ceasefire will preserve Hamas’s bloody oppression of Gaza and make future wars with Israel inevitable.

For most Gazans, even when there is no hot war, Hamas’s dictatorship is a nightmarish tyranny. Hamas rule features the torture and murder of regime opponents, official corruption, extremist indoctrination of children, and misery for the population in general. Hamas diverts foreign aid and other resources from proper uses; instead of improving life for the mass of the people, it uses the funds to fight against Palestinians and Israelis.

Moreover, a Hamas-affiliated website warned Gazans last month against cooperating with Israel in securing and delivering the truckloads of aid flowing into the Strip. It promised to deal with those who do with “an iron fist.” In other words, if Hamas remains in power, it will begin torturing, imprisoning, or murdering those it deems collaborators the moment the war ends. Thereafter, Hamas will begin planning its next attack on Israel:

Hamas’s goals are to overshadow the Palestinian Authority, win control of the West Bank, and establish Hamas leadership over the Palestinian revolution. Hamas’s ultimate aim is to spark a regional war to obliterate Israel and, as Hamas leaders steadfastly maintain, fulfill a Quranic vision of killing all Jews.

Hamas planned for corpses of Palestinian babies and mothers to serve as the mainspring of its October 7 war plan. Hamas calculated it could survive a war against a superior Israeli force and energize enemies of Israel around the world. The key to both aims was arranging for grievous Palestinian civilian losses. . . . That element of Hamas’s war plan is working impressively.