American Evangelicals among ‘the Last Ones Standing with Israel’

The Biden administration is applying a “double standard” to Israel, said Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, and “they’ve ramped up their rhetoric and their pressure on Israel” after the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) accidentally killed seven aid workers in a drone strike last week. Due to the U.S. government’s desertion, “Israel is standing alone in the world,” Perkins added, and “evangelicals in America are really the last ones standing with Israel.”

By holding Israel responsible for the mistaken drone attack, the Biden administration is expecting more of our allies than of our own armed forces. “On August 29th of 2021, as the United States bungled their withdrawal from Afghanistan … the Biden administration fired a drone attack, and it killed 10 civilians,” Perkins recalled. “And there was no action taken for those involved in that.”

Israel’s isolation is evident from the global opposition to its planned operation in Rafah. “There is a double standard,” Senator James Lankford (R-Okla.), an evangelical himself, insisted on “Washington Watch.” “The Biden administration is putting pressure on Netanyahu to have a ceasefire and to stop and allow terrorists to remain in Rafah when we know there are thousands of terrorists that are literally hiding out in that last spot.”

Rafah has “become a symbol … in the sense that Israel keeps saying, ‘We have to go to Rafah.’ And so the entire world comes down against Israel saying, ‘You mustn’t go into Rafah,’” Center for Security Policy senior fellow Caroline Glick explained on “Washington Watch.” “The fact is that Rafah is the last redoubt of Hamas’s conventional forces, and they have to be destroyed.”

The debate over Rafah has “become sort of a stand-off between Israel and [the rest of] humanity that doesn’t want the Jews to succeed,” Glick added.

To defend its abandonment of Israel, the Biden administration has argued that an immediate ceasefire is necessary to protect the lives of Palestinian civilians. “Obviously, it’s a war time, there’s painful loss of life for civilians that are out there. That’s the painful difficulty of any war in any place,” said Lankford. “We’ve experienced that as Americans, [and] we do everything we can to be able to protect innocent life. Israel is also trying to protect innocent life.”

But Biden is applying pressure on the wrong party, Lankford insisted. “We really need to have pressure on Lebanon to back up Hezbollah [from the border]. We need to have pressure on Qatar. The Qataris could put pressure on Gaza and Hamas today and could release all of those hostages. But Qatar is choosing not to do that.”

While the media and now the Biden administration continually highlight the plight of Palestinian refugees, they neglect to mention that Israeli civilians also continue to face terror attacks and rocket barrages, and tens of thousands have been displaced from their homes. “There’s about 63,000 Israelis that have had to pull away from the northern border because of the constant attacks from Hezbollah,” Lankford noted.

“Israel is our ally. We need to stand with her. We need to help in every way we can, to help in the threat of terrorism that’s coming at them,” Lankford agreed. “We do want to end terrorism. We understand what it’s like to be attacked in a threat of terrorism.”

Besides the fact that Israel is our ally, Israel is engaged in a just, defensive war. Hamas initiated the current conflict by invading Israel without warning, pillaging, torturing, and killing without distinction. During that unprovoked raid, Hamas terrorists deliberately and brutally killed more than 1,200 Israeli civilians and kidnapped more than 200 victims as hostages, many of whom are still in captivity.

By contrast, Israel has not intentionally killed a single Palestinian civilian. While it’s true than many Palestinian civilians have been killed, that is only because Hamas terrorists deliberately surround themselves with as many civilians as possible, in order to maximize the collateral damage when Israel hits legitimate, military targets. It’s impossible to know exactly how many civilian casualties there have been in Gaza because the only casualty numbers reported from Gaza are produced by an organ of Hamas which does not distinguish between military and civilian deaths.

Lankford recently traveled to Israel, where people are feeling “abandoned” by the Biden administration, he said. “The folks in Israel that I talked to are really grateful to see folks on the ground saying, ‘No, there are Americans that do stand with you,’ including evangelical Christians and others, especially a lot of Republicans that are speaking out clearly to say, ‘We’re going to stand with Israel.’”

Not only do evangelicals support Israel for the same reasons liberals used to — basic human rights, national self-determination, etc. — but they have an additional affection for them as God’s chosen people under the Mosaic covenant, the nation of David, Isaiah, Peter, Paul, and Jesus. As the world’s progressive elite continues to unjustly demonize the Jews, American evangelicals are among the last voices in the world who will speak up for Israel, making their support even more essential.