This week, Donald Trump’s pick for ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, a notorious Islamophobe and Christian nationalist, had his first nomination hearing. Previously governor of Arkansas, Huckabee said on the campaign trail in 2008, “You have Arabs and Persians, and there’s such complexity in that. But there’s really no such thing [as a Palestinian]. That’s been a political tool to try and force land away from Israel.”

We hear about Jewish Zionism all the time, for good reason — it’s Israel’s ideological justification for decades of settler colonialism and ethnic cleansing in Palestine. But there’s another form of Zionism that reigns in the United States: Christian Zionism, a political ideology driving much of the Trump administration’s current crackdown on Palestine activism on campuses and its backing of Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

The foundation of Christian Zionism is the belief that Israel today is a continuation of the biblical land of Israel. Palestine will be “returned” to the Jews, then Christ will return to the Holy Land and initiate the end of times. What happens after is subject to several different interpretations, but the consensus among Christian Zionists is that only those who are Christian are saved from hell. In other words, Christian Zionists support the state of Israel as a means to an end — one that isn’t exactly hospitable to the Jewish people.

Donald Trump’s pick for US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, is likely to be the newest addition to a growing list of Christian Zionists in Trump’s cabinet. During his Senate hearing on Tuesday, he reaffirmed the roots of his connection to Israel and Zionism: “We ultimately are people of the book. We believe the Bible. And therefore, that connection is not geopolitical. It is also spiritual.”

In a 2017 speech during his visit to settlements in the occupied West Bank, he said:

There are certain words I refuse to use. There is no such thing as a “West Bank.” It’s Judea and Samaria. There’s no such thing as a “settlement.” They’re communities. They’re neighborhoods. They’re cities. There’s no such thing as an “occupation.”

Such rhetoric is rooted in the broader movement of Christian Zionism, which includes organizations like Christians United for Israel (CUFI), a group with close ties to Huckabee. CUFI was founded by pastor John Hagee, one of the most powerful televangelists in America, in 2006. Today it boasts over ten million members and a well-oiled political machine that it uses to influence US policy and politicians on many issues, but Israel is front and center.

Under Donald Trump, CUFI made major strides, taking credit for several of the first Trump administration’s hawkish projects including Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights, moving the US embassy to Jerusalem, and cutting aid to UNRWA, the United Nations body tasked with serving Palestinian refugees.

Hagee made headlines in 2018 when he was invited by Trump to the opening of the US embassy in Jerusalem. At the ceremony, Hagee spoke about the importance of Jerusalem for Christian Zionists, stating it was the city “where the Messiah will come and establish a kingdom that will never end.” He left out exactly what the prophecy he follows dictates will happen to Jews.

Pastor Robert Jeffress, one of the most prominent figures of Christian Zionism in the United States, delivered the opening prayer at the same 2018 US embassy opening in Jerusalem: “Father, we are . . . grateful as we think about [the founding of the state of Israel in 1948], when you fulfilled the prophecies of the prophets from thousands of years ago and regathered your people in this Promised Land.”

All of this may sound silly and fantastical. But this ideology is backed by power and money and has a very real impact on tens of millions of people’s lives.

Christian Zionism is a highly organized and institutionalized political group dating back to the early nineteenth century, well before the foundation of Jewish Zionism. With deep ties to European imperialism, Christian Zionism rose to prominence. Figures like Lord Arthur Balfour, for example, who in 1917 issued the Balfour Declaration that promised Palestine to Zionist settlers, were heavily influenced by Christian Zionism.

On several occasions, Jeffress has shared openly Islamophobic and antisemitic views. He has referred to Islam as “a false religion.” In a sermon he gave in 1990, Hagee alluded to the Holocaust as part of God’s plan to get Jewish people “back to the land of Israel.”

And it’s not just a small group of racist individuals with celebrity televangelists at the head. Self-identified Christian Zionists make up around 30 million people according to one academic estimate, a significant portion of the larger and influential voting bloc of evangelical Christians. Many have credited Trump’s decision to move the US embassy to Jerusalem in 2017 to his massive Christian Zionist voting base.

In some respects, it’s no surprise that we don’t hear more about Christian Zionism from Israel and its proponents. How do they talk about a zealous movement that wants Israel to succeed for the purpose of fulfilling a Christian prophecy that includes the annihilation of non-Christians like Jews? It hardly works in favor of one of Israel’s foundational propaganda points: Israel is the only safe haven for the Jewish people.

“Most presentations of Christian Zionism tend to caricature their theological beliefs as outlandish and fantastical, making it easier for some to dismiss the movement as fringe and not worth taking seriously,” says Ben Lorber, senior political analyst at Political Research Associates. “More broadly, the movement left is still figuring out how to understand and oppose Christian nationalism, of which Christian Zionism is the foreign policy expression.”

Within the Israeli government, key politicians have recognized the importance of the growing evangelical movement in the United States as a prime target for building support for Israel’s occupation.

Former Israeli ambassador to the US and current Israeli minister of strategic affairs Ron Dermer said in a 2021 interview, “About 25% [of Americans] — some people think more — are evangelical Christians. Less than two percent of Americans are Jews. . . . So if you look just at numbers, you should be spending a lot more time doing outreach to Evangelical Christians than you would do to Jews.”

He continued to lay out why evangelicals were an important audience: “[It’s] very rare to hear evangelicals criticize Israel, [unlike American Jews who are] disproportionately among our critics.” On February 20, Dermer flew to Washington to meet with Trump about his plans for Gaza.

Jonathan Brenneman, a national leader with Christians for Palestine, an organization working to organize and educate churches across the United States around Palestine and the dangers of Zionism, describes Christian Zionism as ”the most overlooked influence on US Middle East policy. It is both a pillar of the far-right white Christian nationalist agenda and also its adherents can be found in almost every congregation in America, even in progressive denominations.”

Huckabee is likely to be approved with little to no push back. While bombs rain down on Gaza’s doctors and journalists, yet another denier of Palestinians’ right to exist is set to be appointed to the US government.