© Ronen Zvulun/Reuters
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, left, and David M. Friedman, the American ambassador to Israel, at the dedication of the American Embassy in Jerusalem. “You’re running a country, you need friends,” Mr. Friedman said.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, left, and David M. Friedman, the American ambassador to Israel, at the dedication of the American Embassy in Jerusalem. “You’re running a country, you need friends,” Mr. Friedman said.
In a conference room off his office, Mr. Netanyahu thanked the small circle of prominent pastors and activists on Tuesday for pressing President Trump to open the embassy, breaking with decades of American policy that Jerusalem's status should be decided in peace talks.
Which embassy would be next? Mr. Netanyahu wanted to know, running through a list of other countries with strong evangelical churches. Guatemala, Paraguay and Honduras had already followed the United States in announcing their intention to move their embassies to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv, but what about Brazil, India or even China?
"The prime minister was very excited," recalled Mario Bramnick, the Cuban-American pastor of a Pentecostal church near Miami and a Trump supporter who attended the meeting.
The culmination of decades of lobbying, the dedication of the embassy in Jerusalem this past week doubled as the most public recognition yet of the growing importance the Netanyahu government now assigns to its conservative Christian allies, even if some have been accused of making anti-Semitic statements.
Comment: Given that Zionism was originally a Christian project before a minority in the Jewish community accepted its goals as their own, this alliance should be no surprise. And it's a canny move on Netanyahu's part. Even though the Israeli Lobby has managed to escape being labeled as a foreign agent (which it is), it still needs some popular U.S. support, and the evangelicals provide that. The Jewish State cannot exist without a bogus, literal Biblical interpretation. If "God gave us this land" is seen as true, then it is much harder to criticize the means by which it was made so: ethnic cleansing and apartheid.