(RNS) — Two back-to-back interviews by conservative influencer Tucker Carlson in the past two weeks revealed a growing chasm within American evangelical Christianity over U.S. support for Israel.
The former Fox anchor, now host of “The Tucker Carlson Show,” recently interviewed the Rev. Fares Abraham, a Palestinian American pastor who is director of the evangelical organization Levant Ministries. Carlson then flew to the Ben Gurion Airport for a two-and-a-half-hour interview with Mike Huckabee, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, Baptist minister and former Arkansas governor.
If anyone wants to understand today’s Middle East evangelicals, they should listen to Abraham’s riveting personal story. His mother survived being shot by Israelis. When he was 10, Israeli soldiers dumped a huge stone on a neighbor, killing him immediately. Abraham said that Israel shelled the Baptist church in Gaza where his wife attended as a child and that Israeli snipers cut down another Gaza church’s pianist. She may not have bled to death, Abraham said, had the Israelis allowed ambulances to rescue her. Instead, the pastor said, her body showed signs of having been run over by a tank.
Abraham’s story diverges radically from what Huckabee told Carlson, which was a mix of dehumanization of Gazans, baseless generalizations and repetition ad nauseam of racist Israeli talking points. He exhibited total detachment from anything having to do with Palestinians, including any recognition of Palestinian nationhood or territory. He declared that the occupied West Bank is in fact part of historic Israel, calling it Judea and Samaria. He took it upon himself to represent, defend and express pride in the Israeli war machine, which he insisted is more humane than any other army, including that of the U.S.
The interview with Huckabee itself came about after an exchange on the social media site X that ended with Huckabee daring Carlson to come to Israel so the ambassador could explain what Christian Zionism means.
Once Carlson was in front of him, Huckabee was unable to explain how U.S. policy applies to a verse in the Bible’s Book of Genesis about God granting the descendants of the patriarch Abraham the land that Israel now occupies. Carlson poked holes in Huckabee’s concept of who, specifically, the descendants of Abraham are, and whether the current secular leaders of Israel, whose families came from Eastern Europe, are worthy of this divine deed, which, Huckabee asserted more than once, applies to the land from the Nile to the Euphrates — Egypt to Iraq — even if the current Israeli government is not claiming it all at the present time.
Huckabee sounded more like a member of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party than a representative of the American people.
The Rev. Fares Abraham focused on other biblical references — Jesus teaching that his kingdom is not an earthly entity and that all human lives, created in the image of God, must be preserved at all costs.
When I spoke with Abraham after the Carlson interview, he insisted that his core concern is to issue a pastoral call to the American church. “I invited Christians to listen directly to Palestinian Christian voices, to pray, to get informed, to visit the region and to stand in solidarity with the living Body of Christ in the Holy Land,” he said.
He emphasized that “the interview was not about polarization, but about awakening and faithful witness.”
It is doubtful that such a call will make a dent in Washington’s Middle East policy. Instead, the coming decision on a war against Iran will likely be made with Huckabee’s fantasies of a greater Israel in mind. We should ask ourselves, however, which is the way to peace.
(Daoud Kuttab is the publisher of Milhilard.org, a news site focused on Christians in Palestine, Israel and Jordan. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)
