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Christians United for IsraelPete Hegseth
Christian Zionists doubled down on apocalyptic war while interfaith activists reclaimed liberation theology in the streets of DC.
Published on July 16, 2026
Pastor John Hagee, head of CUFI, preaches on the End of Days at his Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, TX.
Image: Hagee Ministries
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Last week, Christians United for Israel—the largest Christian Zionist organization in the United States—held its 21st annual national gathering at a resort outside Washington, DC. With over 10 million members, CUFI boasts a long track record of unflinching support for the gamut of hard-right policies at the heart of the US-Israel relationship, from expansion of illegal Israeli settlements and ongoing support for the genocide in Gaza, to war against Iran and across the Middle East.
At this year’s summit, CUFI called on Washington to continue to back Israel to the hilt, with unconditional military and diplomatic aid, in a joint war against Iran, Hezbollah, and other named enemies. “Finish the job,” was the blunt message to Washington from Russell Johnson, CUFI’s Washington State Director. “Israel should not be restrained from permanently removing an existential threat simply because diplomats want a ceremony and politicians want a headline.”
Speakers from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a stalwart neoconservative think tank, called for regime change in Iran—a longstanding goal of pro-Israel hardliners—and slammed the currently proposed US-Iran peace deal as a ‘Memorandum of Misunderstanding.’ One speaker called for the US and Israel to bring “swift justice, Biblical style” against Hamas in Gaza—in effect a call for an intensification of the genocide currently underway.
The conference was timed to coincide with America250, Trump’s -fied weekend of July 4th ceremonies. Throngs of Christian nationalists could still be seen across DC’s streets as the conference kicked off the morning of July 5. CUFI speakers worked overtime to tie their pro-Israel messaging to themes of American exceptionalism and the ‘Judeo-Christian values’ at the heart of ‘Western civilization.’
A number of speakers, like Israeli ambassador Yechiel Leiter, insisted that support for Israel was a natural fit for MAGA’s ‘America First’ agenda.
“We love the idea of America First. We don’t want China first. We don’t want Russia first. We want America first. And we’re part of America First. Israel is the first line of defense against the annihilationism emanating from Iran and its proxies, Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon.”
But such efforts only underscore how divided the MAGA camp remains on this issue. CUFI’s 21st annual conference came at a time of dizzying uncertainty for the pro-Israel Right, which has been haunted by the specter of declining support for Israel, especially among right-wing youth.
Pundits like conference speaker Mark Levin have railed tirelessly against MAGA critics of Israel, the most prominent of whom is Tucker Carlson. Meanwhile, megadonors like Miriam Adelson—who attended the conference, and was repeatedly applauded from the stage—have poured millions into defeating politicians like Thomas Massie, a Republican critic of Israel.
“Truth is not a podcaster saying something that’s contrary to the biblical mandate. Truth is what God Almighty says it is,” Hagee boomed. Time and again, speakers lashed out at this unnamed ‘podcaster,’ a sneering reference to Tucker Carlson. “Ladies and gentlemen, a podcaster recently asked why we’re so obsessed with [Israel’s] right to exist,” declared Leiter. “Well, I have news for you. I’m not obsessed at all.”
Despite these attempts at reassurance, it was undeniable that “there’s a theme in all the speeches” at the conference, as right-wing pundit Glenn Beck put it.
“The battlefield has moved, and it’s moving rapidly. We’re losing those on our own, on our own side…We bought the t-shirts. We wore the pins. But somewhere along the way, we got lost on teaching the why. Our children started asking hard questions. ‘Why this land? Why these people? What does any of this have to do with Jesus?’ And too often our answer has been, ‘The Bible tells us so.’ And that’s not the wrong answer, but it’s not enough of an answer.”
“We can’t just lobby the White House. We must confront the church house,” said Pastor Scott Thomas, a member of CUFI’s Executive Board, citing polling suggesting that Christian Zionist beliefs are declining in the pews. “We just can’t win on Israel in the university. We must win in the seminaries.”
Such laments have become common in pro-Israel circles. But until recently, many had sung a happier tune as well. Earlier this year, the pro-Israel Right greeted the joint US-Israeli war on Iran (long referred to by Christian Zionists like Hagee as ‘head of the snake’) with a wave of euphoria and giddy expectation. In their view, by finally sending warplanes to light up the skies over Tehran (and bombing an elementary school in Minab, which killed scores of children), Trump had dared to achieve what generations of American presidents had failed to even attempt.
“Ladies and gentlemen, God sent us Donald Trump at the right time,” Hagee declared to roaring applause at last summer’s CUFI conference held days after Trump authorized the bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities. And in a May 2026 sermon at his Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas, Hagee celebrated Trump’s new war as a prelude to the End Times. “God bless you, Mr. President.”
But now, with Trump weighing a deal to end the war on terms widely seen as favorable to Iran, CUFI seemed bruised and despondent. “As we gather here today, it is important to never forget that there are many who seek high office, but there are fewer who understand the necessity of righteousness in that high office,” Hagee explained in a speech urging the administration to stay the course and escalate their campaign of military aggression alongside Israel.
“Like most politicians, Pharaoh changed his mind. Can you imagine that?” he continued, comparing Trump to the arch-oppressor of the ancient Israelites. Just as Pharaoh and his army were drowned in the Red Sea by a miraculous act of God, Hagee warned, so may America face divine wrath if it fails to back Israel’s war to the hilt.
It is, of course, ludicrous to suggest that Israel has been forsaken by its American partners at a time when the National Defense Authorization Act, currently before Congress, would secure an unprecedented degree of military and intelligence integration between the two countries.
But the metaphor also enables Hagee to rally followers with the prophetic urgency of the End Times. “When the situation looks impossible, when we find ourselves or Israel at the Red Sea, get excited,” he told his flock, “because that’s when God Almighty is going to show up with all of his might and majesty. Hallelujah.”
Like most evangelical Zionists, Hagee reads Biblical passages like Ezekiel 38 as a Scriptural promise that during the travails at the end of days, the armies of Gog and Magog will launch a cataclysmic war against Israel in the Holy Land. Isolated and forlorn, Israel will be saved from destruction only when God intervenes to miraculously defeat these armies on the blood-soaked battlefield.
In May, Hagee identified Gog and Magog with the nations of Russia, Iran and Turkey. At last week’s conference he again warned that this End Times war is near.
“As a Bible-believing Christian, I know that should Israel be forced to go it alone here on earth, then the world will once again watch in wonder as God Almighty comes to the rescue of Israel and destroys the enemies of Israel. And I am telling you today prophetically that’s exactly what’s going to happen. In the future the armies will come against Israel and God Almighty is going to wipe them off the face of the earth. I know that[‘s] what waits for the nations that turn their back on Israel. And as an American patriot, I pray that day never comes… for if America turns its back on Israel, God will certainly turn his back on us.”
This End Times yearning betrays the contradictory nature of . While the movement claims to “pray for the peace of Jerusalem,” as the saying often goes, they also hold that on some level war is inevitable. While they admonish the US and other nations to stand with Israel as an ironclad ally, they also believe that, eventually, Israel will be “forced to go it alone.”
Life or empire
While Hagee preached war at the resort hotel, a very different kind of resilience was on display in the streets of Washington, as the Interfaith Action for Palestine (IAP) held its third annual summit to counter CUFI. Around 200 activists from across the country converged at a church near the Capitol for three days of ritual, study, and action and to call for a free Palestine.
Drawn from organizations ranging from Christians for a Free Palestine and Mennonite Action, to Jewish Voice for Peace, Rabbis for Ceasefire, American Muslims for Palestine, and Buddhist Peace Fellowship, the action represented the breadth of an interfaith coalition that has worked diligently, especially since October 7, to change the narrative around religion and politics in the Holy Land “Tonight we come together from many different places, cultural, and faith practices,” Rabbi Léah Miller declared at the opening evening worship service. “And when we are working together, we create a beautiful tapestry, one that is stronger, richer, and more resilient than any thread could ever be alone.”
“Empire wants us to be divided,” C. Stonebraker-Martínez, co-Director of the Cleveland-based InterReligious Task Force on Central America (IRTF), reminded the attendees that night.
“But we know it has been people on the margins, midwifing, doula-ing, laboring, and ushering in the good news of liberation since time immemorial. We know wherever there is , folks from the status quo have been resisting with us, rebelling and leveraging their privilege for the sake of the collective good…let us remember, and let us renew our hope for a better future, the future that we know is possible, where Palestine will be free from the river to the sea, where all people know their inherent worth and dignity, where all people know that all land is holy, and that each one of us are chosen for so much more than this.”
The coalition’s slogan, All land is Holy. All people are chosen, is a deliberate effort to cut against the colonial supremacism at the heart of the contemporary pro-Israel agenda—that divine favor is the province of one ethnic, religious, or national group—and counter it with a vision of collective liberation.
“We get to practice living into the world we want,” said Jonathan Brenneman, a Palestinian-American Christian and cofounder of Christians for a Free Palestine. “We get to model [a] new story, one that embraces the loving and liberatory roots of our different faith traditions, and demonstrates our united resistance to the violence of religious .”
Interfaith Action for Palestine activists hold a banner with the carefully written names of thousands of Palestinian children murdered during Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
Image: Ben Lorber
The coalition used shared song to mobilize supporters. “Let Gaza live, say yes to life!” declared one upbeat anthem. “What I know that our people have known from time immemorial is that if we don’t sing about it, we might not get through it,” Rabbi Koach Baruch Frazier told the gathering. “Empire likes to beat us down sometimes…but there’s always a song that can give us enduring hope.”
IAP activists sing in Union Station.
Image: Ben Lorber
Activists swarmed Union Station, filling the cavernous lobby with song. Holding banners proclaiming ‘Seek Care not Warfare,’ ‘Send Bread Not Bombs,’ and ‘No God Bombs Children,’ they cut a powerful counterpoint to the triumphalist America250 signs lining the public space. As the march left Union Station and prepared to take the streets Brenneman declared:
“This country is quote-unquote ‘celebrating’ 250 years. We know that it is built on genocide and enslavement of people here, of people on the African continent, and has continued to oppress people all over the world. And as a Palestinian, I know that our tradition of Palestinian Christianity was used by those Europeans to colonize this land, and then was used by those Europeans to justify the colonization of our land. So, as we do this work and struggle for a free Palestine, we know that we do this work and struggle to free Turtle Island [an Indigenous name for North and South America] as well. And as we march, let us ground in that—in the generations of people who have struggled against colonization, oppression, and genocide. We are part of that lineage today as we work and struggle against these forces of oppression and death with our message of care, not warfare, and our message of life.”
Under the July heat, the rally paused outside Christ Church DC, a new outpost of the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC), a Christian nationalist denomination that counts Secretary of War Pete Hegseth as a prominent member. (One day earlier, IAP activists had canvassed the neighborhood alerting residents to the nondescript storefront church in their backyard. It wasn’t just a place for Hegseth to pray on Sundays, they argued—it marked a deliberate advance of the Christian nationalist movement, a flag planted in territory ripe for conquest, a strategic front in their campaign of authoritarian state capture.)
Standing before the church’s brick facade, Tommy Airey, a leader with Christians for a Free Palestine, declared: “They turned a dark-skinned Palestinian Jew named Jesus into a white Christian nationalist. In the name of Christ, they justify the murder of Palestinians and other precious people all over the Arab and Muslim world.”
In front of Christ Church DC, Pete Hegseth’s Christian nationalist church.
Image: Ben Lorber
With banners lining the sidewalk, the IAP unfurled a long shroud on which they had carefully written the names of thousands of Palestinian children murdered during Israel’s genocide in Gaza. As they held the shroud aloft one leader proclaimed: “We love boldly, and courageously, and out loud,” they declared. “We want to show Pete Hegseth and his minions what love looks like…we love these children, because they are our children.”
Activists unfurl the shroud with the names of Palestinian children killed in Gaza outside Pete Hegseth’s church.
Image: Ben Lorber
The march concluded outside the Museum of the Bible where they outlined their visions of both Jewish and Christian Scripture and their relationship to social action. The private museum, opened in 2017 with funding from donors like Hobby Lobby, intertwines a triumphalist narrative of American history alongside a white Christian nationalist interpretation of Christian Scripture, founded on the dictates of conquest and power.
Reverend Naomi Washington-Leapheart gives a sermon in front of The Museum of the Bible.
Image: Ben Lorber
In a sermon delivered on the steps of the museum Reverend Naomi Washington-Leapheart (who is Strategic Partnerships Director for PRA) reminded the activists that there are different ways of approaching Christian Scripture:
“The question is whether Christians will read scripture from the side of life or from the side of empire… The irony is Christian Zionism presents itself as the strong theology, right, but in reality it’s profoundly fragile. There’s nothing there, y’all. It can’t tolerate ambiguity. It can’t withstand historical complexity. It can’t hear Palestinian Christians. Period.”
We of course can’t know for certain how CUFI might respond to such a critique, but the failure to even consider the plight of Palestinians—particularly children—speaks volumes about their approach. Or, as Reverend Washington-Leapheart put it: “[Christian Zionism] teaches us to read the Bible from the throne instead of from the cross.”
Authors
Ben Lorber
Ben Lorber’s research focuses on antisemitism and white nationalism.
Comment by Truth Uncensored Afrika. Please read the articles on Dispensationalism on this site.
Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. Matthew 7:15
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