Opinion Piece: Israel, Antisemitism & Isolationism

Conflict, Confusion and Antisemitism

A recent thought-provoking podcast entitled “Why Christians Shouldn’t Support Military Action in the Middle East” expressed a view increasingly emblematic of the political position of many appearing within the professing Reformed community and beyond in the United States today – isolationism.  For some, the most ‘Christian’ form of foreign policy must be isolationist – a perspective which needs scrutiny and careful reflection, especially when, in our judgment, there is so much confusion over how Christians should view international relations, including such matters as “Just War” theories as expressed on this podcast.

Unfortunately, isolationism as a political doctrine is not infrequently being joined by and linked to aggressive antisemitism¹ and, in some concerning cases, the outright hatred of Jews and the State of Israel by various online influencers and commentators. While not all isolationists are antisemitic by any means, those who do express a resentment or hatred of Jews and of Israel nearly all advocate isolationism concerning American foreign policy and their understanding of international relations.

The disease of antisemitism has spread like wildfire in the West in recent years, especially within the United States. Much of this contemporary antisemitism is directly tied to the modern State of Israel. Historically, Europe has always been plagued by varying degrees of antisemitism for a multitude of reasons. Some of this has to do with Jews being falsely portrayed by as “Christ-killers” – in willful ignorance of Acts 2:23 where we are told that Christ was “delivered by the determined purpose and foreknowledge of God” to the cross – or more popularly to views that regard Jews as vile “money-changers,” as the worlds “pornographers,” or the absurd and conspiratorial notion that there is a vast international cabal of Jews that rule the world via such organizations as the Rothschilds, the Illuminati, the Bilderbergs, etc. In short, the garden-variety antisemitism of past centuries (which even the great Reformer Martin Luther fell prey to in his later years) gave way in the twentieth and twenty-first century to a more virulent kind, beginning with the publication in 1912 by the Russian Czarist secret police, the Okhrana, of “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion”. This wicked fabrication was used as an excuse by the Okhrana to justify a pogrom against Russian Jews and was instrumental in taking antisemitism to new levels in Europe. This was primarily borne out in the ideology of German National Socialism and the rise of Nazi Germany where Adolf Hitler blamed “the Jews,” in particular, for the German defeat in World War I. This also inflamed much of the latent antisemitism throughout Europe as was seen in Nazi allies such as Petain’s Vichy France, the Arrow Cross in Hungary and the Iron Guard in Romania, not to mention Fascist Italy. Of course, antisemitism is found not just on the extreme right but also on the left as Josef Stalin himself had no issue with the killing of Jews and planned to send them to Siberia, partly because his main rival in coming to power was Leon Trotsky who was Jewish and partly because he thought Jewish nationalism was hostile to socialism.

The Modern State of Israel

The establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 has today become the focus of antisemitism. Those Christians who support this establishment are being increasingly dismissed by other Christians who oppose the State of Israel—including many in the professed Reformed community—as “dispensationalists”. Their argument tends to be that the only reason a Christian could have to support the modern State of Israel is if one is a dispensationalist. This means, among other things, that ethnic Jews remain the covenant people of God (i.e., God has two peoples, the Jews and the church) and regarding the “end times” holds that the nation-state of Israel had to be reestablished before Christ could rapture his church out of the world, and that further, as held by some dispensationalists, animal sacrifice must once again occur in a rebuilt Jewish temple. Dispensationalism has long been thoroughly discredited². It is undoubtedly contrary to Scripture, yet one need not be a dispensationalist to hold that the establishment of the modern State of Israel was a God-ordained and welcome event and that it was the Christian Empire of Great Britain that made this possible. It is strange indeed when those who hold to an ostensibly Reformed theological view of the sovereignty of God, who causes nations to rise and fall, seem to imply that His sovereign decree was in error regarding the modern State of Israel being established. 

While we mere creatures are not privy to the eternal counsel of the Triune God, what if it pleased the Lord to bring about the establishment of the State of Israel as a means to fulfill the Apostle Paul’s statement in Romans 11 that many previously unbelieving Jews will come to embrace the Lord Jesus as the Messiah and that once again those “who are natural branches, be grafted into their own olive tree” (Romans 11:24)? Whether or not God will use the establishment of the modern State of Israel to bring unbelieving Jews to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ is known only to God Himself of course, but one need not be a “dispensationalist” to consider this a real possible outcome. 

Regardless of whether that possibility turns out to be true, there are a multitude of reasons for American and Western Christians in general to support the State of Israel that have absolutely nothing to do with dispensationalism, so the charge that support for Israel implies this is utterly baseless. For example, the existence of the modern state of Israel is a perpetual geographical and visible reminder of the historical revelation of the living God, of the ancient promises concerning the Messiah, of covenantal judgment on the nations (including Israel itself!) and an irritating stone in the shoe of those who hate the scriptures, the Lord and His Anointed. Or we might point to the fact that the State of Israel, with all its sins, failures and imperfections, is the only free democracy in the Middle East (in fact the only country in the Middle East where Arabs can vote!), and the only country in the Middle East where Christians can worship freely, as well as being the vital regional ally of the United States, Britain and the West against those who desire to turn the world into an Islamist caliphate of one form or another.

The Left-Right Political Illusion

Yet the existence of modern Israel has been used by Jew-haters to spread their poisonous and abhorrent ideology. This ideology has been embraced by both the so-called left and the extreme right. Recently, there has been considerable interest in the “horseshoe theory.” Traditionally, and erroneously, the ideological spectrum has been considered linear, with the “left” at one end and the “right” at the other. However, the English philosopher Roger Scruton pointed out that: 

It is testimony to the success of communist propaganda that it has been able to persuade so many people that fascism and communism are polar-opposites and that there is a single scale of political ideology stretching from “far left” to “far right.”…[We must] see through that nonsense, to perceive what it is designed to conceal: the deep structural similarity between communism and fascism, both as theory and as practice, and their common antagonism to parliamentary and constitutional forms of government.

The concept of the “left” and the “right” is one of the many calamitous outcomes of the French Revolution. During the Revolution, those in the Revolutionary French Assembly who were considered to be moderate monarchists or republicans, such as Lafayette, were seated on the right, while the radical Jacobins and pre-Marxist socialists sat on the left. But as Scruton shows, the common “left-right” linear spectrum as a method of political analysis is of little actual value as National Socialism, and particularly the Nazi German variety, is generally placed on the extreme right where the Nazi party was founded as a proletarian party that fused a focus on the “working class” with revanchist and German ethno-nationalism. National Socialism and Communism, in practical terms, differ only in their focus. National Socialism has a vertical focus on socialism as it pertains to a particular race and a nation, whereas Communism has a horizontal focus on socialism as it pertains to the international working class. Both are, in fact, leftist ideologies, but because of the disdain of Marxists and the academic left for National Socialism, it is placed on the far right. The “horseshoe theory”, by contrast, shows that the extremes of both the left and right are actually very closely related and therefore should not be represented linearly but rather as a circle that nearly touches at both ends.  

This coming together is what we are now starting to witness. It is important to notice that it is not which version of the so-called “left-right” spectrum chosen that is crucial in this discussion, but rather realizing that there is an alliance, whether tactical or strategic, between antisemites on the hard left and antisemites on the extreme right. The extreme right’s embrace of antisemitism is nothing new historically. Still, its stark emergence on the left in more recent years has been driven by the aggressive and very public alliance between Marxism and Islamism. This has perhaps been best illustrated over the past eighteen months by the large “Free Palestine” marches that have occurred weekly in London, England, New York City, and various parts of the U.S., as well as frequently in Toronto, Canada. The first one in London took place on October 14, 2023. The British press discovered that the leftist Palestinian Solidarity Campaign group were planning and booking the March with the relevant authorities whilst the massacre of over 1,100 Jews was still unfolding³, and these writers are personally aware of COE clergy who participated! These marchers supporting proscribed terrorist organizations like Hamas come out waving Palestinian and Iranian flags, or the LGBTQ Pride flag and Trans flag, as well as carrying signs about Islam’s intentions toward Israel and the West, climate change, or various Marxist tropes. As a further example, in recent weeks, a Royal Air Force Base in Britain was breached by a Marxist group called Palestine Action, determined to damage military aircraft as a protest against perceived British support for Israel⁴. This alliance has even reached into the political realm in Britain and the U.S., with the present mayor of London and the just-nominated Democrat for mayor of New York City being both radical Marxists and Islamists.  While the substantive and profound differences in these ideologies at their core would seem to rule out any lasting and workable socio-political alliance, the simple fact is their alliance is real and alive and well due in part to the fact that both Marxists and Islamists hate the State of Israel – the enemy of my enemy is my friend!

This does not mean, of course, that there are no Marxists or socialists or even Muslims here and there that are supportive of Israel – the State of Israel was founded primarily by socialists and today contains a strong cadre of leftists, including those who want to get rid of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Nonetheless, you will search long and hard to find any leftists in the U.S. who support Israel outside of those who are Jewish themselves, and even many of them don’t – such as Chuck Schumer and Bernie Sanders. It is evident to all that Left-wing politics in the United States is today dominated by antisemitism. At a stretch, part of this can be attributed to the fact that American leftists loathe and despise Benjamin Netanyahu. However, even the Israeli leftist politician Yair Lapid has come out strongly in favor of Netanyahu’s policy of taking military action against Iran and its proxies Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis. Therefore, even if a leftist or centrist government were in power in Israel, it would matter little to the American or British left. Rather, the left in America and Britain have allied themselves openly with Islamists regarding Israel and “Palestinian” nationalism, which by its very nature supports the destruction of Israel and the genocide of Jews. While Marxists in the United States, such as Bernie Sanders and AOC, may not literally support the genocide of Jews, their support for the loaded slogan “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free” in practical terms would result in the destruction of Israel and the killing of millions of Jews. Other U.S. leftists such as Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar are even more extreme, being radical antisemites, not only because they oppose and want to destroy the State of Israel, but also because they simply hate and despise Jews. As such, this diabolic alliance between Marxists and Islamists is due in part, not only to the desire to see Israel obliterated, but also to the plain hatred of Jews. While the left has historically claimed that antisemitism is a disease only of the right, that claim is disingenuous at best and by their words and actions presently indefensible.

Christians, Jews and Israel

For Christians, and particularly those claiming to be within the Reformed and Lutheran “camp”, antisemitism has also begun to rear its ugly head. For many, this emerges from a deep and perplexing disdain for the State of Israel, as previously discussed and for others from an outright racial hatred of Jewish people. For some, the State of Israel is viewed as merely a pagan godless state that stands in opposition to Christ; to which we would answer, even if it were true, only makes Israel like the rest of the Western world today.

Biblically, there is no room in Christianity for the hatred of Jews. None! Those who do need to read Romans 9 to 11 and particularly 11:16-29 where the Apostle Paul reprimands those Gentiles who have displayed an attitude of arrogance despite the fact, as he states, that they were grafted into the olive tree (i.e., the Christ of the covenant), “for if God did not spare the natural branches, He may not spare you either” (Romans 11:21). The point here is that the Jews are the natural branches of the olive tree mentioned in Romans 11:24. To be sure, “all Israel” as mentioned in this passage is not the equivalent of the modern State of Israel but rather refers to the final totality of the covenant people of God, both Jew and Gentile (Ephesians 2). Nevertheless, Paul is clearly telling us that Jewish people, who have had a partial hardening come upon them for a season, are to be grafted back into the tree, even though they are currently often enemies of the gospel:

Regarding the gospel, they are enemies for your advantage, but regarding election, they are loved because of the patriarchs, since God’s gracious gifts and calling are irrevocable (Romans 11:28-29)

Unfortunately, some today have bought into a fallacious theory propounded by Islamists that the Jews living today in Israel are not Jewish at all – as allegedly they were either mostly killed off by Assyria (the Northern Kingdom) or Babylon (the Southern Kingdom) or perhaps migrated to the New World (as alleged by the Book of Mormon) – as well as denying that there were any Jews left in the Roman named province of Palestine after the destruction of Judea by the Romans in the late 1st and early 2nd  centuries. This propaganda thereby denies that the Jews living in the territory of the State of Israel today are the descendants of the Jews of the Bible or that they are the indigenous peoples of that region. It is difficult to overstate how anti-historical and anti-reality this Islamist notion is.

The question then arises–can a Christian love the Jewish people (or at least not hate them), but nevertheless be hostile to the existence of the State of Israel? To answer this, the question of why the modern State of Israel was established needs to be addressed. Quite simply, the answer is – the Holocaust. While there were the beginnings of a so-called “Zionist” movement in the 19th century, which gained further traction following the end of the First World War, and which was spurred on in part by the British Balfour Declaration, the Holocaust was the principle driving factor that created a sense of urgency among the Jews to establish a homeland for the Jewish People. Here, they could take it upon themselves to prevent a future Holocaust, thus fulfilling the promise of “Never Again”. While there may very well have been the establishment of such a homeland even without the occurrences of the Holocaust, this utter catastrophe and staggering crime of moral depravity solidified the Zionist movement to the point that the establishment of the State of Israel was seen, not merely as a desired outcome, but rather an existential necessity. Thus, the reality of the Holocaust and the establishment of the State of Israel are inextricably bound together. So, how might we answer the question as to whether a Christian can truly love the Jewish people but be opposed to the existence of the State of Israel? Only, it seems, if they conclude that the Jewish people do not deserve a homeland of their own where they can defend themselves from those who want to exterminate them or wipe them off the map. But such a line of thinking seems impossible to justify.  And no other argument could be offered that is not fundamentally based on hatred and ethnic animosity toward Jews.

Arguments, Allegations and Ideology

The appearance of antisemitism within certain professedly Christian circles (and particularly among young, ostensibly Reformed men) has been assisted by two arguments, one of which is old and one of more recent provenance, but both of which arise due to fantastical allegations that are not rooted in either logic, history, or reality.

The first allegation is that the Holocaust either did not happen or that it was nothing like its portrayal by almost all serious and professional historians around the world – so for example, the Jews were simply made to do some serious work by the Nazi’s and since they are idle thieves, many of them died being unaccustomed to labor. The British historian David Irving’s famous claim that the Holocaust did not occur has been thoroughly debunked. What should be telling is that those who have glommed on to this theory are basically Neo-Nazis and others who are proud antisemites; Irving’s theory has merely been seized upon by those who are looking for an excuse to justify their virulent hatred of Jews by suggesting the Jews themselves fabricated the story of the Holocaust for their own evil purposes without any objective historical analysis by those making such an argument. This theory is a worldwide phenomenon embraced by many, including the dictator of Iran, the Ayatollah Khamenei, who also claims that the Holocaust is a Jewish invention. Without reviewing all the data here, whether it was six million, five million, four million or seven million, what material difference does it make to the reality of the murderous horror perpetrated against the Jews? If Hitler and his SS thugs were not quite as effective and efficient as they were thought to have been, in what way would they change the calculus for the Christian or anyone else? Proving a precise numerical figure is not really what is relevant. There may have even been more, not fewer, Jews murdered during the era of World War II than present estimates suggest. What is essential is that the German Nazi party and it stooge allies in other countries set out to exterminate Jews in Europe to the greatest extent possible. If Nazi Germany had been defeated in 1943 resulting in the extermination of less Jews, would that have made a meaningful difference in terms of its reality? The Holocaust is the Holocaust because there was a state-sponsored concerted attempt to exterminate, in toto, a particular group of people on a scale never before seen. Other countries have, in fact, committed genocide – such as Turkey’s action against Armenians in the early 1920s – but that historical fact in no way detracts from the reality and scope of the Holocaust.

The second allegation is the rejection of what is popularly referred to as the “post-war consensus.” The nature of this challenge is too complex and multifaceted to be detailed here. Still, there are two components relevant to this discussion, both of which are related to the rise of antisemitism. The first is that the United States supposedly fought on the wrong side of World War II and either should have been allied with Nazi Germany or at least should have stayed out and neutral. This argument is related to the revival of American isolationism, which will be addressed below. But the basic idea is that the Soviet Union under Stalin was a greater evil and threat to the West and the U.S. than Nazi Germany – which given Hitler’s invasion of France and Europe is an incredible claim. So, while this argument is demonstrably wrong, particularly with the immediate threat in 1941, it has been fueled by an equally fallacious notion that Nazi Germany was solely responsible for World War II in Europe and that the USSR was not really an evil state, or in any event was certainly not as evil as Nazi Germany. To the contrary, the Soviet Union was equally to blame as Nazi Germany for starting World War II as it collaborated with Hitler in the Soviet-German Non-Aggression Pact of 1939 to divide up Poland. The Soviets let the Germans go first on September 1 and then, 17 days later, stabbed Poland in the back. It is certainly questionable whether Germany would have attacked Poland without this Pact, since, while Hitler’s commands later in the War were virtually unassailable by the Wehrmacht, in 1939 the German Army still had a semblance of influence and authority that may have resisted Hitler’s plan. With the Soviets on board, however, there was no effective resistance.

However, the fact that the USSR was an active partner with Nazi Germany in the launch of World War II, not to mention the obvious evil festering in the Soviet regime, does not mean that the U.S. chose the wrong side or should have stayed neutral. Apart from the fact that this would have meant fighting against or abandoning their own free and democratic cousins in the Anglosphere (including Great Britain and their northern neighbor Canada), the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 changed the calculus of the war. Furthermore, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7 (Japan already being at war with Great Britain) meant that war with Nazi Germany was inevitable; and interestingly, it was Germany that declared war on the U.S. on December 8! Moreover, the Japanese attack and German declaration of war proved that the U.S. decision to stay neutral before Pearl Harbor (although it did help supply arms to the British with the Lend-Lease program) did not keep the U.S. out of the war. It is an established military maxim that you fight the enemy that is in front of you. This is what the U.S. did, and in which it had no choice.

The fact that the Soviet Union later gained more territory and obtained satellite states in Europe after the war does not prove that the U.S. fought on the wrong side but was instead the result of poor geopolitical decisions made by FDR who foolishly opposed Churchill and trusted “Uncle Joe” by believing his promises of free elections in Eastern Europe among other things. Again, as with the Holocaust, Neo-Nazis and antisemites who have advanced this theory that the U.S. “chose the wrong side” is not because of any objective and historically insightful analysis, but is instead the result of their ideological commitment. And we have some “pastors” and Christians in the Reformed world all too ready to reverse engineer their theology in terms of similar obligations.

A second argument advanced by those who challenge a so-called “post-war consensus” is that the international institutions, treaties and programs such as the United Nations, the World Bank, the IMF, NATO, the GATT and the Marshall plan that were put into place by the U.S. after World War II were all part of a globalist conspiracy, led by Jews, to destroy American sovereignty. Here again, as with the contention that the U.S. chose the wrong side in World War II, we find an argument fueled by some elements of fact to distort the real picture. It is true that the United Nations has become a forum for both anti-Americanism and, ironically, for those who believe the U.N. to be the result of a Jewish conspiracy, antisemitism and hostility to Israel. It is also true that globalist ideology today is a threat to American sovereignty as many among the globalist elite want the U.N. to become a “supranational” rather than an “international” institution, thereby issuing “orders” that are counter to the consensual nature of international law by binding nation-states against their will, thus violating the Westphalian principle of the sovereign equality of nation-states. In addition, many globalists today would like to see the World Trade Organization have the legal ability to infringe on national sovereignty. It is also the case that many who supported the establishment of these institutions in the post-war era had a naïve and utopian faith in the ability of international bodies to maintain international peace and security.  But it is also true that in the aftermath of World War II, the United States logically and correctly saw the need to create some international (not supranational) institutions that could facilitate dialogue and cooperation between nations to seek to reduce in the future some of the international political and economic tensions that led to World War II as well as to fend off the aggressive advances of a communist Soviet Union in the military and economic realm. The fact that today, with dechristianization in the West, the advocates of globalism have become stronger and more influential does not mean that the decisions taken after World War II were all wrong-headed or that all efforts and international relations and cooperation are wrong and controlled by “world Jewry.”

Isolationism as Orthodoxy

The antisemitism which is infecting a keyboard warrior minority in the Christian and Reformed world is also accompanied by an argument for an isolationist foreign policy. It is beyond the scope of this article to elucidate the major contours of such a policy but suffice it to say that the outcome of isolationist thinking means that your country has no meaningful influence or ability to shape the arena of international relations and geopolitics by abandoning the rest of the world to an anarchic international system consisting of raw struggles for power between nation-states and rejecting the idea of any obligation or responsibility toward other nations. While not all isolationists are necessarily antisemitic, it is no surprise that isolationism is the foreign policy of choice for antisemites. This is true for several reasons. First, because of their hatred of Jews, they also despise the State of Israel and therefore reflexively oppose the West’s political alliance with Israel, especially that of the United States. While that view in of itself does not necessarily result in advocacy for isolationism, such persons certainly oppose the trade of arms to Israel as well as any military action, cooperation or strategic partnership that would assist Israel. As such, they make emotive isolationist arguments as to why the U.S. should not help Israel in any way such as “it is the doctrine of warmongers,” “it will lead to World War III,” “I won’t have my sons die for Israel,” “it will cause Islamists to hate and oppose the U.S. even more,” (as though Islamists are not already radically opposed to the West), or “it detracts from dealing with our domestic issues,” as if the U.S. government is incapable, no matter who is President, from walking and chewing gum at the same time. But there is an even darker reason for the isolationist tropes, and that is their theological view that “Jews control the world” and that the Jewish lobby (namely AIPAC) is in control of the U.S. government. Therefore, any attempt to ally with any country, except those who Jews do not control (hence the sympathetic appeasement of Islamic theocracies like Iran bent on the destruction of Jews and Israel), merely furnishes the “Jewish conspiracy” to control the world.

To bring us back to where this article began, examining the notion that Christians should not support the United States government in assisting Israel strategically or militarily in its fight against its Islamist enemies – especially in regard currently to Iran – we can say some in the Reformed community appear to be embracing isolationism in an opposite overreaction to the problem of globalism. Worse, some are even turning to overt antisemitism. The disease of antisemitism spreads rapidly and easily, appealing to the evil lurking in men’s hearts. While ultimately it will only be defeated by the power of the Holy Spirit in transforming minds and hearts, it is up to those of us who believe this virus to be deadly and perilous not only for the faithful witness of the church in proclaiming the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ but also to civil society that we be informed as to the substance of these antisemitic arguments to be prepared, as the Apostle Peter states in I Peter 3:15, to give a defense.  For as Paul states in 2 Corinthians 10:5, we must “demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God”.

Footnotes

1. The Oxford English Dictionary defines Antisemitism: Characterized by prejudice, hostility, or discrimination towards Jewish people on religious, cultural, or ethnic grounds; anti-Jewish.
2. House Divided: The Break-Up of Dispensational Theology, by Greg L. Bahnsen and Kenneth L. Gentry, is a definitive statement of the failure of dispensational thought.
3. See Daily Mail article: 
   https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14369697/… accessed, June 2025.
4. See this report about the incident that even made CNN in the U.S.: https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/palestine-action-to-be-banned-after-raf-base-attack/ accessed June 2025.

Dr. Joe Boot (President, Ezra Institute) and Daniel Ogden, J.D. (Ezra Institute Fellow for International Law, Comparative Politics and International Relations. He is also a Lecturer in International Relations at Baylor University. The views expressed herein are not necessarily those of Baylor University).