TEL AVIV – The bear hug between Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu and their governments was a partnership like no other the two countries had seen. For four years, Israel was Washington’s favorite foreign policy arena and Jerusalem’s best friend, and the bold new American approach to the Middle East dominated Israel’s national security discourse and its policy.
Much less understood was one of the main pillars of this relationship: the intricate symbiosis between evangelical Christians in the United States and religious Jewish settlers in the West Bank. In a new documentary, “‘Til Kingdom Come”, Israeli filmmaker Maya Zinshtein investigates this “profane alliance”, as she calls it, showing how settlers reap huge political support and raise money from evangelicals, who, she argues, directly and indirectly subsidizing the constant acquisition of the West Bank by the settlers, which the Palestinians want for a future state. In return, evangelicals are closer to fulfilling the prophecy that many adhere to that the second coming of Christ cannot happen without the return of the diaspora Jews to the Holy Land.
This view does not end well for the Jews: they must accept Jesus or they will be slaughtered and condemned to hell. But the film shows Christian Zionists and right-wing Israelis agreeing to disagree about the End of Days as they cooperate and even exploit each other, here and now – and making the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians more difficult to resolve.
The film is being released in the United States on Friday, but when it was broadcast in Israel in the fall, it generated a wave of guilt and soul-searching, in part by revealing how families in an impoverished Kentucky community are flattered by their pastor. in donating to an Israeli charity, despite the country’s wealth, with a technology sector that routinely buys billionaires. But the film is just as likely to teach Christian and Jewish audiences in the United States a great deal about subjects they may have thought they already understood – including how American politics really works.
Zinshtein, 39, an Israeli born in Russia, said she was a classic immigrant, with an outside point of view and an ambition to leave a mark in her homeland. Here are edited excerpts from an interview conducted at his home in Tel Aviv and over the phone.
You immersed yourself in your project from mid-2017, months before President Trump recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, the first major demonstration of the power of the relationship. What attracted you?
When you live in Israel, you have heard about evangelicals, but nothing more. People talk about “these Christians who love us”. But they don’t understand what that love means. It is this force under the surface that has an agenda and people just don’t understand it. But I want to know who is influencing my life.
What did you expect to witness?
It was clear that promises were made to evangelicals during the 2016 campaign. But no one expected things to happen so fast. I remember a meeting with an evangelical leader who said to me, “Be patient, perhaps in late 2019 or early 2020, Trump will recognize Jerusalem as the capital.” He did this three months later, and moved out of the embassy six months later. In my plan, the embassy should be the third act! I was terrified: what do I do now?
What’s wrong with the collaboration to agree or disagree between American evangelicals and Israeli settlers?
We have our democracy, and the settlers are a certain percentage of the country. But they have a much greater influence than their share of the population. And when you have that enormous political power coming into our conversation, it changes the balance. Remember the number of Jews in the world and the number of evangelicals. It is not an equal relationship and we are not the strongest partner.
My brother is on the reservation. He will be summoned in the next war. And there will always be a war here – that’s when, it doesn’t. Evangelicals do not want people to be killed, but they believe that war is a sign. In whose name are we going to fight these wars?
In addition, these people have a very specific set of beliefs that drives them. In the film, for example, you see them celebrating the ban on transgender people [members of] the American military. You are subscribing with your entire agenda. You cannot take just one part.
The film pays close attention to Christians’ love for Israel. Do you accept that it is really a form of love?
When you start to question this, the Israelis say, “Wait a minute, Maya. Don’t we have enough people who hate us? Finally, someone loves us. Let’s just get it. “But when someone loves you just for being a Jew, there will always be someone who will hate you just for being a Jew.
Someone said to me, “When they say they love you, they mean they love Jesus. You are only part of the story. You are the key and you know what happens to the key after the door is opened, right? You don’t need this anymore. “
Love is really just another word for support, isn’t it?
But no one asked, what does this support really mean? It is not “support from Israel”. It is support for a right-wing agenda that many people here would not agree with.
Evangelicals are the only significant power outside Israel that openly supports the settlements. Nobody else does. But the dangerous thing is that they are turning this into support for Israel. Pastor John Hagee, when he founded the United Christians for Israel, had everything to do with the settlements. Today you will not find him talking about the settlements. Only “Israel”.
The film shows a religious settler telling visiting Christians that they are small actors in a film in which the Jews are the stars.
The most amazing thing about this relationship is that each side thinks the other is stupid. Each side is trying to deceive the other.
The access you gained was extraordinary. You didn’t just get an entire Kentucky church and its pastors to open up to you and your team. You filmed inside the powerful Republican Study Committee and at a gala the International Society of Christians and Jews, in Mar-a-Lago.
It was mind-blowing. You saw all these Christians and wealthy Jews sitting together, you saw the Christians testify to how “before I started donating to Israel, I had a small store in Cleveland and today I have a huge chain of stores, just because I started donating to Israel . ”They think it helps them in their lives.
How did you get that access?
The fact that we are Israelis played a crucial role, because we cannot be immediately put in a particular box. If I had been a Jew from New York, I would never have been able to make this film. American Jews are recognized as the other side. We are not. We are part of that bond. The link is with Israel.
You follow the money, showing an elderly Israeli woman who survived a terrorist attack and now gets free food and shoes. If Israel is so rich, why does it need the help of foreigners to feed and dress it?
It’s embarrassing. But Israel invests a lot in settlements. Christian money is meeting the needs created by the settlements. Perhaps instead of, I don’t know, building roads in the settlements, we need to take care of our poor. It raises a much larger issue of priorities.
Donors include people in one of America’s poorest counties.
I cried so much. It’s freezing, you’re wearing a coat and you see children in a windowless house walking out without shoes. Children with rat bites on the legs. Some Israelis who saw the film asked if they could send money.
What do you want it to be for evangelical viewers?
What [Israelis are] not just a Bible, we are people with a present and a near future. That Israelis and Palestinians want to live in peace. Just because your faith says that God told Abraham that all this land belongs to the Jewish people – they will not suffer the consequences. We are the ones who will suffer the consequences in real life, not just in the afterlife.