Dear ,

I hope you are staying well. I am grateful for the opportunity to share with you the ISCZ Newsletter for March 2026.

Please find below a link to our most recent post, "State and Empire in the Holy Land," by Christian Noakes.

In addition, Bad Theology: Busted | Episode 6 - "Christian Zionism in the US Black Church," with Josiah R. Daniels, Keyanna Jones Moore, and Reggie Williams, is currently live and publicly available for download!

You are also invited to check out the following resources and events:

• "The Iran war is an imperial strategy, not fulfillment of prophecy," Interview with ISCZ Co-Founder Rev. Dr. Donald Wagner
• The latest Librarian's Corner, an author spotlight and reading recommendation from ISCZ Library Manager Deanna Roberts
• Webinar Announcement: "Christian Zionism and Nationalism in the Era of Trump," with Halah Ahmad, Ben Lorber, and Robert O. Smith. Monday, April 6 @ 12pm Eastern / 9am Pacific. 
  
• Webinar Announcement: "Faith In A Time of Genocide: Seminarians In Solidarity with Palestine," with Samuel Munayer, John Munayer, and Marah Sarji.
• A link to sign up for news and updates on the forthcoming resource, The Bible Is Anti-Zionist: 40 Reflections on the Greatest Moral Crisis of Our Time  
• An opportunity to support the essential work of ISCZ.

Best,

Jesse Steven Wheeler

Associate Executive Director, FOSNA: A Christian Voice for Palestine

Interview: "The Iran war is an imperial strategy, not fulfillment of prophecy."

Here at ISCZ, part of our work is to connect the dots for people about how Christian Zionist theology and perspectives don't just negatively impact people on the ground in Palestine, it impacts people across the globe in increasingly destructive ways.

The same theological cover that has allowed the genocide in Palestine to continue is what lies behind the U.S and Israeli aggression against Iran.

Recently, US military leadership is claimed to have said that the Iran war is part of God’s plan, that President Trump was “anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth.”

Last week we sat down with Rev. Dr. Donald Wagner who has a different perspective. For decades, the US has used Christianity as a cover for imperial domination in West Asia. What’s behind Trump’s military actions against Iran is not the fulfillment of divine prophecy: it’s a strategy to secure US control of oil in a global economy that runs on the petrodollar.

Raja Shehadeh (1951—) is a Palestinian lawyer, human rights activist and writer who co-founded the award-winning Palestinian human rights organization Al-Haq in 1979. Born to a Palestinian Christian family that fled from Jaffa to Ramallah in 1948, he graduated from American University of Beirut with a degree in English literature and went on to study law at the College of Law in London, England. He blogs regularly for the International Herald Tribune/The New York Times International and lives in Ramallah with his family. His book Palestinian Walks: Forays Into a Vanishing Landscape won the Orwell Prize in 2008. The Prize committee stated that, “[we] felt it made landscape into the essence of politics, and political writing into an art.” The book takes the reader alongside the writer on a series of hikes, juxtaposing justifiable bitterness with immeasurable hope. These six walks span a period of twenty-six years, and while the hills would have seemed familiar to Jesus, the day concrete was poured over the flora created irreversible changes. By recording how the land felt and looked before the settler-colonial project of Israel began, Shehadeh attempts to preserve, at least in words, the Palestinian natural treasures that so many Palestinians living in the diaspora will never know.