by Atalia Omer

From Pink- to White-Washing 

As journalist Ali Harb noted, the loud outpouring of eulogies and tributes for Charlie Kirk by Israeli and other Jewish Zionist leaders was deafening. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wrote on X that Kirk’s legacy was that of a “lion-hearted friend of Israel” who “fought lies and stood tall for Judeo-Christian civilization.” Similarly, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar called Kirk an embodiment of “the Judeo-Christian values that unite Israel and America.” 

Indeed, associating Kirk with the struggle against the supposed decline of a “Judeo-Christian civilization” shaped the posthumous discourse, though conspiracy theories about Israel’s role in his death were also present. The eulogies focusing on Judeo-Christianity gesture both to Israeli figures’ recognition that, close to his assassination, Kirk (as well as other elements within MAGA) began to question unconditional US support of Israeli policies as inconsistent with “America first,” playing into the classical antisemitic tropes that “Jews” control US policies. Worried about these apparent cracks in the MAGA movement’s support of Israel during the Gaza genocide (October 2023-October 2025), Israel’s rhetorical moves are progressively moving from “pinkwashing” to underscoring Israel’s relevance to and consistency with White Christian supremacy, while the other, more eschatological motifs of Christian Zionism still also circulate. 

The Gaza genocide, in other words, has demystified Israel’s orientalist self-representation as “a villa in the jungle,” appealing to the progressive values of, for instance, LGBTQI+ and women’s rights. With the phenomenon of PEPs (“Progressives Except for Palestine”) impossible to sustain in the face of Israel’s blatant violation of Palestinian humanity, Israel’s crimes are no longer pinkwashed but white-washed. That is, instead of emphasizing its “civilizational” progressiveness, the Zionist project now relies on its alliance with White Christian racism and heteropatriarchal “family values.” Both forms of “washing” are deeply orientalist, Islamophobic, and revealing of “Judeo-Christian” racism multifocality. 

The eulogies came from across the Jewish Zionist spectrum, regardless of their relative liberalism or extremist interpretations of Jewish domination and political sovereignty. Itamar Ben Gvir, the Kahanist racist (“death to Arabs”) National Security Minister from the Jewish Power Party and a key member of Netanyahu’s openly racist and settler colonialist coalition, also eulogized Kirk. His remarks highlighted the Islamophobia and orientalism that underpin the “Judeo-Christian” trope in its emphasis of a “collusion between the global Left and radical Islam” as “the greatest danger to humanity today” – and Kirk as a martyr in this “civilizational” fight. Ben Gvir’s counterpart in the messianic Jewish colonization project, Bezalel Smotrich (Minister of Finance) and head of Religious Zionism, likewise remembered Kirk’s friendship, “love of Israel,” and his fierce commitment to protecting “the morals and principles he believed in.” Smotrich then claimed that Kirk’s murder amounts to an assault on the values Kirk represented, which he equated with “the free world.” He then rhetorically likened Israel to the United States, arguing that Kirk’s murder is “dangerous for Israel, dangerous for the United States, and dangerous for the free world.” 

Co-warriors in a “Judeo-Christian” Battle

The deployment of the “Judeo-Christian” trope with its Islamophobic connotations to appeal to right-wing chauvinistic leaders such as Hungary’s Viktor Orbán – known for his explicit antisemitism also echoed in the United States – is nothing new. For example, Netanyahu, in March 2025 remarks at the Joint Statements in Budapest, flattered Orbán, saying, “You have, in your leadership, done remarkable things for Israel and the Jewish people. You support Israel proudly…you stand with us at the UN, and you’ve just taken a bold and principled position on the ICC. I thank you, Viktor.” Netanyahu then underscored Israel-qua-“the Jews” and Hungary as a part of Europe, that is, a common “Judeo-Christian” civilization and co-warriors in a civilizational war: “I believe we are fighting a similar battle for the future of our common civilization,” he said. “Our Judeo-Christian civilization, Western civilization as we understand it, it’s under assault right now from one powerful corner and that is radical Islam.” 

Netanyahu’s activation of Judeo-Christian racism, assimilating Israel as a part of a transnational “civilizational” struggle against decoloniality and “gender ideology,” points to how our understanding of Christian Zionism requires a shift from the level of theology and eschatological imaginations to its ascendence as a modality for a White Christian context, specifically manifestations of ethnonationalism and a discourse of Islamophobic domination. Netanyahu draws on this discourse to shift the analysis of Jewish supremacy, apartheid, military occupation, and genocide to a Manichean civilizational “forever” war in which Israel-qua-Jews is a part of the White Christian European project.  

Indeed, a characteristic of the transnational consolidation of White Christian nationalism, as reflected by Hannah Strømmen, is its selective deployment of the Bible, toxic masculinity, and the perpetuation of narratives of civilizational decline. Israel has a role in the consolidation of the racialized Christian right and its particular, not necessarily eschatological form of Christian Zionism. This role, which utilizes Judeo-Christian racist formations, is substantial and shapeshifting. As exemplified in the eulogies for Kirk, they underscore Israel or “the Judeo” part in the narrative of White supremacy over the “Judeo” as a necessary fetish for Christian redemption. This also signifies, as Yaacov Yadgar reflects, the end of Judaism and the ascendence of Christian supersessionist logic that, I add, should be interpreted through race and racialization in a persistent colonial discourse as much as theologically. 

What is at stake for those in MAGA who oppose the Christian Zionist consensus isn’t Christian eschatology or salvation but rather White Christian (heteropatriarchal) dominance. Naturally, anyone familiar with Christian Zionism knows it predates Jewish Zionism and only became politically active due to a moment of imperial and colonial opportunity. As such, there is nothing new about recognizing the racist and “civilizational” motives driving Christian Zionism. However, the Gaza genocide has compelled Israeli and Zionist representatives to emphasize their alignment with White supremacy rather than Christian eschatology. This reveals how deeply Zionism and Israel as a political project are rooted in European Christian modernity and coloniality. Netanyahu seeks no separation between the logic of White supremacy and the Islamophobic “civilizational war” and Israel, thereby dismantling the false distinction between antisemitism and Zionism. As Kirk, Orbán, and others demonstrate, they are highly consistent with each other.  

Antisemitic Zionism 

Kirk’s sanctification by Jewish and Israeli leaders was disconcerting, considering Kirk’s otherwise explicit antisemitism. The movement of which he was symptomatic has a diminishing concern with making their romantic admiration of Hitler concealed in dark spaces on and off the internet. This is evident in the leaked messages exchanged by Young Republicans, where they express homophobic, misogynistic, racist, and antisemitic thoughts, with some (but certainly not overwhelming) worry that they would be exposed to the media. Upon the exposé, people at the commanding heights of power such as Vice President J.D. Vance defended them for merely doing “what kids do.” Christian Zionism and its convergence with White Christian ethnonationalism have enabled such escalations and greenlighting of blatant antisemitism. When Jews are equated with Israel as a fetish and an instrument for Christian fulfillment, real, actual Jews are irrelevant and even worthy of “gas showers,” as the Young Republicans’ text exchanges reveal. 

“Project Esther,” the addendum to Project 2025 of the Heritage Foundation and the policy blueprint of the second Trump Administration, clarifies, as its critics highlight, both the weaponization of antisemitism (understood as Palestine solidarity and criticism of Israel and Zionism) and the reduction of all Jews to a settler colonial project. Accordingly, this document, written by White Christian nationalists, enters the business of defining and policing who is a “good Jew” and which Jews are enablers of “a Hamas network,” a conspiratorial motif demonstrating the convergence of the mechanisms of the so-called global war on terror, the projection of antisemitic tropes about “a cabal,” and the antecedent robust anti antisemitism Zionist hasbara infrastructure in place for decades intent on “controlling the narrative” through policing and silencing debates about Palestine/Israel – also captured in the notion of “the Palestine exception.” 

Project Esther and the ease with which actual Nazi sentiments (including Nazi salutes) are tolerated by the Jewish American establishment, otherwise engaging in character assassinations of critics of Israeli policies, demystifies the US-Israeli “friendship.” The convergences of Christian Zionists with Christian racialized White nationalism expose the reliance of Zionism and Israel not only on a Christian theo-political eschatological imagination, which shifts the terrain of discourse outside of historical analysis, but also on White supremacy, Islamophobia, and a “Judeo-Christian” civilizational discourse that is more Manichean than eschatological (though they are not mutually exclusive). 

As noted, the current moment is also reflected in Kirk’s own rethinking of the United States’ unquestioned support for Israeli belligerence. Still, this rethinking is clearly not driven by a concern for Palestinian lives but rather by an “America First” frame that others within MAGA, such as Marjorie Taylor-Green and Tucker Carlson, have also articulated. Recognizing the internal fracturing of MAGA support propelled Israeli hasbara to foreground the language of whiteness and Israel’s role (as an extension of “the West”) in a “civilizational war” rather than that of Christian eschatology or the prosperity gospel that has urged Christians to “bless” Israel to be blessed. The shift to an argument that is basically “unquestioning support of Israeli genocidal and apartheid policies is an American First agenda item” relies on a blatant Islamophobic White racism. This claim to Jewish (by way of Israel) instrumentality for White supremacy pivots on the allusion to a “Judeo-Christian” alliance, where Israel is “the collective Jew.” It likewise signals a shift from an eschatological redemptive terrain to a political-historical agenda of White Christian domination. Even though one cannot analyze the force of Christian Zionism outside the history of the Western Christian empire, the eulogizing of Kirk points to the need to zoom in on the analysis of Judeo-Christian racism upon its convergences and divergences from the eschatological supersessionist fetishizing of “the Jews.”  

Colonial Violence

The eulogies in the aftermath of Kirk’s assassination highlighted a “Judeo-Christian” link between Kirk’s vision of a White, Christian, and heteropatriarchal America (aiming to reclaim its supposedly lost “greatness”) and Israel as an ethnoreligious racialized political project for Jews. While research on the links between Jewish and Christian Zionisms has traditionally focused on theology, prophecy, and eschatology, Kirk’s eulogies shed light on the roles of White supremacy, Islamophobia, orientalism, and classical antisemitism. They reveal how openly Israeli leaders are associating the Israeli settler colonial project with a White Eurocentric Manichean civilizational discourse (where Israel-qua-Jews finds itself immersed in whiteness – a curious phenomenon considering that for most of Jewish European history, Jews were Europe’s despised and orientalized “other,” not really from Europe and unassimilable). By aligning with Kirk’s worldview, Israeli and other Jewish Zionist leaders emphasize their identity as part of a Judeo-Christian civilization and their alignment with “conservative values.” Indeed, this explication of Israel as bound up with a transnational war to reclaim “the West” ironically demystifies Zionism as a movement of “return” to the East. As some analysts (for example, here) have reflected, Jewish Zionism from its inception reflected the colonization of Jewish consciousness by Christian imagination about the Jews and their return to “the Holy Land.” 

But the eulogies to Kirk expose that the Christian eschatological imagination, as it became translated into enabling and pursuing Zionist policies, is constitutive of the racialization of Christianity, the construction of the violent supersessionist construct of the Judeo-Christian, and Islamophobia (which is a sine qua non for this analysis). In other words, we cannot talk about Christian Zionist theology without also interrogating its embeddedness within the Islamophobic discourse of Judeo-Christian civilization and its view of Israel as part of a conservative project of the Christian right that, while also grounding itself in biblical warrants (but not the same as conventional Christian Zionists) consistently tells a narrative of “civilizational decline” that targets a host of marginalized categories of people and norms. Project Esther shows us how convenient it is to instrumentalize false claims of antisemitism to assault an intersectional coalition of people who reject the logic and practice of White supremacy. This instrumentalization also exposes how the White Christian “love” of Israel is grounded in a racial discourse of domination.    

Indeed, Kirk’s “Turning Point” movement embodies the consistent rather than contradictory relation between Zionism and antisemitism and White Christian supremacy. The sacralization of Kirk as a martyr of a civilizational struggle signals a “turning point,” if you will, in understanding Christian Zionism’s convergence with and divergence from White Christian nationalism. The Gaza genocide clarified Israel’s reliance not only on Christian Zionist theo-political fetishizing of Israel as “the Jews” enacting a prophecy or on liberal modalities of Christian Zionism embedded in the “ecumenical pact” that Marc Ellis powerfully examines in his critique of the mobilization of Holocaust guilt to deny crimes against Palestinians, but also on whiteness, orientalism, and Islamophobia. The Islamophobic and orientalist dimensions underpinning the so-called “covenant” between the United States and Israel are telegraphed through the concepts of “Judeo-Christian values” or “Judeo-Christian civilization.” Subsequently, uplifting Judeo-Christian racism and “values” over eschatology and prophecy exposes how Christian Zionism is now more explicitly articulated in terms of the agendas of political domination of the Christian right rather than prophecy, eschatology, and redemption.   

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