By Aidan Orly
This month marked the third anniversary of Hamas’ October 7th attacks, and the start of the US-Israel genocide in Gaza. Many rightly point out the attempted ethnic cleansing of Gaza is a continuation of the Nakba that began in 1948. But Christian Zionism teaches us that western usurpation of Palestinian land started a century earlier when British, American, and German evangelicals began settling in Palestine to lay the foundations for a Jewish State. This history is a binding force for far-right Israeli leaders and Christian Zionists today in their joint mission to expel Palestinians from their land and expand the borders of the Jewish ethnostate.
The Roots of Palestinian Dispossession: 19th century evangelicals in Palestine
Beginning in the 1830s, a wave of British, American, and German evangelicals voyaged to Palestine to establish missions, churches and consulates to establish their influence over Palestine at the height of the imperial age. To many of these evangelicals, Palestine represented the eschatological promise of Jewish return, and a strategic economic and military asset. They began surveying, mapping, and settling the land, hoping it would inspire mass Jewish immigration.
In the 1840s, British evangelical Colonel Charles Henry Churchill, a relation of Britain’s Prime Minister Winston Churchill, was the first man to devise a political plan for the Jewish State in Palestine, half a century before the coalescence of Jewish Zionism. Serving as British consul to Ottoman Syria, Churchill urged prominent Jewish philanthropist Moses Montefiore to help finance the project, arguing that with the support of European powers, the Jews would attain “the sovereignty of at least Palestine.” Ilan Pappe, noted Israeli anti-Zionist historian, argues that with this plan, Churchill “laid the foundations for the future Balfour Declaration.” Palestinians were not included in these plans. It was evangelicals in the mid-19th century who popularized the idea that Palestine was a land without a people for a people without a land.
For the rest of the century, evangelicals sought to strengthen the foundations for a Jewish State in Palestine. In the 1870s, Laurence Oliphant, formerly a British politician, settled in Palestine and became one of the most influential financiers and advocates of Jewish settlement. His plan to create a Jewish colony in the Galilee became a blueprint for settlements thereafter and Oliphant became a hero among Jewish Zionists when the movement coalesced years later. What was Oliphant’s plan for the Palestinians? Ilan Pappe writes that Oliphant “was the first ‘lobbyist’ to pay attention to the fact that other people already lived in Palestine, but he suggested adopting the American settler-colonial ‘project’ of pushing the indigenous population into reservations.”
How this history informs the genocide in Gaza today
Although this pre-Zionism evangelical history is missing from much of today’s discourse, it remains a cornerstone of today’s alliance between Israel and Christian Zionists. In a meeting with evangelical leaders in Florida in December 2025, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu remarked “You are representatives of the Christian Zionists who made Jewish Zionism possible. It’s hard for me to conceive of the emergence of the Jewish state… without the support of Christian Zionists….” Netanyahu has long invoked this history to appeal to Christian Zionists, whose support he needs now more than ever against growing anti-Israel sentiment among the American right. Christian Zionists have been some of his most loyal supporters during his genocide in Gaza, ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, destruction of southern Lebanon and the US-Israel war with Iran because they believe it is God’s will that Israel defeat its enemies, expand its power and borders in Palestine and even beyond. Earlier this year, US Ambassador to Israel and end-times Christian Zionist Mike Huckabee said he would be fine if Israel took all the land between the Nile and the Euphrates, land that many Christian Zionists believe encompasses the biblical land of Israel.
On October 26, a UN Commission released a report that found Israel has been deploying similar tactics in the West Bank as it has been in Gaza for the past three years. The Commission’s chair, Srinivasan Muralidhar, said “the intentional killing and injuring of Palestinian civilians and destruction of homes in the West Bank combined with Israel’s persistent denial of responsibility form part of a broader strategy to exterminate and displace Palestinians….” Although the Israeli elections this month could end Netanyahu’s reign, it is unlikely that the opposition party will reverse Israel’s expansionist project. Israel has, since its founding, furthered the dream first conceived by evangelicals in the 19th century.
Aidan Orly has been a writer and fundraiser at Political Research Associates, a social justice research and strategy center to counter authoritarian movements, for over seven years. Aidan has a Master’s Degree from New York University’s Kevorkian School of Near Eastern Studies, speaks regularly about Christian Zionism, and has been published at Truthout, In These Times, Religion Dispatches and more.
