Religious Nationalism

A new brand of far-right religious nationalism in Israel is seeking to refine the country’s ethnocentric basis, increasing its policing of the boundaries of Israeli Jewish identity in an attempt to shore up support for Israel’s anti-Arab policies. A parallel movement is unfolding in Israel’s chief benefactor, the United States, as the U.S. Zionist movement seeks to marginalize the increasing number of American Jews who are critical of Israeli apartheid in favor of Christian Zionists for whom the existence of a Jewish state in the Levant is part of their millenarian agenda. In both cases, their targets are liberal Jews whose disapproval of genocidal violence against Palestinians is considered a threat to Washington’s most important client state in the Middle East.