Ben Lorber

"But ultimately, they hope that Israeli Jews not only embrace Religious Zionism, but also develop faith in Jesus as the Messiah..."

Indeed more people should be aware that US evangelical christians are instigating conflict in the MENA region

Media Fail to Note Christian Zionist Operative Who Organized Congressional Visit to West Bank Yesterday, House Speaker Mike Johnson, the third-highest ranking US official, visited the Israeli settlement of Ariel, deep in the occupied West Bank, to pledge support for full Israeli annexation of ...

Yesterday’s Congressional visit was part of an international Christian Zionist strategy long in the making. It's everywhere in the US pro-Israel movement, but its influence is easy to overlook religiondispatches.org/media-fail-t...

Johnston sees her "hidden role" in the West Bank as the "staging ground" for the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy. And while many Christian Zionists disavow conversionary intent, Johnston seems to think bringing Jews to Jesus is part of the prophetic plan bsky.app/profile/benl...

From Iron Dome to supply chains, US Christian group quietly shaping US-Israel ties After bringing House leaders to the West Bank and securing missile defense funding, the Alabama-based USIEA sees Abraham Accords countries replacing China as pharma suppliers

In 2011 Johnston's West Bank tour helped convince Congressional leaders to secure major US funding for Israel's Iron Dome system. She claims to work regularly with Netanyahu, Mike Johnson & other prominent US & Israeli leaders- but few know her name www.timesofisrael.com/from-iron-do...

Heather Johnston runs the US Israel Education Association from her home in Arkansas. USIEA arranges 'Biblical' trips to the occupied West Bank for senior Congressional leaders. When AIPAC tours cross the Green line it draws controversy- USIEA benefits from avoiding the spotlight

Media Fail to Note Christian Zionist Operative Who Organized Congressional Visit to West Bank Yesterday, House Speaker Mike Johnson, the third-highest ranking US official, visited the Israeli settlement of Ariel, deep in the occupied West Bank, to pledge support for full Israeli annexation of ...

My latest @religiondispatches.org - GOP leader Mike Johnson visited the West Bank yesterday & proclaimed support for Israeli annexation. But few noticed the Christian Zionist operative who has arranged trips like his for decades, driven by Biblical prophecy religiondispatches.org/media-fail-t...

Like, it would be one thing if they were just claiming that wearing a Star of David can racialize someone as Jewish in the antisemitic gaze. Sure. But they seem to go further in affirming the concept of a ‘Jewish race’ & stating that wearing a Star of David= proudly claiming a racial identity

Pro-Israel anti-antisemitism comes full circle by…affirming the central racist premises of Nazi antisemitism. Mind-boggling stuff

A leading pro-Israel lawfare advocate- “of course the Jewish star represents the Jewish race.” His logic- attacking an Israeli flag is antisemitic, because essentially the Nazis were correct when they racialized Jews by forcing us to wear a Star of David. US district court agrees

Christian Zionists are coordinating internationally right now to support Israeli plans to annex the West Bank. Today's show of support by some of the highest-ranking US politicians is part of that strategy

Johnston started USIEA to connect US Christian leaders & lawmakers like Mike Johnson with West Bank settlers. In her view this fulfills Biblical prophecy. She also prophesies Israelis will find God "in a personal way" (i.e. believe in Jesus)

The delegation was hosted by Heather Johnston, a Christian Zionist operative who founded the US Israel Education Association, based in the West Bank settlement of Ariel, to "play a hidden role" in "helping facilitate unfolding prophecies". From a 2021 interview--

The state of pro-Israel hasbara right now

Ironically it provides the same kind of cynical moral cover as anti-antisemitism for the Right. It allows white Christian nationalists to posture as standing up for the disenfranchised-- in this case not Jews but Palestinians. Playing the two against each other, in new guise

Watching the likes of Tucker & MTG profess concern for human rights in Gaza while gleefully trampling the rights of immigrants, trans folks & many others in the US...the cognitive dissonance is astounding. Critiquing a Jewish ethnostate while building a white Christian one...

People like to claim the pro-Palestine Left are hypocrites for fixating on Israel's injustices while ignoring unjust systems they benefit from in America. This is bogus of course- we oppose both- but ironically, the charge actually does fit for Israel's new critics on the Right.

This is horrific. It leaves me wondering how anyone will prove citizenship if a birth certificate no longer does so.

Progressives Have No Business Celebrating MAGA’s Epstein Revolt Antisemitic conspiracy theories are central to the far right’s obsession with the sex-trafficking billionaire and his links to the global elite

The issues of Epstein and Israel have combined to drive a wedge between Trump and his conspiratorial MAGA base, but those who applaud these developments and right-wing voices are playing a dangerous game, argues @benlorber8.bsky.social at @newlinesmag.bsky.social

newlinesmag.com/argument/pro...

Progressives Have No Business Celebrating MAGA’s Epstein Revolt Antisemitic conspiracy theories are central to the far right’s obsession with the sex-trafficking billionaire and his links to the global elite

My recent piece on Darryl Cooper/MartyrMade, Tucker Carlson and MAGA's Jeffrey Epstein obsession--

newlinesmag.com/argument/pro...

Great digging on the white nationalist ties of Substack's most popular amateur historian. In a piece last week I highlighted Cooper/MartyrMade's recent interview on the 'Jewish Question' (screenshot). As his star continues to rise, he's less inclined to strategically camouflage his true beliefs

The Right’s Anti-Israel Insurgents A burgeoning anti-Zionist strain in the America First movement looks to capitalize on popular disaffection over Palestine for its own ends.

You don’t hear that level of critique often in conservative spaces. As I’ve said before, it’s complicated- will they unpack structural supremacy in the US next? I don’t think so- but it’s a striking sign of the bipartisan, generational shift on Palestine jewishcurrents.org/the-rights-a...

Alongside yesterday’s Senate Dem vote, another sign of major shift on Palestine- Tucker Carlson interviewed John Mearsheimer, who thoroughly unpacked the structural supremacy undergirding Israel’s oppression of Palestinians since the Nakba. Over 4 million views in 24 hours

Progressives Have No Business Celebrating MAGA’s Epstein Revolt Antisemitic conspiracy theories are central to the far right’s obsession with the sex-trafficking billionaire and his links to the global elite

Anger over Trump’s Epstein cover-up and his support for Israel have converged, and while Trump has long fashioned himself as an avatar of that revolt, now he appears as its target, writes @BenLorber8.bsky.social for @newlinesmag.bsky.social

What’s really driving U.S. evangelical support for Israel? Ben Lorber (Political Research Associates) exposes how End Times prophecy fuels Christian Zionism—and why that makes the movement deeply antisemitic.
youtube.com/shorts/NByFM...

I don’t know how we will be able to live in the long shadow of what Jewish liberation theologian Marc Ellis called Constantinian Judaism. How we can take the Torah out of the ark and hear anything other than the roar of tanks and F-16s, the cries of Gaza.

no words will be enough. Thousands of Yom Kippur sermons won’t be enough. Our great grandchildren will ask of us, how? How could this have happened? Couldn’t you see it coming on October 8? In 1967? In 1948? Why didn’t you do more to stop it?

will be able to process that the collective political project that ended up winning the hearts, minds and energy of so much of our people over the last century has produced the mass death of Gaza. We will try to write prayers and poems of lamentation but our mouths will stumble,

twenty months of tireless organizing and advocacy we have been unable to stop a genocide that is at once so close, here in the belly of empire, and so far away, unfolding on the other side of the planet.

In the coming decades and beyond, I don’t know how our Jewish communities

Every Jewish leader, too.

Ruminating on the future of Judaism feels not only beside the point, but almost narcissistic right now. But it’s where my mind goes. Maybe it’s a kind of dissociative tactic, like I can’t sit with the helplessness I feel, that we all feel, when after/