What do Zionism and the Christian evangelical
movement have in common?
For one, they were both significantly influenced
by the outcome of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.
That war has also greatly impacted Arab nationalism
and Islamic extremism.
But 50 years later, why does it matter?
With an eye on the human condition, this is Insight.
A defining moment in international affairs
happened in 1967 with the Arab-Israeli War,
commonly known as the Six-Day War.
In our previous episode, we looked at how
that conflict influenced Arab nationalism
and Islamic extremism.
Today we’ll see how it’s also affected
Zionism and Christian evangelicalism.
The Zionist ideology began in the early 1880s
in a movement known as Hibbat Zion,
Zion being one of the biblical names for Jerusalem.
Its members promoted the settlement of Palestine
to Russian Jews, where State-sponsored riots
intending to annihilate them had just occurred.
This violence aroused the demand for a homeland
where Jews could normalize their status among
the peoples of the world.
Publication of Theodor Herzl’s The Jewish
State in 1896 led to the convening of the
first Zionist Congress.
Support for “the establishment in Palestine
of a national home for the Jewish people”
came in the British government’s 
1917 Balfour Declaration.
Thirty years later the United Nations voted
in favor of partitioning Palestine into
two states—Jewish and Arab—and in 
internationalizing Jerusalem.
The following year, David Ben-Gurion declared
the establishment of the State of Israel,
and five Arab armies immediately invaded.
Eventually there would be a ceasefire, and
because of captured territory, Israel gained
more land than the UN partition plan had proposed.
The ceasefire also resulted in Jerusalem not
being internationalized.
Instead it was divided between 
Jordan and Israel.
This situation changed dramatically 
in the ’67 war.
Israel’s sweeping victory gave them control
over all of Jerusalem, the West Bank,
the Golan Heights, the Sinai and Gaza.
For Israelis, the capture of East Jerusalem
meant access for the first time in 19 years
to Judaism’s most revered site, 
the Western Wall.
In revisiting these remains of the first-century
temple enclosure,
that day even the nonreligious became religious.
The capture of the Temple Mount infused in
many the desire to make something profoundly
religious out of the otherwise 
military and political.
Immediate orders were given for the clearing
of Arab houses adjacent to the Western Wall,
dispossessing almost 1,000 Palestinians.
At the same time the Israelis drove out five
[500] to 600 Palestinian families
from the Old City’s Jewish Quarter.
In the 50 years since then, Israel has steadily
built more and more on disputed territory.
According to the Israeli movement Peace Now,
by 2015 the West Bank had 131 officially established
Israeli settlements outside East Jerusalem
and a settler population that had risen from
zero to more than 385,000.
Beginning in the 1990s, Israelis created an
additional 97 settler outposts
without government permission, and therefore illegal according to Israeli law.
In East Jerusalem, there are now 12 Israeli
neighborhoods and a further 13 Israeli settlements
within Palestinian neighborhoods.
In all, 200,000 Israelis live in East Jerusalem.
The most critical issues remain the future
border between two independent states;
the right of Palestinian refugees to return to
their homeland; defense and security;
and the status of Jerusalem.
Despite many attempts to finalize a peace
agreement, Israelis and Palestinians are at
an impasse, with the Palestinians continually
losing ground.
A fourth sector impacted by the ’67 war
was a segment of American evangelical Protestantism.
Their support for the State of Israel is based
on the belief that the land was given to the
Jews by God and that the existence of the
modern-day state is a fulfillment of prophecy
about the second coming of Christ.
These ideas are based on the teachings of
the 19th-century preacher John Nelson Darby,
founder of the Plymouth Brethren and originator
of dispensational theology.
His ideas were later promoted by the Scofield
Reference Bible, and in more recent times
by Hal Lindsey’s The Late Great Planet Earth
and Tim LaHaye’s Left Behind series,
based on the belief of the rapturing away 
of Christians before Christ’s return.
The belief that prophecy requires the return
of the Jews to their land before the second
coming of Christ has led to dispensationalists
being considered “Christian Zionists.”
Numbering in the millions, these evangelicals
have become a significant political force
in the United States.
Accommodating their views—supporting the
State of Israel—has become very important
in any election cycle.
In the years following the Six-Day War, the
Israeli Ministry of Tourism began to encourage
visits to Israel by US church groups with
dispensational beliefs;
after all,  a solid base of non-Jewish evangelical supporters within the United States
could be of great service.
Pro-Israel organizations began to raise funds
for many projects, including the emigration
of Russian Jews to Israel, the support of
West Bank settlements, and the funding of
the Temple Institute toward rebuilding a structure
on the ancient mount in Jerusalem’s Old City.
This has also led to a realignment of Israel’s
Washington DC lobbying group,
AIPAC, with America’s political right wing.
So politics and religion became intertwined
in new ways following the events
of six crucial days in 1967.
While the events of the Six-Day War changed
many things for many people, in other ways
nothing has changed.
The Palestinian-Israeli impasse has not changed,
nor has human nature’s penchant for violence.
Nothing changed in the worldwide entanglement
of politics and religion.
And nothing has changed in respect of what the 
Bible actually says about prophetic outcomes for all.
Judaism awaits its Messiah, Islam its Mahdi,
and Christianity the Second Coming.
But what the Creator of all humanity promises
for the future transcends all of our narrow
nationalisms and prejudices, our 
aggressions and hatreds.
For all of us, the true seventh day of the
Six-Day War is yet ahead.
The prophet Isaiah writes, “He shall judge
between the nations, and shall decide disputes
for many peoples; and they shall beat their
swords into plowshares, and their spears into
pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword
against nation, neither shall they learn
war anymore” (Isaiah 2:4, English Standard Version).
In the meantime, for those who want to have
a part in preparing for such a changed world,
here’s the personal action plan from the
same prophetic word:
“He has shown you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justly,
to love mercy, and to walk humbly 
with your God?” (Micah 6:8).
Who would not now benefit from practicing
such fairness, mercy and humility?
If you'd like to know more, search "Arab-Israeli
War" at vision.org.
For Insight, I'm David Hulme.
