Gaza and the Apocalypse

TEL AVIV – Throughout recorded history, crises and tragedies have inevitably spurred apocalyptic interpretations that seek to imbue temporal catastrophes with some divine or redemptive meaning. One can see this in the doctrines of the major monotheistic religions, and even in modern totalitarian ideologies, such as communism and Nazism. One way or another, humans appear inclined to believe that, without Satan, there is no redeemer.

To understand just how dangerous this logic can be, look no further than Gaza, where a tragedy of Biblical proportions is fueling the messianic hallucinations of Israel, Hamas, and American Christian evangelicals alike.

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his allies – the theo-fascist zealots of the Religious Zionist Party – see the Gaza war as the anteroom to their total dominion over the biblical Land of Israel, a religiously defined territory stretching from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean. For far-right figures like Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir – the leaders of modern religious Zionism and members of Netanyahu’s cabinet – Palestinians must be completely removed from these lands. 

The Zionist apocalyptic fantasy has three steps: gain dominion over the land, build the “Third Temple” in Jerusalem, and replace democracy with the Kingdom of the House of David, which, according to the Hebrew Bible, was appointed by God to rule Israel. Enabling the government’s constitutional assault on democracy and human rights within Israel is just part of the bargain they made with Netanyahu in service of this dream.

But bringing about the coming of the messiah will require more than judicial reform or even settlement construction. It will involve “messianic pangs” – in the form of upheaval, suffering, and pain – and even an apocalyptic battle: the long-prophesied War of Gog and Magog, in which a coalition of enemies seeks to eradicate Israel, only to usher in the messiah. According to some zealots, Hamas’s October 7 attack, which triggered the current war in Gaza, amounted to the start of this fight.

This thinking reflects a political theology that was developed in seminaries in the occupied Palestinian territories by rabbis who viewed Israel’s “miraculous” victory in the Six-Day War of 1967 as a “messianic moment.” In fact, the founders of religious Zionism – Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook and his son, Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook – relished the idea of conflict. “When there is a great war in the world,” the father wrote, “the power of the Messiah awakens.” The son echoed him: “Every war is a phase in the Redemption of Israel.”

Beyond welcoming war and destruction, this ideology effectively exculpates the state of Israel for any violation of universal moral principles, not to mention international law. In 1980, Rabbi Israel Hess, advocating the eradication of the Palestinians, wrote an article entitled “Genocide: A Commandment of the Torah,” in which he cited God’s instruction to King Saul to kill every person in Amalek. More recently, Smotrich complained that “no one in the world will allow us to starve two million people, even though it might be justified and moral.” For these zealots, it is the “word of God,” not the rules or values of humankind, that should guide Israel’s behavior.

Messianic Jews have counterparts in the United States. American evangelicals also view the war in Gaza as a catalyst for the realization of their divine plan, and far from fearing the apocalypse, they crave it no less than the Kooks. “When Israel is involved in great warfare,” one influential pastor, John Hagee, has declared, “lift up your heads and rejoice,” for “your redemption draweth nigh.”

After the intercepted Iranian missile attack on Israel last April, Hagee declared, “Prophetically, we are on the verge of the Gog-Magog war that Ezekiel described in chapters 38 and 39.” (In his version, it is Jesus Christ’s “second coming” that would follow the near-annihilation of the Jews, with faithful Christians and converts – not the Jews themselves – inheriting the kingdom of God on Earth.) This explains why Hagee and his Christians United for Israel – the same group that pressured former US President Donald Trump to move the US embassy to Jerusalem – urged US lawmakers not to stand in the way of the war’s escalation. Evangelical leaders across the US have pressured their allies in the Republican Party to increase aid and arms deliveries to Israel.

If Christian evangelicals are echoing the ideology of messianic Jews, Hamas is mirroring it. The “land of Palestine,” the 1988 Hamas covenant declares, is an Islamic “waqf” (an inalienable endowment under Islamic law) “consecrated for future Muslim generations,” and no part of it should be “squandered” or “given up.” In its “principles and policies,” released in 2017, Hamas reiterates that it “rejects any alternative to the full and complete liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea.”

Moreover, the Hamas covenant says, “Day of Judgment will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews.” When a Jew hides behind “stones and trees,” it continues, those stones and trees will say, “‘O Muslims, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.’” In the 2017 document, Hamas establishes “Zionists,” rather than “Jews,” as its primary enemies, but its rejection of “so-called peaceful solutions” remains as clear as ever.

Hamas is not an ordinary jihadist group, though. Yes, on October 7, it employed the kinds of brutal tactics for which terrorist groups like the Islamic State (ISIS) are known. But unlike ISIS (and al-Qaeda), Hamas is a purely nationalist movement, with no global designs. ISIS has even held “Hamas in contempt and as apostates” for their singular focus on the liberation of Palestine, which departs from fundamentalist doctrine.

But the recent appointment of Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’s top official in Gaza, as head of the political bureau of the movement is tantamount to a military coup by the hardliners against Hamas’s political wing outside Gaza. With Sinwar, Hamas longs for war and self-destruction as the only way to redemption, and religious fanatics in Israel and the US share that yearning. Unless diplomacy defuses the threat of an apocalyptic struggle over the Holy Land, the zealots may get their wish.

Shlomo Ben-Ami, a former Israeli foreign minister, is Vice President of the Toledo International Center for Peace and the author of Prophets Without Honor: The 2000 Camp David Summit and the End of the Two-State Solution (Oxford University Press, 2022).

Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2024.
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