By James M. Dorsey
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Israel’s American support base is shrinking.
From various directions, American President Donald Trump, increasingly critical evangelicals, until recently a rock-solid Israeli support base and influential Make America Great Again torchbearers, are undermining Israel’s position.
On Tuesday, Trump highlighted his changing attitude during a conversation in the Oval Office with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman at his side. the sale of 48 F-35 fighter jets to Saudi Arabia.
Later, at a dinner at the White House, Mr. Trump declared Saudi Arabia “a major non-NATO ally,” a status already enjoyed by the regional states of Qatar, Bahrain and Israel.
The sale could potentially change the military balance in the Middle East and violate U.S. law requiring the United States to ensure Israel maintains a “quality military edge” in the region, a pillar of the Jewish-majority state’s military posture.
“This is a great ally, and Israel is a great ally… They are both at the level where they should be at the top,” Mr. Trump said when asked whether Saudi Arabia would get as advanced a model of the F-35 as Israel.
Israel is the only country in the Middle East that operates F-35s, widely considered the world’s most advanced fighter jet.
Mr. “Trump made it clear… He wasn’t going to do that is wasting his time stopping the sale of all these weapons and items just because of (Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin) Netanyahu” said Nawaf Obaid, a former foreign policy and media advisor to the Saudi government.
The question is what Mr. Trump will offer Mr. Netanyahu in compensation to maintain the fig leaf of maintaining Israel’s qualitative military edge.
To be sure, the sale limits Israel’s military superiority, but does not eliminate it.
“The Israeli Air Force’s planning and operational capabilities have no parallel in today’s Middle East… That is likely to be the case take time
until they…manage to close the professional gap,” said journalist Amos Harel.
Still, the sale will likely put a similar deal with the United Arab Emirates back on the table.
The The UAE has suspended the talks on the purchase of F-35s as part of the 2020 deal, which saw the Gulf state establish diplomatic ties with Israel alongside Bahrain and Morocco, as the US feared China could gain access to the aircraft’s technologies.
The importance of the sale to Saudi Arabia and the UAE goes beyond issues of the military balance of power in the Middle East. It ties the United States and Saudi Arabia in more ways than one.
Investments from Saudi Arabia and the Emirates in Africa’s crucial mineral industry are of strategic importance to the United States, given China’s global dominance in the sector. The production of F-35s depends on critical minerals.
The U.S. defense industry’s dependence on rare earth metals. Credit: Williston Basin CORE-CM
“Critical minerals are…an important component of the discussion here in Washington,” said Middle East analyst Firas Maksad, noting that Saudi Arabia was preparing to become a major critical hub for mineral processing.
Moreover, sales will inevitably occur influence on Chinese influence, given the likely US demand that Saudi Arabia erect a Chinese wall between F-35 operations and digital infrastructure involving Chinese technology.
The US will want the wall to isolate the F-35’s environment from, for example, encrypted satellite communications, logistics platforms and data centers.
Trump’s tampering with the nature of US relations with Israel comes at a time when messianic evangelical support for Israel is waning. Not only in the United States, but also worldwide.
Gaza could be the catalyst for this shift.
Yet rising criticism of Israel and greater empathy for Palestinians, especially among American evangelical Christians ages 18 to 29, reflect a shift in power in the global evangelical community.
“This train has left the station. It’s not coming back, especially among the younger generation,” said Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, an evangelical conspiracy theorist, who during the Covid epidemic compared masks to the yellow Star of David that the Nazis forced Jews to wear. Ms. Taylor Greene later apologized for her comment.
Trump’s bungling also comes as influential figures in the president’s Make America Great Again base have turned up the volume on criticizing U.S. support for Israel and mainstreaming far-right anti-Semites such as the 27-year-old neo-Nazi, white supremacist and Christian nationalist. Nick Fuentes And blatantly anti-Semitic podcaster Candace Owens.
This shift is exacerbated by the rise of non-Western evangelicals, including Palestinians and Middle Eastern communities, who are responsible for 70 percent of the global evangelical communityand may share a belief in the End Times, but have not politicized it to make support for Israel a commandment.
As a result, African states, which make up about 30 percent of the United Nations’ membership, with few exceptions favor the creation of an independent Palestinian state and reject Israeli annexation of territory captured by Israel during the 1967 Middle East war, despite longstanding efforts by Israeli and American evangelists to convince them to become more supportive of Israel.
Pew Research predicted in 2015 that this country will be located south of the Sahara by 2050 Africa is said to account for 38 percent of the world’s Christian population. In 2019, the research group said that by 2060 six of the ten countries with the largest Christian populations
will be in Africa.
For many American evangelicals, the End Times means the gathering of Jews to the Promised Land during a time of persecution during the Tribulations. Evangelicals believe that Jews who survive persecution and recognize Jesus as their Messiah will be saved.
“The theological emphasis is shifting. We younger evangelicals are interpreting the teachings of Jesus as an emphasis on compassion, peace and justice for all, rather than on political alignment with a specific nation,” said one younger evangelical activist.
The global shift in power in the evangelical community was made visible last month when the World Evangelical Alliance (WEA), which represents 600 million evangelicals from 161 countries, last elected Sri Lankan activist Godfrey Yogarajah as chairman, replacing Thomas Schirrmacher, a religious scholar with close ties to the German political establishment. general meeting in Seoul.
Botros Mansour
Mr. Yogarajah has not spoken publicly about Israel or the Gaza war, but emphasized that he would work closely with Botros Mansour, a Nazareth-born Israeli-Palestinian lawyer with a history of mediate between Israeli Palestinian Christians and Messianic Jews.
The Alliance appointed Mr Mansour as Secretary General and CEO in August.
Attendees at the meeting said Mr. Yogarajah indicated that the WEA would take a more balanced approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict than The more pro-Israeli St. from Mr Schirrmacherans.
“It means something profound that at this moment a Palestinian Christian from Israel has been asked to serve as Secretary General,” Mr. Mansour said in his speech. inaugural address.
In a similar vein, the European Baptist Federation (EBF) elected Lebanese Pastor Charles Costa as its new president in September. The EBF groups associations in Europe, the Middle East and Central Asia.
Yet North American evangelicals retain significant influence in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
This became clear last year when Julia Sebutinde, Vice President of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), became the only member of the world’s highest judicial body to oppose all interim measures it advocated South Africa’s case and accused Israel of genocide in Gaza.
“The Lord is counting on me to be on Israel’s sideMs Sebutinde said in August at the launch of a new evangelistic ministry of the Watoto Church in the Ugandan capital Kampala. It was Ms Sebutinde’s first public comment on her opposition to the International Court of Justice ruling.
Watoto Church was founded in 1984 by fourth-generation Zimbabwean-born Canadian missionary Gary Skinner.
The Ugandan government distanced itself from Ms Sebutinde at the time of the International Court of Justice ruling.
“Judge Sebutinde’s position is her own individual and independent opinion does not in any way reflect the government’s position of the Republic of Uganda,” the government said in a statement.
Dr. James M. Dorsey is an Adjunct Senior Fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, and the author of the syndicated column and podcast, The Turbulent World with James M. Dorsey.
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