The enemies of the West are trying to break the biblical bond between Jews and Christians, according to Karys Rhea, a writing fellow with the Middle East Forum.
Speaking to the ILTV Podcast, she said that foreign influences, from Russia to the Middle East, are infiltrating the Christian Right and spreading messages that could make Christians question their connection to the Old Testament and the Jewish faith.
Rhea warned that these efforts are part of a broader strategy to weaken longstanding religious and political alliances between pro-Israel Christians and the Jewish state.
“I think that the Christian right is, generally speaking, largely concerned about domestic policies, which is completely understandable, and so they might not realize how they are being targeted or taken advantage of by our enemies,” Rhea said.
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She noted that these bad actors are using members of the Republican Party, from Tucker Carlson to Candace Owens, to help deliver these messages.
“Now, there’s like this civil war that is going to be very determined by who ends up becoming the nominee in the 2028 election,” Rhea said.
These efforts are making some members of the Right look strikingly similar to the Left in what Rhea calls “horseshoe politics.” This theory posits that the political spectrum is not a straight line, but rather a horseshoe. As one moves further to either extreme, the far right and far left begin to resemble each other.
“The reason why it's not a circle is because the two extremes are not exactly alike,” Rhea explained. “Fascism is a different flavor than communism. Yes, they are both centralized, yes, they are both totalitarian, but they also have very, very important differences. In communism there's no private institutions. … That's not the case in fascism. There, the state controls private institutions, but they don't own them. They're not nationalized.”
She said one can see the horseshoe increasingly manifest by watching people shift alliances. Carlson, for example, has had more leftists on his show than conservatives in the past 12 months.
“He won't tell you that they're leftists, but they'll tell you that they're leftists if you watch them in any other venue, except for the Tucker Carlson show,” according to Rhea. “Carlson is essentially trying to appropriate the conservative movement to insert a left-wing agenda.”
She added: “When you get extreme in your politics, the extremism is so all-consuming that it ends up shifting alliances so that the fundamental goals are about power.”
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נשיא רוסיה ולדימיר פוטין ריאיון ל טאקר קרלסון
(Photo by NATALIA KOLESNIKOVA and GIORGIO VIERA / AFP)
Rhea added that she is also seeing an “embrace of victimhood” in her party, but the victim is not the transvestite Black female, as on the Left, but the Christian male, who is now the most oppressed and therefore needs to be reborn as privileged.
“It's the same hierarchy, but it's just different characters, and they're moved around,” Rhea noted.
She said this has an impact on Israel and the Jews, but that Israelis and Jews would be wise to step outside their own lens of geopolitics and not view everything only in terms of what directly affects them. Instead, she suggested taking a broader view of global political trends shaping alliances. While there is significant overlap between the United States and Israel in terms of shared enemies, values, and national priorities, there are also important differences. Those differences, particularly those unique to the American political landscape, are also influencing developments in Israel.
Israel should also get out of “hasbara mode,” Rhea recommended, and instead utilize the cultural bonds that already exist between Christians in America and Israel.
“Evangelicals in America love Jews and Israel more than most Jews love ourselves and so when I go to events with Christian Zionists, it's unbelievable how many individual patriotic Americans understand that our founding was based on Judeo-Christian principles,” Rhea said. She added that Jews should be brainstorming with these Christians on how to counter those trying to break that bond, because if the biblical ties remain strong, the politics will follow.
“I would say that for every American Jewish community that you are involved in, get involved with a Christian Zionist community,” Rhea concluded.
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