kuttab_26-27r.qxp_Christianity and the Middle East 2/3/22 4:53 PM Page 26
Christianity and the Middle East
When an American Christian Zionist Can’t Even Say the Words “Occupation” or “Justice” By Daoud Kuttab YOU WOULD THINK that Joel Rosenberg’s own identification is enough to turn off any non-Israeli Middle East leader. He prides in his Christian Zionist evangelical ideology and boasts of his newly adopted Israeli citizenship, brought about most likely because his father is of the Jewish faith. He is similarly proud that his two sons have served in the Israeli army, one in a special unit. Yet reading his latest book, Enemies and Allies, one is taken back by how leaders of major Arab countries, kingdoms, and emirates open the doors for him for repeated visits and audiences with their own top leaders. Rosenberg, his family and different delegations of pro-Israel white evangelical leaders have been invited and have met the leaders of Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. Ironically, these very visits and meetings with Arab heads of state probably helped him to visit the previous president of the United States in the Oval Office with the help of thenVice President Mike Pence. Primarily a sensational New York Times bestselling novelist, Rosenberg’s books talk of wars and assassinations, all conspired by the enemies of the U.S. and Israel and all thwarted by the courageous Israelis and some of their Arab friends and, of course, with eminent help from America. It is not clear how he made it into all those capitals. Was it his sensational anti-radical Islam novels or his strange dual citizenship and contacts with both Israeli and American leaders or simply perfect timing? Is it the fact that conservative Gulf leaders wanted something from the anti-Iran Trump administration,
Award‐winning Palestinian journalist Daoud Kuttab is founder and di‐ rector general of the Community Media Network in Amman, Jordan. His book, Sesame Street, Palestine: Taking Sesame Street to the Children of Palestine, describes the ups and downs of producing a world‐famous children’s program for children enduring Israeli occu‐ pation. 26
including the right to buy F-35 American fighters, or Sudanese, who wanted to be removed from the terror list, or the Moroccans, who wanted Washington to recognize their sovereignty over the Western Sahara? Rosenberg was the perfect messenger to help those countries improve their standing with Donald Trump and company. On more than one occasion you get the sense that Rosenberg himself is surprised by his own success. He can’t believe that an American Israeli whose sons serve in the Israeli army is enjoying multiple visits and meetings with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman (MBS) or Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohamed Bin Zayed (MBZ) or being flown by royalty over Jordanian lands. The author himself is often surprised by the convergence of fiction and nonfiction as he walks into a Jordanian palace that was targeted in one of his novels or in the Oval Office where American foreign policy was being cooked up. This is not to say that the author is not genuine in his faith, and in the messages that he is trying to send to proIsraeli American evangelicals, of the existence of Arabs who are nice and generous and actually don’t hate Israel. Rosenberg also acts as the semiofficial messenger of America’s evangelicals, rarely giving an indication that his role as an unelected spokesman of white pro-Israel evangelicals is nowhere close to being representative of their flock. He talks about the 600 million worldwide evangelicals or the 60 million white American evangelicals as if their political opinions, and often divergent views of the world, are one and the same as his own. Rosenberg talks on behalf of American evangelicals in absolute terms, such as this line from his conversation with MBS: “I told him that the vast majority of the 60 million evangelical Christians in the United States love and strongly support the State of Israel and the Jewish people. I wanted him to know how deeply we care about Israel and why this was a deeply held theological—not political—conviction of ours that would never change.” MARCH/APRIL 2022
