Introduction

In a recent episode of The Tucker Carlson Show (“Israel’s Purging of Christians From the Holy Land and the Plot to Keep Americans From Noticing”), Tucker Carlson interviews Dr. Fares Abraham, a Palestinian-American who was born in Bethlehem and is the founder of Levant Ministries. Like other episodes of his show, this conversation features inaccurate suggestions, misrepresentations, misinterpretations of biblical texts, distortions of historical incidents, and the promotion of a biased organization. The episode:

• Inaccurately suggests:
  • The Jewish State prevents Messianic believers from immigrating to Israel.
  • The Jewish State prohibits Christian preaching about Jesus in Israel.
  • Israeli Christians are going extinct.

• Misrepresents:
  • The connection of contemporary Jews to ancient Jews in the land of Israel.

• • Christian Zionism by:
    • Mischaracterizing a phrase associated with a Christian clergyman.
    • Generalizing about Christian Zionists wanting an exclusively Jewish Holy Land.
    • Misidentifying Christian Zionism as a heresy.
    • Suggesting that building a Third Temple is a central motivator of Christian support for the State of Israel.

• • Israelis as consistently seeking to acquire Palestinian land.

• • Palestinian Christians by suggesting they uniformly seek peace.

• Misinterprets biblical texts by:
  • Inaccurately suggesting that the Abrahamic covenant is conditional.
  • Inaccurately suggesting that Jesus repudiated every Jewish national, political, and territorial expectation.
  • Inaccurately suggesting that the biblical promise’s scope’s expansion negates a territorial Israel.
  • Inaccurately suggesting that Scripture attests to the spiritualization of the land of Israel.

• Distorts historical incidents:
  • 2023 – Church of Saint Porphyrius
  • 2025 – Taybeh Church

• Promotes the biased Breaking the Silence organization.

Inaccurate Suggestions

Inaccurately Suggesting the Jewish State Prevents Messianic Believers from Immigrating to Israel

Abraham asks Carlson: “Did you know that Israel goes out of its way to prevent Messianic believers from making aliyah?” After Carlson responds in the negative, Abraham proceeds to claim: “[I]f they [Israeli authorities] find out that you [Jews] believe in Jesus, they don’t give you the right to immigrate to Israel.”

Contrary to Abraham’s suggestion, while Messianic believers are not eligible to make aliyah under the law of return, these believers are still eligible to apply to immigrate to and become citizens of the State of Israel. While a number of Jewish believers in Jesus, like Brother Daniel (Oswald Rufeisen), have argued that Jewish believers in Jesus should be eligible to make aliyah under the law of return, other Jewish believers in Jesus, like Father Elias Friedman, who attached importance to the survival of the Jewish people, have acknowledged the strong basis for the reasoning employed by the Israeli Supreme Court Judge President Moshe Silberg in denying that Father Rufeisen should be regarded as a Jew under Israel’s law of return:

“The Jewish converts, as experience teaches us, have cut themselves off completely from their people, for the simple reason that their sons and daughters marry into other peoples.” In consequence, guided by a healthy instinct for survival, the Jewish people was convinced that conversion was destructive of Jewish identity and closed its doors on the convert […] It was a weighty argument, based on irrefutable observations (Jewish Identity, p. 19).

According to a clause in the law of return, Gentiles who have Jewish ancestry, like fathers or grandparents who are considered Jews according to the definition of the term under the law of return, can be granted oleh (immigrant) status with all the rights and privileges granted to Jewish olim (immigrants), and an oleh’s non-Jewish spouse is entitled to the status of oleh. It is worth noting that polling conducted in 1988 by the Dahaf Research Institute found that 78% of Israelis expressed support for granting aliyah rights “to the believer in Yeshua who pays his taxes, serves in the army, celebrates Jewish festivals, etc., etc.,” determining that “each point adds more reassurance” to Israelis (Messianic Judaism, p. 198). In assessing the polling data from the Dahaf Report, the University of Wales at Lampeter Professor Emeritus of Judaism Rabbi Dan Cohn-Sherbok concludes: “[T]he general public in Israel is little concerned about the beliefs of Messianic Jews as long as they see themselves as loyal citizens of the State of Israel” (Ibid.).

Inaccurately Suggesting the Jewish State Prohibits Christian Preaching about Jesus in Israel

Abraham suggests that Israel prohibits Christian preaching about Jesus in the Jewish State when he states that a Christian ministry in partnership with the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs published guidelines instructing Christians: “Do not speak the name of Jesus. Preaching is not allowed in Jerusalem […] Don’t mention Jesus.” When Carlson asks Abraham: “Why?” Abraham responds:

When I read that, my mind went back all the way to the Book of Acts Chapter 5, when the spiritual elites of Jerusalem summoned Peter and the disciples, and they told them, “Do not speak of the name of Jesus.” Imagine those pastors coming to Jerusalem to not be able to share their faith and to share about their Christ, and their Messiah, and their hope.

Contrary to Abraham’s suggestion, Christians are free to share their faith in and beliefs about Jesus in the State of Israel. The late Israeli Messianic Jewish leader David H. Stern indicated that those who “think evangelism is illegal here [in Israel]” hold “a false belief” (Voices of Messianic Judaism: Confronting Critical Issues Facing a Maturing Movement, p. 196). As Stern has explained:

Israel is a democracy […] [where] we [believers] can tell anyone we want about Yeshua [Jesus] […] We publish full-page advertisements about him [Jesus] in the Hebrew newspapers. We pass out pamphlets about him on the streets. We sell books explaining him. Joe Shulam’s organization, Netivyah, produces a nightly radio program about him in Hebrew […] Periodically, religious members of the Knesset introduce legislation to curb evangelism, but these bills have always failed” (Ibid., pp. 196-197).

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill historian of religion Yaakov Ariel has observed how Israeli efforts to cultivate positive relations with Christian groups have contributed to the Jewish State ensuring that Christian groups are able to carry out their activities, including missionary work, in the State of Israel: “Trying to build good relations with Christian groups, the Israeli government considered it essential to assure them that the Israeli state would not interfere with their work,” with police tasked with “protecting missionary centers” (An Unusual Relationship: Evangelical Christians and Jews, pp. 193-194). In 1996, a first-round legislative proposal “to outlaw missionary activity [passed the Knesset vote],” but the Israeli government ultimately opposed “the proposed law in exchange for a promise by Christian groups not to evangelize” (Ibid., pp. 195-196). However, as Ariel explains, Christian groups involved in missionary activity in the State of Israel made no commitment to stop missionizing Jews: “The Christian groups that promised not to evangelize Jews were not engaged in such activity anyway, and those who made it their goal to missionize Jews made no promises to stop their activity” (Ibid., p. 196).

Abraham casts contemporary Israeli authorities as New Testament villains, “the spiritual elites of Jerusalem” preventing the disciples of Jesus from preaching. This villainized depiction of Israelis not only misrepresents how Jews understand themselves, but also misrepresents how the State of Israel treats religious minorities. This inappropriate casting of Israelis as New Testament villains recalls the following statement from the ancient Judaism and rabbinics scholar Yehuda Kurtzer:

I identify neither with the imagined Jew of the evangelical prosperity gospel […] nor as the moneychanger object of Jesus’ scorn in the Temple, as many progressives seem to want to see Zionists […] Christians bear the responsibility to exhibit the humility of not casting as protagonists and antagonists the real human beings between the river and the sea.

While Abraham claims to want peace, it is unclear how villainizing Israelis helps achieve a peaceful outcome.

Inaccurately Suggesting Israeli Christians are Going Extinct

Carlson states: “Just to be clear, under the Israelis, it’s [the Christian presence is] at the point of extinction. Having survived the Romans, and the Crusaders, and the Ottomans, and the English, it’s under the Israelis that the Christians are about to go extinct.” Abraham replies: “Yes, this is exactly why I am not going to be silent anymore.”

Contrary to Carlson’s and Abraham’s suggestion that Christians living in the State of Israel are on the verge of extinction, the Israeli Christian population has increased and prospered in the region’s only state where Islam is not the dominant religion. In 1949, there were 34,000 Christians in the Jewish State, while more recent data from Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics indicate that the number of Christians in Israel stands at approximately 184,000 and is growing, with the percentage of the Christian population in Israel having increased by 0.7% from 2023 to 2024. This demographic situation of Christians in the Jewish State contrasts markedly with the broader Middle East, where the Christian population has declined.

Misrepresentations

Misrepresenting the Connection of Contemporary Jews to Ancient Jews in the Land of Israel

Tucker Carlson asks his guest: “If you were to say, ‘Who lived in first-century Palestine, current-day Israel,’ are you more closely related to those people, or is Benjamin Netanyahu more closely related to those people?” Abraham responds: “They should do a DNA test and see. I did my DNA test. Palestinian Christians are [of] Levantine origin.” In response to Abraham’s statement, Carlson states: “So it’s likely that you have more Jewish ancestors than Benjamin Netanyahu, whose family’s from Europe.” Abraham responds to Carlson by stating, “Probably.”

In critiquing a similar claim made by the Dar al-Kalima University President Dr. Mitri Raheb, the New Testament scholar Malcolm Lowe stated:

Even if Raheb’s claims about the ancestry of himself and Binyamin Netanyahu were true, he would be putting them at the service of a shameless racism. But, of course, he also has not the slightest evidence to support those claims. He knows nothing of Netanyahu’s ancestry […] As for DNA, had he taken the trouble, Raheb could have found that genetic studies on Jews have shown that European Jews are genetically much more closely related to Jews in the Middle East and even to some non-Jews there, than to non-Jewish Europeans.

The insinuation that most Jews are not descended from Jews historically, but rather are Khazar descendants who converted to Judaism has been discredited. In a similar vein, Abraham suggests that Palestinians are “the indigenous people of the land,” not Jews: “We’re [Palestinians are] not from neighboring countries. We’re not converts. We’re not newcomers. We’re not immigrants. We are the indigenous people of the land.” In fact, the Middle East historian Daniel Pipes has observed that the majority of those who identify as Palestinians today are, in fact, immigrants from other locations:

[N]on-Jewish immigra[nts] to Palestine […] and their descendants probably make up a majority of the population now called Palestinian. Palestinians, in other words, are not an aboriginal, autochthonous, first, indigenous, or native people; most of them are as recently arrived as Zionists.

To suggest, as Abraham does, that Palestinians alone are indigenous to the land is, therefore, misleading. Given this view, it is not surprising that, in discussing various rulers of the territory, Carlson omits periods in antiquity when Jewish biblical kings and Hasmonean rulers exercised sovereignty over the land.

Misrepresenting Christian Zionism

Mischaracterizing a Phrase Associated with a Christian Clergyman

Tucker Carlson says: “A land without people for a people without land.” Abraham responds: “Yes, but the land had people.” Carlson and Abraham reference this quotation whose words appear to have derived from the Scottish clergyman Keith Alexander in suggesting that those who uttered these words did not acknowledge that Palestinian Arabs lived in the territory.

In fact, Alexander was aware that Palestinian Arabs lived in the land. As the historian Diana Muir observes: “Keith was aware that the Holy Land was populated because he had traveled to Palestine in 1839 on behalf of the Church of Scotland and returned five years later with his son, George Skene Keith, believed to be the first photographer to visit to the Holy Land.” In a speech to the Palestine Exploration Fund Society, the British statesman Lord Shaftesbury also acknowledged the presence of inhabitants resident in the land, describing Palestine as “almost without an inhabitant—a country without a people, and look!  Scattered over the world, a people without a country” (A Short History of Christian Zionism: From the Reformation to the Twenty-First Century, pp. 119-120).

While Carlson and Abraham suggest that such statements imply a desire to rid the land of Palestinian Arabs, Alexander and Shaftesbury did not imply that those residents in the land would be required to leave. Muir explains how such rhetoric of advocates of Jewish return to the land of Israel should not be viewed as indicating lack of recognition of residents in the land or an intention to displace these residents:

Nineteenth-century Westerners associated peoples or nations with territory, and so to be a land without a people did not imply that the land was without people, only that it was without a national political character […] Advocates of a Jewish return to Israel, when they thought about the Arab inhabitants at all, assumed the existing Arab population would continue in residence after a Jewish state was established. This outcome appeared workable[,] since all nation-states include ethnic minorities among their citizens.

Carlson and Abraham mislead viewers by suggesting that the statement indicates a lack of recognition of Palestinian Arabs in the land or a Zionist plan to ethnically cleanse Palestinian Arabs from the territory.

Generalizing about Christian Zionists Wanting an Exclusively Jewish Holy Land

Abraham generalizes about Christian Zionists in suggesting that they all want the Holy Land to be exclusively Jewish:

They want to make the connection that this land divinely and theologically belongs to one group of people […] Why can’t we share the land? Why can’t we live in peace? This is the position that every single follower of Jesus must adopt and follow. Let’s find a way to share the land. Let’s find a way to make peace instead of getting caught in end-times scenarios, something speculative some time in the future.

In fact, not all Christian Zionists have expressed opposition in principle to territorial compromise with and sovereignty for Palestinians in the Holy Land. As Stony Brook University Professor Stephen Spector has noted:

The claim that all Christian Zionists adamantly demand that Israel keep every inch of its biblical territory is vastly overstated […] Many born-again Christians have only a very vague notion of Israel’s role in the final days, and even among evangelical elites, there is remarkable diversity and nuance in their beliefs. That, in turn, allows flexibility about the principle of land-for-peace. Indeed, though it flies in the face of the common stereotype, 52% of evangelical leaders are in favor of a Palestinian state on land that God promised to Abraham, as long as it doesn’t threaten Israel! That may surprise people who fear born-again Christians’ obduracy on the question of covenant land. But the explanation, says the University of Akron’s John Green, is simple: They want to see peace in the Middle East (Evangelicals and Israel: The Story of American Christian Zionism, pp. 161-162).

Many Christian Zionists, thus, have expressed a willingness to accept Palestinian sovereignty over a portion of the Holy Land were the security of the Jewish State to not be threatened.

Misidentifying Christian Zionism as Heresy

Abraham states: “In simple terms, I think Christian Zionism has replaced Jesus with the current State of Israel.” Carlson replies: “That’s why I think it’s heresy […] I thought Christianity is about following Jesus, and Jesus is the key.” Abraham appears to express agreement with Carlson’s claim that Christian Zionism constitutes heresy. To support this point, Abraham invokes Galatians to suggest that a focus on the earthly Jerusalem is incompatible with being in Christ: “In Galatians Chapter 4, it spells it out really clearly. If you are in Christ, you belong to the freewoman, Sarah, and if you don’t belong to Christ, you’re still fixated and enslaved by the idea of an earthly Jerusalem.”

In fact, the Messianic Jewish theologian and Near Eastern Studies scholar Mark S. Kinzer has observed that while Galatians “offers a biting critique of the earthly city of Jerusalem,” the book does not negate the city’s “enduring significance” (Jerusalem Crucified, Jerusalem Risen: The Resurrected Messiah, the Jewish People, and the Land of Promise, pp. 98-99). The University of Virginia William R. Kenan Jr. Professor Emeritus of the History of Christianity Robert Louis Wilken argues that the kind of interpretation of Jerusalem in Galatians that Abraham presents in his discussion with Carlson originates with Origen, not the early Christian tradition, which affirmed an eschatological earthly Jerusalem:

Origen appeals to two texts [Gal[.] 4:26; Heb[.] 12:22] in the Christian Scriptures that seem to divest Jerusalem of its historical and hence political significance […] These texts show that when the Scriptures speak of Jerusalem[,] they do not have in mind the city in Judea that was once the capital of the Jewish nation; Jerusalem, according to Origen, does not designate a future political center but a spiritual vision of heavenly bliss. In his use of Galatians 4 and Hebrews 12[,] Origen breaks with earlier Christian tradition. Irenaeus and Tertullian had cited Galatians 4 to support a belief in a future Jerusalem on earth (The Land Called Holy: Palestine in Christian History & Thought, p. 70).

Thus, Abraham’s belief that Galatians does not affirm the enduring significance of an earthly city of Jerusalem diverges from earlier Christian eschatological expectations regarding an earthly Jerusalem affirmed by such patristic theologians as Irenaeus and Tertullian. 

CAMERA’s Partnership of Christians and Jews Director Rev. Dr. Tricia Miller has contested the charge that Christian Zionism is heresy. Christian Zionists do not perceive a “competition” between faithfulness to Jesus on the one hand and their Zionist commitments on the other. As alluded to above, an issue that detractors of Christian Zionism encounter in identifying Christian Zionism as a heresy is that various church fathers and scholastic theologians affirmed expectations that have come to be associated with Christian Zionism. For example, the Catholic theologian and Sacred Heart Major Seminary Associate Professor of Old Testament & Biblical Languages André Villeneuve observes:

[S]everal Church Fathers and scholastic theologians anticipated a Jewish return to the land. Saint Justin Martyr (First Apology 52), the Venerable Bede (Commentary on Luke 21:24), and Saint Thomas Aquinas (Commentary on Jeremiah 31:37) each offered reasons, from within the Catholic tradition, to expect such a restoration.

Given patristic affirmations of expectations that have come to be associated with Christian Zionism, the Fuller Theological Seminary Theology Professor and Loyola Marymount University Theological Studies Professor Nicholas R. Brown questions how critics of these beliefs can classify them as heretical:

[S]uppose one is persuaded that a de-territorialization of Jesus and the kingdom is not just the regrettable and errant by-product of a flawed form of Christian exegesis, but is instead isomorphic to the tradition itself such that it is impossible to construct a landed interpretation of Jesus and the kingdom without also seriously compromising and damaging the integrity of one’s Christian faith and identity in the process. How does one square that interpretation with the fact that several patristic theologians were vigilantly protective of the chiliastic belief that Jesus would restore a landed kingdom to Israel at the parousia (For the Nation: Jesus, the Restoration of Israel and Articulating a Christian Ethic of Territorial Governance, p. 13)?

Abraham and Carlson not only neglect to mention that many of the features that have come to be associated with Christian Zionism have been affirmed by multiple patristic and scholastic theologians, but also omit that a number of Palestinian Christians have arguably incorporated heretical elements into their theologies. The historian of religion Paul Charles Merkley contends that Palestinian Christian theologians have adopted a Marcionite approach to interpreting Scripture that effectively detaches the Old Testament from the New Testament:

Palestinian contextual theology displays its repudiation of the doctrine of God’s election of the Jews—the keystone of Christian theory of history since the mid-second century, when the Church formally denounced as heresy the doctrines of Marcion, which proposed the rejection of all Jewish Scripture (Christian Attitudes towards the State of Israel, pp. 76-77).

The Palestinian Lutheran clergyman Munther Banayout Isaac, a critic of the State of Israel, appears to concur with this assessment:

I believe Palestinian Christians have become Marcionites both in practice and belief. Whether it is a Palestinian liberation theology or a spiritualization of the OT, the church has fallen prey to misreading or rejecting parts of the OT. This phenomenon is not limited to Palestinian Christians but is also apparent within other Arab Christian communities. Dutch theologian Bernard Reitsma quotes Arab theologians who speak about a “practical type of Marcionitism in the churches in the Middle East,” and “a great Marcionite revival in [the] East today” (The Land Cries Out: Theology of the Land in the Israeli-Palestinian Context, pp. 218-219).

Similarly, Rabbi Dr. Eugene Korn, the former Academic Director of The Center for Jewish-Christian Understanding and Cooperation in Israel, has observed:

[T]hroughout my interactions with Palestinian Christian religious officials and my reading of their theologies, […] [t]he Palestinian Christian theologies that I encounter are invariably pre-Second Vatican Council forms. That is, they are hard supersessionisms that deny the validity of Judaism today, reject any connection between the covenanted Jews of the Bible and today’s Jews, and deny any de jure Jewish rights to The Land […] This is true for Palestinian liberation theology as well as non-liberation theologies (Catholic-Jewish Engagements on Israel: Holy Land, Political Territory, or Theological Promise?, pp. 171-172).

Thus, while Christian Zionism need not be understood as heretical, Palestinian Christians have arguably incorporated heretical elements into their theologies.

Suggesting Building Third Temple is a Central Motivator of Christian Support for Jewish State

Carlson states: “One of the ideas that’s common among Christian Zionists is that they [Christians] need to help rebuild this thing called the Third Temple.” Abraham responds:

Yes, Jesus in Ephesians 2 knocked down the wall of hostility that separated the Jews and the Gentiles. Why are we bringing it back up? Why are we building it […] There is no Scripture that point[s] to the fact that Christians need to build a Third Temple. There is no prophecy about a Third Temple. There is no way in Scripture about anything close to the Third [Temple] […] Everything in Scripture points to Jesus, not to a Third Temple.

The centrality of building a Third Temple as a motivator for Christian support for the State of Israel as suggested by Carlson and Abraham is not reflected in survey data analyzed by scholars of Christian Zionism Motti Inbari and Kirill Bumin, who found “no support for the hypothesis that premillennial dispensation[alist] theology, which expects the Jews would build a Temple for God prior to the events of the Second Coming, is a statistically significant predictor of support for Israel” (Christian Zionism in the Twenty-First Century: American Evangelical Public Opinion on Israel, p. 40). In commenting on the significance of this finding, Inbari and Bumin note: “This finding is important since many commentators do associate evangelical support for Israel with the reconstruction of the Temple in the near future. Our results fail to find support for this evangelical motivation” (Ibid.). In fact, they argue that rather than promoting certain eschatological beliefs, their “analysis shows that nurturing a positive opinion of Jews, irrespective of theology or other potential explanations, may be the best way for evangelical leaders to promote support for Israel among their congregations” (Ibid., p. 44).

While Abraham claims there is no basis in Scripture for the idea of a Third Temple, believers in a Third Temple have located support for this idea in Scripture, including the Old Testament prophetic Books of Ezekiel (40-48) and Joel (3:18). The historian of Christian Zionism Paul Richard Wilkinson has argued that the New Testament also indicates there will be a Third Temple: “Jesus Himself explained to His disciples that there would be a future temple (Mt. 24:15), while Paul spoke of the same when writing about the Antichrist (II Thess. 2:3-4)” (Israel Betrayed: Volume 2: The Rise of Christian Palestinianism, p. 41).

The implication that belief in a Third Temple is incompatible with belief in Jesus has been contested by believers in Jesus. While Abraham suggests Jesus replaces the temple, the Anglican theologian and Reformed Episcopal Seminary and Jerusalem Seminary Distinguished Professor of Anglican Studies Gerald R. McDermott has argued that statements and actions of Jesus and his disciples suggest that identification of Jesus with the Temple is not incompatible with belief in the continuing value of a Jerusalem Temple:

[W]hen Jesus quoted Isaiah’s prediction that the temple would become “a house of prayer for all nations” (Mark 11.17; Is. 56.1), he seemed to concur, as [former Duke Divinity School Dean and New Testament scholar] Richard Hays suggests in his recent Reading Backwards, with Isaiah’s vision of “an eschatologically restored Jerusalem” where foreigners would come to God’s holy mountain to join the “outcasts of Israel” whom God has “gathered” (Is[.] 56.7-8). Hays adds that John’s figural reading of Jesus’ body as the new temple (John 2.21) “should be read neither as flatly supersessionist nor as hostile to continuity with Israel.” It does not deny the literal sense of Israel’s Scriptures—that the temple was God’s house—“but completes it by linking it typologically with the narrative of Jesus and disclosing a deeper prefigurative truth within the literal historical sense.” That the apostles saw the temple as both God’s continuing house and also a figure for Jesus’ body is shown by their participation in temple liturgies even after the Temple’s leaders had helped put their messiah to death (Acts 2.46).

Similarly, Kinzer has observed:

The [Jerusalem] temple had always pointed upwards (to the heavenly temple) and outwards (to the cosmic temple); now[,] [after the destruction of Solomon’s temple,] it also pointed forwards (to the eschatological temple) […] [T]he Jerusalem temple also pointed beyond itself to a human temple—namely, the people of Israel (Jerusalem Crucified, Jerusalem Risen, p. 69).

While he seems to agree with Abraham that the Apostolic Message does not obligate Christians to promote the building of a Third Temple, Kinzer maintains that the Apostolic Message also does not obligate Christians to oppose its reconstruction should changing circumstances render this prospect morally and prudentially acceptable:

While the prophetic euangelion does not require disciples of Jesus to advocate the reconstruction of the temple, it also does not require that they oppose such action […] [C]ircumstances in 2018 (as I finish this book) make the reconstruction of the temple a perilous and potentially disastrous venture that would dishonor a major world religion and violate the rights of its adherents. While it is difficult to envision a future scenario in which that is not the case, history takes many strange twists and turns that defy all attempts at prognostication. Should circumstances change in a way that makes the reconstruction of the temple a morally and prudentially acceptable action, disciples of Jesus would be free to support it […] [T]here is nothing about temple worship that is incompatible with New Testament teaching. Nevertheless, our hope rests not on any such human project, but on the temple built without the help of human hands, whose holy of holies will be the New Jerusalem, and whose glory will fill the entire cosmos (Jerusalem Crucified, Jerusalem Risen, pp. 262-263).

Thus, while Abraham contends that there is no basis in Scripture for a Third Temple, various biblical texts render Abraham’s conclusion questionable.

Misrepresenting Israelis as Consistently Seeking to Acquire Palestinian Land

Abraham asks why the land cannot be shared, suggesting Israel is to blame: “Israel has pursued one strategy […] over decades, which is take as much Palestinian land as possible and keep as few Palestinians on the land as possible.” However, he neglects to mention how successive Zionist leaders and Israeli governments have accepted deals rejected by Palestinian Arab leadership that would have resulted in Palestinian statehood in the territory in 1937-1938, 1947-1948, 1967, 1993, 2000-2001, and 2007. He also omits how Israel has ceded territory in exchange for peace in the past, as when Israel returned the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt as part of the Camp David Accords, while unilaterally withdrawing in 2005 from territory, like the Gaza Strip, that Israel ceded to Palestinians.

Misrepresenting Palestinian Christians as Uniformly Seeking Peace

Abraham suggests that Palestinian Christians have uniformly adopted a peaceful approach in relating to others:

[W]e condemn any attacks on civilians. We condemn any form of violence to achieve justice. This is the very core of the Christian message. We reject violence altogether. Palestinian Christians have always extend[ed] their hands in making peace with our Jewish neighbors, with our Muslim neighbors, with everyone. We just want to live in peace, so we condemn violence at all levels.

In fact, Palestinian Christian Archbishop Atallah Hanna has praised suicide bombers as “Arab heroes” while using language demonizing the Jewish State and opposing Palestinian concessions to achieve peace: “Israel is the Great Satan, and therefore one is not allowed to negotiate with Israel or even consider a cease-fire. Any kind of peace with Israel means making concessions, and that defeats the Arab strategy to resist and oppose the Jewish state” (Anti-Zionism in the “Electronic Church” of Palestinian Christianity, p. 29).

The archbishop has also supported Palestinians imprisoned by the State of Israel for committing terrorist acts against Israeli citizens:

There are more than 8,000 Palestinian prisoners in the prisons of the Occupation. They are the pick of Palestinian youth, of honorable strugglers, who served the Palestinian cause. They were sentenced to the prisons of the racist Occupation because they defended the cause of their people, because they resisted, because they struggled, because they waged Jihad, because they were not those who were silent, who kept apart, who stood with their arms crossed, in the face of what was committed against their Palestinian people. They are prisoners of freedom.

Merkley has also described the Palestinian Catholic Geries Khoury as “contemptuous of Christians who speak of the possibility of a peaceful reconciliation with the Jews” (Christian Attitudes towards the State of Israel, p. 80).

Misinterpretations of Biblical Texts

Inaccurately Suggesting the Abrahamic Covenant is Conditional

Abraham states: “[W]hen they don’t obey the covenant that was given to them, God always kicked them out.” When Carlson mentions that the people of Israel were “taken to Babylon,” Abraham responds:

Yeah, twice, and the Old Testament gives graphic language when it describes Israel not obeying the laws of the Lord. It says the land will vomit you out […], so it was conditional when it was given to Abraham, but in Jesus, it’s secure, it’s eternal […] [T]he Palestinian Church really understands this because they truly understand the meaning of the covenant.

In fact, while one strand of the prophetic tradition suggests that residence of the people of Israel in the land of Israel was conditional on faithful living, the Abrahamic promise of land itself was unconditional. The unconditional nature of the Abrahamic promise suggests that Jews continued to hold title to the land while not in residence there and would eventually return to the territory. In critiquing the kind of view Abraham presents, Wilkinson explains:

Both Testaments make it abundantly clear that the land of Canaan was given to Abraham and his physical descendants in perpetuity by virtue of God’s promise and God’s oath (Gen. 15:4-21, 17:7-8; Gal. 3:18; Heb. 6:13-17). This promise was enshrined within an everlasting, unconditional, and unilateral covenant (Gen. 17:7-8; Ps. 105:8-12) […] [This view] confuses “possession” of the land (unconditional) with “occupation” of the land (conditional) and fails to account for the plethora of restoration promises which Jesus Christ came to “confirm” (Rom. 15:8) (Israel Betrayed: Volume 2, p. 40).

While Abraham seems to preclude the possibility that Scripture attests to the idea that the people of Israel could reside in the land of Israel while in an unrighteous state, another strand of prophetic tradition expresses the belief that God would return the people of Israel to the land of Israel while the people are still unrighteous for the sake of his name (e.g., Ezek. 36:21-28, 31-32, a passage whose themes and logic are echoed by John the Baptist, Jesus, and Paul in the New Testament). Kinzer posits that the New Testament combines both strands of the prophetic tradition:

If we read Luke and Acts as anticipating a return of Israel to its land before it welcomes Jesus with the words of Psalm 118:25-26, then Luke and Acts may combine these two strands of the prophetic tradition. First, God acts (in accordance with the teaching of Ezekiel and Isaiah) to partially restore Israel to its own land. Only afterwards does God give Israel a new heart, so that the people are able to receive Jesus as the prophet like Moses (Acts 3:22). This second redemptive act then opens the way for the full restoration of Israel, and of all creation with it (Acts 3:19-21) (Jerusalem Crucified, Jerusalem Risen, p. 254).

Abraham, thus, not only inaccurately describes the Abrahamic promise of land as conditional, but also neglects to mention Old Testament and New Testament texts suggesting that the process of restoring the people of Israel to the land of Israel would begin while the people are in a state of unrighteousness as a result of God acting for the sake of his own name.

Inaccurately Suggesting Jesus Repudiated Every Jewish National, Political, and Territorial Expectation

Abraham indicates that Jesus told his disciples to discard their “nationalistic aspiration” in favor of building the kingdom of God:

That’s what Jesus instructed his disciples to do. He said, “Hey, leave your nationalistic aspiration aside. We have a kingdom to build. The kingdom of God is at hand. The kingdom of God is among you,” so they let go of their dreams to build the kingdom for Israel, and they went and they paid with their life for the kingdom, the eternal kingdom of God, so Jesus […] is the locus of the land.

Jesus never uttered the words Abraham attributes to him. In fact, when his disciples asked him if he would “at this time restore the kingdom of Israel” (Acts 1:6), Jesus responded: “[I]t is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has fixed by his own authority” (Acts 1:7). This response by Jesus to his disciples’ question significantly does not deny that sovereignty will return to the Jewish people in the eschatological future. As the Kenrick-Glennon Seminary Associate Professor of Theology Lawrence Feingold explains: “Jesus answered not by rebuking the foolishness of the question. Instead, as on other occasions when asked about eschatological signs, he emphasized that knowledge of the day and hour of eschatological events is hidden from us” (Contemporary Catholic Approaches to the People, Land, and State of Israel, p. 13). In commenting on the intertextual allusion in Acts 1:7 to Daniel 2, the Life Pacific College Academic Dean and Assistant Professor of Bible and Theology Michael A. Salmeier observes:

[T]he reference to “times or periods (seasons)” in Acts 1:7 may lead the reader to recall the same phrase from Daniel 2, emphasizing divine control over kings and kingdoms within world history. It would, therefore, create expectations about the kingdom’s restoration to Israel and the divine role in that (Restoring the Kingdom: The Role of God as the “Ordainer of Times and Seasons” in the Acts of the Apostles, p. 25).

Abraham suggests that the message Jesus preached effectively conflicted with every Jewish political and territorial expectation:

This is the first sermon he’s [Jesus’] ever preached […] He said: “The spirit of the Lord is upon me. He has sent me to set the captive free, to bring sight to the blind, to proclaim the good news to the poor” […] The Jews were waiting for the Messiah, but they were waiting for a military liberator. They were waiting for a politician to come and lead them against the Romans.

If Abraham is suggesting that what Jesus preached conflicted with every political and territorial expectation of Jews, this suggestion would seem to be mistaken given that Jesus references the biblical institution of the Jubilee involving “a just distribution and governance of Israel’s land” (For the Nation, p. 165) with its attendant socio-economic and political associations. As Brown explains:

Jesus proclaims “release” and “deliverance” for the “poor,” the “captives,” and the “oppressed.” Once again[,] it is important to bear in mind that these constituencies, which invariably overlapped, are describing not just the socio-economic and political condition of impoverished first-century Jewish peasant farmers[,] but also the root cause of their material and political deprivation, namely landlessness. Correlatively[,] to have Jesus announce their “release” and “deliverance” in conjunction with the provisions of the Jubilee year and while acting under the aegis of being God’s “anointed” would necessarily entail addressing and rectifying the root causes of that deprivation (Ibid., p. 180).

While Jesus might not have approved of people waging a military campaign against Roman imperial rule, this position need not preclude the possibility that Jesus shared national, political, and territorial aspirations of Jewish people while maintaining that these hopes would be realized through divine intervention. As the Bradley University Professor of Religious Studies and New Testament scholar Isaac W. Oliver explains:

[D]isapproval of human violence need not indicate that the historical Jesus or Luke forsook all hope for Israel’s national-political restoration. Mahatma Gandhi was no less a “nationalist” because of his political pacifism, which ultimately saw the collapse of British colonial rule over India. There were Jews around Luke’s time who adopted a quietist attitude toward political authorities, patiently waiting for the day when divine retribution would be meted out against their enemies. Even if Luke was not inherently opposed to Rome, he, like many of his fellow Christ-followers, assumed that Jesus would punish the wicked and reward the faithful when he triumphantly returned to establish his kingdom on earth (Luke’s Jewish Eschatology: The National Restoration of Israel in Luke-Acts, pp. 47-48).

To suggest, as Abraham does, that the message Jesus preached conflicted with every national, political, and territorial hope of the Jewish people would, therefore, seem to be mistaken.

Inaccurately Suggesting the Biblical Promise’s Scope’s Expansion Negates a Territorial Israel

Abraham suggests that the biblical promise of land has expanded to include the whole earth such that the New Testament effectively negates any continued positive theological significance for the “mere geographical location” of the land of Israel for Jewish people:

What is the promise? He expanded it from a mere geographical location alongside the Mediterranean coastline to include the whole earth. The New Testament spells it out. The Apostle Paul in his Letter to the Romans 4:13 said: “By faith, God made Abraham the heir of the whole world.”

However, Abraham neglects to mention New Testament passages suggesting the land inheritance continued to refer specifically to the land of Israel. For example, McDermott has observed that Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew references Psalm 37, which repeatedly employs the phrase “inherit the land” in reference to the land of Israel, in his beatitude: “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the land” (Matthew 5:5). Brown notes that the use of the term “inherit” in connection to the “land” in the beatitude helps clarify that Jesus is specifically referring to the land of Israel:

As [New Testament scholar Gary] Burge notes, the Greek word for “inherit”—κληρονομέω—”was commonly used to refer to the assignment of land in the Old Testament promises.” Hence[,] Jesus’ combination of “land” and “inheritance” in Matt[.] 5:5 has a clear and unambiguous meaning: “this is the land of inheritance, the Land of Promise” (For the Nation, p. 155).

While Abraham adduces Paul to support Abraham’s view that the land of Israel has expanded to include the whole earth, Abraham neglects to mention that Paul in the Book of Acts—following the resurrection of Jesus—identifies as an “inheritance” the land God gave to the people of Israel while preaching to a synagogue audience in Antioch Pisidia: “[A]fter destroying seven nations in the land of Canaan, God gave this people Israel their land as an inheritance” (Acts 13:16b-17, 19). This statement by Paul suggests that he, too, regarded the land of Israel as an inheritance of the people of Israel. Even if the promise of the land has expanded, this expansion need not imply that the people of Israel no longer inherit the land of Israel. As The King’s University Director of Messianic Jewish Studies and Professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies David Rudolph observes:

In the Torah and in Second Temple Judaism, Abraham’s call to be “heir of the world” and the particularity of the land promise were not seen as either-or trajectories but both/and. If Paul had territory in view in Romans 4:13, he had one eye on the universal aspect of the promise and the other on the particular. Michael Vanlaningham concludes, “Rather than removing the privilege of the land from Israel, Paul appears to affirm it” (The New Christian Zionism: Fresh Perspectives on Israel & the Land, p. 177).

The Letter to the Romans that Abraham references features numerous affirmations of the continuing positive theological significance of the land of Israel for the Jewish people. For example, Romans 9:4 asserts that the “glory” (doxa), “covenants” (diathēkai), “giving of the law” (nomothesia), and “worship” (latreia) belong to Paul’s kinsmen “according to the flesh” (fellow Jews). In explaining the connection of “glory” and “worship” to the territory of the land of Israel, Boston University Aurelio Professor of Scripture Emerita, Hebrew University of Jerusalem Comparative Religion Professor, and New Testament scholar Paula Fredriksen observes:

Behind Paul’s Greek word for “glory” stands the Hebrew kavod, which refers specifically to God’s glorious presence, thus to the location of that presence, namely his temple in Jerusalem. And latreia (“worship” or “offerings”) points to the Hebrew avodah: Paul here names the sacrificial cult, revealed in scripture and enacted around Jerusalem’s altar, as a defining privilege of Israel (Paul: The Pagans’ Apostle, p. 35).

Paul in Romans 9:25-26 quotes a passage from the biblical book Hosea, but adds language underscoring the importance of geography not found in any known version of the Septuagint: “And in the very place where it was said to them, ‘You are my people,’ there they shall be called children of the living God” (Hos. 1:10) (additional terminology in italics). In explaining the significance of this terminological addition to the biblical text, Rudolph observes:

Since the Greek word ἐκεῖ (translated “there” in Rom[.] 9:26) does not appear in any known Septuagint version of Hosea, it would seem to suggest that Paul is placing an emphasis on this geographic location. What do the words “in the very place” and “there” point to? In the context of Hosea 1, these terms refer to the land of Israel. Moreover, the Hosea 1:10 text that Paul quotes is in the middle of the prophet’s description of how the land and seed promises to the patriarchs are fulfilled in the eschaton. In Hosea, a messianic king is appointed and then possession of the land is restored” (The New Christian Zionism, p. 192).

The Hartford International University for Religion & Peace and New Testament scholar Amy-Jill Levine argues that Paul may very well have had the land of Israel in view in describing the salvation of Israel in Romans 11:

Paul’s reference to “all Israel” (Romans 11:26a) may well mean exactly that—the Jewish nation, Abraham’s descendants according to the flesh. In Paul’s view, their salvation will occur together with the salvation of the non-Jews, as in Romans 15:10: “and again he says, ‘Rejoice, O gentiles/pagans with his people’” […] Jews are not subsumed into a broader assembly, and they do not lose their ethnic identity. Since they do not lose their ethnic identity, they do not lose their connection to the land. Rather, that connection, like circumcision and kashrut and Shabbat-observance, is presupposed. The focus on the land is then reinforced in Romans 11:26b, when Paul presumes the ongoing role of Zion, whence the Deliverer will come (Peace and Faith: Christian Churches and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, p. 144).

Fredriksen contends that this Romans passage articulates Paul’s expectation that the twelve tribes of Israel would be restored in the land of Israel in the eschatological future:

When Paul speaks of End-time redemption, he too recalls this ancient lineage going back to Noah: the gentiles’ plērōma means “all seventy nations.” So too Paul’s evocation of the plērōma of Israel, pas Israēl: his phrasing recalls the patriarchal narratives, the lineage of Abraham passing through Isaac to Jacob and thence to Jacob’s twelve sons, the “fathers” of Israel’s tribes. “All Israel” conjures the full restoration of these twelve tribes, another traditionally eschatological event. As in Deuteronomy 32.43, which Paul will quote at the end of this letter, so also here in Romans 11: the ingathering of Israel is linked immediately to the inclusion of the nations” (Paul, p. 161).

Paul’s allusions in Romans 11:26-27 to Isaiah 27:9 and 59:20 also suggest that Paul thought Israel’s salvation would include a territorial dimension. This belief is suggested in an analysis of this Romans passage with its intertextual allusions to Isaiah by St. Bonaventure University Professor Emeritus of Theology and Franciscan Studies Christopher Stanley adduced by the University of Kansas New Testament scholar Mark D. Nanos:

Though the story is not identical, the obvious parallels between this passage [Isa. 27:9] and Isa. 59.20-63.7 make it easy to see why an ancient reader (who worked from the premise of a unified Scripture) might have felt compelled to interpret the one passage in the light of the other […] Both passages reach their climax in the return of the dispersed children of Israel to their land, in the one case by the supernatural activity of Y[-]H[-]W[-]H himself, in the other by the hand of the defeated nations. The final scene shows the fulfillment of all the dreams and aspirations cherished by Y[-]H[-]W[-]H’s people over the years: eternal peace and security in their own land (The Mystery of Romans: The Jewish Context of Paul’s Letter, p. 280).

Another indication that Paul maintained that the people of Israel would be restored to the land of Israel in the eschatological future is his reference in Romans 11:27 to Jeremiah 31. As Moody Theological Seminary Professor of New Testament J. Brian Tucker explains:

Within a future eschatological miracle understanding of “all Israel will be saved” is an often overlooked idea that this also means that Israel will need to be restored to the land […] In Rom[.] 11:27, Paul writes, “And this is my covenant with them, when I take away their sins.” This citation from Jeremiah 31 highlights the prophetic hope for the restoration of the houses of Judah and Israel (Jer[.] 31:31, 33-34). The context of Jeremiah predicts a return from exile to the land for God’s people […] It is more likely that Paul has been moving towards the conclusion that begins at 9:13: “his concern for Israel includes her exile … his hope for Israel’s salvation includes the restoration of Israel and Judah.” The reference to Jer[.] 31:33 in Rom[.] 11:27 suggests that since restoration in the land was part of the prediction in Jeremiah, part of the “mystery” that Paul is revealing includes Israel’s restoration. This is particularly probable given the subjugation of Israel at the hands of the Romans in Paul’s day (Reading Romans After Supersessionism: The Continuation of Jewish Covenantal Identity, pp. 192-194).

It appears likely, therefore, not only that various New Testament passages suggest that an expansion of the biblical promise of land would not have been viewed as incompatible with the continued positive theological significance of the land of Israel for the Jewish people, but also numerous New Testament passages affirm that the land of Israel continues to hold positive theological significance for the Jewish people.

Inaccurately Suggesting that Scripture Attests to the Spiritualization of the Land of Israel

Abraham suggests that Jesus transformed the meaning of the land of Israel from a temporary and physical reality to a spiritual and eternal reality:

Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, it spells it out in Hebrews, that they were eagerly looking for the new Jerusalem whose architect and builder is God. They were not fixated on a mere strip of land. That’s temporary. That’s going to be gone. We should be focused on what’s eternal. And obviously, when Jesus came, and he was in John 18 when he was being tried before Pilate, the charge was: “Are you a king? Are you threatening me? Are you a threat to my kingdom?” Jesus said: “Yes, I am a king, but my kingdom is not from this world” […] Why are we bringing back a pre-Christian territorial mindset to the Church today […] Do we inherit a holy land between the river and the Mediterranean, or does it mean something else? The meaning of that promise ha[s] also been transformed. It’s not just the scope of the promise. It’s the meaning of the promise, from temporary to eternal, from physical to spiritual.

Abraham constructs a false binary between physical and spiritual in claiming that Hebrews depicts a spiritual, not a physical, land of Israel. In contrast to Abraham, Kinzer has observed how the imagery that Hebrews employs suggests the land’s physicality remains significant:

The eschatological imagery of Hebrews depicts the world to come as land (Heb[.] 3:7-4:11; 11:14-16) and city (Heb[.] 11:10, 16; 12:22; 13:14) […] However, the eschatological city is called Mount Zion (Heb[.] 12:22)—i.e., the Temple Mount […] I would underline the observation that Hebrews speaks explicitly of an eschatological city and land […] [A]s Moffitt stresses, that city and that land are “physical” realities, just as the resurrected form of Jesus is truly a “physical” body. Moreover, while the city and the land of the future are distinguished from the city and land of the present age, the two ontological orders must have some relation to one another—just as the future world as a whole is distinct from the present world and yet related to it. Hebrews does not […] negate the significance of the city of Jerusalem, the land of Israel, or the Jewish people. The traditional scholarly view that the author viewed Israel as “a thing of the past, the husk of the first, now antiquated covenant” should be discarded (Jerusalem Crucified, Jerusalem Risen, pp. 93-94).

If one is to take the language utilized by Hebrews seriously, therefore, as Kinzer does, the physical land of Israel, including Jerusalem, must retain its significance if it is to meaningfully relate to the eschatological realities described in the book. Abraham also invokes the statement by Jesus that his kingship is “not of this world.” However, contrary to Abraham’s suggestion, Kinzer argues that this statement does not indicate that the kingdom has no national, territorial, or political connections to the Jewish people:

In his dialogue with Pilate in the Gospel of John, Jesus states that his kingdom is “not of this cosmos” (18:36). This has often been understood as a rejection of a “Jewish” conception of messiahship, in which the king has a special relation to a particular nation or territory, and rules over an earthly (rather than a purely heavenly) domain. But this is not what John means by the phrase “this cosmos.” For John, the phrase resembles the rabbinic term olam hazeh, and refers to the current age and order of the world, which (for John) is subject to the power of dark forces. Jesus comes to save and give life to the world (John 3:16-17; 4:42; 12:47), but to do so[,] he must deliver it from the power of the one who currently dominates its affairs (12:31). Jesus’ kingship is not exercised according to the pattern on public display in the royal courts of the ancient world; nevertheless, he was crucified as the king of the Jews, and this title connects Jesus to a particular nation, territory, and political institution (Jesus – The Messiah of Israel?: Messianic Judaism and Christian Theology in Conversation, p. 202).

Thus, while Abraham references verses from Hebrews and the Gospel of John to suggest that the kingdom of God has no national, territorial, or political connections to the Jewish people, a careful reading of these texts indicates otherwise.

Distortions of Historical Incidents

2023 – Church of Saint Porphyrius

Abraham relates: “In October, there was a bomb that killed 17 Christians. [A] historic [fifth-century] church was bombed in Gaza and killed so many Christians.” He appears to be describing here a 2023 incident involving the Church of Saint Porphyrius. However, Abraham omits that the IDF indicated that Israel’s attack targeted “a Hamas command center near the church that the military believe[d] ha[d] been involved in launching rockets and mortars toward Israel.” In addition, Abraham neglects to mention that the “incident [was] under review” by the Israeli military. By excluding this important information from his description, Abraham misleadingly suggests that the State of Israel deliberately attacked the church.

2025 – Taybeh Church

Abraham refers to the “town of Taybeh, where they [settlers] burned a centuries-old church,  they burned the crops, vandalized properties.” Contrary to Abraham’s description, there was no evidence of a fire in the church, which was undamaged. While there was a fire nearby, it also threatened an Israeli farmer’s land, and the evidence suggests settlers sought to extinguish it. One report indicated that an Israeli shepherd trying to help put out the fire was attacked by Palestinians: “[H]e was in the field with his animals when a fire ignited a few meters away. He alerted the farm owner and tried to extinguish the flames with his shirt—only to be confronted by Palestinians emerging from the cemetery, shouting and throwing objects at him.”

Promotion of Biased Breaking the Silence Organization

Abraham says: “Thank God for organization[s] like Breaking the Silence, which is a group of former IDF soldiers, and they’re sharing their stories and their experiences in the West Bank.” While Abraham’s praise of Breaking the Silence suggests he treats the organization as a credible source, Breaking the Silence has made questionable allegations. Documentary evidence and witness testimony have contradicted claims made by the organization. Israel’s Channel 10 observed that testimony of a Breaking the Silence staff member, Nadav Weiman, was false and determined that 40% of 10 of the organization’s testimonies “could not be verified due to insufficient identifying details […] 20[%] were determined to be exaggerated, [and] another 20[%] were debunked as false,” while only “20[%] proved true.”

Conclusion

As the above analysis has demonstrated, this episode of The Tucker Carlson Show includes inaccurate suggestions that the Jewish State prevents Messianic believers from immigrating to Israel and prohibits Christian preaching about Jesus in Israel as well as the false allegation that Israeli Christians are going extinct. The episode also misrepresents the connection of contemporary Jews to ancient Jews in the land of Israel, Christian Zionism, Israelis, and Palestinian Christians. In addition, the episode features misinterpretations of biblical texts, distortions of historical incidents, and the promotion of the biased organization Breaking the Silence. The spread of the kind of misinformation found in this episode and other episodes of The Tucker Carlson Show provides viewers with a distorted understanding not only of history, politics, and religion generally, but also of the Jewish people and the Middle East specifically.