In early November, {a photograph} of 4 white males in cowboy hats at JFK airport was uploaded to social media with the caption, “These cowboys from Arkansas and Montana were at JFK today on their way to help out at the farms in Israel. They are not Jewish.” By the point the cowboys landed in Tel Aviv, a Jerusalem Put up commentator declared, “they were already a social media sensation”.
Certainly, since then they’ve netted hundreds of likes and feedback comparable to “God bless Israel! I will always stand with her” and “The Jewish people are so grateful to have friends.” Israeli and American media retailers have additionally celebrated the cowboys by way of interviews and updates about their work and time in Har Bracha, a Jewish settlement in “Judea and Samaria” – the time period for the West Financial institution utilized by those that consider the land belongs to the Jewish folks.
But the cowboys are additionally a conduit to understanding a elementary likeness between white American and Jewish Israeli society, particularly their settler tasks intent on the erasure of dehumanised “natives”.
The boys volunteer by way of the Christian Zionist organisation HaYovel, or “The Jubilee”; in response to the organisation’s web site, this biblical time period “looks forward to a day of worldwide redemption and a fully restored land of Israel.” As Christian Zionists, the cowboys and their sponsors consider that 4 millennia in the past, God promised the land to the Jewish folks, who will rule it till the rapture and, in the end, the second coming of Christ. On this state of affairs, Christians will likely be saved and ascend to heaven whereas these adhering to different religions will likely be despatched to hell.
Whereas not all evangelical Christians in the USA (roughly 1 / 4 of the inhabitants) maintain these Christian Zionist convictions, polls present that a big majority consider that the fashionable state of Israel and the gathering of tens of millions of Jewish folks there are “fulfillments of Bible prophecy that show we are getting closer to the return of Jesus Christ”. Many Christian Zionists additionally consider within the “prosperity gospel,” which contends that blessing Israel leads to private and monetary achieve. These tenets compel Christian Zionists to help Israel’s settlements and different expansionist insurance policies by way of donations, lobbying, and, as within the case of the cowboys, labour.
For twenty years, HaYovel has introduced a whole lot of volunteers annually to work in settlement agriculture. With many overseas staff fleeing since Hamas’s assault on October 7 in addition to Palestinians barred from working in settlements and Jewish Israelis known as up for navy responsibility, extra Christian Zionists just like the cowboys are filling in. As one American employee told Israeli channel i24, “I can’t go into Gaza and fight, so I’m gonna help here on the farm.” The Christian volunteers additionally converse of themselves as “boots on the ground” throughout Israel’s time of want, invoking their labour as a navy operation.
This white, militaristic masculinity widespread amongst evangelicals was examined by scholar Kristin Du Mez in her 2020 e-book, Jesus and John Wayne. Du Mez explores 75 years of white evangelical historical past in the USA, tracing how evangelicals have changed Jesus with an “idol of rugged masculinity and Christian nationalism,” together with by way of such popular culture figures as Mel Gibson and John Wayne in addition to politicians like George W Bush and Donald Trump, all of whom “assert white masculine power” and embody the evangelical values of patriarchy, authoritarian rule, belligerent overseas coverage and concern of Islam.
Whereas Du Mez’s examine doesn’t give attention to Christian Zionism, she has famous the evangelical apply of supporting Israel. “[It’s a] kind of slippage into America as a new Israel,” she stated in a 2021 interview. Right here Du Mez ostensibly refers back to the thought of early American colonists escaping non secular persecution in England as the brand new Jews and America the brand new Israel, promised to the settlers by God.
This conflation of America and Israel as God-instructed colonialism – one which depends upon the substitute of savage natives with righteous settlers – is revealed within the Christian Zionist cowboys’ rhetoric. Media interviews with Montanan John Plocher particularly spotlight the trope of excellent cowboys versus dangerous Indians and the dehumanisation of natives – tropes transposable on to Israeli Jews and Palestinians.
In a December dialog with Israel Now Information, Plocher was requested why he thinks the Jewish inhabitants in Israel is so enthusiastic about him and his fellow cowboys. “They’ve said that seeing the cowboys is like seeing the good guys,” Plocher responded. “You think of all the Westerns and John Wayne and all these people who stand up for the right thing and so it’s just an encouragement to them.”
Even if American settlers murdered and terrorised Indigenous girls, youngsters, and different unarmed Native civilians and took the land for themselves, the narrative of excellent white cowboys versus dangerous Indians has appeared repeatedly in US fashionable tradition. Scholar Michael Yellow Hen has examined this narrative “as part of the colonial cannon asserting white supremacy and Indigenous inferiority” and relates how in Western motion pictures and tv, “Not only did we spectacularly lose, but … we were also presented as screaming, grunting, unreasonable savages.”
Although Zionists and Christian Zionists might declare that Jews are Indigenous to the land, it’s Palestinians – made Indigenous by way of Israel’s means of settler colonialism – who are sometimes depicted as barbaric and backward, as “beasts walking on two legs,” “little snakes,” and “human animals.” Equally, in a November interview with Israel Nationwide Information, Plocher compared Hamas and Palestinians extra broadly with grizzly bears and declared the necessity for the land to be rid of them. He recounted that grizzlies are an issue in Montana and that the “original people” who got here to Montana (which means white settlers) eradicated them. The issue now, he continued, is that folks need the grizzlies “everywhere”. “Let us do what we need to do to defend ourselves,” he stated, which means kill the grizzlies. “It’s the same with you guys, it’s Hamas … We understand you guys have to go after that and eradicate that.”
As Israel commits genocide within the Gaza Strip with the help of the USA and as Israeli killings of Palestinians within the West Financial institution and East Jerusalem improve and settler violence in opposition to Palestinians within the West Financial institution turns into extra commonplace and brutal, the plain parallels between Israeli and American settler colonialism, white supremacy, and aggressive militarism should compel us to counter these tropes and traits. Let the affinities between the 2 states impel increasingly more of us to problem the parallel methods of violence and domination and, as Yellow Hen has argued, “seek justice on behalf of those colonized”.
The views expressed on this article are the creator’s personal and don’t essentially mirror Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.