America’s Evangelical Youth Declare War on ‘Israel’: What’s Driving the Shift?

The United States is home to roughly 100 million evangelical Christians, with at least 20 million traditionally backing the Israeli Occupation for religious reasons, according to Israeli media.

Yet clear signs tracked by American outlets suggest that support among a significant segment of evangelicals is starting to waver, particularly in the wake of “Israel’s” genocide in Gaza.

Polls show that backing for the Israeli Occupation among younger evangelicals has declined, driven largely by social media and the rise of alternative narratives that challenge “Israel’s” version of events, alongside a growing current within the evangelical movement that expresses support for Palestinians.

In response to this shift, the Israeli foreign ministry hosted 1,000 evangelical pastors and influencers, led by Pastor Mike Evans, religious advisor to President Donald Trump, in an effort to counter the decline in evangelical support.

While this does not signal an end to American evangelical backing for “Israel,” it points to a clear generational shift and mirrors broader changes in U.S. public support following the Israeli aggression on Gaza.

Signs of Waning Support

Trump’s repeated acknowledgments that American backing for “Israel” was eroding became a key signal, alarming Israeli Occupation officials more than anyone else, given that the evangelical base supporting “Israel” had been built over more than 50 years.

Over the past half-century, so-called Christian Zionists—evangelical supporters of “Israel”—have built a global, multifaceted movement. They have been credited with shaping political debates in numerous countries and have grown increasingly significant for Israeli foreign policy, according to New Lines Magazine.

On December 17, 2025, at a Hanukkah reception at the White House, Trump said that “Israel’s” influence on American society was in continuous decline. He added that political support for “Israel” in Washington, which had been the strongest lobbying force over a decade ago, was no longer as powerful.

In an interview with The Daily Caller in early September 2025, he said that “Israel” had lost its influence and former ability to pressure political circles in Washington due to the war and the blockade in the Gaza Strip. “Israel was the strongest lobby I’ve ever seen. They had total control over Congress, and now they don’t,” he added.

On July 31, 2025, Trump warned in a media leak published by the Financial Times during a private meeting with a Jewish campaign donor that traditional public support for “Israel” was eroding. He called “Israel’s” war crimes in Gaza “tragic, shameful, and catastrophic” and said that even his supporters were beginning to change their views.

What worries Tel Aviv most is that declining evangelical support has shifted toward the religious MAGA movement, the main backers of the Israeli Occupation among American conservatives. Politico reported on July 29, 2025, that the MAGA movement has turned against “Israel” and begun to walk away from it, warning that Donald Trump could lose his MAGA base because of the Israeli Occupation’s crimes in Gaza.

The shift is embodied most starkly by the prominent evangelical media figure Tucker Carlson, who has moved from defending Zionism to openly fighting it after the war on Gaza, which he says awakened his conscience.

On his show, Carlson condemns the killing of tens of thousands of children in Gaza and denounces what he describes as fabricated justifications by evangelicals within the Trump administration to shield “Israel.”

He argues that such defenses have no basis in the Bible and are, in fact, its complete opposite, while attacking Christian Zionist pastors for using religion to brainwash their followers into accepting the killing of children under the cover of war.

Four factors have intensified anger within the MAGA movement toward Donald Trump, pushing many supporters, especially younger ones, to distance themselves from him, with the Israeli Occupation’s crimes in Gaza at the center of the backlash.

Voices within Trump’s evangelical MAGA base have grown increasingly critical of both him and “Israel,” according to media assessments.

Based on monitoring by Al-Estiklal, MAGA supporters fault Trump for four main reasons. First, his support for the Israeli Occupation despite war crimes they see as contradicting evangelical Christian principles, and for casting evangelicals as backers of genocide.

Second, they accuse Trump of entangling the United States in the wars on Gaza and Iran, in direct contradiction to his campaign promise to avoid foreign conflicts and focus on domestic renewal under the slogan Make America Great Again.

Third, the movement is angered by the rise in settler attacks on Christians in the occupied Palestinian territories, along with efforts by the Israeli government to block or restrict the entry of Western pastors and to clamp down on the activities of Western Christian organizations, despite their financial and political support for the Israeli Occupation.

Fourth, MAGA supporters have turned on Trump over his refusal to release documents related to his alleged ties to convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, which they see as undermining the Christian moral credentials that once secured their backing.

The Roots of the Shift

A study published by Eurasia Review pointed to a sharp decline in support for “Israel” among young evangelicals aged 18 to 29 compared with previous decades, noting that a large share of this group has moved toward neutral positions or even open support for Palestinians.

The study warned that support for “Israel” among American evangelicals is now falling rapidly and that ignoring this downward trend could, within a decade or two, produce a largely “Israel”-opposed evangelical movement in the United States.

Conducted by researchers linked to the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy at the University of Cambridge, along with the head of the International Israel Allies Caucus Foundation, the study identified three main reasons behind what it described as the evangelical youth backlash against “Israel.”

The first is deconstruction, a process through which many young evangelicals are reassessing their faith and beliefs, often embracing a more progressive form of Christianity than that of traditional evangelical churches. This shift has led many to reject the long-held emphasis on the land of “Israel” and the belief that Jews are God’s chosen people.

The second factor is the rise of woke ideology among young evangelicals. As faith deconstruction deepens, many are drawn toward social justice causes and liberation-focused theology that centers on peoples seen as oppressed, including Palestinians. Within this framework, the Israeli Occupation is cast as the aggressor, Palestinians as victims, and “Israel” itself as an apartheid and racist settler colonial state.

David Bernstein, a researcher at the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy, has argued that this progressive woke ideology embraced by young American evangelicals harms Jews and fuels hostility toward “Israel” and antisemitism.

The third reason is religious illiteracy, referring to the decline in Bible study and biblical knowledge among evangelical youth. An Israeli Jerusalem Post report cited a survey by the American Bible Society in April 2024, showing a steep drop in biblical literacy among Generation Z Americans, whether religious or not.

According to the study, declining familiarity with the Old Testament and the biblical teachings traditionally used to justify support for “Israel” has directly contributed to waning backing for the Israeli Occupation.

Israeli Lobbying Against Pastors

In response to the shift in support, “Israel” launched a multi-million-dollar campaign targeting Christians in states with large evangelical populations, where backing for “Israel” has been waning, such as Arizona.

The broad outreach aims to bolster traditional support, with initiatives like a campaign in Arizona reaching 38 churches to encourage Christians to view “Israel” more positively, according to AZPM. This was seen as indirect evidence of Israeli concern over declining backing, prompting the allocation of substantial resources to restore support.

Fox 10 reported on October 24, 2025, that the campaign marked the largest geographic mapping of Christian churches in U.S. history, carried out by a newly established company executing a major digital marketing and awareness strategy on “Israel’s” behalf. The effort targets churches and university campuses in four states, with Arizona’s campaign alone costing $3.2 million.

American media highlighted “Israel’s” hosting of over 1,000 U.S. evangelical pastors between December 3 and 7, 2025, as part of efforts to rally Trump’s evangelical MAGA base after the war on Gaza. The American Conservative and Responsible Statecraft described the tour, with its religious and political stops, as a coordinated attempt by Zionist groups to exploit Trump’s evangelical religious base to pressure him into meeting “Israel’s” demands.

The initiative was effectively a message to the U.S. administration: any political pressure on “Israel” would carry costs within Trump’s evangelical base, aligning American evangelical discourse with “Israel’s” settlement agenda in the West Bank and encouraging recognition of annexation.

Mike Evans, founder of the Friends of Zion Museum and Trump’s religious advisor, summarized the effort, saying that “Israel” cannot achieve victory without evangelical support. Evangelicals believe God promised the Holy Land to the Jews, and that their return there from around the world will hasten the end-of-days war and the second coming of Christ. This religious belief fuels their support for the Israeli Occupation, viewing control of the “Promised Land” as divinely sanctioned while adhering to both the Torah and the Bible.

Israeli analyst Judy Maltz wrote in Haaretz on December 11, 2025, that gathering the 1,000 U.S. pastors was aimed at sending Trump a clear message that his Christian supporters back “Israel” and expect him to act accordingly. Pastors even staged displays holding the Torah and the Bible, proclaiming that MAGA is grounded in the God of these scriptures, the “God of Israel.”

The Controversy Reaches Egypt

The campaign has sparked debate in Egypt, following Pastor Mike Evans’ statements about training 100,000 evangelicals to act as “Israel’s” ambassadors in their countries and bringing 1,000 pastors to “Israel” to serve as unofficial envoys to legitimize its criminal occupation in the name of religion. Journalist Hind al-Dawi, on Alkahera Walnas TV, highlighted Christian Zionist efforts supporting the Israeli Occupation and called on Eastern churches to engage with U.S. evangelical initiatives.

The campaign drew sharp criticism for proposing a “digital academy to train evangelicals to support Israel” and for urging Eastern churches to respond.

On December 20, 2025, Egypt’s evangelical community issued a statement firmly rejecting any association with so-called Christian Zionism.

On December 21, 2025, Watani, a newspaper representing Egypt’s largest Orthodox Church, criticized social media accounts that blamed Egyptian Christians for “Israel’s” crimes, emphasizing that Copts are paying “the price for a conflict that is not theirs.”

Egypt’s evangelical leadership had previously rejected any association with American Christian Zionism, condemning “Israel’s” genocide in Gaza, opposing plans to settle Palestinians in Sinai, and denouncing aggression on hospitals and churches in the Gaza Strip.

Western evangelical churches and organizations continue to raise funds for the Israeli Occupation army and support Jewish migration to “Israel,” earning praise from Netanyahu as “the greatest friends of the Hebrew state.”

As a result of this support and the war on Gaza, cracks have begun to appear in what was once a tightly aligned evangelical voting bloc in the United States, driven by growing disillusionment among its members over the Israeli Occupation.

Jacobin, a progressive American outlet, described the trend on November 25, 2025, as the end times of Christian Zionism.

According to the latest survey by the Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU) and YouGov on American attitudes toward the Israeli Occupation, young Republicans are increasingly turning against “Israel.” 

Fifty-one percent said they would support candidates seeking to reduce U.S. aid to “Israel,” while 53 percent opposed renewing the annual American commitment to military assistance.

Washington provides “Israel” with approximately $3.3 to $3.8 billion annually in direct military aid, and in 2025, Trump authorized over $18.5 billion in arms transfers.