The Israel Allies Foundation: How Christian Zionists are shaping support for Israeli apartheid

On 8 June 2025, thousands of miles away from Israel’s unremitting genocide in Gaza, the Ecuadorian National Assembly announced the formation of an Israel Allies Caucus. 

The new congressional group is the latest addition to a Christian Zionist network known as the Israel Allies Foundation: a non-partisan lobbying group based in Washington, DC. 

The Foundation’s president, Josh Reinstein, was born in Toronto, raised in Dallas, served as a tank gunner in the Israeli army, and now lives in Jerusalem.

Like his predecessor, Binyamin Elon, he is also Director of the Knesset Christian Allies Caucus (KCAC), which works to “forge direct lines of communication between Knesset members and Christian leaders and political representatives.

Working “in partnership with over fifty Israel Allies Caucuses in governments worldwide,” they promote what Reinstein calls “faith-based diplomacy.”

As a result, he says, “Christians [are] taking their Biblical support and turning it into real political action” to create “a diplomatic iron dome”.

Weaponising theology

Christian Zionism, according to Friends of Sabeel North America (FOSNA), “is a political and theological ideology that misuses Christian texts to support the modern nation-state of Israel out of the belief that Israel has a cosmic purpose in bringing about the ‘End Times’ which will culminate in the second coming of Jesus and the end of the world”.

This “is a modern heresy that leads to idolatry of the state of Israel, militarism, and violence that undermines the historic witness of the Church,” says Donald Wagner, former National Program Director at FOSNA.

“Evangelical, mainline Protestant or Roman Catholic, it supports Israel's genocidal erasure of Palestinian Christians and Muslims in historic Palestine,” he adds.

“Whether one considers Christian Zionism a theology or even a heresy, the one clear thing about it is that it weaponises theology and the bible for purely political goals,” Palestinian Human Rights Activist and Director of FOSNA, Jonathan Kuttab, told The New Arab.

“It attempts to give divine sanctions to its program and urges Christians as a matter of religious duty to support or oppose politicians and political actions based on its interpretations of selected scriptural texts. It is not in the least concerned with other religious or spiritual issues,” he added.

With that arsenal at hand, lobbying groups like the Israel Allies Foundation garner support for Israeli colonialism at the expense of Palestinians, and in the name of God.

Made in the USA

Christian Zionism in the United States “has gotten more powerful” since October 2023, says Mimi Kirk, Director of the Institute for the Study of Christian Zionism. “I think the movement is using this moment to its advantage,” she tells The New Arab, noting a close “collaboration with Christian Zionists in the Trump administration”.

Nonetheless, the Congressional Israel Allies Caucus (CIAC) - the US crux of the Israel Allies Foundation - is proudly non-partisan. Chaired by two Democratic and two Republican Zionists, it currently has 23 members with a marginal Republican majority. Former Vice President Mike Pence also co-chaired CIAC during his tenure in Congress.

The Foundation remains “a little more under the radar” than groups like Christians United for Israel (CUFI) - the largest Christian Zionist organisation in the Americas, says Kirk.

They are therefore barely mentioned outside of pro-Israel media. However, she explains, “they are very good at outreach,” and so “they connect church leaders and thought leaders who are pro-Israel with politicians in the United States and beyond”.

In 2016, they worked in collaboration with CUFI “to defeat the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement” in what Reinstein described as an effort to “fight the threats”.

Furthermore, according to journalist Victoria Clark in 'Allies for Armageddon', Reinstein and Hagee, the Christian Zionist founder of CUFI, “are well acquainted today”. She describes how Reinstein, alongside Binyamin Elon and KCAC founder Yuri Stern, suggested that Hagee form CUFI back in 2004.

CIAC also claims to have “spearheaded legislation fighting for an indivisible Jerusalem”. Although evidence of this is unsubstantiated, in 2017,  a year before Trump’s embassy move “for the Evangelicals”, one of the CIAC co-chairs, a devout Christian Zionist called Doug Lamborn, signed a letter to Trump, “urging the president to recognize Jerusalem as the undivided capital of the State of Israel and to relocate our embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem”.

Colonial diplomacy

“Recognizing Jerusalem as the undivided, true, eternal capital of Israel” is a primary aim of the Foundation and, of the seven countries to have done so - the United States, Paraguay, Guatemala, Honduras, Kosovo, and Papua New Guinea - three are in Latin America.

The recent formation of the Ecuadorian Allies caucus, whose members have already “recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel", requires subsequent attention. Just one month earlier, Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa visited Israel to inaugurate a new “innovation center” in Jerusalem. The centre has diplomatic status and serves as an extension of the Ecuadorian Embassy in Tel Aviv.

“In several Latin American countries, the Christian Zionists have lobbied for moving the embassies of their countries from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, specifically because they were told that blessing Israel would bring them blessings,” Kuttab explains.

“I was specifically told so by Evangelical leaders in Honduras on a trip I took there. They favoured the movement of the embassy, and the signing of an Israeli-US-Honduran agreement to bring to their country the blessings that were promised in Genesis for those who blessed Israel.”

Whilst the dominant Catholic population is declining across Latin America, the number of Protestant “Evangélicos”,  mostly Pentecostals, is on the rise, according to a study by Pew Research Center.

“Protestants in Latin America are [also] more likely than Catholics to say that Jesus’ second coming is imminent,” the study observed.

“I think people are going to be shocked in the next 10 years to see what these [Latin American] countries are doing against anti-Semitism, BDS and anti-Zionist movements,” said Reinstein.

Similarly, in Papua New Guinea, the latest government to relocate its embassy, Reinstein attended the November 2023 ceremony and posted a photograph alongside Prime Minister James Marape, noting “the power of faith-based diplomacy”.

According to Professor Steven Ratuva, Director of the Macmillan Brown Center for Pacific Studies, in an interview with Te Ao Māori News at the time: “One of the important factors in the vote as well, is the rise of Evangelical movements in the region which are linked to the Evangelical movements in the United States, which are in support of Trump, in support of Israel and Zionism generally.

“When you mix religion and politics together,” he wrote, “humanity is out of the window, and the dead children are seen as a necessary way to get there.”

'Christians not countries'

Africa, which Reinstein considers “one of the most exciting places,” is another focal point of the Israel Allies Foundation. “There are places like Zambia, Uganda, Rwanda, Ghana, and Malawi that as Christian nations are really moving ahead like wildfire with this idea of faith-based diplomacy,” Reinstein said. “I think we’re going to see embassies moved to Jerusalem.”

Five years later and no such moves have been made. Nonetheless, on 11 September 2024, almost one year into Israel’s genocide in Gaza, the Addis Ababa Declaration of Africa-Israel Cooperation and Partnership was signed by lawmakers from over 20 African countries at a summit organised by the Israel Allies Foundation, the Israel-Africa Initiative, and Thinc Israel.

At the event, Fr Louison Emerick Bissila, Chaplain of the African Union, proposed “three fundamental reasons why Africans should align themselves with Israel”.

These ranged from the geopolitical to the historical and, finally, the theological. “The strength of Israel lies in the land of Israel. What we now know as Medinat Yisrael (the State of Israel) is, in essence, the fulfilment of God’s promise to settle His people in their land.”

“It’s Christians, not countries, that stand with Israel,” announced Reinstein at a Knesset assembly in 2023. “You are the generals in the war of public opinion,” he declared. 

Yet, in the midst of that so-called war, global support for Palestinian rights and liberation remains widespread. Public condemnation of Israel’s genocide has reverberated around the world since October 2023, claiming a definitive win for public opinion, despite foreign policy.

“This horrible genocide has brought about much more of an understanding, even among the wilfully blind,” says Kirk. “But then you have these forces on the other side that have so much power, funding and resources.”

They warrant a watchful eye.

Ana Maria Monjardino is an independent journalist and writer from London

Follow her on X: @ammonjardino