God cares about people, not what you call the West Bank
A US House committee will now use the biblical names Judea and Samaria. The point is to frame a political conflict as a religious war.
Century illustration
Brian Mast, the Republican congressman from Florida who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee, directed committee staff on February 26 to refer to the West Bank exclusively as Judea and Samaria, according to an internal memo obtained by Axios. While not an official shift in US policy, the directive signals growing support among lawmakers for Israel’s annexation of the occupied Palestinian territory. Critics argue that this shift to biblical language will embolden extremists on both sides and make a negotiated peace even more elusive.
This isn’t just about renaming a territory. It’s about framing a political conflict as a religious war. It reduces a 76-year conflict to a simplistic battle between good and evil, rather than seeking to understand its true root causes. This is both reckless and delusional. It justifies an illegal occupation and demonizes the victims.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has always been about land disputes and human rights. But Christian Zionists like Mast are intent on rewriting it as a biblical struggle between God and God’s enemies. Once you frame a conflict that way, compromise becomes impossible: How do you negotiate with someone who claims divine entitlement?
