Swede supports West Bank settlers

August 16th, 2005 at 18:36 Björn Hallberg

Christian Zionism at its best.

Among the pullout foes staying in the northern West Bank community of Sa-Nur, one can find an unusual guest: Nils Peter Hansen, 54, a civil aviator who made his way from Sweden to Israel in order to support the settlers.

“My wife told me, you need to travel to the Holy Land. Jews are being expelled and we need to do something, so I came,” he said.

Notably, Hansen is not Jewish. He is a believing Christian who views himself as a genuine friend of the Jewish nation. He holds Danish citizenship, but currently lives in a small community in central Sweden.

Crossposted and pruned from my commentary over at The Local:

I can safely say that pro-Israeli, anti-disengagement activists are shooting themselves in the foot by taking support from people like Nils Peter Hansen. There is precious little about Hansen himself, other than that he supports Israel, that he is Christian and that he’s been to Israel no less than 24 times.
If I should dare a guess, without further research, Hansen is probably either a Pentecostalist or member of “Livets Ord” (Word of Life). But that is of course just generalizing. Those two seems to be the most common to harbour Christian Zionism. At least that has been my experience.

Now why is this important? Well, as I said, while it is convenient to accept aid and support from Hansen and others one should also be clear about why they are helping. If my memory serves me right, some Christian off-shoots interpret the book of revelations in such a way that in order for the second coming of Christ to occur, the Jews need to be gathered in Palestine. At which time they will most likely be offered conversion or death. But that part of the deal is of course not discussed. Now, I’m not sure that this is openly declared. I doubt it, when a Pentecostalist professes his support for Israel he probably uses more secular terms, Israel’s right to exists, the expulsion of Jews etc, since the second coming of Christ and certain death may not be a big selling point with everyone. For the casual reader, it may seem that they are offering the support for no selfish reasons.

Christian Zionism remains a major problem and one that is largely not understood or underestimated.

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