The death of Ayatollah Khamenei should have been a moment of moral clarity. After four decades of theocratic rule, a regime that funded Hamas and Hezbollah, called for death to America and Israel, and exported terrorism globally was suddenly leaderless. Across Iran and much of the world, people celebrated.
Yet some voices on the American right condemned this action. Tucker Carlson called the war “absolutely disgusting and evil.” Carlson clearly got confused between the arsonist and the fire brigade.
This type of disorientation endangers Judeo-Christian civilization.
The prophet Ezekiel foresaw a moment following the regathering of the Jewish exiles — when two sticks, the stick of Judah and the stick of Ephraim, would be joined together and “become as one” in the Creator’s hand. Two distinct identities bound not through uniformity, but shared purpose: the defense of a world in which human beings have dignity and freedom. Iran’s rockets were not aimed only at buildings. They were aimed at dragging Western civilization back toward chaos.
After the chaos of the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 A.D., many Jewish movements disappeared. The Sadducees vanished. The Essenes faded. The Zealots were extinguished. Yet two streams endured. One became Rabbinic Judaism, preserving Jewish identity through centuries of exile. The other emerged from Jewish disciples of Jesus, eventually becoming Christianity, carrying the ethical inheritance of the Hebrew Scriptures across civilizations.
These two traditions developed different missions. Judaism became a guardian of continuity. Christianity became outward-facing, carrying biblical values to the nations. Though bearing different objectives, neither could have fulfilled its destiny without the other. Without Judaism’s fierce adherence to tradition, there would be no Jewish people to return home.
Without Christian Zionists — Lord Balfour, David Lloyd George, President Harry Truman — the rebirth of Israel would never have occurred. When these two traditions stood together, history moved.
Today, our alliance is under immense pressure.
Antisemitism is rising. On the American right, voices once considered allies traffic in antisemitic conspiracies. On the left, animosity toward Israel has been normalized in academia and media.
Antisemitism flourishes when truth is rewritten and identity is untethered from history. When societies lose their grounding — in human dignity, and the belief that justice is not merely the will of the powerful — Jews are among the first to suffer.
We write this as beneficiaries of a Judeo-Christian inheritance: as dual U.S.-Israel citizens, the sons of a Jewish father and Christian mother, witnessing firsthand how alliances fracture when truth yields to propaganda. Israel is living proof that this partnership is possible: the only country in the Middle East where Jewish sovereignty protects Christian worship, minority communities, and the rule of law.
Earlier this year, we convened nearly 400 Christian and Jewish leaders representing 180 networks in Nashville, founding the first Judeo-Christian Zionist Congress. Pastors and rabbis, policy makers and media figures, educators and cultural influencers united by a shared conviction that this alliance has the power to change the course of history.
Iran’s missiles are aimed at the idea that nations can modernize, rights can expand and people can worship freely. They are aimed at liberty, normalization and everything dictatorial theocracy fears most. The question of who stands against this darkness — and who equivocates — will be determined by civilizational identity.
The prophet’s vision offers us an image of strategic and consequential alignment — two distinct peoples bound by a shared inheritance.
We are unbreakable when bound together to preserve the precious way of life we hold dear.
Calev Myers and Simeon Myers are the founders of the Judeo-Christian Zionist Congress.
