Halfway through, our commander paused to ask why a bunch of Americans had come to Israel to shoot things — after all, we can go shooting any time we like. Everybody laughed. For the tourists, the fantasy of the camp had nothing to do with firing a weapon or even taking down a “terrorist”; it was about imagining being a part of a state permanently engaged in a cosmic struggle. My brothers-in-cardboard-arms were not American Jews, but a group of Christian Zionists, who saw themselves as being on a spiritual march towards victory that at some point would end in Israel.

Recent polling from the University of Maryland found that American evangelical Christians largely account for the positive GOP’s regard for Israel; without them, Republican attitudes on the subject look a lot like the rest of America’s. Following October 7, the Ethics and Religion Liberty Commission, an arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, represented those views in a statement signed by over 2,000 church leaders which declared that they “fully support Israel’s right and duty to defend itself against further attack”.

American evangelicals have a long and complicated history towards the Jewish people; one which changed significantly with the formation of the state of Israel in 1948. This was the fulfilment of a well-understood prophecy about the End of Days, which holds that the modern nation of Israel had to be created, and had to prosper, in order for Jesus to return.

This prophetic worldview explicitly meant taking over the Palestinian territories. Destroying the Dome of the Rock, where the Al-Aqsa mosque sits today, would allow Jews to rebuild the Temple Mount, which “the lawless one” — often understood as the Antichrist — would according to the prophecy, enter and proclaim himself God. This, in turn, will lead God to reveal himself and destroy the false prophet.

The prophecy of the End Times is variously interpreted and hotly debated, but essentially it says that that Jesus will return to take Christians into heaven by means of a rapture, before ruling over Earth in a seven-year tribulation. According to this belief system, only Christians will be saved.

So where does this leave the Jews? I asked Daniel G. Hummel, a historian of American religion and foreign relations. He points to the intervention of the evangelical Christian theologian G. Douglas Young, who in 1956 founded the American Institute of Holy Land Studies, now known as Jerusalem University College. For Young’s Jewish neighbours, the evangelical conception of the End Times was a “really horrible situation”, Hummel explains. To get around this, Young came up with the idea of a “second rapture”, which would occur exactly halfway through the seven years of tribulation, and would “let all the Jews escape what was coming, which is called the Great Tribulation — where the really, really bad stuff happens”.

Young was, at the time, a fairly marginal figure, both theologically and politically, but his early work in finding common cause with the fledgling Jewish state laid the foundation for the evolving theology of Christian Zionism — which has ultimately shaped US foreign policy towards Israel. The relatively new concept of a Judeo-Christian heritage became useful in the Cold War. Godless communists had already taken over Russia and China — and Arab nationalists seemed sympathetic to them. Israel came to be seen as a bulwark against an encroaching red wave. Prior to 1945, evangelicals had by and large not voted, seeing themselves as above worldly politics. As patriotic Americans, evangelical leaders began to take a keen interest in foreign policy in light of the communist threat.

But Christian Zionism and antisemitism were not mutually exclusive. In leaked tapes from a 1972 conversation between leading evangelist Billy Graham and Richard Nixon, Graham told the President: “Not all the Jews, but a lot of the Jews are great friends of mine, they swarm around me and are friendly to me because they know that I’m friendly with Israel. But they don’t know how I really feel about what they are doing to this country. And I have no power, no way to handle them, but I would stand up if under proper circumstances.”

A year after Graham aired his feelings about “swarming” Jews, and probably for political expediency, he made it clear that his followers needed to leave Jews out of their efforts to convert people. The move was hugely controversial among evangelicals at the time, but laid the groundwork for strong relations between them and Israel: by the Eighties, up-and-coming Israeli politicians, including Benjamin Netanyahu, were attending prayer breakfasts.

The rationale behind good Israeli-American relations evolved after the fall of the Berlin Wall. By the Nineties, where once the state had been a bulwark against communism, it was now seen as critical in countering radical Islam. Israel, with all of its walls and borders, knew all about fighting Jihad — a project that became all the more urgent in America after 9/11, with all its prophetic implications. And by this time, the evangelical “Moral Majority”, now firmly steeped in Christian Zionism, was a much-discussed part of the Republican voting coalition.

In 2006, Texas preacher John Hagee, who hails from the Pentecostal-Charismatic tradition, founded the powerful lobby group Christians United for Israel (CUFI), which today claims over 10 million members. Even prior to the current conflict, he delivered ecstatic sermons prophesying a “thrilling” apocalyptic future, where Christians are raptured before an attack on Israel by Iran and Russia, and the Apocalypse begins. It is a reference to a highly contested passage described in Ezekiel, where God will make his presence known against foreign invaders through a series of natural disasters, leading to the destruction of the Biblical lands. “What you do to Israel, god will do to you,” Christians United for Israel warned Hamas after October 7. “Joy will come because he who watches over Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps.”

It was these Christian Zionists who Donald Trump was courting when he moved the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in 2018. In an official statement, he called it “a long-overdue step to advance the peace process and to work towards a lasting agreement”. But when speaking off the cuff, Trump revealed a more cunning political calculation. “That’s for the evangelicals,” he told a Wisconsin rally in 2020, before marvelling that “the evangelicals are more excited by that than Jewish people”. As one pastor explained at the time, the re-establishment of Israel’s political boundaries “kick-starts the end times into motion”.

But it’s important to understand that Christian Zionism is a spectrum, says Walker Robins, a scholar of the phenomenon; for most evangelicals, it means that “the priority is to stand with the Jewish people”. Others, however, “really do traffic in somewhat classical, antisemitic tropes”, which are not always easily detectable. Thinking back to my visit to the IDF fantasy camp, the intense philosemitism of the Christian Zionists there was unsettling. The American leader told us that “every Jew is a miracle”, and as such, that we were witnessing “miracles all over the nation of Israel”.

Historically, Jews have all too often been portrayed as less than human; today’s Christian Zionists superhumanise them, which may be an improvement on the past, but is still antisemitic. According to certain schools of evangelical thought, Jews must be protected as critical infrastructure on the road to fulfilling prophecy. As Robins has pointed out, in this conception, “Jewish people are around for a specific purpose”, but are in themselves expendable instruments: a literal means to the End.

The sight of Ellen DeGeneres and George W. Bush sitting together in the owner’s box at a Dallas Cowboys game was so unexpected, and caused such fierce debate across Hollywood, that the comedian felt she had to come out and defend herself. Opinion was viciously divided — and loud. Many of DeGeneres’ famous colleagues supported her cross-political companionship, while others condemned any association with Bush as beyond the pale.

Such was the fascination with this pairing, that a scene that wouldn’t have seemed out of place in a skit on a late night comedy show inspired the final question posed to Democratic presidential candidates during the last debate.

Laura & George Bush sitting with Ellen Degeneres and Portia de Rossi is not something I expected to see at an NFL game pic.twitter.com/AbWbhXd3RC

— CJ Fogler account may or may not be notable (@cjzero) October 6, 2019

This was a pivotal moment in President Bush’s long march back into the public consciousness. And it provides an opportunity to reassess one of the most polarising leaders in US history; he’s particularly useful at the moment, as he serves as a lens through which to view the current political divide in the United States.

George W. Bush’s presidency was divisive before it even started: he won the 2000 election, despite losing the popular vote due to the idiosyncrasies of the American Electoral College (sound familiar?) and a controversial Supreme Court decision over “hanging chads” (kids, look it up) in Florida. He was, in the eyes of many, illegitimate.

Support may then have soared at home and abroad in the immediate aftermath of September 11, 2001, and the early days of the War in Afghanistan. But his administration squandered all that goodwill with their adventures in Iraq (Bush found an eager ally in Tony Blair, who suffered a similar reputational collapse) and bullying foreign policy.

As the political baggage of two increasingly unpopular wars was compounded by the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression, Bush finally united Americans — in their disapproval of his performance. His approval rating bottomed out at 22% as he left office, retired as the least popular president in US history and arguably the most hated man in America.

But, over time, a curious thing happened. He recovered. To the extent that, by January 2018, a CNN opinion poll showed that Bush’s approval rating had nearly tripled from his end-of-term low, climbing to 61% (just a bit below Barack Obama’s rating at the time).

This means that about half of those who disapproved of him by the end of his presidency have turned their opinions around.  And this bifurcation is not as simple as the Republican/Democrat divide; in fact, by 2017, even a slim majority of Democrats held favourable opinions of Bush.

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So what’s caused the Bush revival? What is this middle ground hankering for?  I suspect, to an extent it is the “absence makes the heart grow fonder” effect. Bush has kept a pretty low profile since retiring, and a significant number of his public appearances have been disaster relief events or showcases of his newfound passion for painting amateur portraits of dogs, world leaders and veterans (somehow, this isn’t a late-night sketch either), not exactly the most offensive material.

Bush also made several public appearances during various periods of mourning, including at the memorial of his intra-party political foe John McCain and the funerals of his mother, Barbara, and father, George H.W. Bush, all of whom died last year. These were also occasions at which his other unlikely but very real friendship — with former First Lady Michelle Obama — became obvious. And surely anyone who’s friends with Mrs Obama must have something good going for them.

It also helps that there is obviously no love lost between Donald Trump and the Bush family. Trump basically bullied Jeb Bush out of the presidential race in 2016, and destroyed the TV career of Bush cousin Billy with his vulgar conversation with the then-host of Access Hollywood. The Bushes have given Trump the cold shoulder ever since.

Sure, President Trump has set a low bar against which any ex-president can stand favourably — using military aid to Ukraine for political purposes, for example, and telling mostly American-born minority congresswomen to “go back” to their countries to name only two controversies to date. But there’s a more specific quality that “W” possessed which has been lacking in American politics in recent years: sincerity.

Throughout his political career, Bush presented himself as an honest straight shooter: even if you didn’t agree with him, you knew where he stood. This attitude largely came from his Evangelical faith, which drove many of his policies and provided him with a fairly unflappable base. That base remains loyal. You could sense it when Donald Trump attacked the Iraq War as part of a defence of his Middle East policy during a recent speech at the Value Voters Summit in Washington DC; the previously enthusiastic Evangelical crowd grew noticeably quiet.

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To the delight of Bush’s Evangelical supporters — and the horror of liberals and libertarians dedicated to the strict separation of church and state — President Bush wore his faith on his sleeve. The Evangelical label has, of late, become more of a political term than a religious tag, signifying a certain brand of American conservativism, Bush’s faith went beyond the political. Both Bush and his wife, Laura, publicly credited his conversion (with an assist from legendary preacher Billy Graham) with helping him end his drinking and hard-partying ways at the age of 40, paving the way for his political career.

Bush’s policies were inextricably linked to his faith. He labeled his approach “compassionate conservatism”, and while other Republicans have cynically abused this slogan, Bush seemed to genuinely value both halves of it.

He was surely conservative, a son of the Religious Right that had brought Ronald Reagan and Bush’s own father into the White House. The George W. Bush administration had hardline approaches to abortion and same-sex marriage. It banned stem cell research, and channeled money to religious groups through its Faith-Based Initiatives program.

But Bush also expanded Medicare access, proposed immigration reform that included a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants already in the United States, and increased aide to sub-Saharan Africa. These policies may be anathema to the current Republican leadership — but they make sense under a genuine commitment to the compassion that Bush claimed. To moderate Republicans today, approval for Bush represents nostalgia for a version of conservatism that could credibly, even proudly proclaim to have the best interests of the country and the world at heart.

On the other side of the political fence, moderate Democrats remember that even when there were sharp policy disagreements between the Bush administration and those on the Left, few people (Kanye West aside) could accuse him of basing his policies on animosity towards any groups of Americans.

Educators and reformers may have opposed Bush’s No Child Left Behind education reforms, but it was clear that he genuinely sought to combat “the soft bigotry of low expectations” regarding America’s worst-performing public schools. His anti-abortion stances and opposition to marriage equality may have been driven by religion, but they weren’t fueled by misogyny or homophobia; Bush did not resort to trotting out the “some of my best friends are…” defence for his policies, but his wife, Laura, apparently helped soften his political stance on same-sex marriage out of respect for their same-sex couple friends (whom, we now know, include Ellen and her wife, actress Portia DeRossi).

In contrast, Donald Trump has presented a presidency rife with prejudices and aspersions against various groups, seemingly unguided by any larger sense of purpose or philosophy (and some would say completely unguided by morality more generally). And he is unchallenged by any Republicans of principle. They have either retired (like former Speaker of the House Paul Ryan) or have decided that having a Republican in the White House with a rabid voter base was worth the price of swallowing their own principles (see Senators Ted Cruz, Lindsey Graham and even Majority Leader Mitch McConnell).

Outside of Evangelicals, whose fervent (but possibly wavering) support for Trump has not displaced their allegiance to Bush, the Trump wing of the party sees Bush as part of the Right-wing establishment that Trump overpowered during the 2016 Republican primaries. The anti-Bush Trump supporters include white nationalists, previously fringe elements of the conservative movement who have been courted by Trump but thoroughly condemned by the Bush family.

This cohort sees the Iraq War, in particular, as the albatross around Bush’s neck. While most Republicans remain supportive of the decision to go into Iraq, the Trump wing considers it to have been a colossal waste of lives and money. They have singled out this particular military adventure as the source of America’s current open-ended commitments in the region and its “never-ending wars” — despite the fact that America has been deeply embroiled in the Middle East for decades. And while Bush was criticised at the time for going to war war really being over oil, Trump himself has recently castigated Bush for not actually seizing the oil to America’s profit; in other words, they fault Bush for not actually measuring up to the crude caricature they painted.

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On the other extreme, the current crop of Democratic challengers are pulling to the Left with ever-increasingly liberal policies that seem at times to be more about virtue signalling than practical visions for the country. (I can’t help but think that the voter desire for political sincerity, which Bush so appealed to, is why Bernie Sanders, the candidate who was socialist decades before it was cool, remains a viable force, even as younger and healthier candidates have vied for his position on the Left.)

For these resolute Bush detractors on the Left, the Iraq War was not only a mistake but a crime. Bush and his advisors (Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and others) were not straight shooters or patriots, but cynical opportunists who concocted a false story of Weapons of Mass Destruction to launch an invasion in order to gain access to Iraq’s oil reserves. “Bush lied, people died”.

Beyond lingering feelings about the Iraq War, the renewed animosity toward Bush among progressives has been fed by two trends currently occupying the Left: cancel culture and anti-wealth sentiment. The criticisms lobbed at Ellen DeGeneres by some of her Hollywood colleagues centre around this idea that President Bush should be regarded as a war criminal, and absent some kind of legal accountability, should at least be shunned from public life. Both Tim Robbins and Avengers actor Mark Ruffalo, have chided the comedian for her personal choices.

Her friendship has also been used to further the Left’s obsession with class antagonisms. For these progressives, the fact that a lesbian, liberal talk-show host could pal around with a staunch religious conservative who opposed not just same-sex marriage but many of DeGeneres’ values, well, it just goes to show that wealth trumps everything else in American politics.

Ellen and W may be divided by ideologies and beliefs, the narrative goes, but they are nonetheless joined together in a plutocracy that is out of touch if not actively hostile towards average Americans. DeGeneres herself has joked about her lifestyle in the ironically-titled standup special Relatable, but now she and George W. Bush are being cast as members of an ultra-elite who need to be put in check for the good of the country.

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It is, I believe, a mistake to think the American public is poised to demonise wealth. In any case, even though Bush is rich, he has not been one to particularly flaunt that wealth (tax cuts during his presidency notwithstanding). And furthermore, the fact that Iraq did emerge with its own elected government, no matter how dysfunctional, and with control of its own oil fields somewhat blunts the worst of their condemnations of the war as a complete sham or failure.

Many Democrats, meanwhile, are watching their party leaders enact increasingly stringent purity tests and an unwillingness for dialogue, much less forgiveness, for those who violate progressive norms or even associate with violators. These standards are, for many, impossible to keep, counterproductive to real progress, and represent the replacement of practical politics with disingenuous virtue signalling.

Essentially, in an era when Trump has taken hold of the reins of Republicanism, and his most prominent critics within the party have died, retired or capitulated, the public rehabilitation of Bush represents a nostalgia for a party that was both conservative and principled.

Compared to current insincerity, nihilism or extremism dominating politics in the United States, many Americans find themselves longing for the days of a true believer. For them, it was refreshing to see a conservative Christian and a gay Hollywood liberal daring to be seen talking to one another, a scene that increasingly feels like a comedy sketch because it is so far removed from real politics today.