Evangelical Zionism in Jerusalem

“The Embassy”— shorthand for the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem in Evangelical parlance— is situated on Rachel Imeinu Street in what is known as the German Colony: a lush and slowerpaced neighborhood in the western part of the city, away from Jerusalem’s immediate center. It is a pleasant part of town, sprinkled with small boutiques, Italian cafés, bars, and some residencies of ambassadors and diplomats. Previously the area also housed several of the national embassies that have been relocated to Tel Aviv as a result of the passing of the Jerusalem Law and the subsequent international protests against it in 1980. The German Colony has an interesting history. More than hundred years ago, it was established by a group of Pietist settlers called “the Templers” which was led by the German theologian and politician, Christoph Hoffman. Like several other Christian groups that set up in Palestine during the course of the nineteenth and earlytwentieth centuries the Templers were inspired by millennial ideas. In this particular case, that spiritual cooperation, cultivation of the land, and rebuilding the temple would mark the beginning of the kingdom of God and the millennial era. In the 1940s the seven colonies that the Templers had established in the second half of the twentieth century, including the one in Jerusalem, were dismantled by the British, and any remaining Templers were deported to Austria and Australia, never to return (Kroyanker 2008). In what looks like a happy coincidence, the sidestreets of the German Colony today are named for famous Gentile supporters of Zionism such as former British Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, the French Nobel Prize winner, Emile Zola, and the South African politician, Jan Smuts. The street where the icej is located, however, has a more biblical ring to it: “Rachel, our mother”. The large and beautiful mansion that houses the Embassy also has a fascinating history; built in the middle of the mandate period by the Christian Arab contractor Ibrahim Haki, it hosted several embassies and consulates before the icej took up residence there in 1997. Previously the icej had rented several other buildings, among them the house on Brenner Street which postcolonial theorist Edward Said claimed to have been his childhood home before his family was evicted as part of the 1948 struggles: a story which has frequently been picked up in literature about the icej. In a 1992 article, and a later bbc documentary, Said showed his audience the building, and described how it was now occupied by a “rightwing