Anadolu sent multiple requests for comment to the Pentagon, but none received responses till the time of publication.
Religious overtones have run high in the Israeli-US attack. A day into the offensive, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu referenced a Torah command comparing the Iranian regime to an ancient biblical foe — one that has also been invoked in reference to Palestinians.
“We read in this week’s Torah portion, ‘Remember what Amalek did to you.’ We remember—and we act,” he said during a visit to a site struck by an Iranian missile.
The Amalekites are described in the Hebrew Bible as a persistent adversary of the Israelites and are associated with a Torah commandment to erase their memory.
Rising religious rhetoric: ‘An immediate threat’
Mikey Weinstein, a former Air Force officer and legal counsel with the Ronald Reagan White House, now serves as the president of the MRFF. He said Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has taken a jackhammer to long-standing barriers between church and state at the Pentagon since he assumed office last year.
“MAGA have destroyed this. Their approved solution is to be straight, white, Christian and male. And that’s bad enough when you find Christian nationalism in elementary schools, middle schools, high schools, colleges, right? Legislatures, the cops, the firefighters, the sewage workers,” said Weinstein.
“But when you find it where all the nuclear weapons are, and laser-guided weapons and the drones, it is an absolute threat, an immediate threat, not a shift, but an immediate threat to the national security of our country and the world,” he added.
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Part of Hegseth’s injection of religion into the Pentagon has been regular monthly prayer gatherings that have recently featured Doug Wilson, a far-right evangelical Christian nationalist who has defended slavery, called for a reversal in women’s rights, and proposed the US becoming a theocracy.
“What Hegseth has done has been to rip asunder the very essence of our US military, destroying what our US Supreme Court has determined to be the compelling governmental interest when it comes to the First Amendment in our military, which is to maximise its lethality, and you do that by maximising good order, morale, discipline, unit cohesion, health and safety of the troops and mission accomplishment,” said Weinstein.
Injecting Christian nationalism into a multi-racial and multi-religious military is at stark odds with its long-standing underpinnings.
That overhaul, he added, has contributed to the dramatic spike in complaints the foundation has received following Trump’s decision to begin war with Iran.
“It’s exploding,” Weinstein said of the volume of outreach to his office. “Now that the ice has broken, we’re being flooded.”