This past summer, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made headlines when he falsely claimed at a Christian conference in Jerusalem that there was “no starvation in Gaza.” A less noted, but also telling, moment came after Netanyahu’s remarks, when Yossi Dagan, a leading advocate for Israeli ambitions to annex Palestinian territory, presented evangelical minister Paula White-Cain with a gift: a glass map of the occupied West Bank, etched with the locations of Christian holy sites.

“My friend,” exclaimed White-Cain, who coordinates President Donald Trump’s relationships with influential Christians. “It’s such an honor.”

His gesture was part of a pattern. During a March 2025 meeting in Washington, DC, Dagan gave White-Cain a mezuzah supposedly made from stones near the biblical altar of Joshua. “You are doing a mission from God,” Dagan told her. “You are saving the world with President Trump.”

“This land is ours, God gave it to us.”

Dagan presented a similar mezuzah to Mike Huckabee, an evangelical Christian who is US ambassador to Israel, when they toured holy sites in the West Bank.

Dagan’s courtship of White-Cain and Huckabee is part of a yearslong effort by the Israeli right to cultivate support from American evangelicals for Jewish settlers in the West Bank. The head of the Shomron Regional Council, which oversees dozens of settlements, Dagan has been aggressively lobbying the US to back the official annexation of the West Bank—a once fringe idea that is increasingly being pushed by key Israeli officials.

“He’s on a mission,” says Maya Zinshtein, who filmed Dagan lobbying US lawmakers in 2019 for her documentary ’Til Kingdom Come, which examines ties between evangelical Christians and right-wing Israelis. Zinshtein said that while she opposes Dagan’s efforts, she recognizes him as a “brilliant politician” who hammered his talking points in “meeting after meeting after meeting” in Washington.

Since Israel first occupied the West Bank during the Six-Day War in 1967, hundreds of thousands of Israeli settlers have moved to the territory—relentlessly encroaching on the land that is home to around 3 million Palestinians. Some analysts argue the territory has already been de facto annexed by Israel. But no country, including the United States, has recognized the area as part of the state of Israel. The International Court of Justice stated in July that “Israel must immediately cease all new settlement activity” and return all West Bank land and property.

For Israeli extremists, the war in Gaza has become a pretext to expand settlements and further restrict the movement of Palestinians in the West Bank—an entirely separate territory. Israeli military operations and settler violence have displaced more than 40,000 West Bank residents this year, according to the United Nations, and could result in “mass ethnic cleansing.”

In a February 2025 interview with an Israeli podcaster, Dagan explained that he had spent months advocating for the US government to rescind Biden-era sanctions on settlers, which Trump did soon after taking office. One of the settlers freed from sanctions, Yinon Levi, was arrested by Israeli authorities in July in connection with the fatal shooting of Palestinian activist Awdah Hathaleen. Levi was subsequently released from jail and has not been charged with a crime.

A self-described “student” of the ideas of militant Zionist leader Ze’ev Jabotinsky, Dagan traces his commitment to annexation back to the Oslo peace process, which he says he protested as a seventh grader in the 1990s. A decade later, when Prime Minister Ariel Sharon ordered the evacuation of some Israeli settlements in the West Bank, Dagan was among activists who barricaded themselves in one of those outposts. “I remember this injustice,” he told the Jerusalem Post in 2020. “I have dedicated my life to ensuring that this never happens again.”

Dagan has found eager allies in the American religious right. In recent years, he has arranged West Bank visits for various US officials and luminaries, complete with stops at wineries and holy sites. Such visits have fostered connections to some of Trump’s most influential evangelical advisers, including Huckabee, White-Cain, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth—Christian Zionists who link their religious faith to unyielding support for Israel.

As far back as 2016, Dagan was devoting time and resources to supporting Trump’s presidential campaigns. In 2024, he co-led a campaign called JVote, encouraging US citizens in Israel to vote for Trump.

Two weeks after Trump’s reelection, Dagan posted on Facebook that he had met with Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-N.Y.) and other lawmakers “to influence, to convince, to teach and also to pressure” for US recognition of Israeli sovereignty in the West Bank. In March 2025, he met with Massad Boulos—Tiffany Trump’s father-in-law—who serves as an adviser to Trump on the Middle East. In May, Jewish News Service reported that Israel’s Ministry for Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism was providing more than $800,000 for Dagan’s efforts to “fight attempts to delegitimize Israel’s control of Judea and Samaria”—the Israeli government’s name for the West Bank. This, one Israeli official said, made Dagan’s efforts an “official public diplomacy tool of the State of Israel.”

A US law called the Foreign Agents Registration Act—or FARA—requires most people engaged in lobbying or other influence activities on behalf of a foreign government to register with the Justice Department. Dagan has never registered under FARA.

“The lobbying and influence activities you have described do raise significant questions,” David Laufman, an attorney who previously oversaw FARA enforcement at the Department of Justice, told Mother Jones. Given Dagan’s work for an Israeli governmental entity, Laufman said the question of whether he must register likely turns on whether Dagan qualifies for an exemption for people formally accredited by the State Department as diplomatic or consular officers. But a State Department spokesperson said Dagan has not applied for diplomatic status.

### God’s “Blank Check”: Christian Zionists Are Pouring Billions of Dollars Into Israeli Extremism

Evangelicals have become Israel’s most important American allies.

Regardless, the legal details don’t appear to have slowed his lobbying campaign. He has repeatedly visited Mar-a-Lago, and he met with Huckabee at an Israel Heritage Foundation event in New York before Inauguration Day.

Much of Dagan’s work appears to be coordinated with Tony Perkins, head of the Christian-right Family Research Council. In July, Perkins reportedly helped arrange a meeting between Dagan and Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry, who agreed to support legislation mandating that his state replace references in official documents to the “West Bank” with settlers’ preferred terminology: Judea and Samaria. “The State of Louisiana stands fully with Israel on this issue—and on anything you may need,” Landry declared. Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Mike Huckabee’s daughter, has already signed such a bill, and—at Dagan’s urging—Republicans in six other states are pushing comparable measures. (Dagan and Perkins did not respond to requests for comment.)

A similar effort is underway in Washington, DC. This past January, Dagan worked with Tenney to establish the congressional Friends of Judea and Samaria Caucus, urging Trump to back annexation. Tenney has said that Dagan first proposed the idea of a congressional caucus. Around that time, Tenney and Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) introduced legislation requiring the federal government to use “Judea and Samaria.”

“No more of this ‘West Bank’ business,” Rep. Doug LaMalfa (R-Calif.) said during a Perkins-organized event where Dagan spoke to 30 GOP lawmakers in DC. “This is a part of Israel.”

“Take a look at what this means for Israel to be able to have sovereignty,” Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) added, as a TV behind him displayed red heifers—animals that figure prominently in the biblical underpinnings for much of Christian Zionism.

For many Christian Zionists, support for Israel and annexation is linked to a belief that Jewish control of the region portends the second coming of Christ—along with the fiery death of anyone who doesn’t accept him as their savior. “They really believe that Jesus is coming back,” said journalist Sarah Posner, who has written extensively about American evangelicals. “They also believe that the Bible commands everyone, but especially Americans, to support Israel. And that means supporting the Israeli right.”

Dagan appears untroubled by the theological implications of evangelical fervor for annexation. He often tells Christian Zionists that settlers are fulfilling biblical prophecy about the restoration of the Holy Land. “God brings us, exactly like the prophecies told, to build,” Dagan said recently on Perkins’ podcast. “Right,” Perkins interjected. “It’s happening.”

Dagan sometimes cites a disputed interpretation of Genesis 12:3—that those who support Israel will be blessed and those who oppose Israel will be cursed. In July, Dagan laid his hand on Rep. Jodey Arrington’s (R-Texas) head and offered a blessing of his own. “The God that blessed Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and Joseph…He will bless you,” Dagan said. “Because you are really a true friend of [the] Nation of Israel…and especially the pioneers of Judea and Samaria, and help us with sovereignty of Judea and Samaria.”

Dagan has met numerous times with Larry Huch, a prominent Texas-based evangelical pastor who works directly with an Israeli state fundraising entity—Keren Hayesod, or the Foundation Fund—and frequently promotes Israeli interests to his millions of TV viewers. In February, Huch said Gaza “has to be leveled.” In April, he visited the occupied territories, telling Dagan and other settlers that he’d recently pressed Trump to recognize Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank.

In May, Huch published footage that included a conversation he had with Dagan at an overlook in Peduel in the West Bank. Elsewhere in that video, Huch tells viewers that he works with the Israel Allies Foundation to “go into governments around the world and teach them politically, my job is spiritually, why to stand with Israel.” According to Huch: “One of the biggest selling points we have when we’re talking to government officials is how many of you as Christians all over the world are partnering with us, partnering with Israel…[to] bring Jewish people—fulfilling Bible prophecy—back to the nation of Israel.”

Zinshtein, the filmmaker, said that despite differences over scripture, right-wing Israelis like Dagan and evangelical leaders in America “are both gaining something from this bond, either political or spiritual.”

“It’s like marriage [in which] you’re not talking about your problems,” she said. “It can go on forever.”

And for Israelis, maintaining those ties to “a large, cohesive block of Americans who are Christian Zionists” helps ensure that the president will not impede the Netanyahu government’s actions in Gaza or the West Bank, Posner said.

This month, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich introduced a new plan to seize most of the West Bank. The settlers are once again relying on American evangelical support to help make it a reality.

“When I sit with members of Congress, senators, with ministers,” Dagan said in February, “I tell them first of all the truth—this land is ours, God gave it to us, according to our faith and also according to your faith, if you are Christian. It is written in the Bible.”

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