Politics professor Elizabeth Oldmixon explained in an interview with Vox the strange thread of Christianity that fosters an apocalyptic vision the inspires much of the right-wing support for Israel.

“These are the folks who believe that there will be a millennium in the future, a golden age, where Christ reigns on Earth, [and] they believe that before Christ will return, there will be a tribulation where Christ defeats evil,” she said. “There will be natural disasters and wars, and perhaps an Antichrist, as the book of Revelations notes. Then at the end of that period, the people of the Mosaic covenant, including the Jews, will convert. Then after their conversion, the great millennium starts.”

She continued: “You have this group of people looking around for signs of the end time, and in the 20th century when Israel was founded, this was seen as a major sign. This was electrifying for that community because the gathering of all the Jews in exile to the Holy Land is a prerequisite for all of these events unfolding. So for the subset of evangelicals in the 20th century, support for Israel became a really, really important political position.”

And as evangelical Christianity grew into a central part of the GOP’s coalition, pro-Israel policies became cemented in the party’s ideology.

The alliance between the evangelicals and pro-Israeli Jews, though, is a peculiar partnership. The Christians enter into the bargain with the assumption that, when they reach their goal of the apocalypse, any Jews will either become Christians or go to hell. But their pro-Israel allies don’t seem to mind this much, perhaps because they don’t believe this version of the apocalypse will ever actually come to be — and as long as it is just a fantasy, their interests and those of evangelicals remain aligned.