The creed Pete Hegseth wears is Christian holy war over Jerusalem. Jews were among its first victims. His support for Israel sits inside that theology.

“Deus Vult” is a white supremacist whistle tattooed on his bicep and stamped on the Bible he swore his oath on. He explained the phrase himself in his 2020 book American Crusade, where he calls it

the rallying cry of Christian knights as they marched to Jerusalem

It gets the last words of the book. He says he is proud to belong to the church network that Doug Wilson founded. Doug Wilson says giving women the vote was a bad idea, and his churches teach wives to submit to their husbands. Hegseth shared a video of the network’s pastors arguing that women should not have the right to vote.

Hold that thought, because it’s especially important for this story.

The crusade’s first mass killing was in the area today known as Germany. In May 1096, on the road east, crusader bands targeted the Jewish communities of Speyer, Worms and Mainz for total destruction. Solomon bar Samson’s chronicle describes Count Emicho’s men entering Mainz on May 27 and killing the Jews who had taken shelter in the archbishop’s palace. Emicho’s bands were destroyed in Hungary. The armies that followed took Jerusalem three years later and killed its Jews as well. That crusade is what Hegseth is tattooed with. The first people it killed were Jews.

Christians also created Zionism as a means of calling Jews outsiders and forcing them to leave (remigration). Lord Shaftesbury campaigned in 1840 for the powers of Europe to push the Jews to Palestine, and Foreign Secretary Palmerston listened. William Blackstone, a Chicago evangelist, petitioned President Harrison in 1891 with the question, “Why not give Palestine back to them again?” Theodor Herzl published The Jewish State five years after that. Jewish writers such as Moses Hess and Leon Pinsker made their own case for a return in those decades. Or course it was the Christians who reached government authority on this first. Blackstone read Jewish settlement in Palestine as a sign that the end times were near. For these men the return of the Jews was a step in their own Christian prophecy, where the Jews were the disposable means.

I have written here before about how Christians built Zionism and pushed Jews into it. Hegseth continues that tradition. In Jerusalem in 2018 he told an Arutz Sheva conference that rebuilding the Temple on the Temple Mount was a “miracle” that could happen. A miracle of antisemitism. A year later he went up to the Mount with the international director of the Temple Institute. These views are his own, and he published them loud and proud years before he was confirmed to head the Pentagon.

Israel’s government clearly has a use for this. Netanyahu told 60 Minutes that he wants American financial support drawn down to zero, and he described the replacement to a congressman as “my plan.” As usual with him, it’s a big bag of misdirection and corruption.

The plan moves the relationship out of State Department aid, which Congress votes on every year, and into Pentagon procurement. So the “zero” of the plan is in terms of accountability, not spend. NPR reports that AIPAC supports the arrangement, while experts expect less congressional oversight. Trump announced on November 3 that the $4 billion a year in aid is “stopping” at the end of 2026, meaning it loses proper visibility.

The bill text directs the Secretary of Defense to set up a joint defense technology initiative “with the concurrence of the Minister of Defense of Israel.” The House passed it in July as Section 219 of the defense bill, and the Senate bill carries it as Section 1217. The Secretary who would run this Israeli integration into the Pentagon is … wait for it … Hegseth. He told Israeli Defense Minister Katz in March, “Keep going to the end, we are with you.”

I wrote back then about his $200 billion war supplemental. Netanyahu’s plan looks like it’s about to put Israel’s funding under a crusader, a true believer in his own holy war.

Now, to the point of all this. On November 10 the House voted 211 to 204 to send Thomas Massie’s eight articles of impeachment to committee, which ends them for this Congress. Four of the eight concern the war on Iran that the United States launched with Israel. I had already posted the case for trying Hegseth in No Quarter.

Against Massie is AIPAC’s super PAC, which spent $3.58 million against him this cycle. Republican Don Bacon explained his vote by describing Massie as “anti-Iran, anti-Ukraine, anti-Israel.” Bacon said in the same breath that he is no fan of the secretary. He voted to fan Hegseth, while saying he wasn’t a fan, just to oppose Massie.

The part that seems to really matter, more than Republicans talking nonsense, is that eleven Democrats missed the vote, and their votes would have defeated the motion. Several said traffic held them on the way back from a reception hosted by Elect Democratic Women.

Remember when I said hold that thought? Women. In government. Something Hegseth very clearly opposes, along with the founder of his church network, who calls women’s suffrage a bad idea.

That women group’s super PAC also took $2.4 million from AIPAC’s super PAC, close to a third of what it raised. Eight of the eleven Democrats have given their reasons for leaving Hegseth, from traffic to a medical procedure. The missing three of Haley Stevens, Julia Brownley and Frederica Wilson have remained silent. Their silence could matter because AIPAC’s super PAC put more than $30 million behind Stevens in her Senate primary.

Sean Casten, an Illinois Democrat, put it down to lateness:

You’ve got to be on time for votes. No excuses.

He blamed Republicans for the outcome and said the House has yet to build the political case. That is the complicated explanation. It requires professional politicians to arrive late on the evening that their votes decided the result. And we’re not talking about just any old vote here. Trump and JD Vance both blamed the Iran War for the Republican losses in the midterms. Democrats failing to make the Hegseth vote are going to deserve harsh scrutiny for exactly the reasons we’re discussing here.

The simple explanation for the failure to vote starts with the reception called Elect Democratic Women. It allegedly was for new members on the evening of the vote, an obvious conflict. Katherine Clark, the Democratic whip, is a founder of the group, and she voted against the motion. Julia Brownley sits on its executive board and Melanie Stansbury on its board of directors, and both missed the vote. These are experienced members who know when the House votes. An empty seat on a motion that passed by seven counted the same as a yes. A group whose political arm takes AIPAC money held a reception that kept members of Congress from an impeachment vote, and that is corruption at work whatever each member intended.

Democratic women in a reception that interrupted their vote against one of the most openly mysoginistic leaders in history.

The filings show where the AIPAC money went this year. It went against the congressman who wrote the articles and into the group that hosted the reception. AIPAC supports the funding plan and Netanyahu calls it his own. Hegseth kept the job that would administer it.

The Christians who first lobbied for Zionism treated Jews as instruments of their own prophecy. Netanyahu’s plan hands Israel’s funding to a crusader’s office. Each side has reason to believe it is using the other.

But the real story here is the Elect Democratic Women reception. Up to five of the missing votes trace to the traffic members blamed on the way back from it, three more remain unexplained, and seven would have beaten the motion.