Category Archives: Christian Right

Israel’s Folly

Christian Right, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Terrorism

The [Pat] Robertson episode demonstrates that Israel doesn’t respond appropriately to its friends or to its enemies. Against the backdrop of Iranian incitement to genocide, with the hard-Left joining that seething cesspool of a Palestinian Street to rejoice in Sharon’s fate; at the dawn of the Age of Hamas and insecure borders, and in the context of a world that has delegitimized the Jewish State and defined it in much the same terms as Ahmadinejad has (‘criminal Zionist entity, colonial occupier’)—Israel still doesn’t know Shiite from Shinola.

The quote is from Israel’s Folly, my new column for this week. As always, comments are welcome.

Israel's Folly

Christian Right, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Terrorism

The [Pat] Robertson episode demonstrates that Israel doesn’t respond appropriately to its friends or to its enemies. Against the backdrop of Iranian incitement to genocide, with the hard-Left joining that seething cesspool of a Palestinian Street to rejoice in Sharon’s fate; at the dawn of the Age of Hamas and insecure borders, and in the context of a world that has delegitimized the Jewish State and defined it in much the same terms as Ahmadinejad has (‘criminal Zionist entity, colonial occupier’)—Israel still doesn’t know Shiite from Shinola.

The quote is from Israel’s Folly, my new column for this week. As always, comments are welcome.

The Sovereignty of Strangers

America, Christian Right, Islam, Israel

I can’t recall who wrote this or where. All I know is that some libertarian had asserted that the evangelical leader Pat Robertson was a traitor for advising Israel against appeasing the United States of America.
Come again?
Patriots for a sane American foreign policy—myself included—ought to encourage all America’s friends to push back and do what’s in their national interest, not ours.
More so than most, libertarians know the U.S. often acts unjustly. Why then would we want our friends to prostrate themselves before us? Those of us who want the U.S. to stay solvent—and out of the affairs of others—recognize that sovereign nation-states, who resist, not enable, our imperial impulses, are the best stopgaps against hegemonic overreach.
Such libertarians generally concede the U.S. should not override the sovereignty of other nations. That some make an exception for Israel, illustrates how irrational hatred distorts principles and their consistent application.

Lay Off Pat Robertson

Christian Right, Israel

Pat Robertson, “a life long supporter of Israel,” is being attacked for saying that God “has enmity against those who divide [His] land,’ suggesting He does not look kindly on Sharon. But as Ariel Sharon lies gravely ill , felled by a massive stroke, the seething cesspool known as the Palestinian Street has been rejoicing. Smiling children hold up placards with the words, “Sharon Die.” (Look at them; aren’t they precious?)

The Palestinians’ official leadership has been slightly more somber; the Arab world, after all, is and has always been more radical and militant than its leaders. As Arab-American scholar Fouad Ajami once noted, “It is a peculiarity of the Arab political order that many of the rulers and the dynasties are more moderate than the populace.” Hamas, the Palestinians’ unofficial representative—it is expected to win the upcoming democratic parliamentary elections—has been leading these terrifying tykes in celebration.

Every bit as bent and brutal are the offerings on assorted hard-Left websites. The Counterpunch cranks, for example, set a similar tone with articles entitled: “Stroke of Luck? Political Hemorrhage in Israel.” Written by an Arab, the piece was no match in its pixelated glee for “Sharon Meets His Maker,” by an expatriate Israeli.

Far and away the most hateful anti-Israel-cum-anti-Semitic tracts are penned by Jews. For instance, the revisionist, pseudo-scholarly campaign to delegitimize Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state is the handiwork of Jews: “the New Historians.”

I have no doubt that were he alive today, Karl Marx would be a “New Historian.” Marx was one of the most notorious anti-Jewish thinkers. “Money is the jealous God of Israel, besides which no god may exist,” he wrote. In A History of the Jews, Paul Johnson presents an overview of Marx’s prolific anti-Semitism. Johnson has concluded that the archetype Jew in Marx’s thinking was replaced by the archetype capitalist.

Another marginal expatriate Israeli accused Bibi Netanyahu of dancing on Sharon’s grave. No links or quotes were offered in support of this inflammatory assertion. The commentator simply superimposed his twisted tantrum on innocent position statements made by the Netanyahu camp. The golem in question garnished his anti-Sharon prolixity with left-liberal root-causes rot: he contends a lone Jew—Rabin’s murderer—is to blame for the anarcho-terrorist society under construction, adjacent to Israel.

Sharon is old, overweight, and overburdened. I happen to think those realities caught up with him! Robertson disagrees. Like them or not, his theological beliefs include the idea that one will reap God’s wrath if one defies His wishes, as Robertson construes them. Big deal! Those who’ve been protesting Robertson with the greatest indignity are also the squawkers who were mum when Iran’s Majnun-in-Chief vowed to annihilate Israel. Let a Muslim cleric with a bucket of lopped off clitorises in the shed (I didn’t say that; Kathy Griffin did) make some or other ridiculous statement and it’s face to Mecca and keister up in the air for these bootlickers.

Robertson may be tactless, but his attackers are hypocrites. If they care so much about Sharon, let them turn the arrows in their quiver on the Palestinian Street, or on the hard-Left, or on other chronic loathers of Israel—and of civilization and liberty.