This week, in his May 4, 2009 Christians United for Israel (CUFI) newsletter, John Hagee continues to invoke his brand of Christian foreign policy:
“God makes it clear that He will bring into judgment any nation, America included, that forces the division of the land of Israel. That also includes the division of Jerusalem.”
What he says should no longer matter but sadly, that is not the case. Residing at the very core of the intractability in the Israel/Palestine crisis are the circular relationships that exist between Hagee, CUFI, the Netanyahu administration and AIPAC.
It doesn’t take a trained psychologist to understand why Jews operate on a constant hair-trigger. Thousands of years of persecution will do that to a people. It is why Israelis recently voted in right winger Binyamin Netanyahu and why he, in turn, was compelled to name avowed racist Avigdor Lieberman, founder of far-right Yisrael Beitenu (Israel Our Home party, whose electoral base are the immigrants from the former Soviet Union) as Minister of Foreign Affairs and Deputy Prime Minister of Israel.
With Israelis constantly being warned that their country faces the greatest of all existential threats from Iran, and by proxy, from Palestine, it is understandable that their psychological warning systems flash code red, while they hold their collective noses and accept John Hagee’s help, all the while adhering to the standard meme, “We need all the friends we can get.” Forget Faust and his sinister bargain. He’s practically a piker next to Hagee, a man who quivers with excitement in hope of the end of the world.
It is the manipulation of fear, far too reminiscent of our own recent dance with the unjustified, pre-emptive and wholly catastrophic war with Iraq which poses the true danger to Israel. Realistically speaking, Israel is the fifth most powerful nation on earth when it comes to nuclear weaponry. Ahmadinejad might be a raving lunatic but the Iranian people have no desire to see their country disappear in a blaze of nuclear glory, right- wing ideologues excluded.
Had fear not ruled the day in Bush’s post 9/11 world, had Condi Rice not warned of mushroom clouds and Colin Powell not PowerPoint-ed his way to the “proof” that we faced multiple, non-existent bio-weapons mobile labs, we would be in a very different place today. Alas, “mistakes” were made and “stuff happens.” Why is it though that we, and Israel, have learned nothing from calamities so fresh, we have yet to find our way out?
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