At a super-secret conservative confab last week a long-time friend and ally said that after 30 years of giving lectures and speeches to conservative groups there was only one event where he could show his true colors, and it wasn’t the one we were attending.
I asked him what colors he could not show at the conference we were attending. First was his opposition to the war in Iraq, which he believes was one of the worst foreign policy blunders in the history of our country, one that has ruined our reputation all over the world and given us nothing in return. Then he said, “Israel.”
Among political conservatives there is a reflexive support for Israel, one that I share. Israel is a democracy, the only one in the Middle East, standing like a beacon in the midst of chaos and danger. And Israel defends our national interests almost alone in whole world.
We also understand that if Israel ceased to exist, the stated goal of various Islamic actors, it would not be the end of our Islamic troubles. For Islamists, the continued existence of Israel is a rallying point but not much more than that.
For Evangelicals, though, support for Israel goes far beyond geopolitics. For them there are also theological reasons; chiefly, that the state of Israel is somehow tied to the End Times. What flows from that is the tacit belief that the State of Israel can do no wrong.
It is surprising for Evangelicals to learn that the State of Israel is one of the worst when it comes to such important matters to Christians as life and family issues. They are as bad as it gets, as bad as the UK, worse than France and Germany. The State of Israel routinely tries to block pro-life Christian NGOs from getting UN accreditation. (more...)
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