Israel's US-American Friends

I went to the link Glenn Greenwald provided for Matthew Yglesias's commentary on the twisted nature of Pastor John Hagee's "support" for Israel.

In the comments section, somebody referred to the Book of Revelations (which describes a last battle or "Armageddon" that will usher in the Second Coming) as a "Jewish Book." It is not. It is a loony-tunes, wing-nut book. There are challenges to its even being included in the New Testament, and, people who fell asleep in religion class can tell you, as could probably anybody else who thought about it for a second, the New Testament is NOT a Jewish Book.

Somebody else said that Israeli's can accept real, material support from loopy Americans who believe crazy things. The money and gun will be real enough. That the Second Coming of the Christian Fundamentalists will never occur will be for the Fundies to whine about. In other words, it's smart for Israel (and fans of Israel like Senator Joe Lieberman) to champion the support of these deluded saps.

I'm not so sure. Is it really in Israel's interests to have the United States political class (Israel's pay-master after all) to be dedicated to advancing the leadership of the most chauvinist, militaristic, inhuman, megalomaniacal expansionists over Israel? Leaders who will conform to the fundies' desire to provoke a full-out war with the Arabs? Leaders who will continue to shame Israel and betray the reasons for its origin by indulging in behaviour similar to much of what they suffered in Europe over the centuries?

The United States of America might well go bankrupt. Even now, its ability to project power is crumbling. European foreign policy is not based on the nutbar Book of Revelations. Europe is far more dependent on Arab oil and therefore Arab goodwill than is the USA. And China and Russia have no reason to ally themselves with an attack-dog in the area either.