The Christian/Jew debate

So we ended last week with a discussion, peripherially associated with Ann Coulter's column, about whether the American conservatives' support of the "state" of Israel is based on biblical self-centeredness, a dislike/distrust of Muslims, actual reverence toward the Jews, or some of each. Obstinate reader and TRR fav, capt. america, directed me to a couple of articles, decidedly left though they were, regarding this very topic. The gist of them was basically that American Christians' support for Jews was analagous to supporting your favorite character in your favorite story. To Christians in America, Jews are the good guys in their favorite story....the story of the second coming of Jesus. I can't say that's wrong. I think it's probably more right than any of the other reasons we Christians claim.

That being said, so what? What difference does it make to the Jews in Israel why we conservatives support their existance as a State, as long as the aid money keeps flowing and the advanced military hardware is made available, but not to the Arabs? I don't seriously think they care as long as they know we will help them defend against Arab aggression.

Now to the more touchy point of Zionist expansion in the region of the West Bank, Gaza, Golan Heights, and Jerusalem. The Arabs who today call themselves "Palestinians" did not "own" the land on which Israel now sits. Jews inhabited and governed that land, historically known as Judea for the last 3,300 years or so, 2000 years before the rise of Islam. Around 2000 years ago, the Romans conquered Jerusalem resulting in the Diaspora in which the Jews were expelled from Judea and fled to various other countries. More recently, say the past 200 years or so, the Jews and Arabs lived in Judea peacefully prior to the official establishment of the Israeli state on Nov 29, 1947. Only then did the other Arab states get upset. All the Arabs who fled prior to the 1948 war became the refugees that now call themselves "Palestinians", thought they are indistinguishable from other Arabs in terms of language, culture, religion, etc.

I know what the argument will be before you make it so let me address it to save us all some time.

"But Ed" you whine, "America, and numerous other countries, were invented too, just like Palestine. If the Palestinians have to give their land back to Israel, shouldn't the U.S. give it's land back to the Indians and Mexicans from whom it was seized? Just because there is no language or culture called Palestinian, does that mean that those people who lived on the land for the last 1300 years, calling themselves Palestinians and speaking Arabic, do not qualify as a nationality? By that logic, Americans don't qualify as a nationality because we don't speak "American", we speak English as in England."

Weak points all. Look, nobody is trying to eradicate completely Americans from the map(except the radical Muslims and we're taking care of that). North America was a vast wilderness when we got here. There was no Indian sovereign nation, with a government, trade partners, diplomatic relations etc. And the U.S. didn't kick the Mexicans out of Mexico, we won some land fair and square in a war. By the way, Israel is the only nation that has ever voluntarily given land back that it won in a war. No Arab nation ever did that. The point is that Israel was a nation over 3000 years ago. The Diaspora happened, followed by hundreds of years of nomadic existence, and finally the holocaust. But for the holocaust, the establishment of Israel might not have happened still. The Jews are unique in their history and attempts to draw analagies with other countries will fail.

Quote from Charles Krauthammer - The Weekly Standard, May 11, 1998

"Israel is the very embodiment of Jewish continuity: It is the only nation on earth that inhabits the same land, bears the same name, speaks the same language, and worships the same God that it did 3,000 years ago. You dig the soil and you find pottery from Davidic times, coins from Bar Kokhba, and 2,000-year-old scrolls written in a script remarkably like the one that today advertises ice cream at the corner candy store."

I won't deny that biblical relevance played a significant role in Israel's return to her original land, clearly it did. It plays a strong role in our support, financial and military, of her today.

Think about this, if the Arabs were to lay down their arms, there would be no more violence in the middle east. If Israel laid down her weapons, Israel would cease to exist the next day. That's the difference between Israel and any other nation with which you can try to draw similarities.