By Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired
I was talking to a man a while back and in the course of the
conversation he mentioned he had visited Israel recently.
“Oh, are you Jewish?” I asked
“No I’m Christian.” He replied.
I asked him if he visited Gaza or the Occupied Territories
while he was there. He was somewhat stunned about Gaza and I don’t think he was
quite sure where it was other than it was a place run by a terrorist
group. As for the Occupied Territories
he wasn’t really interested in that either. I tried to engage him a little about
the Palestinians, the destruction of their homes, theft of their land and what
amounts to ethnic cleansing but it was clear he knew next to nothing about them
except they were out to destroy Israel and wasn’t interested in finding out more.
“As a Christian I am born again and I went there on a
pilgrimage” he told me.
I was thinking about this more after reading Glenn
Greenwald’s piece on religious fanaticism, not Muslim Fundamentalists like
the Taliban or theocratic states like Iran, Saudi Arabia or Pakistan but
religious fanaticism in the US.
Greenwald refers to a Bloomberg poll’s findings that “Almost half of all Americans want to support
Israel even if
its interests diverge from the interests of their own country.” As Jews are a tiny minority in
US society, 1.4% in Greenwald’s piece or 1.7% according to the CIA World Factbook, it’s obviously not US Jews that are the major part of the 50% of Americans
whose first loyalty lies with another country, in this case Israel. One could
only imagine the furor if the country were Iran or Libya, one could end up in
Guantanamo.
The real power behind the
fanatical support for Israel is Evangelicals like the man above. They believe
that a supernatural being gave this land to Jews and
that the Christian god will return there after the conflict that they see there
now. When this god does return, the Jews that don't convert to Christianity are
doomed or something like that, rot in hell, burn somewhere or other such nasty
punishment. This doesn't bother the Jewish Zionists too much as they don't
believe it anyway. Jews have received
their share of Christian nastiness for rejecting Jesus as the Messiah. In this instance, as inhabitants of a
European colonial settler state, they will use the Christian Zionists and
particularly the American ones for monetary, political and military support
that the US government provides. As we know, Congress is full of rich people
most of them never having earned a living through wage labor. Alongside these
are a number of wealthy right wing Christian religious fanatics, the US version
of the Taliban or Iranian Mullahs.
US Imperialism’s support of Israel has nothing to
do with a love of Jews or Democracy, just the opposite, Jewish capitalists are
the Gentile US bourgeois’ competitors. The
US ruling class’ support for Israel has to do with politics and economics. It
was the first British governor of Jerusalem that referred to the creation of a
Jewish state as “Our loyal little Ulster in the Middle East” after the
collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Western imperialism needed a foothold in the
region and the Zionists are the most reliable force for US domination and
plunder of the region’s resources, namely oil. The sheer numbers and revolutionary potential of
the Arab masses ensure the instability of the despotic regimes throughout the
Arab world as the Arab Spring showed and, in the last analysis, even the
heavily US armed Saudi royal family cannot be relied upon to defend US capitalism’s
interests.
The Bloomberg poll is quite staggering when one
thinks about it. Imagine such a huge
section of the US population openly stating this about any other country. Many
Jewish and other intellectuals and leftists were persecuted for their support
of the Russian Revolution, questioned about their loyalty Evangelicals are much more dangerous as they are
Christians and they have political representatives, in some ways it could be
said they are a major wing of one of the two leading US political parties. It’s
a disturbing thought.
This also stresses the extremely reactionary nature
of religious views. Despite talk of
cooperation and tolerance, organized religion is inherently divisive and
harmful to human progress. Every
believer accepts their god as “divine” and all others as man made. The idea that all nations were created by
humans except for Israel which was created by god is a concept that cannot be
debated in a rational way. How can a
mere mortal compete with the creator of the universe and every living thing in
it? If they believe this nonsense they believe it and that’s a psychological
problem.
Both Jews and Christians believe this mind you as
both religions believe in ancient Judeo/ Christian mythology and the tale that
Jews are the chosen people, chosen to defend the Holy Land until, for
Christians, Jesus returns. After that, Jews are sort of up the creek without
paddle, but there’s no point trying to make sense of it. Jewish Zionists as I say have different
motives than the Christian ones.
The other thing about basing one’s actions and
understanding of events on a belief in Christian or any other mythology is that
it is totally irresponsible. It frees
the individual from responsibility is what it does. It allows murder, mayhem,
racism and human misery to continue unabated; it is disgusting that someone can
go to Israel and not attempt to see the plight of Palestinians. It gives the oppressor free rein. Most
importantly, it throws a blanket over the truth, obscures the causes of events
and how the world around us works. Its great attraction is its appeal to the
selfish, individualistic personality.
I understand that a personal spiritual belief in a
supreme being can give a person the strength to act, to involve themselves in
the world around them, encourage them to understand it and the courage to fight
to change it. But that’s different. For “blind faith” and there is much of that,
it is also irresponsible in that it denies our children a future; it contributes
to the slide in to global catastrophe as capitalism destroys our environment threatening
life as we know it. It’s a disgustingly selfish way of looking at the world.
As far as the Christian Zionist view that Jews of
any nationality have the right to settle there and ethnically cleanse the area
of the indigenous Palestinians through land theft and destruction of their
farms and homes, all based on the word of some supernatural force, I am sure that argument would go down too
well here in the US if the Native Americans were applying it; and it seems to
me using their logic that the Native people would be justified.
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