Phil > many Christians support this administration. Yes, they are supportive of Zionism, believing it to be God's will and destiny.
The separation of Church and State is embodied in the US Constitution and it is therefore "unconstitutional" for any US administration to bring religious teachings into its decision-making.
adl.org
However, Zionism gets around this because it is not a religion, merely the political aspiration of certain Jews for a national home. Indeed, Zionism has virtually become the de facto foreign policy of the US because its concept is supported, as you say, by many Christians as well.
The truth is that Zionism, certainly as it is today, is not part of the Jewish religion for the simple reason that orthodox Jewish texts maintain that the State of Israel can only be restored after the return of the Messiah (Messia of the Jews, that is, and not Jesus, Mahomed or anyone else) and the Messiah has not returned. Antisemitism, Holocaust, whatever, are not "proper" reasons for the establishment of the State of Israel, however cogent they may be.
jewsagainstzionism.com
Thus, the Jewish religion has been "modified", updated, call it what you will, to embody the idea that the present State of Israel is, indeed, not only God's wish, but it is also God's wish that all the land in Israel, and also what we understand as Palestine, is His gift to the Jews (Judea and Sumeria). I understand this appears nowhere in traditional Jewish texts. The implications are obvious -- the State of Israel can extend to wherever anyone wants it to be --- from Mesopotamia to the Nile, if necessary.
Apparently, however, because it agrees with Revelations and therefore authenticates Biblical teachings, Christian "fundamentalists" are attracted to this "updated" version of the Jewish religion and it would seem that Zionism is, today, as much part of a certain "genre" of Christianity as it is Jewish.
transmillennial.com
Practically, however, the problem in the US administration is not the religious belief of its various members but the double allegiance which many of the neocons (who are mainly Jewish) have both to the US and to Israel and, indeed, because of this, and with very good reason, Israel is often seen to be determining US policy, especially in the Mid East.
fpp.co.uk
>>Dual loyalties. The issue we are dealing with in the Bush administration is dual loyalties -- the double allegiance of those myriad officials at high and middle levels who cannot distinguish U.S. interests from Israeli interests, who baldly promote the supposed identity of interests between the United States and Israel, who spent their early careers giving policy advice to right-wing Israeli governments and now give the identical advice to a right-wing U.S. government, and who, one suspects, are so wrapped up in their concern for the fate of Israel that they honestly do not know whether their own passion about advancing the U.S. imperium is motivated primarily by America-first patriotism or is governed first and foremost by a desire to secure Israel's safety and predominance in the Middle East through the advancement of the U.S. imperium.<<
Indeed, there are many who believe that the present US incursion into Iraq has been mediated mainly by the concern of the neocons to protect/advance Israel's "interests" in the region. |
