Mountain Minyan המנין בהרים

I once asked a Rabbi why some Jews tolerate cooperation regarding Israel from Right-Wing evangelicals who think we’re all going to hell—the exact kind of thinking that let’s you draw a straight line from the Roman Emperors passing anti-Jewish laws, through the Inquisition straight to the Holocaust.

His answer to me was (I can’t remember verbatim): if you’re in a corner with everyone around you holding a knife to your neck, you’ll take help from anywhere. He also added that the Jewish people were very smart and knew what they were dealing with.

Personally, I don’t think the situation is that desperate. I think U.S. support for Israel’s security is unwavering, even if our government disagrees from time to time with some of their actions.

While I respectfully disagree with the Rabbi, I understand his argument and I don’t dismiss it. Personally, I am strongly Pro-Israel, and have been for my entire life, and I am skeptical of a Palestinian state because I cannot see what their economy will be based on, so I’m not defending what happened in Sweden…

…but, I was surprised to receive a “mass e-mail” from a local synagogue with a link to a Pat Robertson “news” segment on an incident in Sweden, where an event had to be shut down due to security concerns over the Israeli tennis team visiting. Obviously not all Jews are keyed in to what they are dealing with. Robertson begins the segment by taking potshots as Sweden, of course. That’s what the whole segment is really about: not about standing up for the Israelis, but taking shots at a country that he sees as a collection of infidels and socialists. How can that not be obvious to anyone who knows what Robertson is and what he’s about?

I don’t deny that there have been some disturbing anti-Israel actions going on lately in Europe, but to judge Sweden—a country that helped save Jews from the Nazis—on the basis of a few kooky protesters is to engage in the same kind of xenophobic typecasting that Israel’s enemies do towards Israel. I have been to Sweden. I have (distant) relatives who live in Sweden and close relatives who are Swedish. They are just like anyone else: they have differing views on everything. They are not a monolith. The right wing is using our unfamiliarity with Europe to convince us that they all hate Israel. Odd then that the EU recently backed Israel’s play on Palestine declaring statehood, and a Norwegian university board voted unanimously against an Israel boycott, which are not uncommon in the United States! (Even among some Christian denominations, who are supposedly our big backers here.) Unless you believe in antisemitism’s own myths of secret Jewish power, these actions must represent a non-unanimity of opinion (at least) in those countries.

In fact, I find this especially hard to swallow because this kind of thing goes on in the United States all the time. Have you been to a college campus *anytime* anything to do with Israel comes up? My undergrad college, which began known as a school for Jewish girls, was by my time, was ultra-left wing on everything yet was sharply divided on this issue. I could never understand how liberals could support the fundamentalism of the Islamists. I also cannot understand how Jews can support Christian fundemantalists—these people think we killed their god, you know?! They think we are all going to hell. They think we have tails and horns.

I wouldn’t want to be an Israeli coming to speak at a U.S. college, yet the U.S. is easily Israel’s strongest ally. So, we’re passing around cheap shots at Sweden because something that just as easily could have happened in any number of places happened there. This is exactly the kind of thinking, as I mentioned, that people use to attack Israel in the US. The US is responsible for the slaughter of hundreds of times more innocents than the Israelis, and we do it in countries across oceans. Yet many Americans smugly sit in judgment of the situation in Israel’s backyard. That’s just as ignorant and xenophobic as Robertson’s attack on Sweden.

I’m happy to read news about antisemitism, but the last thing I expect is Pat Robertson in my inbox being sent by my synagogue.

Update: THIS is what I’m talking about. Sarah Palin: “More and more Jewish people will be flocking to Israel in the days and weeks and months ahead…” Why? Because, of course, she thinks we all go there to die right before the end of the world. Read the quote in this article from a guy at Liberty University, you know, the bastion of those evangelicals who we need to defend Israel…

This is a condition for the second regathering, the regathering in belief, when the Jewish nation is converted. Then there will be the battle of Armageddon, because remember, Satan wants to wipe out the Jews to prevent the Second Coming, but Jesus comes to rescue the beleaguered Jews. We believe that the Jews are going to be converted so that they can call on Jesus to rescue them from Satan.

Podhoretz got the question bass ackward. It’s not why are so many Jews liberals, it’s why are any Jews associated with the Religious Right and their enablers?

…and of course, I think it goes without saying that viral e-mails like that originate inside the evangelical institutions, who, along with Neoconservatives, are trying to wedge Jewish voters against Democrats by bamboozling them into believing that Barack Hussein Obama is going to sell out Israel. Why not try it? This kind of wedge politics has worked very well getting lower income Christians to vote for policies that hurt them over single issues like abortion or gay marriage. Too bad for them 78% of Jews aren’t buying it.

Update 2: Here’s an article on Pat Robertson slandering Jewish Sabbath services. Here’s info on his book repeating the antisemitic line about Jewish conspiracies. Here’s an article also on the conspiracy theories but also about how Robertson targets Jews for conversion.