A foreign policy test for the Christian Right

[Note: Editorial technicalities resulted in this post being inadvertently pulled; this is the restored version.]

This is a development that will provide another test of what the Christian Right's "support of Israel" really means: Israelis Grow Troubled by Bush Priorities by Jim Lobe Inter Press Service.

The Christian Right for the last couple of decades has made a point of presenting itself as "pro-Israel". What that has often translated into in practice for groups like the Christian Coalition that actively lobby Congress and the President over policies was support for the most hardline stances of the rightwing Likud Party in Israel, including significant private financial contributions to the settler movement in the occupied territories, who are essentially the vanguard of the hardliners.

Even though the Christian Right position has been based on/justified by a theological position which claims that Biblical prophecy predicts that the Second Coming of Christ will be preceded by the mass killing of most of the Jews on earth with the remaining Jews converting to Christianity, their claim to being "pro-Israel" helped them in disclaiming anti-Semitism. (That particular position, promoted by Pat Robertson among others, is sometimes called "Christian Zionism".)

But in the past, moves toward a peace settlement by Israeli governments were greeted with deep skepticism by the "pro-Israel" Christian Right. Robertson's response to the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin by a Jewish fanatic gives an idea of the twists his "pro-Israel" outlook can take:

Reflecting on the Rabin assassination ... , Robertson said: "I believe that anyone who injures God's land — God's holy land — and blocks the flow of prophecy in that land is in great danger. And the Lord warned me years and years ago, 'You're coming into Israel, the land of the Bible. You don't make mistakes here because the prophecies will stand.' And however much God may love me, He'd take me out of the way...to keep me from interfering with prophecy." (from Pat Robertson's postmodern Armageddon [1998] by Edmund D. Cohen, The Public Eye Web site)

Rabin, he was suggesting, had been punished by God for trying to negotiate a permanent peace agreement with the Palestinians.

Lobe describes how many Israeli policymakers have become leery of further attempts by the Bush administration to liberate countries in their neighborhood and bestoy the blessings on them that Iraq has received:

While the administration of President George W. Bush favours, or is at least indifferent to, the collapse of the Baathist regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad, the Israelis reportedly made it very clear in high-level talks here late last month that they do not see the alternatives to the young leader as particularly attractive.

At the same time, while Washington appears relatively content with Europe and Russia taking the lead in diplomatic efforts to persuade Iran to curb its nuclear programme well short of any weapons capacity, Israel is growing concerned that Washington's threats to push for international sanctions or even attack suspected nuclear targets in Iran are becoming less and less credible.

The government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, whose new party is expected to emerge as the strongest in elections next year, is also increasingly worried about Washington's pro-democracy drive for the region. In its view, the U.S. campaign risks empowering Islamist groups that are ideologically even more hostile to Israel than the authoritarian regimes they are challenging.

In that respect, the strong showing by the candidates affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood in recent parliamentary elections in Egypt, the Arab state with which Israel first established peace, is considered particularly ominous. (my emphasis)

The fact that many Israeli policymakers may worry about the credibility of US threats against Iran doesn't mean that Ariel Sharon has stopped making his own. (See my post Is it really in America's interest for this to happen? 12/12/05) But this is one of the consequences of Bush's War in Iraq. The Iranians can certainly see that the US doesn't have the capacity to invade and occupy them. Had Bush been able to accept success in getting the UN inspectors back into Iraq, and had let them verify that the WMDs were no longer there, US pressure on Iran now would be far more credible.

Lobe also observes that this development is contrary to any simplistic interpretation of the role Israel plays in the American neoconservatives' view of the world. What American neocons and their Christian Right fellow zealots think is good for Israel is not always the same as what most Israelis think is good for Israel. American Jews in general are far more favorable to a peaceful settlement with the Palestinians than the neocons or the Christian Right. Lobe writes:

The notion that Sharon is unhappy with the direction of U.S. policy in the region naturally challenges the view that Israel exercises a dominant - if not decisive -- influence over Washington's Middle East policy, particularly since the rise within the Bush administration after the September 2001 attacks of neo-conservatives for whom Israel's security is considered a core principle.

But neo-conservatives have generally held their own views about how that security can be best ensured - usually in ways that are much closer to the right-wing Likud Party, whose ranks Sharon has just deserted, than to an Israeli government whose policies they consider too dovish. Thus, while they cheered Sharon for his harsh crackdown against the second Palestinian intifada, many neo-conservatives broke with him over his disengagement from Gaza.

In spite of their gradual decline in influence in the Bush administration since the Iraq invasion, neo-conservatives have been lobbying hard for the past two years for a policy of "regime change" in Syria. If necessary, this would include limited military strikes designed to humiliate Assad and punish him for his alleged failure to dismantle operations by the Iraqi insurgency and "foreign fighters" in Syria. They have been backed by the same hard-liners who championed the Iraq invasion, notably Vice President Dick Cheney and some senior Pentagon officials.

In the past year, neo-conservatives have also argued that overthrowing the Baathist regime in Syria would add momentum to U.S. efforts to spread democracy in the region, particularly in the wake of Damascus' withdrawal of its military and intelligence forces from Lebanon after the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in February.

If Israeli policy tilts against the policies of the Bush Administration in the ways that Lobe discusses, it will be fascinating to see how our "pro-Israel" Christian Right enthusiasts will react. Will they be "pro-Israel" if another sitting Israeli government is pro-peace?