How is that, you say? Well, according to godly Brother Pat, God wants Israel to steal every inch of land - or every centimeter of land, if you prefer - currently in the Palestinian areas of Gaza and the West Bank plus more besides.
Ariel Sharon used to be seen as a friend of Robertson's Christian God because his warlike policies were pushing Israel toward endless wars. Which in Robertson's brand of apocalyptic thought, is a good thing, because their Bible reveals to them (not through a literal reading, let me tell you!) that Jesus will come again in glory only after most of the Jews in the world are slaughtered in a big ole Middle East war.
Sharon never gave up on taking more and more land in the West Bank. But he did enrage the hardcore settler movement - which the American Christian Right supports in hopes of seeing that massive End Times slaughter of Jews sooner rather than later - by his unilateral pullout from Gaza.
Check out what "pro-Israel", pro-Jewish sentiment sounds like from one of the leading lights of the Christian Right and the Christian Republican White People's Party:
Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson suggested Thursday that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's stroke was divine punishment for "dividing God's land."
"God considers this land to be his," Robertson said on his TV program "The 700 Club." "You read the Bible and he says 'This is my land,' and for any prime minister of Israel who decides he is going to carve it up and give it away, God says, 'No, this is mine.'"
The fact that Sharon was 77, overweight, under a lot of stress and had suffered a previous stroke were incidental factors, apparently.
He also said, however, that in the Bible, the prophet Joel "makes it very clear that God has enmity against those who 'divide my land.'"
Sharon "was dividing God's land and I would say woe unto any prime minister of Israel who takes a similar course to appease the EU (European Union), the United Nations, or the United States of America," Robertson said.
In discussing what he said was God's insistence that Israel not be divided, Robertson also referred to the 1995 assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who had sought to achieve peace by giving land to the Palestinians. "It was a terrible thing that happened, but nevertheless he was dead," he said.
In other words, it was the Christian God who offed Yitzhak Rabin because he was making efforts to achieve a peace settlement with the Palestinians. In Pat Robertson's working facsimile of our world, anyway.
Yes, it's notions like this that animate the most hardcore voting base of today's Republican Party. Let's repeat that:
It's notions like this that animate the most hardcore voting base of today's Republican Party.
Incidentally, it should go without saying, but I'll say it anyway: Most Jews and Christians in the world do not believe that the prophet Joel was trying to act as foreign policy adviser to the 2006 prime minister of Israel. Or that it's God's will that history will culminate with a mass slaughter of most of the Jews in the world.
But Pat Robertson and his like-minded Christian Right crusaders do.
It's strikes me that one day, like the rest of us, Pat Robertson will also depart from this mortal plane. With or without the Rapture. Should we interpret his death when it comes as being a sign of God's wrath at him for acting like a world-class jerk?
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