With Friends Like These...

...who needs enemies? Beware O Israel of your so-called friends from the Christian right. In the long run they will do you more harm than good. And no, they are not good for the Jews.
The only reason why they have any interest in Israel is because they believe Jesus is coming back to establish his second kingdom on Earth there. In preparation for his return, everybody is supposed to turn into a Christian. Jews, as I have said before in these pages, are the most prized potential converts to Christianity for these people. Jews for Jesus is nothing but a Christian right organization devoted to evangelize Jews and turn them into goyim. We need them like a "loch in kop". Like a hole in the head.
Now, these are the same people who want to establish Christian prayer in public schools here, regardless of whether there are Jewish or other children at school who may not want to pray to Jesus. These are the same people who somewhere in Maryland told a Jewish family who complained about Christian coercion at school, that if they didn't like it they could leave, that America was a Christian nation. The Jewish children, who had recently moved from somewhere else, were taunted and called names. So don't for a minute think that these people, who think worse than neanderthals, have our best interests at heart. They are the worst possible friends we could have. We tend to welcome friends because we think we have none. Our preconditioned, knee-jerk reaction to welcome friends no matter how despicable they are is not helpful.
Right now it is not in the best interest of Israel not to have a comprehensive policy towards the solution of the unholy mess with the Palestinians. The US government should be forcing Israel and the other interested parties to sit down and find a workable solution. This, in the interest of the safety of the entire world. Instead, it lets Israel do whatever it pleases and the amelioration of the conflict is nowhere in sight.
Israel has every right to defend itself from those who want its demise. But if it is to survive, it needs to relinquish the Occupied Territories. The US, Europe, Israel and the ultra-rich Arab cynical as hell oil countries, need to create an infrastructure for the Palestinian state to work. Given what we've seen with the sectarian violence and general chaos of the Muslim world, it sounds easier said than done, but the first thing we need is to find is political will. Diplomats should be feverishly working to create, encourage and amass the political will needed to start solving this problem. Israel, who, so far, seems the only one of the participants to have taken some steps in that direction (Oslo accords, withdrawal from Gaza, etc) will not be able to be the modern, legitimate democracy it is supposed to be if it continues the occupation. The solution is not easy and it demands commitment from all sides, something that has not been in evidence at all from the Palestinian or the Arab side.
What we don't need, no matter how good it looks, is the crazyass help from the Evangelicals, which will only help to further radicalize the region. The Christian right has a dogmatic, unprogressive, and very particular agenda of their own, and they could not care less about the Jews in the long run.