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The Republicans Love Israel? Look Carefully.
Gershom Gorenberg

Democrats who demand American involvement are showing the truest support of Israel.

It's a mind-wrenching time for the grand old tribe of American Jewish liberals, as friends remind me in e-mailed angst. You have to support Israel; does that really mean you have to support everything Israel is doing? If you marched down a street in Washington with a flag to show that you don�t want your cousin in Haifa blown up, have you provided proof for Ariel Sharon that any U.S. politician who criticizes him just a wee little bit for the rampage in Ramallah will find it electorally costly?

If such dilemmas weren�t bad enough, Republicans are loudly proclaiming that they alone are the true champions of Israel�s cause. In a recent New York Times column, William Safire charged that the "Democratic Party and its liberal media voices distanced themselves from Israel" during the recent offensive in the West Bank. Those awful Dems, Safire says, called for more U.S. diplomatic involvement. They even kept Safire�s favorite Israeli, Bibi Netanyahu, from appearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. (Since Safire still yearns for Dick Nixon, it�s no shock he never noticed Bibi�s failure as prime minister.)

Meanwhile Gary Bauer, stalwart of the Christian Right, is reportedly proclaiming his backing of Israel in his daily e-mails to 100,000 conservatives, and House Majority Whip Tom DeLay -- when not busy proclaiming that "Christianity offers the only viable, --reasonable, definitive answer" to life�s big questions -- is co-sponsoring a resolution of solidarity with Israel. As Safire tells it, the Republican backlash against U.S. diplomatic pressure "stiffened [the] administration�s spine" -- which is how he sees President Bush�s decision to pretend Sharon didn�t ignore his demand to pull out of the West Bank immediately.

Does that mean that a decade after James Baker�s infamous comment about Jews who "don�t vote for us anyway," liberal Jews should swallow their distaste with the Republican domestic agenda and, for Israel�s sake, write checks and cast votes for conservative candidates? Absolutely not.

Start with the reasons that American conservatives support hard-line Israeli policies, which range from a one-dimensional "realism" to Christian fundamentalism. The realists are ostensibly concerned with the pragmatic issue of how to end terror and keep Israel safe. That puts them in the same conceptual universe as supporters of diplomacy, though they disagree on the methods. Like Sharon, though, the supposedly realistic conservatives see only the dimension of force. Terror is in their range of vision, and must be defeated by superior power. Palestinian aspirations to statehood and despair at living under Israeli rule are outside their perception, and needn�t ever be addressed. Behind the rational policy talk lie the emotions of macho: We�ll see who�s stronger here.

The view from my Jerusalem window is that such unrealistic realism has so far lead only to escalation. Yet however mistaken they are, the "realistic" conservatives do have Israel�s interests at heart. That�s more than can be said of the theological "support" for Israel evinced by the Christian right.

Christian conservatives start with the Biblical land-grant argument, which appeals to West Bank settlers and their fellow travelers, but which is profoundly unsettling to most of the rest of us. As Oklahoma Republican James Inhofe explained his opposition to territorial compromise in a recent Senate speech, "God appeared to Abram and said, �I am giving you this land� -- the West Bank. This is not a political battle at all. It is a contest over whether or not the word of God is true." As a religious Jew, I�d agree that our connection to the land begins in Genesis, but that doesn�t mean we need to ignore the practical or moral costs of holding the entire Land of Israel. For Inhofe, the death toll is irrelevant; the Jews� job is to stand up for his literal reading of the Bible. Sorry senator, I�m not interested in being your shahid.

The fuller version of the Christian "pro-Israel" theology comes from political preachers such as Pat Robertson. In a recent article in the Jewish web magazine Olam, Robert explained his views, though readers may have missed the meanings of his fundamentalist catch-phrases. Israel�s conquest of Jerusalem in 1967, he intimates, opened the last 40 years of history, leading to an apocalypse that could include atomic or biological weapons, "even a strike at the earth from asteroids." As the disaster approaches, "the Jewish people are going to begin to see their God" -- which for Christian fundamentalists means accepting Jesus. Israeli concessions would be wrong because they�d defy that version of prophecy. This is apocalyptic foreign policy: Support Israel not for the sake of Jewish lives, but in order to bring on doomsday and, by the way, the conversion of the Jews. With friends like this ...

Back in the real world, Israel needs to stop terror. But its long-term interest is to return to negotiations, reach a two-state settlement, and free itself of the West Bank. With Ariel Sharon and Yasser Arafat in charge of their respective nations, that�s not going to happen without outside help. Democrats who criticize Bush�s ineffectual diplomacy and demand American involvement are therefore showing the truest support of Israel.

As for American Jews, they should be demonstrating the political skills that are their pride. Tom DeLay and James Inhofe probably won�t be moved much by letters from you, but there are plenty of politicians -- Democrats and moderate Republicans -- who may think the way to purchase Jewish political backing is to sit back and watch the Mideast bleed. For Israel�s sake, please tell them otherwise, in every way you can.