Israel

You have to be a member of the boomer generation to remember when email, instead of Twitter or whatever has now taken the place of Twitter, was the preferred method of social communication. Every extended family group had an older, Republican, always a Republican, relative who served as the self-appointed information administrator and would distribute emails containing right-wing generated lies and talking points that always purported to reveal the nefarious goings-on of Democrats. And no matter how ludicrous were the claims, they were accepted as fact by Republicans.

For many years the collector and distributor of internet knowledge for my own large extended family was an older cousin who was a dentist and, evidently, believed that acquisition of such an impressive level of achievement gave him unequaled insight into the workings of the universe. I would, mostly,  open his emails since they occasionally contained news about family members I seldom got to see, but this was rare, and I never bothered to respond to them, or to the emails he forwarded that were authored by right-wing operatives and conspiracy theorists. It was easy to discredit the wild claims about Democrats simply by going to any of the various websites that tracked and disproved them, but, evidently, not one Republican in existence has ever done this.

There was one time, though, that one of the forwarded emails struck a nerve. It claimed Democrats did not support American troops fighting in Iraq because they did not support the Iraq war. This time I responded to my cousin, saying that like millions of Americans I did not support Bush and Cheney's war, but I certainly did support our troops. And, the fact that I was a veteran and he was not, made my opinion worth at least as much as his. He replied with an typically weak Republican attempt at sarcasm, apologizing for confusing my thinking. I replied that he hadn't in the least.

Since the days of the Iraq war, Republicans have increasingly used this tactic of equating criticism of them, their allies, and their policies with criticism of better people and higher principles: criticizing Trump is criticizing America; criticizing police officers who kill black Americans is criticizing law enforcement; criticizing the abundance of guns is criticizing the constitution; criticizing economic policies that further enrich the already rich is criticizing capitalism.

A more recent manifestation of this tactic is to claim that criticism of Israeli policy relating to Palestinians is the same as being anti-Semitic. Israel is certainly special in that it serves as the sanctuary for a people who have endured extreme and enduring persecution, but it is also a sovereign, independent country subject to the same international laws, rules, and relationships that all other nations must deal with.  Israel's biggest problem is its right wing leader, Netanyahu, who like all other right-wing leaders is corrupt and incompetent. Like all the others, he is incapable of formulating and implementing a coherent public policy of any kind except for those that enrich him, and keep him in power.

Instead of deciding what Israel is, what it should be, and creating a rational strategy to get there, Netanyahu and his party want everything. They want all the land now occupied by Palestinians for themselves, and then for all the Palestinians to magically disappear.  In order to make their dream come true, their only strategy is to cozy up to American conservatives and hope they can generate enough political pressure so America will be forced to help them muscle their way to their fantasy future. In so doing, both Israel and America will continue to be portrayed as enemies of Muslims and will continue to be targets of extremist attacks. Which will be just fine with the Israeli right, because it ensures that Israel and America will be joined in a partnership against the rest of the world.

As far as long term strategy, though, there can't be anything dumber than Israel getting in bed with the American right: home to neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and evangelical Christians. While the American liberal left may criticize Israeli's self serving, self-destructive foreign policy, there is no doubt it will come to Israel's defense if it is attacked. The American right on the other hand, may or may not, depending on the same calculation it makes about everything: will it enrich them and help keep them in power.

I have to shake my head in wonderment at the strangeness of the world when I see Netanyahu cozying up to the most conservative of American evangelical Christian leaders.  As of now, they are supporters of Israel, but only because the existence of an independent Jewish state with Jerusalem as its capital is part of a narrative they interpret as leading to them being world rulers imposing a Christian theocracy on humanity.  Definitely, no Jews will be allowed in that future, and in the present, all it will take for the evangelical world to turn against Israel is for one influential leader to express his belief that Jews have done their part and now it's time to go back to viewing them as killers of Christ and the right would abandon Israel in an instant.

The ability of conservatives of all nationalities and religions to view the world as they want it to be, instead of the way it is, is an unending wonder.

There are no morals more relative than conservative morals, and no hypocrisy quite like conservative hypocrisy.