Lebanon: how to talk to your Jewish friends about Israel, and other matters fraught with dire dastardliness

1. How to Talk to Your Jewish Friends About Israel -- by Ira Chernus

“I can talk to my Jewish friends about anything -- except Israel. When that subject comes up, they just shut down.”

I’ve heard this complaint from so many people, so many times, that I want to offer a few suggestions about how to talk to your “pro-Israel” Jewish friends. I hope this will be helpful to everyone, Jew and non-Jew alike, who is critical of Israel’s war policy and wants to move public opinion toward peace.

First, you can think about your own reasons for raising the subject. Are you just trying to express yourself -- to bear moral witness or vent moral outrage? Or do you want to help your Jewish friends think about Israel’s actions in a new, more peace-oriented way? Let’s assume it’s the latter.

That means you aren’t just trying to score points and win the debate. So there’s no reason to go on the attack. Even though you may have most of the right and justice on your side, take it slow and easy. If you put your Jewish friends on the defensive, they are likely to close their ears, eyes, and minds. That’s what we all do when we feel defensive about anything.

And many of your friends probably feel defensive when it comes to Israel. They are defending themselves against the voice of their own conscience. They are morally sensitive people. That’s what is so frustrating. They care deeply about social justice in every other arena. But there is something peculiar about this Israel thing that seems to throw their normal ethical compass out of whack.

That “something” is a very complicated mix of factors. Part of it is a lifetime’s worth of socialization. They’ve been raised in a community that assumes -- without question, as an article of faith -- that Israel really is fighting for its life. They’ve been taught to see Israel as an innocent victim, surrounded by irrational, barbaric anti-semites bent on destroying it. So all Israel can do is fight back.

Your friends have been told this so many times, by so many people, in so many ways that it will take an immense mental shift to begin to question it. Imagine someone trying to convince you that the sun rises in the west, and you’ll begin to understand what an effort you are asking them to make.

At the same time, your friends still have that ethical compass. They are bound to be disturbed by the pictures they see on television. They know that the Lebanese and Palestinians are suffering far worse than the Israelis. They don’t value Jewish life more than Arab life. (If they did, they wouldn’t be your friends, right?)

So they are in a deep bind. They feel sure Israel is an innocent victim. Yet they can see the clear evidence that Israel bears some responsibility -- and, they’re beginning to suspect, culpability -- for the violence. They know two things that seem obviously true yet can’t both be true, because they contradict each other. Psychologists call that cognitive dissonance.

Cognitive dissonance hurts. People cope with the pain in different ways. Often they just stop thinking about the whole subject. It’s too hard to try to hold both sides of the contradiction in mind at once. So they find relief by getting mentally paralyzed.

There’s a large segment of the American Jewish community that deals with Israel by trying not to think about it. If some of your friends are in that camp, and you raise the issue, you are disturbing the ease of their mental slumber. You are forcing them to look at both sides of the contradiction. Naturally, they get irritable. They’d rather not talk about it at all.

Cognitive dissonance puts people on the defensive because it’s so confusing -- especially when the issue is as confusing as the Middle East. Few American Jews have studied the conflict in any detail. Most know only the simplistic slogans they’ve been raised with and a smattering of facts. They just fit their few facts into the ready-made “pro-Israel” mold that their Jewish socialization provides.

If you complicate matters with facts that don’t fit the mold, you’ll be forcing them to confront their own confusion. That threatens the precarious mental balance they are struggling to maintain. Naturally they’ll get defensive. It’s not you they are defending against (though it feels like it is). It’s the complexities inside their own minds.

Most of your Jewish friends probably have some uncertainty and confusion about their Jewish identity anyway, apart from questions about Israel. Unless they are rigidly Orthodox Jews, they are probably not quite sure what it means to them to be Jewish. Anything that touches on that confusion is likely to make them feel uncomfortable. They may want to push the whole subject -- and anyone who raises it -- away. That just adds to their defensiveness.

If you persist, they may very well rely on another time-tested way of coping with dissonance: Try to make the contradiction go away by denying one of the things that appear to be true. Of course it never really works. No one can make the truth disappear by sheer will power. The repressed truth inevitably presses back up and demands to be heard. But the mind, fighting to escape dissonance, tries to push it back down. It’s an understandable defensive maneuver.

If you are giving voice to a repressed truth -- that Israel bears some blame for the violence and should cease fire immediately -- you embody precisely what they are defending against. So they have to push you away, too. The more you insist on the wrongs of Israel’s actions, the more they resist you and insist that Israel must be right. They’re caught in a sad but psychologically understandable cycle.

You may be able to ease the cycle of defensiveness and help your friends hear you, if you take it slow and easy. You can start out by assuring them that you agree with them on some fundamentals. You too want Israel to exist. You too want the Israeli people be safe. The question is how Israel can best achieve security.

You can point out the obvious: This summer’s war has only created more rage among Israel’s neighbors. It’s entirely predictable that Israelis will be less secure for a long time to come. Lots of Israeli Jews are criticizing their government on this crucial point. They are certainly not “anti-Israel.” You are not “anti-Israel” either, just because you criticize the Israeli government's policies.

No matter how gently you say all this, you’ll probably trigger your friends’ dissonance and defensive buttons. But at least you’ll be starting off on some common ground. That’s why I suggest avoiding the question of Israel’s moral right or wrong and sticking to the practical question of security. Focusing on the moral issue may well press the defensive buttons so hard, the conversation may end before it begins. Focusing on security improves the chances that your friends will listen to your criticisms of Israeli policy.

They may never agree with you completely. But if you can understand them sympathetically, you can help them begin to listen to new viewpoints. Eventually, they may begin to think about Israel in new, more peace-affirming ways. That alone can make a tremendous difference. It’s worth the effort.

(Ira Chernus is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He is the author of " American Nonviolence: The History of an Idea " and, most recently, " Monster to Destroy: The Neoconservative War on Terror and Sin ." Email to: chernus@colorado.edu)


2. Are the Words “Israel" and “Jews” Synonymous? -- by Danny Schechter

I remember reading a story once about some of the Jewish fighters during the years of the Nazi genocide who escaped from the Warsaw Ghetto through the sewer system into another part of the city. Bedraggled and dazed, they came up into a city that was going about its business as usual, largely unaware of what was happening in a part of town that had been sealed off. (The street cars that went through the ghetto had to darken all windows so travelers couldn’t see what was going on.)

The escapees sought out brave members of the Polish resistance who were also fighting German aggression against their country. They too were at war with the invaders and occupiers. But they soon found that their “comrades in arms” couldn’t accept what they were being told, couldn’t believe the extent of the forced starvation and mass murder taking place just a few blocks away. They couldn’t image the extent of the barbarity, perhaps because it wasn’t happening to them. They were in denial.

The desperate Jews were shaken. They too couldn’t believe that they were unable to communicate the full horror of their plight and make it believable, even to people who shared some of their political goals. That realization turned into demoralization that turned to despair. They then felt guilty about fleeing and surviving while their friends and families were being killed.

They looked around at the normality and apparent indifference of carefree Warsaw, and decided to go back, back to their fate.

While there is never any exact parallel with today’s events--- and no, I don’t believe that yesterday’s victims of Nazism have become today’s Nazis—there is one aspect of this terribly tragic story that has relevance: the inability of many people to transcend their own pain (or point of view) to empathetically connect with the pain of others or even hear the critics.

As someone who grew up in a community that each year marked the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, its lessons were drilled into my head from an early age. I was taught to support those who resist aggression and stand for human rights. And as anyone who saw the film Schindler’s List knows, it was not just Jews who joined that fight. There were “righteous” Christians and people of all nationalities.

Yet, at the same time, I believed that the bitter history of Jewish suffering conveyed on us a special responsibility to speak out when others are suffering and yearning for freedom. Is that not the key lesson of the annual Passover Seder and the idea of solidarity and community concern? Is that not why activist “Jews for Justice” rallied to the cause of Bosnia’s embattled Muslims? Is that not why many Jews have always been on the front lines of the fight for humanity and social change?

Like many, I was drawn to the civil rights movement and other social justice movements. During those years, I was privileged to personally meet and talk with a Muslim leader named Malcolm X who introduced me to his traditions. Since then I have traveled in the Muslim world and met many people who respect democracy and believe in the need for a just resolution of the Israel-Palestinian crisis.

I know of many Jews who share that concern, and, in fact, surveys have shown over the years that ordinary members of the Jewish community are far more politically progressive about the need for peace than those who claim to be their “leaders,” a self-righteous elite who sit on top of vast fundraising machines. They have well-paid jobs specializing in spreading fear and alarm about anti-Semitism as a tool for frequent solicitations and psychological conditioning. The memory of the Holocaust is still manipulated for political purposes.

There is a well-financed Israeli lobby that funds politicians and dominates the op-ed pages. What else explains the dramatic difference in public opinion in this country and overseas? Why do polls show Americans and Israelis backing the war while the world calls for a cease fire?

These organizations operate like a well orchestrated machine to enforce a “party line” and, in some well-documented cases, groups like the Anti Defamation League even spied on and demonized fellow Jews who feel differently. Pro-peace organizations like Tikkun have had to buy ads in the NY Times to get heard.

Jews who support Darfur are acceptable; those who oppose Israel’s bombing of Lebanon are deemed extremists.

Don’t they know that human rights are universal and cannot be invoked selectively? Israel cannot be given a special pass: it has to obey international laws and UN resolutions, not just the ones it agrees with.

Just as the shelling of civilians by Hezbollah is unacceptable, so is the widespread Israeli devastation of a neighboring country, one ironically, with many people who wanted to live in peace with Israel. Almost every journalist who has looked at this war has noted that Israel used the kidnapping of its soldiers as a pretext for a war plans that were years in the making. The Hezbollah rockets were fired after Israel’s bombing began, not before.

If anything, this Bush-backed war will radicalize Lebanon as it is the Middle East and fuel more anti-Semitism and hostility to Israel. It has turned Hezbollah into a hero in the region.

Somehow many in our media have turned the words Israel and Jews into synonyms, as if all Jews are hard-line Zionists who automatically back the policies and practices of the Israeli government, every Israeli government. Ironically, there is more debate among Jews in Israel on these issues than is reported, or somehow allowed in the United States where Jewish critics of Israel policies are often ignored or labeled “self-hating” Jews.

Many organizations, especially in Democratic Party circles (and even the Blogoshere) would prefer to ignore the issue for fear of being divisive or attacked. Notice how many in the Congress rallied to Israel’s side before the facts were even in. Notice how few, even in the anti-war contingent had the courage to speak out. (Read Tom Hayden’s recent piece apologizing for how skillfully he was co-opted by the Israeli Lobby when he ran for office in California.)

Some organizations are just shilling for the Israeli government –no matter what it does—out of both tribal loyalty and political fealty to neo-con/Likudnik politics, a perspective which enjoys unrivalled and disproportionate access to the media and its think-alike punditocracy. Some are just money generating mechanisms sending money to Israel, a developed county that gets $3 billion dollars annually in US aid intended for developing nations. The Federation which supports many social services just sent millions. One wonders how much of this will go to Israeli Arabs who have also had homes bombed?

It’s not surprising that many Jews are unaware of what’s happening largely because of the information diet they are exposed to, every day and in all media like the rest of us. They are expected to recite the “official” mantra—not think for themselves.

On Tuesday, I received an invitation from the president of the American Jewish Congress. It was for a 4 day “Israel Solidarity Mission.” Cost per person: $1000.

It is described as “Not only solidarity but much more!”

“Touring the embattled North of Israel and personally sharing our friendship with families there who have lived through the terror of Katyusha rockets falling on their homes;

“Visiting an air force base where we will thank the brave pilots who are defending Israel and see, up close, the advanced F-16-I jets they fly;

“Receiving a briefing from the Brigade Commander and his troops defending against Hamas terrorism in Gaza;

“Meeting with top officials of Israel’s government to hear what lies ahead and to learn how we can help.”

There’s not one word of interest or concern here with the civilian victims of bombing in Lebanon or the conditions of Palestinians in Gaza. Not one word of compassion or interest in meeting prominent Israelis who feel this war is not in Israel’s interest. It strikes me as more reinforcement for the already deeply held prejudices.

Writing in the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz—which far too many American Jews know nothing about—and in fact know little about Israeli political reality (preferring to live with feel-good myths dating back to Leon Uris’ book Exodus)--Nehemia Shtrasler contends:

“Israel has always said it has nothing against the Lebanese people and does not want to harm Lebanon, only the PLO (then) and Hezbollah (now). But in practice, it has harmed, destroyed and humiliated the Lebanese time after time. Their fate did not interest us.”

What does interest us? What should interest us? I know the great Rabbi Hillel once said, “If you are not for yourself, who will be for me.” But then, he added, let us not forget, “If I am not for others, what am I? And if not now, when?”

And then, there is also, always, that golden rule, forgotten by warmakers across the ages: “Do not do to others what you would not have them do to you.”

(News Dissector Danny Schechter is “Blogger in Chief” of Mediachannel.org . His latest film is “ In Debt We Trust. ” Comments to Dissector@mediachannel.org)

3. Israel and the Art of Sophistry
What is 'brave' about giving back something you have stolen?
By John McCarthy

In Tony Blair's speech in Los Angeles last Tuesday, he said he was sickened by what was happening in Lebanon but went on to effectively absolve Israel of responsibility for the devastation there. He urged: "Just for a moment, put yourself in Israel's place."

In that one phrase, our Prime Minister summed up everything that is wrong with our policy for the Middle East. In that one statement, he gave credence to all the so-called Islamic extremists who claim the British and American governments care nothing for Arabs. His protestations of sympathy were profoundly offensive, two days after the attack on Qana. If he had really wanted to help he should have been shouting long and loud for an immediate ceasefire to stop the killing of innocents, rather than opting for diplomatic sophistry, important though the proposed UN deal will be in the long term.

Mr Blair ignored the carnage of Israel's rampage through Lebanon and attacks on Gaza. He blamed all the horror - indeed all the world's ills - on what he described as an "arc of extremism" stretching across the Middle East. Amazingly, his "arc of extremism" formed, among others, by Hizbollah, Hamas, Iran and Syria, failed to include Israel. He said: "We need to make clear to Syria and Iran that there is a choice: come in to the international community and play by the same rules as the rest of us." The sort of rules that accept Israel's wanton destruction of Lebanon as a reasonable response to the killing of four soldiers and capture of two more by Hizbollah?

Israel is out of control. A craving for physical security (unsurprising with the post-Holocaust generation's attitude of "never again"), together with secular Zionist ideals and the Jewish fundamentalist belief of being God's chosen people, has allowed Israel to believe it can do as it will. Anything, it seems, is legitimate, and Mr Blair has backed the US in rubber-stamping actions in Lebanon and Gaza which surely will be looked back on as crimes against humanity.

Groups such as Hizbollah and Hamas have said they want the destruction of the Israeli state. This obviously unacceptable ambition is shared by Iran and others. At times, such statements appear largely rhetorical; at others, they are backed by suicide bombings and rocket attacks. But, even now, no one can sensibly claim that Israel faces a real threat of destruction or occupation. Israel, on the other hand, is actively engaged in the destruction of a nation, bombing Lebanon back "by 20 years", as the military put it, and in the occupation of Palestinian land.

Look at the events leading to the crisis on Israel's other fighting front, Gaza. Gaza is Palestinian territory, occupied by Israel until last September and still dominated by Israel's military might. On 25 June, Palestinian fighters crossed into Israel, attacked an army post and returned with their captive Cpl Gilad Shalit.

Like many, Mr Blair sees this as the start of Israel's (not Palestine's) "crisis in Gaza". The action was widely reported in our media as being "an escalation" by Palestinian "militants", and Israel's aggressive response was only to be expected. What Mr Blair and other observers will not admit is that the day before Cpl Shalit's capture, Israeli forces went into Gaza and kidnapped two Palestinians whom Israel claims are Hamas militants.

Tony Blair should put himself in the Palestinians' place for a moment. Israel kidnaps your citizens from your territory and no one takes a blind bit of notice. A tit-for-tat raid justifies an onslaught that has cost more than 140 Palestinian lives, many of them civilians. Whose "arc of extremism" is in action here?

The UN says 63 Palestinians were killed and 142 wounded in Israeli attacks on Gaza in May and June this year. These attacks included more than 3,000 artillery shells and almost 50 air strikes. In the same period, Palestinians fired 369 rockets, nearly all home-made and inaccurate Qassams. Fourteen Israelis were injured. Two Israeli soldiers died trying to rescue Cpl Shalit.

Doubtless the people of towns such as Ashkelon and Sderot - within range of Palestinian rockets - are terrified and angry. But what about the terror of the people of Gaza? It is one of the most densely populated places on earth; 1.4 million people live in an area smaller than the Isle of Wight. In the past month, Israel has turned Gaza back into a ghetto, bombing the power station so homes are often without electricity or clean water. Aid agencies say Israel is allowing in only just enough food to stop the population from starving. The UN says Gaza is on the brink of a humanitarian disaster.

Mr Blair did acknowledge the core need to "put a viable Palestinian government on its feet". But there was the usual caveat. The Palestinian state must be "democratic and not threaten Israel's safety". The Palestinians have a democratically-elected government. It is led by Hamas, but because Hamas has not recognised Israel formally the Hamas government will not be recognised. If one is being balanced, or "proportionate", one has to ask: Why would Hamas recognise Israel? Why should Hamas bow before the guns of Israel and say they will stop fighting for their freedom?

Israel has been occupying Palestinian land, in defiance of UN resolutions, for almost 40 years. Instead of insisting on Israel leaving all Palestinian territories, Mr Blair spoke of the former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon's "brave step of disengagement from Gaza" last year. What is brave about giving back something you have stolen, still keeping the rightful owners in a virtual prison? Until the safety and human rights of Palestinians - and of all people in the region - are valued as much and put on an equal footing with those of Israelis, there is no hope for a peaceful settlement.

The LA speech was vintage Blair but he seemed undecided which of his two favourite roles he was playing, world leader or preacher. Ultimately, his words, though full of sound and fury, signified nothing. The Lebanese, Palestinians and Israelis - all of us - deserve better and more honest leadership.

(John McCarthy was kidnapped in Lebanon in 1986 and held for five years.)


4. Birth Pangs of a New Christian Zionism -- by MAX BLUMENTHAL

Over the past months, the White House has convened a series of off-the-record meetings about its policies in the Middle East with leaders of Christians United for Israel (CUFI), a newly formed political organization that tells its members that supporting Israel's expansionist policies is "a biblical imperative." CUFI's Washington lobbyist, David Brog, told me that during the meetings, CUFI representatives pressed White House officials to adopt a more confrontational posture toward Iran, refuse aid to the Palestinians and give Israel a free hand as it ramped up its military conflict with Hezbollah.

The White House instructed Brog not to reveal the names of officials he met with, Brog said.

CUFI's advice to the Bush Administration reflects the Armageddon-based foreign-policy views of its founder, John Hagee . Hagee is a fire-and-brimstone preacher from San Antonio who commands the nearly 18,000-member Cornerstone Church and hosts a major TV ministry where he explains to millions of viewers how the end times will unfold. He is also the author of numerous bestselling pulp-prophecy books, like his recent Jerusalem Countdown , in which he cites various unnamed Israeli intelligence sources to claim that Iran is producing nuclear "suitcase bombs." The only way to defeat the Iranian evildoers, he says, is a full-scale military assault.

"The coming nuclear showdown with Iran is a certainty," Hagee wrote this year in the Pentecostal magazine Charisma . "Israel and America must confront Iran's nuclear ability and willingness to destroy Israel with nuclear weapons. For Israel to wait is to risk committing national suicide."

Despite his penchant for extreme rhetoric, or perhaps because of it, Hagee endeared himself to key members of the Israeli right. With the help of former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who once spoke at a massive pro-Israel fundraiser at Cornerstone Church, Hagee has raised at least $8.5 million for Israeli social work projects. And as a result of Hagee's influence in the Lone Star State, reflected by his enormous wealth--he reportedly rakes in more than $1 million a year from his television ministry--and his close relationship with the previously omnipotent and now disgraced former House majority leader Tom DeLay, Washington's Republican leadership is just a phone call away.

Hagee recently united America's largest Christian Zionist congregations and some of the movement's most prominent figures--including the Rev. Jerry Falwell, Gary Bauer and Rod Parsley, an Ohio preacher instrumental in launching Republican Ken Blackwell 's gubernatorial campaign--under the banner of CUFI, creating the first and only nationwide evangelical political organization dedicated to supporting Israel. Hagee says he would like to see CUFI become "the Christian version of AIPAC ," referring to the vaunted pro-Israel group rated second only to the National Rifle Association as the most effective lobby in Washington.

But while Hagee is the public face of CUFI, he remains tethered to his ministry in the Texas plains, far from the wheeling and dealing of inside-the-Beltway culture. To advance his agenda on the Hill, Hagee has tapped David Brog, a seasoned and articulate lawyer who has been Republican Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter's chief of staff, and who boasts myriad connections in Republican Washington. Besides Brog's political acumen, there was another characteristic Hagee found appealing: He is Jewish.

"I think while there are some differences between us as far as our religious views," Brog told me about Hagee, "what matters more, and what is of much deeper significance, is everything that we share. We share a love for Israel and a love for America. And we share an understanding of the war on radical Islamic terror, and that makes us brothers."

As Hagee's political point man, Brog has instantly emerged as an important operative on the Christian right and an effective advocate shielding the movement from institutional Jewish criticism whenever an evangelical leader makes a gaffe. After a series of wildly impolitic remarks by Pat Robertson, including the suggestion that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's descent into a comatose state was God's punishment for the Gaza withdrawal, Brog used an interview with the conservative National Review to defend Robertson as "a good man." When Anti-Defamation League president Abraham Foxman lambasted the Christian right as a dire threat to America's Jewish community, Brog scolded Foxman in a lengthy Wall Street Journal op-ed. "There are very serious threats facing American Jews today, and they have nothing to do with social conservatives," he wrote.

Common Ground

Brog says he is more comfortable among evangelicals than most Jews, in large part because he shares their viewpoint on social issues like abortion and homosexuality. "I experienced an evolution in my views," Brog explained. "I was a Democrat as late as law school, and when I started off in the political world I was an Arlen Specter Republican. But over the years I've really continued to become more conservative. I don't think my views on social issues line up with those in the Jewish community anymore."

Brog's first major order of business as CUFI's executive director was to preside over its kick-off banquet on July 18, an unqualified success, with more than 3,000 evangelicals packing the Washington Hilton's main ballroom to hear speeches by speakers ranging from Israeli Ambassador Daniel Ayalon to Republican Senators Rick Santorum and Sam Brownback, to Ken Mehlman, the Republican National Committee chairman who has vowed to peel off Jewish voters from the Democratic Party by highlighting the GOP's unwavering support of Israel.

Though CUFI's banquet was planned months in advance, its timing could not have been more opportune, staged as Israel and Hezbollah exchanged their first salvos over Lebanon's southern border. While international diplomats were ratcheting up pressure on the United States to administer a cease-fire, Falwell used his speech at the banquet to issue a stern warning to the White House. "I will rebuke the State Department for any and every time it told Israel to stand down and show restraint," he boomed, sending gales of applause rippling through the packed crowd.

The next day, thousands of attendees of CUFI's banquet fanned out to Congressional offices to lobby lawmakers in support of Israel's military campaign in Lebanon. CUFI's lobbying push coincided with the nearly unanimous passage of an AIPAC-authored House resolution declaring support for Israel. Though CUFI's efforts on the Hill certainly did not hinder support for the resolution, according to Brog, CUFI's impact has been felt "on a more subtle level."

Brog underscored how the latest Middle East crisis has provided a platform for Christian Zionists to exercise their newfound influence: "There is an ongoing debate in Washington over how long to let Israel continue the campaign against Hezbollah--how long will we let Israel fight its war on terror as we fight our own war on terror? And I think the arrival in Washington at that juncture of thousands of Christians who came for one issue and one issue only, to support Israel, sent a very important message to the Administration and the Congress, and I think helped persuade people that they should allow Israel some more time."

M.J. Rosenberg, director of policy analysis for the Israel Policy Forum , a Washington-based group working to restore US support for an Israeli-Palestinian peace process, dismisses the Christian Zionist lobby as a pilot fish alongside the great white shark of AIPAC. "I think that the only effective pro-Israel lobby is the Jewish pro-Israel lobby," Rosenberg told me. "And that's because the right-wing Christians are Republicans. Israel tends to not even be their main issue; they have abortion and gay marriage higher on their radar. What makes the Jewish pro-Israel lobby more influential is that their people give their donations to anyone who is effective on the issue, Democrat or Republican. These people [Christian Zionists] are locked into Republicans."

But Brog maintains that CUFI represents a novel phenomenon in evangelical politicking. Though CUFI's constituency is almost entirely Republican, Brog says the success of its banquet reflects the increasing importance of Israel to evangelical voters. "It took AIPAC over fifteen years to get over 2,000 people to their annual policy conference. The fact that in five months that we got over 3,000 people to our conference and were turning people away--it sent a message. It's one thing to say, 'Hey, I support Israel among the other issues I support.' It's another to cancel your vacation and fly to Washington and say, 'I'm here, I'm a Christian activist and Israel's more important to me than any other issue.' "

Brog has revealed several "meet and greet" sessions between CUFI and the Bush Administration that highlight the elevated importance of Christian Zionism in GOP-dominated Washington. At the White House, Brog and CUFI's representatives have professed their support for Israel's military campaign in Lebanon and, in Brog's words, "spoke to the Administration about Iran and the need to prevent arms from going to Iran and Hamas, and the need not to let any US aid go to Hamas."

Brog explains that CUFI has become a valuable ally of AIPAC, which helps them coordinate lobbying efforts. "They have a great research staff," he said. Brog has also earned the confidence of the Jewish Federation by making sure to elicit the cooperation of its local chapters before initiating a recruitment drive in the federation's area. "I have absolutely no reservation about working with John Hagee," Houston-area Jewish Federation CEO Lee Wunsch told the Jerusalem Post .

AIPAC spokesman Josh Block declined to answer questions about the extent of CUFI's influence. But he offered a positive, if somewhat canned assessment of their lobbying efforts. "That organization is evidence of the broad American support for the US-Israel relationship that exists in every segment of American society," Block told me. "AIPAC welcomes all organizations working to strengthen the bond between the United States and Israel."

But CUFI is not just any pro-Israel organization.

Toward Tribulation

Brog first encountered Hagee in 2005, shortly after Brog left his job as Senator Specter's chief of staff. Both Brog and Hagee happened to be invited by evangelical publishing magnate Steven Strang to speak at an evangelical mega-church's "Night to Honor Israel" in Orlando, Florida. At the time, Brog was "researching" a book he planned to write on evangelical-Jewish relations. "I was just curious," he said, "are these guys really some evil people working for Armageddon as the media portrays them?"

Any concern in Brog's mind that evangelicals harbored nihilistic motives for supporting Israel was dispelled, he says, once he and Hagee sat down and chatted. It was then that Hagee revealed his vision of a massive new Christian Zionist lobbying organization. Brog expressed enthusiasm for Hagee's idea and touted his political experience. Hagee was sold. It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship. "I thought it was the most important thing I could do, not only for Israel but for America," Brog said of his decision to work for the preacher.

A speech in November 2005 by Anti-Defamation League president Abraham Foxman blasting the Christian right as the "key domestic challenge to the American Jewish community" was the moment for Brog's emergence. During the late 1990s, Foxman had heaped praise on Christian Zionists and paid to reprint a pro-Israel op-ed by Ralph Reed as a prominent ad in the New York Times . Foxman's criticism provoked Brog to step forward in his new identity.

In an op-ed article published on the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal , he wrote: "There is indeed merit to the agenda pursued by Christian conservatives. Evangelical Christians are rock-solid supporters of Israel--a fact that the Jewish community has belatedly begun to acknowledge and appreciate."

Brog's rebuke to Foxman was echoed with a chorus of Christian-right outrage, including a blunt threat from Don Wildmon of the American Family Association. "The more [Foxman] says that 'you people are destroying this country,' " Wildmon said during a radio broadcast, "[the more] some people are going to begin to get fed up with this and say, 'Well, all right then. If that's the way you feel, then we just won't support Israel anymore.' "

Since the controversy stirred up by his comments, Foxman has muted his criticism of the Christian right. Even more, he has offered his qualified acceptance of CUFI. "On the one hand, we need to welcome him. On the other, we need to be cautious about embracing it," Foxman said last month to the Jerusalem Post about Hagee and his organization.

Brog's recently published book, Standing with Israel: Why Christians Support the Jewish State , expands his case for Jewish acceptance of evangelical political goals. Brog told National Review that his book has universal appeal and will help anyone to "better comprehend the birth pangs of what in time will be a very important alliance." The phrase "birth pangs" is clearly understood by evangelicals as a scriptural citation from Matthew 24 , which refers to the apocalyptic struggle that will usher in the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.

Yet the thrust of Brog's arguments is targeted toward a Jewish audience suspicious of evangelical motives. Brog's thesis rests on the premise that while Islamic anti-Semitism poses an existential threat to Jews, Christian anti-Semitism is a bygone phenomenon that died the moment the Allies seized Hitler's bunker.

To explain the psychology of those Jews who think otherwise, Brog invokes the stereotype of the shtetl Jew. "Many in the American Jewish community are also living in the past, stuck in European ghettos," Brog wrote. "In an alternative reality built on traumatic communal memories, millions of Jews continue to crouch, fingers on their triggers, surrounded by bloodthirsty Christians who view them as a replaced, deicide people. Yet the world has changed dramatically in recent decades, and the enemy they fear has long since become a friend." As proof, Brog cited the outpouring of evangelical support for Israel.

Despite his best efforts, Brog remains dogged by questions about evangelical reasons for backing Israel. Hagee has told his supporters that supporting Israel is a "biblical imperative," and proudly pronounces his belief that Israel is the future site of the Rapture. Hagee has even reveled in events that most Israelis would describe as tragic. For instance, in his 1996 book The Beginning of the End , Hagee described the murder of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin as fulfillment of prophecy and suggested admiration for Rabin's assassin, Yigal Amir.

Imagining Amir's mindset as he prepared himself to kill Rabin, Hagee wrote, "Tonight, if God was good, an opportunity would show itself. No longer would Rabin be able to transfer Israeli lands to Palestinians. The damage he'd done in the West Bank and Gaza was enough. Israel had a divine right to the land, and to give it away was an act of treason against Israel and an abomination against God."

More recently, some of Hagee's allies, such as nationally syndicated evangelical radio host Janet Parshall, became ecstatic when Israel and Hezbollah commenced hostilities last month. "These are the times we've been waiting for," Parshall told her listeners in a voice brimming with joy on July 21. "This is straight out of a Sunday school lesson."

Brog dismisses concerns about the Christian Zionists' fixation on end times as a "misreading of Christian theology. "One sign of the Second Coming is that there will be widespread moral decay in society," Brog told me. "If Christians really thought they could speed the Second Coming, then why aren't Christians out there opening brothels and selling drugs? Quite to the contrary and quite to the chagrin of many liberals, they are doing the opposite."

Thanks to Brog's parrying of Jewish criticism and securing the cooperation of major Jewish organizations, his "brother" Hagee faces few repercussions as he prays for Armageddon. With local CUFI chapters growing across the country, a "rapid response network" of thousands of pastors developing, and an open door to the White House, Brog and Hagee are planning for the long term. "We want to speak to Washington and encourage support for Israel whatever the conflict may be," Brog said. He paused, adding, "Provided of course that Israel's cause continues to be just."

But the renewal of the peace process and rolling back the West Bank settlements would be an unjust cause. For Hagee and for CUFI, all roads lead to a "nuclear showdown: with Iran. Diplomacy would only make God angry. As Hagee warns in Jerusalem Countdown , "Those who follow a policy of opposition to God's purposes will receive the swift and severe judgment of God without limitation."


5. Fighting By Proxy
The conflict in Lebanon isn’t going away, and a much bigger one looms with Iran.
By Michael Hirsh (from Newsweek)

Disappearing for August vacation? Here’s a cheering thought on your way out of town: If you think things look grim this summer in the Mideast, the fall is going to be really harsh. You can bet on it. Have a good one!

First, there’s a high probability that the war between Israel and Hizbullah will persist for weeks, even escalate. The United States and France, which had a moment of diplomatic unity over the weekend, are now squabbling over the language of a preliminary U.N. Security Council resolution. Among other things, France now wants to include Lebanese-requested language that will require faster Israeli withdrawal, and the Bush administration is resisting these changes. While negotiations flag, Israel’s cabinet has approved a wider, 30-day military campaign in Lebanon. “It’s going to be very bloody,” an Israeli official told me today. “The diplomacy is dead.”

And the confrontation to come could make this one look like a sideshow. As summer turns to autumn we are likely to see the Hizbullah proxy war morph into an even uglier fight between the United States and Israel, on one side, and Iran, on the other. Israeli officials are increasingly forthright in saying that their current effort to neutralize Hizbullah, and Washington’s eager endorsement of this effort, is part of a larger strategic campaign being waged against Iran, one of Hizbullah’s chief sponsors, at a time when Tehran is getting fearfully feisty.

Pre-empting Hizbullah now is, for Israel, an indirect way of dealing with Iran sooner rather than later, Daniel Ayalon, Israel’s ambassador to Washington, told me in an Aug. 5 interview. The timing of Israel’s confrontation with Iran has little to do with the event that triggered the Israel-Hizbullah war—the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers in early July—and everything to do with Tehran’s growing familiarity with the arcane science of nuclear fission. By most intelligence estimates, unless Iran is stopped it will learn how to master the uranium fuel cycle at its Natanz facility in a matter of months, making it able to secretly produce bomb-grade fissile material when it pleases. This is one reason why Iranian negotiators have been stringing out the talks with the EU-3-Britain France and Germany—as well as the United States, despite Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s admonition way back in early June that Tehran had only “weeks, not months” to respond.

For Israel, preventing Iran from gaining this know-how is its true “red line”—the line that cannot be crossed—far more than when Tehran actually builds a bomb (which could be years away). Once Iran knows how to enrich uranium for weapons by experimenting with its small-scale 164 centrifuge cascade at Natanz, it is only a matter of time before it surreptitiously develops a nuclear weapon, the thinking goes. And by the latest estimates, despite technical setbacks, this breakthrough could happen within the next several months as Iran continues to perfect its processes at Natanz, says Israeli ambassador Ayalon. “We have said [it could be] the end of 2006, if they are not interrupted,” he told me in our interview. “Recently they may have been set back [by technical problems], but I would say they will achieve this now in the first quarter of 2007.”

So by Israel’s reckoning, there’s not much time for “later.” Ayalon, who has warned about Iran’s growing influence for years, says the continuing Israeli campaign in Lebanon is partly directed at constraining Iran. “First, the physical degradation of Hizbullah denies Iran a really powerful tool. Secondly, there is the political and prestige blow to Iran. Until now Iran was on the march and nobody stopped it. Here for first time there is a line in sand they could not cross [in Lebanon]. This is how I think history will view this.”

All indications now are that Iran itself anticipates a major confrontation in the fall over its nuclear program, which Tehran continues to insist is a civilian power project granted to it as a signatory to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty. On July 31, the U.N. Security Council adopted a resolution that gives Iran until August 31 to immediately suspend all of its uranium-related activities or face “appropriate measures” in the form of economic sanctions. Rather than bowing to this latest ultimatum, Tehran has been signaling that it will simply follow through on what it had threatened to do if the West adopted such a resolution: it will reject out of hand a package of incentives offered up by the EU-3 with Washington’s backing.

U.S. officials still hold out hope that the move from threatened to actual sanctions will work to force Tehran to suspend enrichment—to breach its own red line, its self-declared right to enrich uranium—and come to the table. A senior White House official told me in early August that he expects the Security Council to pass a second resolution after the Aug. 31 deadline. “We will use it to organize what we hope will be effective economic sanctions on Iran, if not a third resolution.” The Israelis, for the moment, are fully supporting the diplomatic approach.

There is still time for cooler heads to prevail on the Israeli, American and Iranian sides. First, Iran is a long way from a weapon. The International Atomic Energy Agency has found no conclusive evidence that Iran intends to use its know-how to build a nuclear bomb. IAEA director Mohammed elBaradei has said that the Iranians know that mastering uranium enrichment is a “deterrent” in and of itself and that “they don’t need a weapon, it sends a message,” as he put it in a speech in 2004. Other officials familiar with Tehran’s thinking have said that an attack from the United States or Israel would have the opposite effect from what was intended: it would tilt the debate inside Tehran toward a certain conclusion that only a bomb could provide adequate deterrence . The only answer, other than military confrontation, may be a broad diplomatic effort led by the United States, one that would seek to forge a “grand bargain” with Iran covering everything from the nuclear issues, Iraq, and trade, as well as a regional security pact that would address Hizbullah and Israel.

But Bush has refused to consider this, and hardliners in both Jerusalem and Washington are increasingly skeptical that diplomacy can work. There is also an unnerving tendency in the Bush administration to identify Israel’s interests with America’s, which is endangering Washington’s position with whatever friends among Islamic moderates it once had. Despite leeriness about a military strike option, both the Israel and American militaries have been preparing for it. Washington has been selling bunker-busting BLU-109 bombs to the Jewish state while the Pentagon updates its own target lists. Israeli officials are also galvanized by a new sense of vulnerability to the rogue missiles exposed by Hizbullah’s successful evasion of the Israeli air force. “We have seen a lot of proliferation by Iran to Hizbullah,” said the Israeli official. “Take the C-802 missiles, one of the best surface-to-sea missiles in the world. China sold them to Iran. Then Iran violated its contract commitments to China and transferred them to a third party. We didn’t even know this weapon existed in the Third World. So what else are they transferring?”

Let’s not forget that America’s timetable for confronting Iran has always been driven, in part, by Israel’s own. Vice President Dick Cheney declared more than 18 months ago that Iran was at the top of the list of "the world's potential trouble spots" and cited a possible Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear sites as a reason. “One of the concerns people have is that Israel might do it without being asked, that if, in fact, the Israelis became convinced the Iranians had significant nuclear capability, given the fact that Iran has a stated policy that their objective is the destruction of Israel, the Israelis might well decide to act first,” Cheney told talk-show host Don Imus in January 2005.

Israeli officials have not been shy about suggesting that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, with his religiously inspired rhetoric about Israel’s destruction, has become an intolerable threat to the Jewish state. They have also argued that Iran directly ordered Hizbullah to provoke Israel last month in order to distract attention from Tehran’s nuclear program, which was to have been agenda item No. 1 at the G-8 summit in St. Petersburg until the Israeli-Hizbullah war began. Dan Gillerman, Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, told me last week he had “certain” intelligence that Iran’s top nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, had communicated those orders to Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah during a trip to Damascus two days before the kidnapping. (Gillerman refused to elaborate on the intelligence.) “I think a lot of this is about Iran,” Gillerman said. We’ll soon find out just how much.