The "Religious Right" and Middle East War
By no means is this below a criticism against all Fundamentalist Christians, but rather those who have moved from forecasting Armageddon to trying to bring it about. Such "believers" have become dominant among Republican leaders in Congress from Texas and Oklahoma, while politically they provide moral cover for the Israeli Lobby, which otherwise has lost much of its idealistic support.
According to them, Israeli government policies must never be criticized because Israel is doing God's will. But they do criticize any Israeli government which tries to bring peace, witness how Rabin and Barak were so attacked. These are the radical Dispensationalists. Their alliance with the Israeli Lobby is very two sided; each thinks it is using the other for its own ends. The Likud gets crucial support in the Republican Party for its West Bank occupation and settlements. The Dispensationalists get encouragement in their belief that the end of the world will come sooner. They believe that they then will go straight to Heaven without the pain of dying, while the rest of the human race, including Jews who don't convert, will soon be wiped out with great suffering. In their passion for the return of Christ, these people forsake the most fundamental Christian principles of humanity towards human beings and even Christians in the Middle East. They humiliate Muslims everywhere. Any policies that promote conflict and misery in the Middle East are "good" for their ends. The article below is about how the strange alliance got started.
The profound Catholic libertarian philosopher, Dr. Leonard Liggio, once remarked how he was always surprised how Americans who had lived in the overseas nearly all came to the same conclusions about American foreign policy. It is noteworthy that most Dispensationalists are very insular and know little about the outside world. Today they are a major factor in U.S. foreign policy.
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