What an IDF solider thinks of the name Israel

[2xx1xy1JD]

Palimpsest - thanks for the link to the Guardian article, it was a good read.

I should clarify that most of the Israelis that I spoke with don't speak English as a first language and are not American. They would also have no idea what the Book of Revelations, End Times or Rapture is. One relative asked if a prominent Christian political supporter of Israel was Protestant or Catholic. That's about as sophisticated as the understanding got. Don't forget - half of Israelis originally came from countries where the dominant religion was Islam, not Christianity, so there's no even that historical memory of Christianity for them.

Now, that said, most of the Israelis I've spoken to are also somewhat cynical in general, about ALL of their support. They expect opposition, they expect that sources of solid support will suddenly do an about-face, they expect that they will get support from others for totally self-serving or Machiavellian reasons. When you read up on the history, it's actually amazing just how much sources of support flip-flop. In 1919, the British supported the Zionists, and Emir Feisal (King of Syria and later King of Iraq) actually wrote a letter saying "We Arabs, especially the educated among us, look with the deepest sympathy on the Zionist movement." In 1948, Britain played both sides and ultimately abstained from the partition vote, Truman supported Israel against the advice of the state department only after the intervention of his former business partner and the US refused to provide weapons, India voted against partition and the Soviet Union not only voted for partition but allowed the Czechs to provide weapons to Israel. There were plenty of socialist Jews, including my grandparents, who thought that Stalin was their hero until the revelations of 1957 showed that he was persecuting Jews and actively plotting against them. Prior to the Iranian Revolution, relations with Israel were decent and Iran provided refuge to thousands of Iraqi Jewish refugees (including my FIL) and allowed them to fly to Israel. France was the major supplier of arms prior to 1967, then suddenly withdrew all support and reneged on previous commitments. Turkey was a big ally during the 1990s, and that's flipped. Major US support only started after 1967. India's now a growing ally. Saudi Arabia has been dialing down its rhetoric against Israel recently because it's more concerned about Shi'ites and the Arab Spring.

Put into that perspective, most Israelis won't find anything extraordinarily objectionable about American Christian Zionists who want to give them money and support them politically, while making few demands. Having a crazy End Times theology is small potatoes next to others asking you to release child-killing terrorists, deny the Armenian genocide, provide diplomatic cover for despots, etc.

Now, one thing that does concern me is the Christian Zionist view on Iran. I don't care about End Times theology, but I do care that a nuclear bomb could cause a real apocalype in Israel. While support against allowing this to happen is nice, I have no confidence that the Christian Zionists know anything whatsoever about Iran, and it's not a place for ignorant fools to fuck up. I don't offer advice on the details of the nuclear deal, because I have no idea how to build a nuclear bomb and have no business giving any opinion on whether the deal would make it more or less likely. I do know something about the attitudes of Iranians themselves (particularly in Tehran), however, and I'm constantly shocked that this ISN'T a bigger part of the discourse. If you see Iran as some evil monolith, and if you just view all Muslims as spawn of Satan, you don't bother to do actual research into what the trends are and what people think. Iran is quite different from the Arab countries. You've got a lot of folks who are very proud of their heritage - but they see themselves as part of the Persian civilization that goes back thousands of years, and don't define themselves by the Revolution. The population is extremely young - the majority were born after the Revolution, and have no memory of oppression under the Shah. The oppression that they've known has come from the regime. The elderly clerics in charge are desperately clinging to power, but there's a whole movement of fairly moderate, pro-western youth coming up who have no use for them. The US utterly failed to appreciate this fact in 2009 and properly anticipate that there would be a major upheaval. [The signs were there, but nobody saw them. We knew that something big was going to happen because we work in a town north of Toronto that has a huge number of Persians, and all my husband's Persian patients suddenly asked for prescription refills because they were planning on going home to vote. We also talk to Persian patients and clients all the time. Why doesn't the intelligence community spend more time focusing on this stuff, which is easy to see if you look for it?] Anyway, once you realize this, you figure out that bombing Iran is the last thing that you want to do. Any nuclear facilities will be underground (they aren't stupid and they know that the Israeli air force would simply do an air strike if they could), and any larger attack will hurt and antagonize the very people they need for support. You need the support of the Iranians themselves to get regime change.

[eri]

When I think of people who require legal protections and social sympathy, I don't think "longstanding dominant religion that has only recently come upon adversity with the advent of another religion in the same geographical area."

[alba]

Support for Israel or not, I think it's pretty poor taste to use a baby to make a political statement.

This. More than their ignorance, more than their arrogance, I hate that they're using their CHILD as a political tool. I'm not surprised, exactly, considering it's what Jim Boob's been doing all along, but I am still bothered by it.

[2xx1xy1JD]

Here it is:

[bBvideo 560,340:1fe65gnb]

[/bBvideo]

The people who think it is no big deal to join with these sorts of groups to get support need to realize that these groups only want "good" Jews who do and say exactly what the Christian Zionist want them to do and say. The second a Jewish person dares to have an opinion that doesn't agree with them they want them gone.

I'm guessing Amy Joy is done with this thread. :? I would love to hear more from her friend and her thoughts on this conversation.

Sorry to ressurect an old thread, but I just realized who Max Blumenthal (the guy who made that YouTube clip) is.

He's virulently anti-Zionist, to the point of rejecting the idea of a two-state solution because he doesn't want Israel to continue to exist, period. Hate sites like "crappy weather front" seem to love quoting him, esp. since he loves to compare Israelis to Nazis.

So....we've got a guy who hates Israel and wants it to disappear, making a video slamming Christian Zionists. Call me cynical, but maybe he doesn't like Christian Zionists, not because they may not be good for Israelis, but precisely because they are.

I don't have any illusions about the Christian Zionists beliefs. As I see it, though, they think that an imaginary event may send me to an imaginary hell if I don't believe in their imaginary deity. Meanwhile, they are raising real money and providing real support to fight real threats and save or improve real Jewish lives. Like any alliance for strategic purposes, each side has their own agenda, and it could all end tomorrow. That's not a reason for Israelis to refuse the support today.

[puckersnout]

I only skimmed it, but the guest author came off as a fetishist. She says she's not an Israeli citizen yet. I thought Jews were granted citizenship by birth? To be clear, the author doesn't say she's converting, either. She says she married an Israeli, but that doesn't necessarily mean she married a Jew, does it? Who can serve in the IDF?

No, being Jewish doesn't automatically make a person an Israeli citizen. A friend of mine (who was quite a religious Jew, actually) married a Jewish person born is Israel. She had to go through all kinds of hoops, interviews, paperwork, etc. to be accepted as a citizen. She also had to prove she had income. She was a doctor, so not a problem. She found the process quite annoying.