Huckabee: Wingnut Fundies Now More Supportive of Israeli Gov't Than U.S. Jews

Posted by Joshua Holland, AlterNet at 10:57 AM on August 21, 2009.

Over at TPM, they're making quite a bit of this comment by Mike Huckabee:

Mike Huckabee just told CBN: "One of the things I find most interesting is that generally Evangelicals are so much more supportive of Israel than the American Jewish community."

Josh Marshall offers some analysis -- hitting the obvious point: "American Jews tend to support Israel because of a mix of nationalism, ethnic identification, religious belief and democratic values while the religious right tends to support Israel because its existence will hasten the apocalypse when God will vanquish the Jews en masse in hellfire and turn Israel into a vast evangelical theme park. So the two groups sort of come at the issue from different perspectives."

And there's the requisite response from a Jewish liberal pointing out that American Jews, as a group, are pretty progressive on average and they define "support" for Israel as other than loving its right wing militarism, or Bibi's government, or the settler movement or the occupation of Palestinian land.

I don't know that Huckabee's assertion is true, and I think it would depend on how one defines being "supportive," but I don't think he's necessarily wrong either. It's clear from my own personal experience that during the last 25 or so years, the number of American Jews in my circle who think that Israel holds the moral high ground and is a vulnerable but righteous democratic state surrounded by a sea of bloodthirsty Arab barbarians has declined dramatically, even as the pro-Israeli right has actively courted the conservative Christian community with those very same claims. 

I don't see Israeli political culture reversing it's long rightward shift anytime soon. I don't see its government modifying its policies towards the Palestinians or its disdain for international law or its leaders' tactical paranoia which holds that all criticism of the state's policies are acts of bloodthirsty anti-Semitism.

And so I can see this subtle shift continue as younger generations of American Jews grow up further from the trauma of near-annihilation during World War Two and more young Evangelicals are indoctrinated into supporting Israel as part of their apocalyptic fantasies.

Where might that lead? Perhaps to a "pro-Israel" coalition made up of little more than a minority of ultra-right-wing Jews with an affinity for the settler movement -- Israeli terrorists -- and the conservative Evangelical mega-church set. 

Tagged as: israel, huckabee

Joshua Holland is an editor and senior writer at AlterNet.