Joe Lieberman's Dangerous Alliance with Christian Zionists [VIDEO]

At a recent Manhattan fundraiser featuring high-profile Bush supporter and lifelong bachelor Ed Koch, Joe Lieberman sought to score easy points, and a few quick bucks, by tarring Democratic candidate Ned Lamont with the anti-Israel brush. Lamont, he said, was "surrounded by people who are either naïve or are isolationists or, frankly, some more explicitly against Israel."

Using his second favorite tactic -- race baiting -- Lieberman pointed to black congresswoman Maxine Waters, who abstained from voting for the Hezbollah condemnation, and Al Sharpton, who seldom speaks of Israel, but who has had tension with Jews in the past.

Of course, as Joe Conason noted recently in Salon: "Lieberman can hope to get away with his racially inflammatory strategy only if everyone else forgets not only his habit of sucking up to [Jesse] Jackson and Sharpton but his history of stroking the most bigoted black leader in the world."

That leader he's referring to, of course, is...Louis Farrakhan.

Responding to Lieberman's gambit, Hillary Clinton challenger Jonathan Tasini wrote: "the truth is, Joe, you're no friend of Israel." Lieberman's "Israel at any cost" position he likened to: "the friend of an alcoholic who would slap him on the back and yuck it up at a bar, offering to pay the alcoholic's tab -- forget the consequences, as long as it makes him feel good."

Tasini's analogy is spot on, but with all due respect, he misses the motherlode behind it.

In an August 11th Newsweek column, Rabbi Marc Gellman, a Bush supporter, expressed his disappointment in Connecticut's Jewish voters, writing: "I cannot understand why Joe's percentage of the Jewish vote was not in the high 90s instead of the 54-57 percent range (according to Lieberman’s campaign)."

The only mystery is how Lieberman did that well.

The irony is, no matter where a person falls on the political spectrum, it would be difficult to find a candidate less appealing to anyone who supports Israel's security -- or who opposes conservative Christian theocracy -- than Joe Lieberman. To understand this confusing assertion we roll back the clock a ways.

Kickin' it with the fundies

Picture this. It's late at night in the late 90s and you're watching PAX, the local Christian-owned shopping- and infomercial-dominated network. An appeal comes on urging viewers to join a burgeoning alliance of Christians and Jews in support of Israel. Joe Lieberman has just finished lavishing praise on Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, the man responsible for this unlikely marriage:

"Rabbi Eckstein established the first dialogues in America between the Jewish community and the evangelical Christian community. He is the leader in America, probably in the world, in this important work."

"I believe that this man is doing a noble work worthy of our support and understanding."

Your skepticism might be warranted were the video clip not in the upper right hand corner and were the links not so well-established and numerous. That's Joe Lieberman locking arms with Jerry Falwell, who believes that Jews will go to Hell and that the Antichrist will be "a Jewish male."

It appears to be okay for Joe Lieberman because, despite the fact that the Jews and Muslims in Israel are all going to Hell, Falwell is big enough to note that "we remain friends in support of the State of Israel as required by scripture." Of course, politics is filled with cynical weddings, but this one puts Israel on the fast track to destruction.

Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, founder of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (IFCJ), is co-founder, with Joe Lieberman, of the D.C.-based public policy outfit, Center for Jewish and Christian Values (CJCV), which seeks to "build a more moral society in America." The CJCV is the "values" wing of the IFCJ, whose advisory board included William Bennett, Gary Bauer, and Ralph Reed, which professed to foster a Jewish-Christian dialogue and to mutually support the state of Israel. Some of the IFCJ's crusades smack of lending Jewish support to traditional right wing Christian bogeymen, like: "[T]he Radical Left is responsible for denying children the right to religious expression in public schools."