Israel: American Albatross or Blessing?

Today, as it turns out, is Christians United For Israel Sunday http://www.cufi.org/site/PageServer. I didn’t know that until I turned on the internet this morning and came upon an evangelical church in Texas that helps spearhead this movement. It claims over 1000 churches in 50 countries.
In July the Cufi movement will send thousands of members to Washington to meet with Israeli officials and lobby for strengthening ties between the US and Israel. I had completely overlooked the entire matter because I forgot that May 15 (Friday) is Israeli Independence Day.
I am old enough to remember the excitement we evangelical Christians felt in May, 1948, when a Jewish state was established on the western shores of the Mediterranean for the first time in over 2,000 years. From the beginning America—and its Christian population—were midwife and godfather to the process.
Harry Truman was running way behind his Republican opponent that year—who happened to be governor of New York, the state with the largest number of electoral votes. Truman needed help to get New York back. He found a way to lock in New York’s large Jewish population.
The United States staunchly backed Israel’s bid to become independent. Truman won his election and Israel became a nation. The war that broke out on May 15, 1948, was as tight as the election Truman won in November (remember the headlines: “Dewey Wins”?)
Five Muslim nations bordered the new, nearly defenseless Jewish state. Five armies poured into Israel. All Israel had for a military were the discharged veterans of the single Jewish Brigade the British would allow to serve in her army during World War II.
Weapons and supplies flowed in from all over the world. The Arab armies were thrown back and Israel wound up with an area nearly twice the size originally allocated by the United Nations. A series of foreign policies were put in play that continue to this day.
Muslim policy continues to be what it has been since that day in 1948—Destroy Israel (not just defeat it, destroy it. Israeli policy continues to be what it has been ever since then—Survive. By whatever means; at whatever cost.
American policy remains what it has been since then. Essentially ambivalent. We support Israel with foreign aid, supply it with weaponry, and work feverishly to force it to make an accommodation with those whose only goal is the destruction of the Jewish state.
Here—have a nice slice of foreign aid; now, in return, kill yourselves. This, truly, is the height of ambivalence.
Our double-mindedness is built on the same factor that made the British adopt essentially the same policy before they left Palestine in 1948. OIL. The Muslims have it. Lots and lots of it. We burn lots and lots of it—and need to import it from them.
As they’ve shown us in 1973 and 1979, they can strangle us by simply turning off the spigot. From a purely economic point of view, Israel is an obstruction in our path to prosperity. On the other hand, Israel is the only truly democratic nation in the entire Muslim world.
Jewish voting blocks in New York and a couple of other states are still formidable—as are Christians who tend, like the Christians United For Israel, to vote for Israel. Added to that is a continuing moral imperative rising from World War II—when the United States did nothing to help Jews slated for death in Hitler’s camps, and there were things we could have done.
(A Nazi chieftain in the Balkans offered to trade a million Jews for medical supplies; we let them die. We never bombed the crematoria when we had the chance. We sent boatloads of Jewish refugee children who got as far as New York back to the Nazi death camps. We felt guilty.)
Why are large groups of Christians—who often are individually anti-Semitic (like my own late father)—so firmly pro-Israel? A few reasons.
They tend to be evangelicals who take both the Jewish and the Christian Bible seriously. They believe that Christ will not return until a Jewish State exists around Jerusalem. They take Christ seriously when he calls Jews “my brethren”.
They take the original Abramic covenant between God and Abram (later Abraham). “I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed. (Genesis 12:3 KJV)
And, of course—while some “Christians” choke on the notion—by any rabbinical or Israeli standard, the founder of the Christian Faith, Jesus Christ, is himself Jewish. He would legally qualify instantly for Israeli citizenship—his mother was Jewish.
In the New Testament (Christian Bible), the Pharisee writer, Saul of Tarsus, states bluntly that Gentile Christians are merely grafted into the vine; Jews are the true branches on the Christian tree. Christ tells a Samaritan woman very directly, “Salvation is from the Jews.”
So, these Christians United For Israel will gather in their churches today and, in July, send their emissaries to Washington to show their solidarity. And the entire American family can pray indeed that in the seed of Abraham that lives in Israel “shall all families of the earth be blessed”, including the United States.
We can certainly use a blessing these days.