Pastor Strangelove and the End Times

According to this Economist article, 8 in 10 Americans believe that Israel’s attacks on Lebanon are justified. This is in stark contrast to the attitude of most Europeans, who tend to be appalled by the carnage and generally more positively disposed to the Palestinians than Israel (allegedly because they’re all anti-semites smarting at their failure to exterminate the Jews in the Holocaust, if you believe the Zionist lobby).

Certainly, here in Scotland, when the news broke that US planes were using Scottish airports to transport bombs to Israel, there was enough of an outcry to stop it immediately.

I haven’t seen statistics for the rest of the world, but I imagine that support for Israeli (and American) terror is pretty thin on the ground.

So what’s wrong with Americans? Why are such nice, friendly people not on the side of justice?

There are two main reasons for this: one is the powerful Zionist lobby in Washington, AIPAC, with and annual budget of $50 million and a staff of 200, that pushes for US support for Israel. And they get bang for their buck: Israel gets around $3 billion a year in mostly military aid from the US – excluding donations from private organisations. If America pulled the plug, Israel would collapse in weeks.

The other reason is the lunatic Christian Right, characterised by the kind of eschatological nonsense pushed in the Left Behind series.

Essentially this group believes that Jesus will come againn and rule like some kind of bearded Hitler, throwing all the evildoers into the Lake of Fire and making Christian leaders his gauleiters in the New Jerusalem.

But Jesus won’t come unless certain conditions are met.
This excellent AlterNet article has more:

“At the center of it all is Pastor John Hagee, a popular televangelist who leads the 18,000-member Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas. While Hagee has long prophesized about the end times, he ratcheted up his rhetoric this year with the publication of his book, “Jerusalem Countdown,” in which he argues that a confrontation with Iran is a necessary precondition for Armageddon and the Second Coming of Christ. In the best-selling book, Hagee insists that the United States must join Israel in a preemptive military strike against Iran to fulfill God’s plan for both Israel and the West. Shortly after the book’s publication, he launched Christians United for Israel (CUFI), which, as the Christian version of the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee, he said would cause “a political earthquake.”

So these people want to provoke war and destroy the world so that Jesus will come again and they can reign with him. I think they have a nasty surprise in store.

But the reason that both these articles are missing is this: most Americans don’t think. They believe what the flickering box in the corner tells them to think, and it tells them to support Israel.

Biased? Anti-American? Please prove me wrong. I’d love to see some evidence of critical engagement with the real world from the majority of Americans.

UPDATE. Here is further evidence of American stupidity.