Writing in the American Conservative, my friend Jon Basil Utley writes, “Allied with the Christian Zionists is much of the military industrial complex. It is a key industry in many congressional districts benefiting from unending wars, that create more and more enemies for America.”
Utley writes:
The Israeli Lobby represents less than half of American Jews. The real lobby today is an amalgam of mainly older Jews, evangelical Armageddon believers, and the military-industrial complex, which prospers from unending wars and chaos in the Middle East. A recent Pew poll shows 31 percent of Jews do not feel attached to the state of Israel while another 39 percent feel only “somewhat” attached. A massive 83 percent think that construction of settlements on Palestinian lands on the West Bank do not help Israeli security. Sixty-two percent believe that the Israeli government is not negotiating in good faith with the Palestinians.
Media reporting about the growing American Jewish opposition to Israel’s Likud Party hawks is especially scarce. Republican media such as the Wall Street Journalop-ed pages and Fox News disregard such news. I have attended three meetings of the pro-peace and fast-growing Jewish organization J Street. The last meeting’s dinner banquet in 2013 was attended by 60 members of Congress and sponsored by 41 major Jewish organizations. (I wrote about their counter-influence in “J Street and the Israeli Lobby,” reporting on how so many Jews oppose the Israeli government’s hawkish Likud regime of Netanyahu.) Rarely in America does one see such exhibits as one finds at their meetings that show the suffering of the Palestinians under Israel’s brutal occupation and the many Jewish groups trying to alleviate their suffering. There are many other Jewish and Israeli organizationspromoting compromise and peace with the Palestinians, as well.
Related video:
Video description: Phil Giraldi, Jon Utley, Norton Mezvinsky, and Fuad Sha’ban discuss Christian Zionism at the National Press Club in Washington, DC on January 30, 2013.
