Last week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, by the invitation of American Republican Leaders, was allowed to address Congress. He did so without the formal blessing of the White House, just weeks before his bid for reelection, during a time in which the American Diplomatic Corps is in the delicate stages of brokering a peace deal with Israel's rival country Iran that is designed to ensure Iran can power their cities through nuclear power without the possibility of creating nuclear weapons, something that Mr. Netanyahu is quite upset about. After being greeted with nearly ten minutes of standing ovation by a nearly-packed house of Republican, he spent the bulk of his speech chastising his host country's attempt at seeking peace while claiming that Iran is in striking distance of creating a nuclear weapon (a claim that Israeli Intelligence debunked a couple of years ago) and making the case that America should strike now against Iran and start a new war in the Middle East on behalf of our ally. Anyone who has followed enough of Mr. Netanyahu's career knows that this is not new from him. Iran as been "within striking distance" of nuclear weapons since the Clinton Administration. That's not the issue. The issue was that during the entire speech, Republicans broke into fervant standing ovations that by Rand Paul's account numbered around fifty times with an average for four minutes per ovation.
Israel has been a staunch ally for America for many decades. That said, Israel has been known to cause America more headaches than not. The Jewish homeland is built in the epicenter of world of Islam, which wasn't much of a problem at first until there was a dispute between them and Palestine concerning the two peoples sharing land and Israel expanding their nation to the detriment of their neighbor. Historically speaking, Jews and Muslims have never had much love lost between them, but they have been able to work out their differences. But then that was before Israel took over Jerusalem. Constantly slapping the face of a fellow Islamic nation doesn't help relations with the rest that are ostensibly their neighbors as well.
The only thing keeping the weight of the Islamic world tearing Israel apart is the massive amounts of money and resources American spends. America spends billions a year to keep them safe. We send them the most advanced weaponry (mainly defensive weapons now), we bribe certain nations to shut up and take it such as Egypt, and we threaten war on any nation that even thinks about touching them. And that's where it gets tricky. Such threats only work against nations, not individuals. Terrorist organizations such as Hamas and Hezbollah normally don't have to answer to a nation or its peoples. They can strike within a crowd of innocent Muslims and dare Israel the retaliate, something Israel is only too happy to comply.
Especially under the hard-right leadership of Netanyahu, Israel has refused to broker peace because they don't believe that peace will end the attacks. It is their belief that the only way peace can be brokered is by breaking the will of the Islamic nations, to hit them so hard, that they won't dare hit them again. There are many flaws in this mentality, but consider that this little nation is attacked on a regular basis for decades, where bombs and rockets are regular occurrences, it's not too hard to understand where they are coming from. But that doesn't make them right, either.
And then there are Israeli counterattacks on Palestinians. This is where things get even messier. In order to after the terrorists bombarding their nation with assaults, Israeli forces go into Palestinian territory and start attacking anyone they deem is involved with these attacks. The problem is that Israel isn't exactly known for surgical strikes with limited collateral damage. In fact, frustrated soldiers tend to lash out and murder civilians under the guise they were harboring terrorists. Children, infants and the elderly aren't ruled out. By openly killing with little regard to the population, they create animosity if they're lucky, new potential terrorist if they're not.
So why is America still allies with such an unruly and possibly criminally hostile nation? Part of it is because of America's attempt to recompense the Jewish peoples for the atrocities laid against them during World War II, possibly atoning our own horrible past of antisemitism. Part of it is because we like backing an underdog and if Israel is anything, it's an underdog story. But over the past two or three decades, there has been a new reason why the American public, not just politicians, firmly support Israel. That reason is Armageddon.
In the book of Revelation found in the Bible, prophesies were announced that have been taken as signposts for the "end of days", when the God removes His chosen followers to Heaven and send the rest to eternal damnation. One of the prominent signs of the coming end times was that Israel would lay claim to Jerusalem. Now there is much more to this than just that, but when Israel took Jerusalem, the evangelical Christian religious base took it upon themselves to support Israel's claim to keep them there. The irony is that in the Christian belief, only those who accept Jesus Christ as Lord would be accepted into heaven, something that Jews have denied from the beginning. They are helping Jews to condemn themselves (though not without trying to convert them). The double irony is that it's clear the Israeli government knows that this is why they have Christian support and use it to further their own agenda.
So what does this have to do with conservatism? The problem is that when a conservative wants to support the Israeli people but criticize the flagrant attrocities of their government, it is taken as attack on the nation as a whole. The critic is dismissed as an enemy is Israel if not antisemitic. This would be unacceptable from any other country in the world, but Israel, who does not aid in America's security or prosperity, is allowed to brand Americans as bigots, but allowed to stand in our institutions and look down on us like a dog who just messed on the carpet. And then gets over an hour in applause doing so.
I can't help but think of Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets when I think about Israel, specifically the character of Robert DeNiro's character Johnny Boy. Johnny Boy's carelessness and bravado didn't just get himself into serious trouble, it also got the good friend who kept bailing him out in trouble, too.
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