2017 Jan 12^th

This country has an important relationship with Israel. This relationship has existed since Israel’s founding in 1948. President Harry Truman recognized the State of Israel the same day it was founded. Surely, there must have been then, and there may be still, some collective guilt for this country’s failure to recognize and attempt to stop the holocaust. Keep in mind that this country refused entry to a boatload of Jewish refugees from Germany sending these people back to Germany and to their deaths. Bolivia admitted 30 thousand Jewish refugees; we admitted none.

Things have changed: Now there are bigoted fringe groups of white nationalists who are hostile to Jews but overt anti-Semitism is uncommon.  The United States has adopted Israel as a client state and provided billions of dollars in yearly support. There are many powerful Jewish legislators here who will push for continuation of this support. The American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) pushes hard against anything that might make life difficult for Israel. Recently our Secretary of State has refused to veto a Security Council resolution condemning Israel for continuing to build settlements on territory conquered in 1967. The pro-Israel lobby erupted in anger, raging against the perfidy of the Obama administration and forgetting completely the 3.8 billion a year this same administration had just agreed to give them for another ten years. The Israelis believe that God whispered to Abraham about 2000 B.C. that He would give them this land and that is the basis pf their claim of ownership and the right to settle it.

We have a variety of Americans who have good opinions about Israel: The first and perhaps most potent are American Jews. They are unhappy with the Iran nuclear arrangement, even to the point of inviting the far right Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to address a joint session of congress where he railed against the Obama administration for neglecting Israel’s interests by promoting this agreement.

Then there are the fundamentalists:  These people have a religious belief that Christ will come again but only after the existence of a Jewish state. They don’t seem to be particularly concerned about the welfare of the Israelis because the fundamentalists believe that when Christ reappears the resulting war will kill about two thirds of the Jews (and many other people as well.)

Meanwhile the fundamentalist religious groups are in full support of Israel. This is curious because another thing these religious groups agree on is an opposition to abortion. They insist that any SCOTUS pick must be opposed to abortion. We occasionally see lines of people along our main roadway holding signs opposing abortion. For many this is an all-consuming issue.

But Israel, a country given almost twelve dollars a year by every fundamentalist and every member of his family, allows abortion on demand. The applicant for an abortion must present her case to a trio consisting of two physicians and a social worker but in only about 2 percent of cases is the application rejected. The applicant can seek an abortion privately and that is illegal but no physician has ever been prosecuted for providing such an abortion.

I have seen no effort by religious groups in this country to work to change this very liberal Israeli law on abortion. There has not been a word. Is that because the right wing religious communities don’t know about this liberal Israeli view of abortion, or is it because these right wing religious groups don’t want to call attention to the problem. We probably won’t know the answer to that but it is an interesting question.

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