My friend Arthur Silber points me toward the ravings of one Kay Arthur, a popular “Christian Zionist” author and minister, at the convention of the National Religious Broadcasters:
“Perhaps the most startling moment of the morning was an appearance by popular Christian Zionist author, Kay Arthur of Precepts Ministries. ‘I love America,’ Arthur said, her voice quivering with emotion. ‘But if it came to a choice between Israel and America, I would stand with Israel.’ While the crowd applauded tepidly, I looked around and saw more than a few faces cringing with embarrassment. Arthur went on to read excerpts from the Book of Revelations, painting a surreal image of Jesus seated in a throne floating above Jerusalem, rapturing all the world’s true believers up to Heaven. She left the fate of unreconstructed Jews to the imagination.”
Israel’s amen corner in the U.S. is going to be doing a lot more cringing if David Corn, columnist for The Nation, is right. He cites a Washington Post report by David Ignatius that “more than a half-dozen officials in the Bush administration who are apparently suspected of leaking classified information to AIPAC have had to retain defense lawyers,” and writes:
“Six Bushies on the run? That sounds like major news. But no details have leaked out. So let me contribute in my own small way. A reliable source of mine reports that he recently chatted with one of the principle figures in the investigation and that this fellow said the AIPAC scandal was about to “blow up,” meaning there would be new, noteworthy developments that presumably would generate headlines. The person talking to my source was in a position to know and in a position to hope for the opposite. Consequently, I would assign a fair degree of confidence to this person’s prediction. If that comes to pass, perhaps the Washington media will finally get around to providing more thorough and penetrating coverage of this potential scandal.”
Here, at the intersection between religion, ideology, and treason, is where American politics gets truly … weird. One thing I have to wonder is how and why anyone who is genuinely and sincerely pro-Israel would want to get mixed up with such nutballs. Kay Arthur is the Ward Churchill of the pro-Israel Right, and yet she is intimately connected with all sorts of pro-Israel coalitions and action groups. The Israeli government sent an official representative to the NRB convention.
