The true meaning of the attacks on Glenn Beck

Editorial, Amnon Lord, Makor Rishon, August 24 2011 This is the real meaning of the attacks on Glenn Beck. True, the man had a few embarrassing slips of tongue. People are trying to dig up his supposedly real attitude towards the Jews and Israel. They say of the Christian evangelists that they do not really want Israel's good and that deep down they are Jew haters and anti-Semites. For most of the Christian evangelists it is a campaign of lies that has been waged by the Israeli left and the American left for years. They really embody pure and simple support of the Jewish people and the State of Israel. They believe in the Bible and as a result believe that the Jewish people is the chosen people as it is written, and God works in mysterious ways. It is not true that they love Israel and are pushing it towards a violent clash with the Arabs but do not love Jews. Many of them actively study the Holocaust and teach about it. Some of them teach the Bible to Jews disconnected from their roots. They also seek contact with Jews in Eastern Europe. Anyone who knows the subject knows that what is embarrassing is not those good Zionist Christian but the demeaning treatment they receive from left-wing American Jews. There are stories of good friends of Israel who even do good deeds for local Jewish communities in the US, but nevertheless are treated with disdain, arrogance and sometimes even contempt by US Jews. Sometimes they wonder, why do they behave that way? And the embarrassing answer is that most of the Jews are Democrats and treat anyone they perceive as belonging to the American religious right with contempt. And it doesn't matter if that "religious right-winger" happens to be a friend of Israel who would do anything for Israel and for Jews in general. It would behoove the Israeli public, instead of unearthing the esoteric writings of different members of the evangelist community in order to reject those lovers of Israel, to make a note for itself who really harms Israel. Israel's problem is not Glenn Beck. Israel's problem is Thomas Friedman. Israel's problem is not Fox News, but the New York Times and the local Israeli media. The problem is not the evangelists, who have their own reasons for their enthusiastic support of Israel, the problem is J Street. Now they are threatening us that US Jewry will distance itself from Israel because of Glenn Beck and his ilk. The phenomenon of distancing really does exist in certain sectors of US Jewry, but in other large groups of Jews there is an opposite trend of getting closer to Israel. The fact that certain people flaunt their Jewishness only to make their anti-Israeliness more effective is very worrisome. It only goes to show that old historic phenomena among the Jewish people, that existed in Russia, France, Eastern Europe and Britain, have seeped into US Jewry in recent years. We are one people but the Israelis today are a separate ethnic group from US Jewry and we have different existential interests. If certain Jews in America have a problem identifying with Israel because of Glenn Beck and his ilk, they have to check themselves. Israel can do without Tony Kushner and Thomas Friedman. Glenn Beck and John Voight are good enough for us.