American Conservatives
Find Common Cause with Israel
The much-publicized episode in which Republican Senator Ted Cruz was booed and walked off the stage of a gathering of Middle Eastern Christians tells us that Middle East Christians remain anti-Israel while conservative Republicans are more pro-Israel than ever. For Israel this trade-off is scarcely bad news.
Christians in Arab countries have long been mostly hostile to Israel. Although second-class citizens, they are Arabs as well as Christians, and they often share in the antipathy toward Israel of their countrymen. For decades the most violent Palestinian terror organizations were the Marxist-oriented Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and various split-offs from it, all of them led by Christians. Lebanese Maronite Christians, who apparently played a large role in the Cruz meeting, are divided by clan, and one major section of them follows Michel Aoun, who years ago threw in with Hezbollah in his quest for the presidency of that country.
Other Christians are secretly more sympathetic to Israel, recognizing that the survival of one of the region’s minority groups against the tide of Islamic militancy may make it easier for others. But, already marginalized for their faith, they are loath to assume the onus of defending the accursed “Zionist enemy.”
The new news is that support for Israel has become something of a litmus test for Republicans seeking national office. The Pew organization recently announced that its polling had revealed the largest disparity between the two parties in the history of polling with respect to support for Israel. While 44 percent of Democrats favored Israel over the Palestinians, a whopping 73 percent of Republicans did so.
All political groups gave more support to Israel than the Palestinians, but the margins were quite different...
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