Lux Lucet

Take the words of another prominent Democrat Nancy Pelosi, for example.  She said,

I have said to people when they ask me if this Capitol crumbled to the ground, the one thing that would remain is our commitment to our aid…and I don’t even call it aid…our cooperation with Israel. That’s fundamental to who we are.[2]

This is an extraordinary statement.  The very Capitol of the United States could crumble to the ground, America could be wiped out as a nation, and Pelosi the one thing Pelosi mentions that would remain is – not America’s commitment to the Constitution and coming to the aid of the American people – but our government commitment to Israel, a foreign nation. 

Clearly, our representatives – if one can call such people as Nancy Pelosi “our representatives” at all – have been captured by a foreign lobby.  In this case, we’re talking about the Israel Lobby.  In a 2006 essay published by the London Review of Books, John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen Walt of Harvard wrote,

For the past several decades, and especially since the Six-Day War in 1967, the centrepiece of US Middle Eastern policy has been its relationship with Israel. The combination of unwavering support for Israel and the related effort to spread ‘democracy’ throughout the region has inflamed Arab and Islamic opinion and jeopardised not only US security but that of much of the rest of the world. This situation has no equal in American political history. Why has the US been willing to set aside its own security and that of many of its allies in order to advance the interests of another state? One might assume that the bond between the two countries was based on shared strategic interests or compelling moral imperatives, but neither explanation can account for the remarkable level of material and diplomatic support that the US provides.

Instead, the thrust of US policy in the region derives almost entirely from domestic politics, and especially the activities of the ‘Israel Lobby’. Other special-interest groups have managed to skew foreign policy, but no lobby has managed to divert it as far from what the national interest would suggest, while simultaneously convincing Americans that US interests and those of the other country – in this case, Israel – are essentially identical.[3]

Prior to the work of Mearsheimer and Walt, it was considered taboo even to acknowledge that there was such a thing as the Israel lobby.  Even today, it’s not something that’s often discussed in public.  There’s much more that can be said on the topic, but note especially how Mearsheimer and Walt acknowledge that the American government is putting aside the American national interest in service to a foreign nation. This is immoral, unconstitutional, and dangerous.

But I leave off talking further about the Israel lobby today.  It’s a big topic that needs to be addressed separately. 

Let’s turn to our original question, Does God require Americans to support Israel?  If by this question we mean are Americans morally required to send their tax dollars to the government of Israel and militarily defend it, the short answer is no.  In fact, the sort of financial and military support for Israel demanded by Bill Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, dispensationalist minister John Hagee, and current Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley[4] is not only not required by the Constitution or by the Bible but is antithetical to them and sinful.

Dispensationalists like to cite Genesis 12:3 “I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse him who curses you” as the basis for the moral obligation to support Israel.  But where do they get the notion that using the federal government to take money by force from the American people and to send it to the government of Israel is what is meant by “blessing Israel”? In truth, what dispensationalists are advocating is a form of theft. Civil governments are charged with two and only two tasks in the Bible: 1) punishing those who practice evil and 2) praising the good, which means passing and enforcing laws consistent with the commandments of God.  Taking money from American citizens and sending that money to the government of Israel is not “blessing Israel,” it is sinfully cursing the American people by forcing them to labor in the service of a foreign nation.       

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[1] Who Really Owns the ‘Holy Land’?” https://www.trinityfoundation.org/journal.php?id=225, accessed 11/26/2023

[2] “Democrats Go All-Out for Israel: Joe is a Zionist and Kamala panders to Jewish donors,” by Philip Giraldi, September 15, 2020, The Unz Review, https://www.unz.com/pgiraldi/democrats-go-all-out-for-israel/, accessed 11/26/2023.

[3] “The Israel Lobby” by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, March 23, 2006, London Review of Books, https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v28/n06/john-mearsheimer/the-israel-lobby, accessed 11/26/2023.

[4] White all current presidential candidates have pledged their support to Israel, Nikki Haley has been the most aggressive in her support for the Zionist state.  An example of just how over the top Nikki Haley is on Israel can be seen daily on her X (formerly Twitter) feed.  To give just one example, Haley recently commented that “We should…support Israel whatever they need, whenever they need it, no questions asked.”  In Haley’s world, Americans don’t even have the right to ask questions about how their support for Israel, financial and military, is being used.  https://x.com/mtracey/status/1717609895401234884?s=20, accessed 11/26/2023.

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