by Ali Abunimah
As President Bush met with Palestinian
premier Mahmoud Abbas and his Israeli counterpart Ariel Sharon
in Washington last week, one of Bush's closest allies in
Congress was in Israel. Tom DeLay, the influential leader of the
Republican majority in the US House of Representatives was
accorded the privilege of addressing members of the Knesset on
30 July. His speech was so extreme it prompted Labour Party
lawmaker Danny Yatom to comment, "Geez, Likud is nothing
compared to him."
In his speech, DeLay, a representative
from a suburban district near Houston, Texas, dismissed the
unilateral cease-fire by Palestinian factions, which has
resulted in a virtual cessation of violence against Israeli
civilians and occupation forces, as nothing more than a "90-day
vacation" for "terrorists" and "murderers". He urged Israel to
ignore the truce and go on killing Palestinian activists. DeLay
informed the Israeli lawmakers that he was an "Israeli at
heart", and acknowledged that Palestinians "have been oppressed
and abused", though only by their own leaders, never by Israel.
DeLay's central point was that the entire burden of ending the
decades-old conflict lay on the shoulders of the Palestinians.
Knesset members gave DeLay a standing ovation.
DeLay has spoken recently of a US-funded
"Marshall plan" to aid Palestinians, but this is merely an
effort to distract from the core of his message which is
anti-Palestinian.
Michael Brown, executive director of the
Washington-based Partners for Peace said that DeLay used his
speech "solely to demagogue, burnish his credentials with the
extreme right in Israel and the US, and savage the
Palestinians".
Indeed, on the eve of his trip, DeLay
flatly contradicted Bush's rhetorical -- though so far not
tangible -- commitment to the creation of a Palestinian state,
saying, "I can't imagine in the very near future that a
Palestinian state could ever happen." Revealing his low, some
might say racist opinion of Palestinians, DeLay stated, "I can't
imagine this president supporting a state of terrorists, a
sovereign state of terrorists," and added, "You'd have to change
almost an entire generation's culture."
DeLay is an avowed Christian Zionist and
fundamentalist -- an influential constituency for the Bush
administration. A key tenet of Christian Zionists is absolute
support for Israel, whose establishment and existence, they
believe, heralds Armageddon and the return of Jesus Christ. In
the final conflagration, this belief system holds, Jews gathered
back into Israel would either convert to Christianity or perish
and go to Hell.
Don Wagner, professor of religion at North
Park University in Chicago, explains that, "the Christian
Zionist theology is really an aberration of Christian belief and
it takes Biblical passages out of context and strings together a
literal and futuristic interpretation that does violence not
only to the historic message of Jesus but to mainstream
Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox Christianity."
Christian Zionism "represents an extreme
wing of Protestantism", says Wagner, who has written five books
on Palestinian Christianity and the responsibility of western
Christians to work for justice in Palestine, "but they are
organised and in alliance with the pro-Israel lobby and the
right-wing of the Republican Party, hence they can put
significant pressure on the president and members of Congress
and undercut any hope for a just solution in the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict."
According to Wagner, DeLay and his allies,
"have no interest in a just solution to the conflict, let alone
the fact that Christian Palestinians continue to suffer severely
as does the rest of the Palestinian population from the Israeli
policies he supports".
Because of the anti-Semitism that
undergirds Christian Zionism, Israeli and Jewish American
leaders have until recently kept a distance from the movement.
But the logic of power politics in Washington and a sharp shift
to the right among American Jewish organisations since Israel
began its crackdown on Palestinians in September 2000 has driven
them together.
Last October, Sharon's minister of tourism
and leader of Israel's pro-ethnic cleansing Moledet Party, Benny
Elon, appeared with DeLay at the Washington convention of the
influential Christian Coalition. The crowd of thousands cheered
and waved Israeli flags as Elon called openly for the expulsion
of all Palestinians from Israel and the occupied territories,
and cited Biblical authority for this ultimate "solution". DeLay
also received an enthusiastic welcome when he called for
activists to back pro- Israel candidates who "stand unashamedly
for Jesus Christ". Such comments, which reveal the absolute
contradiction between avowed support for Israel and a theology
that views Jews as damned, has gotten DeLay into trouble before.
Washington Post columnist Mary McGrory suggested that
DeLay's sponsorship of a May 2002 congressional resolution that
gave unconditional support to Israel's campaign of
assassinations and violence against Palestinians might have been
prompted by a need to appease ill feelings caused by a speech he
gave in Pearland, Texas. According to McGrory, the speech
"sounded like a warning to non-Christians that they might not be
saved". The resolution passed by 352-21.
DeLay papers over such problems with glib
statements that "Jesus Christ was a Jew," and "The Jewish people
were God's chosen people."
DeLay insists that his devotion to Israel
comes from his "faith", leading him to a clear understanding of
"good and evil". But neither is staunch support for Israel
politically costly. On the contrary, it has been lucrative in
the endless race for campaign funds. Part of DeLay's growing
influence within the Republican Party stems from the fact that
his campaign committees raised an impressive $12 million in
2001-2002. The Washington Post reporter Jim Vandehei
writes that, "In recent years, DeLay has become one of the most
outspoken defenders of Israel and has been rewarded with a surge
of donations from the Jewish community."
This is new territory for Republicans;
historically the vast majority of American Jewish votes and
campaign contributions have gone to the Democratic Party. But
DeLay's activism, coupled with Bush's own alignment with Sharon,
the "man of peace", seems to have the Democrats worried that
Republicans could make serious gains in this stronghold. In
August a delegation of 29 Democratic congressmen, is heading to
Israel, many for the first time.
As the US heads into presidential and
congressional elections in 2004, the result of this "arms race"
to prove who is more pro-Israel can only mean that the congress
as a whole will be even more of an obstacle to peace than ever.
Yet DeLay's brand of Israel worship earned
him some stiff criticism. A Chicago Tribune editorial
said his visit "undermined the peace process", and accused him
of trying to "warp" US foreign policy. The Los Angeles Times
condemned DeLay for using the "considerable power of his office"
to "promote his personal apocalyptic views".
And even in the Texas heartland, the
San Antonio Express- News declared that DeLay's antics "will
not aid in the cause of peace one iota". The paper recently
called on him to "stay home and leave the Middle East to the
State Department and the White House". Alas, there is little
chance of that.
Ali Abunimah
This article first appeared in
Al-Ahram
Weekly.
