“What took them so long?”

Israel Strikes Back

Conservatives have decided the Israelis are the good guys and Hamas are definitely the black hats.

My sympathies tend to run that way, too.

But conservatives want us to support Israel not only with military and economic and diplomatic aid, but even with direct military participation in the Jewish State’s defense.

And in the whole, broad scheme of the neocon wars, of course, against Israel’s enemies.

To be fair, many Democrats and some of them quite liberal take views very close to that, if not exactly that.

Charles Krauthammer, neocon pundit, famously demanded during the 2008 primary season that the US put Israel under our “nuclear umbrella.”

Be advised there is no defense treaty or even executive agreement in force that commits us to doing anything for Israel, at all.

But when K made his demands not only every Republican (sans Ron Paul, I think) candidate still in the running but every Democrat agreed, with Obama using slightly ambiguous and reserved language committing only to defense of the existence of Israel and Hillary enthusiastically promising to turn Iran into an ash tray if that country nuked Israel.

That’s right, the general run of Democrats are almost as completely in the tank for Israel and the neocons as the Republicans.

Without a treaty, without an executive agreement, without a shred of democratic backing, both parties have publicly said the US would in case of need intervene militarily, and even with nukes, to defend or avenge the existence of Israel.

All the same, liberals – and not just “professional liberals” – generally attack Israel and defend the Palestinians, joining the Arab or Muslim line in any specific controversy.

And many of them will say outright they actually hate Israel.

One suspects liberals of that sort have a lot more sympathy with Helen Thomas than with the office-holding Democrats, liberal or not, who are sworn to Israel’s support and defense. 

By the way, the Islamophobe wing of the conservative movement thinks the US is at war, willy-nilly, with militant Islam all over the world, or at any rate ought to be, and so regards Saudi Arabia and other rich Arab supporters of Islamist movements as actual enemies we ought to be fighting.

I think it is worth noting that that is not and has not ever been the dominant neocon view.

Nor do the dominant neocons quite share in the Islamophobe view that not Islamism or fundamentalist Islam or Islamofascism is the enemy, but Islam itself.

A bridge too far, perhaps.

But see the editorial and the comments.

And the daylight does, with the passage of time, grow dimmer between the neocons and the outright Islamophobes.