Twin Terrors of the Holy Land: The Sexy Fundamentalist and a White-Haired Zionist

by Robert Weitzel

Mention 9/11 to most Americans and the
two numbers are considered sufficient to give meaning to that day. But
mention 9/12, the day after when “terror” became our national mantra
and the “smoking gun” brandished by a neocon-infested administration
for its devilish designs in the Middle East and the numbers are meaningless
beyond the platitudinous, “they hate our freedoms” and “God Bless
America.”

Such platitudes, hawked ad nauseam by
TV “faith-healers” and political snake oil peddlers, may act as
a balm to soothe a body politic traumatized by the attacks on 9/11,
but they do not explain-only obfuscate-the real causes that brought
terror to our “blessed shores.”

Like many Americans on the seventh anniversary
of 9/11, I turned to the Bible for an answer, a problematic move for
an atheist such as myself. Predictably, I went straight to verse 9:11
in the Book of Revelation-the Bible’s most terror filled text-and
found a short blurb about Abaddon the Destroyer; admittedly, an interesting
coincidence, but not a “big picture” explanation.

However, thanks to Providence or serendipity,
the very next verse, 9:12, was a godsend: “One terror now ends, but
there are two more coming.”

Considering the last seven years, plagued
to biblical proportion as they have been by the Bush administration’s
criminal domestic and international response to 9/11, no prophet is
needed to give meaning to the first half of Rev 9:12, while only a cursory
vita review of the Republican and Democratic vice presidential candidates
is needed to illuminate the rest of the verse.

John McCain will be the oldest man ever
elected as a first-term president. He is also the fellow who made an
enemy of the religious right in 2000 when he blasted them for “the
evil influence that they exercise over the Republican Party.” McCain
needs youth and sex appeal and religious right muscle to prevail. He
needs Sarah Palin . . . who happens to be an “end times” fundamentalist.

Barack Obama will be the first “black”
man ever elected president. He is young and inexperienced in foreign
affairs. He is also not polling well among influential older white voters.
Obama needs age and white hair and foreign policy muscle to prevail.
He needs Joseph Biden . . . who happens to be a self-professed Zionist.

Behold the twin “terrors” of the
Holy Land: a sexy fundamentalist and a white-haired Zionist.

Introducing Governor Palin to Master’s
Commission graduates, a youth ministry whose vision is to “see young
men and women who are not afraid to lead and are violent in their pursuit
of righteous,” Ed Kalnins, pastor of the Wasilla Assembly of God church
where Palin was baptized, told the audience that she is the “real
deal.”

Pastor Kalnins is the same guy who believes
that certain parts of the world are controlled by demons-guess which
parts-and preaches an “end times” theology, the radical fundamentalist
belief that the corruption of the Holy Land, that would be Muslims,
Jews, sundry heretics and unbelievers, must be purified by God’s cleansing
fire before the Second Coming of the Lord Jesus Christ can occur.

Knowing Palin is the “real deal”
and that several of the churches she’s attended are associated with
the likes of Christians United for Israel, a right-wing “end times”
organization dedicated to leading the charge to Armageddon (beginning
with the nuking of Iran), odds are good Palin embraces this apocalyptic
vision.

Frederick Clarkson, author of “Eternal
Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy” recently
told Amy Goodman on Democracy Now!, “[Palin’s] well-documented belief
that she’s living in the “end time” . . . and her interpretation
of the Book of Revelation may be driving her public policy and particularly
her foreign and military policy views.”

Palin clarified one of her foreign and
military policy views for the Master’s Commission graduates by assuring
them that the invasion of Iraq was “a task from God.” For a would-be
vice president this policy view, one first held by medieval Crusaders
as they whacked off Muslim heads, is a real diplomatic nonstarter for
the 325 million Arabs living in the Middle East, not to mention the
billion-plus Muslims worldwide.

But the mother of all diplomatic nonstarters
among Middle East Arabs is a comment Joseph Biden, the current chair
of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and Obama’s would-be foreign
policy advisor, made during an interview with the Jewish-American cable
network, Shalom TV, “I am a Zionist.”

Having a declared Zionist as the vice
president of Israel’s most ardent-to the point of irrational-ally
waves a shoe in the face of Arabs who are convinced (rightly or wrongly)
that Zionism’s ultimate goal is to fulfill the 3000-year-old biblical
mandate in Genesis 15:18 to reclaim the land between the Nile and Euphrates
rivers as Eretz Yisrael, a territory that includes all or part of Lebanon,
Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, a slice of Turkey and upwards
of 160 million Arabs.

Considering the brutal tactics used by
a succession of right-wing Israeli governments-backed by U.S. dollars
and military hardware-to secure the Vermont-sized “Eretz Yisrael-lite,”
it’s little wonder that Arabs living within the biblical boundaries
of Eretz Yisrael feel terrorized by Israel’s chutzpa and its 200 nuclear
warheads and have long since elevated their terror alert to blood red.

Keep in mind that when a terrorized people
lack a superpower ally and more sophisticated means, their only recourse
is to throw stones or strap explosives to their backs or pack suitcases
with mini-nukes and deadly microbes or hijack airliners with box cutters
and visit their enemy’s “blessed shores” This is not to excuse
it. This is not to condone it. This is to explain it.

Come November Americans will choose one
of two “terrors” (since our political system allows only two choices):
the Middle East in flames to fulfill a biblical “end times” prophecy
or the Middle East in flames to secure a biblical Eretz Yisrael. Either
way, 325 million Arabs will have an answer that will undoubtedly send
a twinge of terror, and most likely rage, down many a “radicalized”
spine.

If the Bible or patriotic platitudes
or political snake oil continue to be the extent-or sincerity-of
our search for understanding the cause of 9/11, we will sooner than
later have two more numbers of national significance and another annual
occasion for remembering and mourning.