{"id":4319,"date":"2011-05-26T19:10:19","date_gmt":"2011-05-27T00:10:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stonescryout.org\/?p=4319"},"modified":"2011-05-26T19:10:19","modified_gmt":"2011-05-27T00:10:19","slug":"america-and-israel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stonescryout.org\/?p=4319","title":{"rendered":"America and Israel"},"content":{"rendered":"

Walter Russell Mead<\/a> has a fascinating essay on what went wrong last week for President Obama in his latest attempts to move the Middle East peace process forward. The whole thing is worth reading. But the most striking passage comes at the end when Mead turns his focus onto what makes the relationship between America and Israel so special:<\/p>\n

As the stunning and overwhelming response to Prime Minister Netanyahu in Congress showed, Israel matters in American politics like almost no other country on earth.\u00a0 Well beyond the American Jewish and the Protestant fundamentalist communities, the people and the story of Israel stir some of the deepest and most mysterious reaches of the American soul.\u00a0 The idea of Jewish and Israeli exceptionalism is profoundly tied to the idea of American exceptionalism.\u00a0 The belief that God favors and protects Israel is connected to the idea that God favors and protects America.<\/p>\n

It means more.\u00a0 The existence of Israel means that the God of the Bible is still watching out for the well-being of the human race.\u00a0 For many American Christians who are nothing like fundamentalists, the restoration of the Jews to the Holy Land and their creation of a successful, democratic state after two thousand years of oppression and exile is a clear sign that the religion of the Bible can be trusted.<\/p>\n

Being pro-Israel matters in American mass politics because the public mind believes at a deep level that to be pro-Israel is to be pro-America and pro-faith.\u00a0 Substantial numbers of voters believe that politicians who don\u2019t \u2018get\u2019 Israel also don\u2019t \u2018get\u2019 America and don\u2019t \u2018get\u2019 God.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Hat tip: James Taranto<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Walter Russell Mead has a fascinating essay on what went wrong last week for President Obama in his latest attempts to move the Middle East peace process forward. The whole thing is worth reading. But the most striking passage comes at the end when Mead turns his focus onto what makes the relationship between America […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,53,52,26,12],"tags":[1058],"class_list":["post-4319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-israel","category-middle-east","category-politics","category-tom","tag-israel"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stonescryout.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4319","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stonescryout.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stonescryout.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stonescryout.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stonescryout.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4319"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stonescryout.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4319\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stonescryout.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stonescryout.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stonescryout.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}