A while ago I took a walk on a desolate stretch of the Oregon coast.  When I returned to the cabin, I realized I had dropped a purple glove on the beach.  When my husband went out for his walk, I asked him to be on the lookout for my glove.  When he returned, I asked, “Did you happen to see my glove?”  He said, “Well, I saw a purple glove on the beach, but I wasn't sure it was the right purple glove.”

It is said a doubtful friend is worse than a certain enemy.  Israel has many certain enemies.  They appear to be a wretched lot, manufacturing their own misery by avoiding the best things in life, like canine kisses and silk print dresses billowing with April.  Israel's certain enemies rant, “Death to Israel.”

But Israel's survival is increasingly undermined by her array of doubtful friends.  Across the world, sophisticated elites of Judeo-Christian heritage, many even claiming to be Jews or Christians, say they are not sure this is the right Israel.  The left wing, with their imagined special grasp of ethical issues, disquietude towards faith-based moralities, and all-informing commitment to the preservation of their own high-value hineys, will not commit to this Israel.  The deep thinkers demur and with furrowed faces say, This Israel is indeed problematic.  We understand the complexities, but this Israel is highly militarized – not quite the thing.  We are spiritual, not religious.  There is a kernel of truth in all religion.  Don't they all really say the same thing?  This Israel is pressing to be a Jewish state.  Very troubling.  How can we in conscience support the Jews against the Islamics?  Anti-Semitic?  Don't be absurd.  Only a few months ago we watched a moving program about the Holocaust.  But this Israel?  Too aggressive, too nationalistic.  This one will not do.

Regarding territoriality, Israel is the least morally assailable nation-state in the world.  That is why she is so hated.  There is no unalienable right to any material possession, including territory.  The claim of a “right of return” to the land captured by the Jews is an illusion packaged in a swindle.  Every inch of habitable territory on this planet, and much that is barely habitable, is held because a group asserted a claim and then enforced that claim through armed defense.  Generally, territorial claims amount to mere possession – something like, “We're here now.  Don't like it?  We will kill you.”

The Jews have the oldest continually professed religious territorial claim in history.  A faith-based claim is of a higher moral order than territorial conquest for domination and wealth.  (The left wing defends the importance of such claims for aboriginal people like native Americans, but not for Jews.)  The comfortable sorts dissemble: “Judaism is only one of several religious claims to that place.”  That is crap.  There is no comparison in any other religion or nation to the significance of Zion in the Jewish belief system.  Longing for the Messiah's arrival in the Holy Land is the heart-blood of Judaism and the basis of the ancient, permanent Jewish population in and around Jerusalem.  A comparative illustration may help to explain.  Many different nations held power over the trade routes that passed through western Saudi Arabia.  For centuries, Mecca was a center of Arab pagan worship.  Imagine what would happen if the Stonehenge crowd decided to assert a verifiable, historical claim to erect a sun-worship temple a few feet from the Ka'ba.

The morality of the Jewish claim is not Israel's problem.  It is the moral dimension of Israel's statehood that is the problem.  The last thing Judeo-Christian elites will stomach is for either Judaism or Christianity to be true.  The implications of prophetic truth revealed in Judaism and Christianity are unbearable to the self-spiritualized political and academic left, who dwell in an anti-religious, post-military, magical magisterium.  This is true even for presidents and popes.  In the patty-cake world of left-wing elect, territory is held not through military force, but through enchanted dialogue, meetings, and conversation.  The left wing has passionately rejected its own Judeo-Christian moral heritage.  Furthermore, leftists will not fight to defend any country, including their own, and feel contempt for those who will.

The “not any Israel” and “not this Israel” memes differ in degree of hatred, but both psychologies galvanize self-interests and serve essential self-protective purposes.  Islamic voices rage, “Death to Israel.”  But increasingly, reasoned academic voices accommodate the probability of eventual death, or at least perpetual insecurity, for Israel.  Death to Israel is now subtext in mainstream social justice theory.

Superficially, the “death to” or “permanent endangerment” groups are at opposite extremes.  The death-callers are theocrats who need to study The Joy of Sex.  The left wing are sexocrats intolerant of what they believe are myths of Judeo- Christian theism.  But the incentives to call for Israel's death, or for acceptance of the threat of death, are two degrees of providential scapegoating.  Granting the enemies of Israel “space to destroy” affords cheap, moral self-gratification purchased with somebody else's blood.  It unifies unwholesome power of institutions and governments against a nation that poses no threat to them, while distracting attention from real dangers.  Best of all, it provides psychological defense against the moral challenges of Judaism and Christianity, which increasingly are identified as the enemy in decadent Western societies.  In short, both groups, the theocratic sexually impaired and the sexocratic theistically impaired, blame Israel as a distraction, displacement, or rationalization of their own dissolution and duty-shirking.

There are diverse flocks of “Not this Israel” plumage.  There are Orthodox Jews who wriggle out of loyalty by saying, “Do you see a Messiah?  I don't see a Messiah.”  They expected the Ancient One to have a Facebook page.  There are also many in the burgeoning boycott movement, people trying to gin up some meaning in their lives between government handout days who are siding against Israel.  Their enmity did not develop because of the death-to-ers.  The “not this Israel” left was fostered by leaders who claim to be Christians but see that their political bread is best schmeared against Israel.  If only the world leaders who claim to be Christians had been true to their faith, every Palestinian Arab could have been resettled in peace and material comfort, and so much suffering could have been averted.  Jimmy Carter may have especially broken from the pack of recent American presidents in championing “death-to” groups.  The current socialist, warmist nanny-Pope is quietly supporting Israel's enemies.

Bible?  Koran?  What's the diff?  Obama's commitment to the Muslim Brotherhood and efforts to build up Iran's nuclear weapons stockpile make him the first president to militarize the death-to-Israel world order with weapons of mass destruction.  He recently made reference to himself as a Jew deep down in his inner Barack.  Obama has no national identity and uses the presidency as psychotherapy for his multiple ethnicity disorder.  He probably does feel like a Jew.  It seems to be the aspect of his chaotic identity that he hates the most.

This Israel has nothing to do with fabled Jewish suffering.  The unparalleled saliency of the Jews is the cause of their victimization, as in no good deed goes unpunished.  Nor is this Israel merely a sign of end times, for we are not to be distracted by signs.  Knowledge of Israel will come like lightning, turning doubt to ashes.  The sincere hopes of humanity to breathe beyond war will be requited.  It is the certainty of certainties that this Israel signifies that peace will come, light will come, joy will come on this Earth or another.

Also, I did get my purple glove back.