ugh.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1595901,00.html
Christian leanings at the Jerusalem Post
Chris McGreal
Thursday October 20, 2005
The Guardian
The strange and uneasy embrace between the Jewish state and America's
evangelical right is being tightened. At the beginning of next year
Israel's oldest English-language paper, the Jerusalem Post, is to
launch a Christian edition. The Post, a widely respected paper until
it fell into former owner Conrad Black's clutches, is seeking to
bolster its North American circulation by building on the blossoming
relationship between the Israeli right and Christian fundamentalists.
[...]
The paper is getting together with the International Christian Embassy
(ICE) in Jerusalem - an organisation that says it exists to "comfort
Zion" and "declare the purpose of God to the Jewish people" - to
publish a monthly Christian edition from January principally aimed at
American fundamentalists.
[...]
The Israeli government has good reason to be pleased. The ICE today
launches a campaign against the growing support within the
Presbyterian and other churches to divest from Israel in protest at
the occupation. A couple of years ago, the vice president of the World
Jewish Congress, Isi Leible, pondered the meaning of the newfound
relationship between Israel and the American religious right in an
article for the Jerusalem Post. He said many Israelis would have been
appalled at ties with people regarded as "anti-Semites obsessed with a
fanatical urge to convert us".
Politics has overcome - as has the Post's dire financial situation.
But Leible concluded it is better that some things remain undiscussed.
"Their [the evangelists'] support for Israel is based upon the belief
that the Jews must be sovereign in their land as a precursor to the
Second Coming. These and other theological issues should never be
explored".