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Comment by cbozeman | Hacker News Reader

That one is a lot stickier, because no one tried to systematically wipe out the Saudi people.

Hundreds of thousands of Saudis didn't immigrate here to escape certain death.

There's also the fact that America is still a very religious country - and takes it seriously - so many people support Israel because they really do believe they're protecting God's chosen people. No one should "wish" for war, but I've often wondered what would happen if Saudi Arabia decided to wage war against Israel. I'm very curious with whom America would ultimately side.

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> There's also the fact that America is still a very religious country - and takes it seriously - so many people support Israel because they really do believe they're protecting God's chosen people.

Even that's stickier than it initially appears, in that some of the American evangelical supporters of Israel do so because they think it's necessary to start the End Times.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2018/05/14/h...

These prophesies don't actually end well for the Jews.

Everyone thinks their group is chosen by god. News at 6.

None of theses superstitions end well for humanity.

> Everyone thinks their group is chosen by god. News at 6.

Not all apocalyptic thinkers get a reasonable shot at the nuclear codes of the world's primary superpower every few years, though.

> There's also the fact that America is still a very religious country - and takes it seriously - so many people support Israel because they really do believe they're protecting God's chosen people.

From what I understand, there is also a surprisingly large base of devout Christians who support Israel in the hopes/belief that it will lead to a prophesied battle at Armaggedon, helping to usher the end of the world. Apparently [0] George Bush Jr. may have been a believer in this theory (though others dispute this: [1])

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/andrewbrown/2009/a...

[1] https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/11/15/bush-chirac-and-the-war...

Your comment reminds me of a series of concepts that I've discovered while going down a Wikipedia rabbit hole of protestant theology:

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominion_theology

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theonomy

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Zionism

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dispensationalism

Some of this stuff makes the blood curdle. If it was spewed by some guy in a turban the US would probably have had him killed with robots from the sky by now...

"According to an Ifop opinion poll in October, 57 per cent of French Muslims under 25 think sharia law is more important than the law of the French republic"

https://www.ft.com/content/b6c0681f-3a0a-40fa-8b90-86997925f...

In the past few decades, unequivocal support for Israel has fallen among American Jews, while it has grown among Evangelical Christians. Admittedly, these numbers are complicated, as a majority American Jews say they feel an "emotional connection" to Israel, but nearly 60% are critical of the country's policies, and fewer than 25% are both pro-Israel and supportive of the current government policies. See https://jewishcurrents.org/are-95-of-jews-really-zionists/, https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/80-percent-of-us-jews-say-the..., etc.

Christianity and Protestantism in particular have historically been sources of antisemitism and this was true up till well within the 20th century. The fact that hardcore American Christians have now been converted to pro-Israel fanatics, makes the whole thing much weirder, if anything.

The reality is more complicated than that. This line of "pro-Israel fanatics" goes back quite some time, albeit in different forms. Take British Israelism as an example. [0]

Granted, British Israelism would morph into an even more insane (and downright misanthropic) off-shoot, but you know, humans gonna human I guess. I think these attitudes about Israel have existed for quite a long time anyway.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Israelism

"If Israel did not exist, the United States would have to invent one to protect her interests in the region"

“My father would say, were he a Jew, he would never, never entrust the security of his people to any individual nation, no matter how good and how noble it was, like the United States.”

For some reason, we never talk about the religious motivations behind the creation of the state of Israel.

The balfour declaration was signed well before the holocaust had ever happened; using the holocaust to justify the creation of the colony if israel is anachronistic at best.

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