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CounterPunch
November
11, 2002
Cartoons
and the Messianic Age
Tom and Jerry and Jerry
by TARIF ABBOUSHI
In the venerable cartoon, the protagonists' conflicting
agendas define the epitome of cat-and-mouse rivalry: simple
survival for the mouse while the cat relentlessly tries to
gobble him up. On rare occasions, as when both find themselves
evicted from the house, they set aside their differences and
pool their cunning for as long as it takes to reclaim the common
right of residence, whereupon the old enmity is inevitably resumed.
Today's alliance between the American theological-political
landscape's most curious of bedfellows--" evangelical Christians
and Zionist Jews"-- is a case of life imitating the cartoon.
During a speech to Baptist pastors in
Texas earlier this year, U.S. House of Representatives majority
whip Tom DeLay (R-Texas) averred that only Christianity offers
a "a viable, reasonable definitive answer" to life's
key questions. He predictably expressed no such sentiment last
April when he addressed a Washington conference of AIPAC, the
American Israel Public Affairs Committee. The half-dozen standing
ovations he received on that occasion were for his various expressions
of unconditional support for Zionism, such as his quip about
touring "udea and Samaria" and seeing no occupation,
"only Israel."
If silence is a sign of assent, then
Mr. DeLay was true to form when he withheld public comment about
the invective that marked this year's Southern Baptist Convention
in St. Louis. Florida Rev. Jerry Vines chose the occasion to
slur Islam by proclaiming that the Prophet Muhammad's matrimony
with a 9-year-old girl made him a "demon-possessed pedophile."
Another American evangelical stalwart, Jerry Falwell, subsequently
appeared to delight in endorsing Vines' right to his opinion
in front of a national U.S. audience on CNN's Crossfire.
If the practice of dredging up minutiae
from centuries-old holy text to discredit individuals or devotees
of a faith is kosher, it would surely behoove the orthodoxy
among AIPAC's ranks to start an early preparation of their
defenses, rather than wait until the confluence of the AIPAC
and evangelical agendas has run its course. For should his
jab at Islamic sensibilities be a measure of his method, orthodox
Jews must dread the day when Rev. Vines tosses aside the Koran
and reaches instead for the Talmud, considered to be the basis
of religious authority in Orthodox Judaism. One can only wonder
if Vines will be as outspokenly intolerant of the Talmud's sanctioning
of sex with a child as long as the child is less than nine years
old, or of its proviso that a Jew may marry a three-year-old
girl. And what will be the evangelical reaction to the Talmudic
assertion that Jesus Christ is boiling in hot excrement in hell?
Might such revelations strain the alliance?
Probably not, for as far as the evangelicals
are concerned the agenda reigns supreme. Their support of Zionism
is not based on feelings of empathy for Jews. It is, rather,
a manifestation of their fixation on Christian theology's pre-conditions
for the return of the Messiah: Restoration of the State of Israel,
Jewish sovereignty over Jerusalem, and the re-building of the
Temple. To that point, evangelical Christians and Zionist Jews
are complementary voices in the same choir. It is in the expectation
of what happens next that the unity of purpose ends.
Judaism teaches that the coming of the
Hebrew Messiah will usher in the Olam Ha-Ba (the World to Come),
commonly referred to in English as the "Messianic Age",
the time when all people will recognize the Jewish God as the
only true God, and the Jewish religion as the only true religion.
For the evangelicals, the return of the Christian Messiah signifies
the time when the Jews will convert en masse to Christianity,
or perish. Given that there is no place for Jews (let alone
Muslims) in the heaven of Tom Delay, Jerry Vines and Jerry Falwell,
can the Zionist-evangelical alliance withstand the riving force
of such inherently divergent interpretations of the endgame?
Do mice convert to cats?
Tarif Abboushi
lives in Houston, Texas. He can be reached at tabboushi@aol.com
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