Linda Downing

Here's why Israel matters

Highlands Today
Published: March 25, 2010

Anton J. Grambihler invested time and money to mass-mail an eight-page diatribe against Israel to me and others this past week. Googling revealed him to be a business consultant in Richland, Wash., and a talk-show caller propounding his twisted history. He and Iran's President Ahmadinejad ought to share views, if they haven't already. They know and hate Israel's importance. Simply put: As Israel goes, so goes the world.

Christian Holy Week, March 28-April 4, begins with Palm Sunday and ends with Resurrection Sunday. Songs and movies mark the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ; pilgrims re-enact the Via Dolorosa's march of agony. This that sparks war and peace, passion and apathy, that centers our calendar on one famous Jewish man, occurred in Israel, a nation some see as the very center of the earth.

Rhetoric aside, what President Obama, Vice President Biden, and Secretary of State Clinton think of Israel's new housing units for its own citizens in its own capital, matters little. Israelis rightly question what Clinton calls our "rock solid" commitment to their security. Biden urging Israel to "take risks for peace" was another attempt to coerce the land that birthed the "Prince of Peace" to negotiate with those bent on its annihilation.

We are regressing to a pre-Truman, political position. President Truman cast the deciding vote on Israel's sovereignty in 1948. A June 2009 survey showed American voters' support for Israel is dropping. Since 9/11, voices like Grambihler's blame hate toward the U.S. on our support for Israel. However, compromise by Israel or us, such things as dividing Jerusalem and establishing a Palestinian state, will never appease radical Islam. "We will not recognize even one inch for Jews in the land of Palestine as other Muslim leaders have," Osama bin Laden said in Dec. 2007.

Those who know better ought not to inflame anti-Israel sentiment. In Jan. 2008 Arun Gandhi, grandson of Mahatma, wrote online that Israel and the Jews are the biggest players in a culture of violence that "is eventually going to destroy humanity."

In Feb. 2008 the United Methodist Church compared actions of Israelis to Nazis and began divesting from companies doing business with Israel. In Feb. 2009 the U.M.C. hosted a one-month, Washington, D.C., exhibit portraying Israel's founding as a catastrophe.

The March 2010 Charisma reported an Israeli company has found oil near Tel Aviv. Will that sweeten attitudes toward our only mid-Eastern ally? Truman said: "I will handle this problem not in the light of oil, but in the light of justice."

In Dec. 2007 Israeli scientists inscribed the entire Hebrew text of the Jewish Bible onto a space less than half the size of a grain of sugar. That is about the ratio that ignorance assigns to Israel's importance. And yet, "...God has chosen you to be a special people to Himself, out of all the peoples on the face of the earth...not...because you were more in number than any other people, for you were the fewest of all people; but because the Lord loves you..." (Deuteronomy 7:6-8 Amplified). God's plan for love and life demonstrated through an Israelite "is" Easter. That's why Israel matters.

Finding truth requires the right starting point. That is the quest of this column. If you are a seeker of simple truth, we can find it together-side-by-side.

Linda M. Downing is a freelance writer. Contact her at lindadowning.com.