A burnt red-orange sun hovers over the so-called Holy Land as the cease-fire brings momentary placidity, but the blood of a thousand dead infants, mothers, fathers, sons and daughters coarse through the cracked eternal veins of the Gaza Strip, remnants of the slaughter that has taken place between Israelis and Palestinians in recent weeks - all in the name of God.

Although one side calls Him Yahweh, and the other, Allah, it is very likely that each party’s casus belli is ironically based on defending the same Supreme Being, and their religious zealotry has done anything but lead to the spreading of God’s message, but, rather, has rendered an antipodal effect, because, to date, all this fervor of faith has yielded is the slaying of God’s children.

Reviewing the long and convoluted history of the Israel-Palestine territorial struggle leads one to conclude that both parties share culpability - both have acted immorally and aggressively, both have violated international law at one point or another. But what is disturbing is how the United States unquestioningly marches lock-step with Zionism, while ignoring objective information for over 30 years that fissures the a priori judgment of Israel’s moral superiority in this conflict, including actions this past November that actually triggered the Hamas assault.

Most disturbing is the fact that our policy may have caused more damage than good, including the fact that our persistent support of Israel might be part of the reason two planes crashed into and toppled twin steel giants in the middle of America’s Rome.

Politically, the U.S. supposedly has a dog in this fight, because it must protect a brother democracy that is perilously surrounded by menacing Islamic theocracies, although it’s fair to contemplate if Israel itself does not fall into the Judaic version of the latter class, for it operates more like a theocratic state, in relative terms, than a democratic republic, where the laws and principles of church and state are connaturally separated.  This commingling tendency was exposed recently by the Israeli Army’s Office of Chief Rabbi (the name of the office itself explains much, and a more befitting title just might be the Ministry of Religious Propaganda), in a pamphlet circulated prior to the most recent Gaza attacks, that compared Palestinians to the ancient Philistines, proffering the absurdity that Israel could learn from the military tactics of Samson and David.

U.S. policy towards this struggle has been transformed over decades by its own forms of religious fundamentalism. Although America is not a Christian state, it is certainly a nation of Christians, a reality not lost on our political leaders who must not only appease the Israel lobby, but are also beholden to Christofascists, a suiting moniker coined by Charlie Purcell, a modern liberal philosopher, to describe the Religious Right in America. Right-wing Christians are not dissimilar to the Islamofascists whom they so condemn, because they both have perverted religious teachings in a quest, not for heavenly peace, but for the ultimate worldly prize - pure, unadulterated power.

The reasons for Christian support of Israel are aplenty, including the obvious fact that Jesus was a Jew, and that Judaism and Christianity share the Old Testament, and that both believe Israel should kick ass and take names in King David fashion, and that both believe that the Jews have exclusive right to the Promised Land. According to a 2008 Joshua Fund survey, nearly 90 percent of evangelical Christians said they felt a “moral and biblical obligation” to back Israel. Thus, due to the nature of these rationales, U.S. policy has not only become seemingly unalterable, but, I dare say, sacrosanct. Even further, ironically, the policy has become as sacred as the religious misconceptions that caused this mess in the first place.

Yes, irony abounds in this bloody intersection of three monotheistic world religions due to a cataclysmic failure to live by the spiritual pillars of the faith each side is defending. What is even more amazing is the fact that these religions have more in common than many realize, having been born of the same God, are all Abrahamaic religions - with each faith claiming to be Abraham’s true descendants.  

In addition, a fact often overlooked, is that Islam was founded with the help of St. Gabriel, a character that has made cameo appearances in both the Old and New Testaments. When Gabriel visited Muhammad as a vessel of Allah in a cave on Mt. Hirah, he commanded Muhammad to recite what later became the Qur’an. The transcendent truth just might be that there is no “right” or “wrong” faith in this matter, and neither side is innocent in this conflict from a religious or political perspective.

Yet, this pattern of blind support continues to this day as we root on the home team. After Hamas fired rockets when the cease-fire expired in December, the Israelis retaliated with disproportionate airstrikes resulting in a glorious rout for the Chosen People by a score of over 1,300 to 13 deaths.

Even that subversive “liberal” media that supposedly loves all things terrorist is in on the act, as they comply with indicting Palestine as the sole inseminator of peccancy. But that is okay - because we all know that Palestine started it. Or did they?

It is intriguing to note how the Israelite modus operandi parallels the Bush administration’s tactics. The snapping of the six-month cease-fire that the worldwide media blamed on Palestine in December, actually began to unravel in the beginning of November when Israel special forces raided and killed 6 Hamas soldiers, “preventively”, in Bush Doctrine jargon, because the Hamas soldiers were digging a tunnel that “threatened” the state of Israel.

Interestingly enough, we put out of mind the immorality of the Israel blockade on Gaza that strangled lifelines for over half a million innocent Palestinian civilians, depriving them of basic needs such as healthcare, food, and electricity throughout the truce-in-name-only.

Not surprisingly, we fail to look hard at the political expedience of Israel’s aggression. Is it beyond conception that Israel took advantage of the transition of the U.S. executive branch to gain an upper hand in this struggle with Islam? Is the idea beyond reproach that an attack was conducive to Israel’s own coming elections - flexing conservative muscle to feed off fear, not unlike the impact that Tom Ridge’s convenient terror alerts had on the electorate in the 2004 U.S. Presidential election?

Meanwhile, back in Gaza, one hears the wails of discordant prayer emanating from both sides of the strip that then rise to meet the fiery setting sun, which seems stuck in time, like some celestial oracle hanging in limbo in God’s darkening sanguine sky. The true believers absorb a final moment of peaceful quietude on the Gaza front, for the sun will set on the silence when it is ripped apart by airstrike, mortar, machine gun and rocket, as wailing prayer is replaced by the caterwauls of the dying.

As these adversaries continue this holy war, I sit confounded by their conception of the Creator for whom they die, because these prayers appear misguided and perhaps have fallen on deaf ears. And on this day, I believe that the Almighty has not chosen a people, is not smiling down upon either side of the strip, and based on a past that seems present, one wonders if He ever will.

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