Apocalypse No

In the mid-1980s liberals Ronnie Dugger of the Texas Observer and Joe Cuomo produced a biased documentary, "Ronald Reagan and the Prophecy of Armageddon," which was broadcast on 175 public radio stations. Another leftist writer, Rayelan Allan, teamed up with Barbara Honegger, a bit player in the Justice Department who made a public show of attacking President Reagan and quitting her job. While Dugger and Cuomo were concentrating on public radio stations, Allan and Honegger were flooding the pages of newspapers and magazines with their similar propaganda.

What was the message these four characters were sending to the nation? It basically boiled down to their belief that Ronald Reagan and his (Gasp!) Christian advisors intended to bring Armageddon to the Middle East. According to Allan, those wacky Christianists in the White House believed that Jesus could only return to this world after Armageddon, so Reagan and his crusading knights would make sure it happened so they could see bible prophecy fulfilled in their lifetimes, never mind the Jews and other Middle Easterners who would assume thermonuclear temperature in the process.

Guess what? The Christophobic lefties were wrong, and it didn't happen. To provide an excuse for this non-turn of events, Allan figures that the Pope and Nancy Reagan tag-teamed The Gipper to talk him out of dropping The Big One on Syria. We're not sure what kind of mushrooms Allan and her fellow travellers were eating, but we suspect that the fungi from Fantasyland had truly magical properties.

But such liberal lunacy didn't begin on Reagan's watch. Anyone old enough to remember how the Democrats painted Barry Goldwater as a madman who would bomb the world into oblivion? His rival, Democrat Lyndon Baines Johnson then proceeded to began bombing North Vietnam in 1965. It was the hated warmongering Republican Richard Nixon who put an end to it.

A quarter of a century after their alarmist propaganda war against Ronald Reagan, the leftists are dusting off their apocalypse paranoia for another go-round. Michael Felsen, an officer of a secular Jewish communal organization in the Peoples Republic of Boston, has slammed Sarah Palin in an op-ed in the Baltimore Jewish Times:

"More and more Jewish people flocking to Israel? What’s Palin’s source of information? Since 2002—the year in which the major wave of immigration from the former Soviet Union came to an end—there has been a consistent downward trend in immigration to Israel. By 2006, immigration was down to 1980s levels, during which time 9,000-24,000 people immigrated annually. And in 2008, the number was 13,681, representing the lowest ratio of immigrants to Israelis since the establishment of the State – 1.9 immigrants per 1000 residents."

Here's what Sarah Palin said:

“I believe that the Jewish settlements should be allowed to be expanded upon because the population of Israel is going to grow. More and more Jewish people will be flocking to Israel in the days and weeks and months ahead. And I don’t think that the Obama administration has any right to tell Israel that the Jewish settlements cannot expand.”

Does she have her facts straight? You betcha! The Wall Street Journal backs up the 2008 GOP vice presidential candidate:

"Immigration into Israel and the Palestinian West Bank is surging after the financial crisis and economic downturn evaporated jobs elsewhere."

"After years of a brain drain from the region, and despite the lack of a peace settlement, by the end of this month about 4,000 North American Jews will have immigrated to Israel this year, an increase of 33% over 2008 and the most in one year since 1973, according to Nefesh B'Nefesh, an organization that oversees and assists with immigration to Israel from North America..."

Oops! Sorry, Mr. Felsen. You just got owned by The Arctic Fox. There they go again. Leftists think they know everything and that Sarah Palin knows nothing. Yet she has an up to date understanding of Israel's immigration dynamics while the smug Left is completely clueless about the issue.

A commenter on the Baltimore Sun's religion blog In Good Faith "weighed" in with some all-too-familiar secular leftist hysteria:

"Republican Administrations since Ronald Reagan's have been infested by people who believe that the last days are nearing -- and, even worse, that it is part of their life's mission to bring those days ever closer."

We've already noted that it didn't happen during Reagan's eight years in office. Gee, come to think of it, not during George W. Bush's eight years or Poppa's four, either. There's two entire decades that Republicans had the nuclear football handy, and not a single time was it used to toss a Hail Mary pass.

Could it be that Bible believers are humble enough not to put themselves in God's sandals and prefer to leave that which is in the purview of the Creator up to Him? Israel is the best friend the United States ever had, not because of scripture, but because the Israelis have almost always acted like it. Sarah Palin, like Reagan before her, realizes this. It is the liberals, remember, who always take the side of the Palestinians, a people who have chosen terrorist organizations such as Fatah and Hamas to not only speak for them, but to govern them as well.

h/t: hrh for the great WSJ find 

- JP

Seth Lipsky: Even on tough issues, Sarah Palin supports Israel

Seth Lipsky, founder and former editor of the New York Sun, comments in Tablet, an online magazine of Jewish news, ideas, and culture, on Sarah Palin's recent remarks on Israel's West Bank settlements:

"A bit of a brouhaha has erupted regarding Sarah Palin and the Jews. It seems that the former governor of Alaska went on television to promote her new book, Going Rogue, and was asked by Barbara Walters what she thought of Israel’s West Bank settlements."

'I disagree with the Obama administration on that,' Palin replied. 'I believe that the Jewish settlements should be allowed to be expanded upon, because that population of Israel is, is going to grow. More and more Jewish people will be flocking to Israel in the days and weeks and months ahead. And I don’t think that the Obama administration has any right to tell Israel that the Jewish settlements cannot expand.'

"When I read her reply, I thought that it was wonderful. In the two generations in which I’ve been covering the Middle East debate, it was one of the few times a public figure gave in response to a question about the settlements an answer that I would call ideal. It seemed to me courageous, in that Palin was going against not only the administration but many in her own party and the gods of political correctness. There was no shilly-shallying about the Oslo process and the Quartet and the United Nations. Palin didn’t seem particularly worried one way or another about how she might be perceived. She is just on Israel’s side."

[...]

"I spent the weekend reading Going Rogue. It turns out to be a marvelous memoir by a very smart, high-spirited woman, who is handling the messiness of family life and the challenges of a public life in a way that is inspiring millions. She may not be a veteran of, say, the anti-communist battles of the free-trade union movement that made Ronald Reagan a sage on the biggest issue of his time, Soviet communism. But she has the kind of clarity of commitment on key themes that he had and the same kind of wholesome optimism—and she’s still young. I couldn’t find anything in the book that made me worry about the fact that even on the difficult issues she supports Israel."

Unlike some political figures in this country, Sarah Palin knows who America's real friends are. Read the full Lipsky opinion piece here.

- JP