Ann Coulter's Kultur Kampf

Once in a while on the Tinkerwebs you come across a real gem. This one by Ami Isseroff elaborates lucidly and elegantly on the fallout of Ann Coulter's "perfecting Jews" flap and rightwing collusion with Christian Zionists like John Hagee. Here is the text in full (some emphasis added).

Ami Isseroff

Ann Coulter has succeeded far better than anyone else so far in making American Jews supportive of Israel face up to the dilemma posed by right wing extremist support.

Until recently, Jews, conservatives, and the Evangelical Christian right have joined together in a sometimes uneasy coalition to defend Israel and fight terrorism and anti-Semitism, though generally liberal Jews and Zionists don't always see eye to eye with their Christian conservative allies. An especially explosive issue is the desire, on the part of some (not all) Christian Zionists" to convert Jews to Christianity. Apparently, these people are totally insensitive to the bloody and obnoxious history of forced conversions of Jews, and of the permanent cultural trauma it wrought. However, this issue was avoided as most Christian Zionists either disavowed the intention to convert Jews or kept it quietly in the background. The alliance of conservative Christians and Israel advocates was assiduously cultivated by Benjamin Netanyahu. Perhaps the culminating event of that alliance was the appearance of evangelical minister John Hagee at the recent AIPAC convention. This raised some eyebrows, but Jewish Israel advocates do not, as they should not, ever refuse friendship that is offered with such sincerity and ardor.

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Here's Hagee speaking to AIPAC (my addition):

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However, the outrageous Ann Coulter is forcing a confrontation. First she insisted that her ideal America would be one where all Jews were 'perfected' by conversion to Christianity. These remarks brought on a torrent of condemnation from various Jewish organizations, though some die-hard neoconservative Jews like Dennis Prager insisted on rallying to Coulter's defense.

Now Coulter has let it all hang out, as she usually does, attacking what Stormfront and ZioPedia would call "Jew-liberals" as too soft on terrorism and Islam. In thanks for Prager's support apparently, she rallied to his belated defense regarding his criticism of congressman Keith Ellison, attacked by the ADL. In the process, she also attacked (no surprise) Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party.

Coulter wrote:

"The ADL gently chided Columbia University for making the "mistake" of inviting a genocidal, Holocaust-denying Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak. It tepidly criticized Ahmadinejad's speech for being "a charade of half-answers and obfuscation." That sounds like a fair description of Hillary's current stump speech.

The ADL and its ilk reserve their real venom for a beast like Dennis Prager -- a leading Jewish intellectual, author and radio talk show host. Last year, Prager made the manifestly obvious point that the first Muslim congressman, Keith Ellison, should take his oath of office not on a Quran, but on a Bible, in recognition of "the value system (that) underlies American civilization."

According to the ADL, Prager's column was not a trifling "mistake" on the order of allowing an American audience at one of America's premier universities to give a standing ovation to a murderous, racist lunatic. Prager was "intolerant, misinformed and downright un-American." I think I'd take "obfuscation."

The relevant organs of pious liberal society were promptly rounded up to censure Prager, including the American Jewish Committee and two members of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council, Rep. Henry Waxman and former New York Mayor Ed Koch -- who called Prager a "bigot." Do they have Ellison on the record acknowledging whether the Holocaust happened?

The executive committee of the Holocaust Museum called Prager's column antithetical to "tolerance and respect for all peoples regardless of their race, religion or ethnicity."

As noted by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, (see here) the ADL is at the forefront of lobbying for tougher anti-Iran sanctions and monitoring pro-terrorist activity, and Ellison has attended Holocaust commemorations and joined in resolutions condemning Holocaust denial.

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Coulter concluded, "Liberal Jews are on a collision course with themselves. They can't reconcile the survival of Israel with their conception of themselves as liberals. The liberal coalition has turned against them. Jews are out; Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is in. The new king knows not Joseph."

Coulter is right that there is a problem, but is more complex than she makes out, as she illustrates when she delivers her ideas of the conservative ideological package for right-thinking folks:

The usual liberal coterie acts shocked and offended by Christians who actually believe Christianity is true -- unlike Democratic politicians -- to conceal the fact that the left is increasingly dominated by people conniving in the destruction of Israel.

How about having Tim Russert ask Hillary if she believes the New Testament is the perfection of the Old Testament? She claims to be a Christian. Let's get it on the table: Is she or isn't she? It doesn't get any more bare-bones than that.

Let the cat out of the bag that a 2,000-year-old religion practiced by a majority of Americans teaches that Jesus came in "fulfillment of the scriptures," and you might be better off if you had adopted the preferred approach of liberals' new friends the Muslims and simply slit the Jew's throat.
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At least the ADL wouldn't object.

They're too busy conspiring with the Council on American-Islamic Relations to denounce Dennis Prager. And promoting gun control. And gay marriage. And illegal immigration. You know, all the issues that have historically kept the Jews safe.

The ADL denounces the teaching of intelligent design, the placement of the Ten Commandments on public property and Bibles in public schools. Any entity that disagrees with them on these issues will be labeled an "extremist organization."

Regrettably, the above is not a parody. With writers like Coulter, who needs the Onion?

As might be expected of a person like Coulter, she has attacked the "Jews and the Bolsheviks." Indeed, Ann Coulter, the cat is out of the bag. American Jews who support neoconservatives seem to be on a collision course with themselves.

According to Coulter, American Jews have a choice: either they get their throats slit by the Muslims or they must take up the cross. Christian supporters of Israel like Coulter are trying to force Jews into linking support for Israel with support for theocratic religious coercion, God in the public schools, gay bashing, Muslim bashing, immigrant bashing, creationism and the right to keep a loaded machine gun in your closet. Not only Hillary Clinton, but the Jews, will also have to accept that Jesus came in fulfilment of the scriptures. Coulter's America, not just the country she dreams of as an abstract ideal, but a concrete political goal, is a Christian America. It is a melting pot America where everyone melts in Christianity as conceived by Coulter.

It won't work. Secular Jews don't want any God at all in the school system. Observant Jews understand that the God that Coulter and her friends want to put into the school system is not the Abrahamic God, but the triune God of the Christian faith. They have a right to their opinions, but they won't get Jews to follow them on that issue. Jews with sense won't support minority bashing, because Jews know that Jews are always the one minority to bash, when you're bashing more than one.

Coulter made it evident that she is not a friend of the Jews. She needs to have the Jews alive in order to get them converted to Christianity for theological reasons. Her approach to "protecting" Jews and Israel is pretty much the same as that of a rancher protecting cattle being raised for beef.

Either Coulter will be vomited out of the conservative establishment, or American Jews and their conservative Christian friends have arrived at a most significant and unpleasant parting of the ways.

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