PREFACE: ISRAEL OR AMERICA?

. . .In 1988 Professor Shalom Goldman, an associate professor of Hebrew and Middle Eastern Studies at Emory University, made the interesting discovery that a little-known ancestor of the American presidents Bush was no less than Professor George Bush, who — in 1830 — wrote The Life of Mohammed, which just happened to be the first anti-Muslim hate screed ever published on American soil.
. . .Writing in his own 2004 book, God’s Sacred Tongue: Hebrew and the American Imagination (The University of North Carolina Press), Professor Goldman, writing of Bush, who lived from 1796 to 1859, says that Bush’s life and work is important in tracing the roots of “Christian Zionism” in America. Bush was quite well known and prolific in his day and a fervent advocate of a return by the Jews to the Holy Land, and his statements in that regard, says Goldman, “had considerable influence.”
. . .Ironically, despite his advocacy of Zionism, Bush was not a philo-Semite, but, instead, was actually quite hostile to the Jewish people, just as he was toward the Muslims. He viewed the Jewish philosophy as a threat to Christianity and the West and felt the establishment of a Jewish state might only be possible if appeals were made to what Bush called the “worldly and selfish principles of the Jewish mind.”
. . .Of course, today, there is a Jewish state known as Israel, and Bush’s descendants have proven to be worthy advocates for that nation, both Presidents Bush having launched devastating wars on its behalf. And the second President Bush, at least, seems to share his distant ancestor’s peculiar love-hate for the Jews by virtue of his own chosen brand of Christian dispensationalism, which places Israel at its center, yet still looks forward to those so-called “Last Days” when (so the teaching goes) only a remnant of the Jews will survive and become followers of Christ.
. . .However, the Professor Bush of old was not the only philosopher contemplating the return of the Jews to Zion. There were others who actually saw the United States of America as The New Jerusalem — at least temporarily — and viewed American soil as a gathering place for the Jews to prepare for their eventual return to Palestine, which was said to be the land of their forebears. And while today, there are — unknown to many people — many notable anthropologists and archeologists, as well as both Jewish and Christian academics and scholars of Higher Criticism, among others, who have serious doubts about the Jewish people’s so-called “his-

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toric” right to Palestine, the legend of a return to the Holy Land held great sway in America’s early days, and even unto today.
. . .(For those who dare to look into this controversy surrounding the myth of a Jewish historical claim to Palestine, a good starting point is Professor Thomas L. Thompson’s 1999 work, The Mythic Past: Biblical Archeology and the Myth of Israel (Basic Books). Also Jewish author Daniel Lazare’s “False Testament,” in the March 2002 issue of Harper’s, and that article can be accessed on the Internet at findarticles.com.)
. . . Nonetheless, as we move fast forward into the 21st century — long after Professor Bush went to his reward — we find that although the State of Israel very much exists — just barely, and torn apart by major divisions within — the position of the Zionist community on American soil is unrivaled by any other ethnic grouping, even including the old-line so-called “WASP” families of great power and reknown.
. . .Although American Zionists insist that the United States continue to prop up the State of Israel with billions of dollars in welfare, not to mention military aid and other forms of support, these same Zionists do not seem so intent upon taking up residence there. No indeed, they are rather happy here in America and enjoying it immensely.
. . .As we shall see, the Zionist elite in America have achieved much and while many people know that the so-called “Israeli lobby” is powerful in Washington, most people don’t quite understand precisely why that lobby is so powerful. The reason is quite simple: despite all the hoopla and all the rhetoric about “little Israel” and its sacred place in the hearts of the Jewish people, the fact is that the United States has become the center of Zionist power in the world today.
. . .Those Who Reign Supreme, by sheer force of financial clout, coupled with a stranglehold on the Media Monopoly, have established the United States as the mechanism for setting in place a world empire, the long-dreamed-of New World Order.
. . .In the bigger picture, the state of Israel is nothing more than a symbol of an age-old dream that, in reality, has been achieved right here in America — The New Jerusalem.

— MICHAEL COLLINS PIPER