"Fear and Loathing" of Obama's speech on Israel

This link image is showing up on facebook portraits and on blogs. It gets at the raw “fear and loathing”  around Obama’s speech on Israel yesterday within the Christian conservative world. Here are four more examples from a variety of major sources (I am not highlighting minor figures in the Christian and conservative media, I assure you.)

1. The influential Joel Rosenberg, one of the most widely read and quoted figures on the religious right, has stated in clear terms his opinions of the president’s speech:

 The President made an enormous mistake this week in calling for the Land of Israel to be divided and Jerusalem to be divided along pre-1967 borders. This is in direct defiance of the Bible. It won’t work, and it will bring judgment to the U.S., according to Joel chapter 3. Please pray that the President changes his heart and changes course very soon. (emphasis added)

 Rosenberg’s influence is wide. He is considered a leading voice of evangelicals whose devotion to the modern state of Israel is deeply rooted in their views of Old and New Testament prophecies. The complete trinity of conservative radio hosts--Limbaugh, Hannity and Beck—have hosted him on their show. His views on Joel chapter 3 are textbook examples of the belief of many Christians.

 2. The news service of the  conservative Media Research Center has an article by a rabbi who says Obama’s speech shows he wants to “ethnically cleanse” Israel of Jews.

3. Hugh Hewitt, a leading Christian conservative commentator with a national talk show, hosted the hard-right commentator Mark Steyn yesterday for a discussion of Obama’s speech. Hugh begins by claiming Obama has “given Israel away” with the speech. Later in the interview Hugh asks Steyn about the significance of Obama  calling for the 1967 borders, and Steyn seizes the question to state:

If you have the Western faculty lounge attitude, which is the sewer that Obama has been marinated in, in his entire adult life, then 1967 matters far more than 1973 or 1948, or 1922, because 1967 is, as the faculty lounge left see it, the moment when the Israeli occupation began. Why, by the way, did it begin? It began because Israel’s neighbors launched another disastrous war on them. The enemy, Israel’s enemies are incompetent at fighting conventional war. And they discovered that actually instead of sending your troops into battle and keep losing their wars, why not instead play Western public opinion like a fiddle, and eventually the pressure, you start with the low hanging fruit, your average European foreign minister. But eventually if you keep the pressure up, you’ll land an American president who basically is not prepared to stand by the state of Israel. And that’s what they’ve got right now. (emphsasis added)

4. The Brody file, the lead political blog at Pat Robertson’s CBN site, endorses Huckabee’s statement that the president’s speech is “an outrage to peace, sovereignty of Israel, and a stable Middle East.”