For several years liberals and leftists of all sorts were gnashing their teeth and pulling their hair over the horror — horror, I tell you! — over evangelical Christians supporting Israeli hawks. I first wrote about it here, I think. Some British lefties were particularly vexed about this development, I seem to recall, because it represented the team-up of all the stuff they hate: Americans, Rightwingers, Right-Wing Christian Americans, Israelis, Rightwing Israelis, George Bush and Jews generally. I can’t tell you how many emails I received from folks all around the world lamenting, shrieking and otherwise caterwauling about the evil alliance of fundamentalist Christians and warmongering Jews. Quotes from Congressional Republicans on the need for a “greater Israel” were hyped to no end. I think Pat Buchanan and Chris Matthews may even have discussed this once or twice.

The logic went something like this: Bush is a lickspiddle to the knuckle-dragging sky-god worshippers who are in turn convinced that the Bible promises the “Brroklyn born” Zionists everything from the Mediterranean to the suburbs of Kabul. This in turn gave the “butcher” Sharon a free hand to commence his scorched earth policy against Palestinians everywhere.

Anyway, Israel is pulling out of Gaza next week in an unprecedented unilateral surrender of territory constituting an enormous blow to any schemes for a “greater” Israel. Sharon, surrounded by bodyguards, is a pariah among the Likudniks, and guess what?

Bush applauds and the Christian right is, for the most part, silent.

This might be worth pondering the next time some lefty Middle East expert tells you he knows exactly what’s going on and then proceeds to get spittle-mouthed about fundamentalist Christians, Israel and Bush.

By the way, I personally support the withdrawal but just barely and with some enormous misgivings. But we can discuss all that later.