Three Excuses and One Belief:

One of the best barometers of a news sources political leanings are its readers comments.
The same exact story about Obama-care elicits diametrically different responses on Huffingtonpost.com then it does on Foxnews.com.

Like stories on Obama-care, any issue relating to Jews/Israel often results in predictable comment trends, with some innovative comments thrown into the mix.
For example Israel/Jew related stories commonly spur two opposing argument lines.

Anti-Israel= Israel spies on America. Israel takes American money, with negative consequences for America. Israel attacked and killed Americans in the Liberty incident.

Pro-Israel= G-d gave Israel to the Jews. Those that bless Israel will be blessed.

On Fox news the latter is the more prevasive comment. On left-leaning sites the former has the louder voice.

I have always found the two trends an expression of ignorance. The Bible has never been followed by the most religious of followers, even though the three monotheistic beliefs all claim to believe in it. As for the dull anti-Israel comments I told myself that these people great-grand parents believed in the Elders-of-Zion conspiracy and probably thought that Jews use Christian blood in their Matzoh.

However I recently noticed that these beliefs, like 9/11 conspiracy theories in the Middle-East, are really wide-spread. I will give, as I expect others to give me, the benefit of the doubt and offer a different perspective.

1. It is true Israel spies on America, like it does almost every country. Israel is an ally of America NOT America. The reason why Israel's intelligence is from the best in the world is because of its aggressive spying. In the real world of real politics, this is a common practice. Israel does not use this intelligence to kill Americans, but to protect its own citizens. The real question is why Jonathon Pollard -the main Israeli spy that leftists like to bring up- has received such a stiff sentence, compared to other ally-spies.

As a side note these same liberal and predictable commentators NEVER talk about China and its rape of American know-how. I am not surprised, are you?

2. Israel does get 3 billion from America, ALL OF IT MILITARY LOAN GUARANTEES THAT ISRAEL PAYS BACK YEAR AFTER YEAR AND ON TIME. Moreover 70% of these loan guarantees are required and are used to purchase American weaponry, which of course boosts American industry. This is besides the fact that America gets the most powerful military in the larger Middle-east as its closest ally (for more on the obvious benefits of America’s alliance with Israel please see the "linkers and thinkers" series).

3. The most preposterous of all is the mantra " look liberty Israel killed Americans", as if that should undermine 62 years of an America-Israel alliance. Besides the fact that Israel claims that it was an accident, an accident that occurred on June 8 1967 -when Israeli war planes and torpedo boats attacked an American intelligence ship USS Liberty, that was off the coast of Israel in international waters- FORTY THREE YEARS AGO (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Liberty_incident)! To use it for anything more than a proof that NO ALLIANCE IS PERFECT, is akin to America cutting off its alliance with Japan, because Japan attacked America!

Another side-note: these same commentators love to claim that this is an "insidious event covered up by AIPAC (read Jewish) Media" that they only found out about recently… Oh come on, type "liberty incident" into your Google search, the first hit, you guessed it. This despite the central role liberty plays in Israel and America!

As for those that support Israel with Biblical claims. Well that what it says in the Bible. If you don't believe in the Bible, then clearly those arguments don't hold water.

In my opinion there are three groups of people who bring up the above "facts": those who are genuinely ignorant, those that are looking for an excuse to be ignorant, and those that believe in the Bible.

Three excuses and one belief, to be exact.