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Monday, June 04, 2007

Zarelli conference aimed at conservative churches

The Columbian runs a preview story about this week's conservative "Convergence Northwest" conference in Vancouver. (See here, here and here for previous NPI posts about this "GOP-Likud" convergence.)

It's not a big surprise that it's all about the conservative churches. From The Columbian:
Goals of the conference are to discuss conditions in Israel, examine the threat of terrorism and to further Israeli links with local leaders.

But a specific target will be Christian churches, Zarelli said.

"One thing we're focusing on," he said, "is education of people who don't have any clue what's going on, especially pastors of Christian congregations."

Zarelli, a conservative Christian himself, traveled with his wife, Tani, to a similar conference in Savannah, Ga., last fall and to Israel in December, where he met some of the conference speakers. In January, he was appointed to a U.S. Department of Homeland Security advisory council.
It's also not a surprise that the Bush administration would want a fundamentalist like Zarelli as an adviser to Homeland Security. An apocalyptic approach is the only means by which one can "truly understand the threat," as these folks are so fond of putting it.

So the nutshell summary is that Zarelli is putting on a conference designed to promote a faith-based foreign policy that places Israeli interests at the top of the U.S. agenda, not because of any geo-political imperative but because that's what the right-wing churches dig. Hey, I'm no enemy of Israel, and democracy should be supported, but an honest assessment requires an acknowledgment that U.S. and Israeli interests are not always identical. The Zarelli conference certainly seems geared towards promoting extremists both here and in Israel, which is just what the Middle East fracking needs right now.

And really, it grows so tiresome, this "we're the only ones who understand things" baloney, which was repeated yet again in the article, albeit not by Zarelli. No, conservatives, you generally don't understand squat, because you're so busy looking under the bed that salient points tend to escape you. I'm a simple, ordinary person, but offhand even I can understand why someone might hate living in a refugee camp for 60 years. Deal with the whole problem, conservatives, and you might find progress could at least appear on some distant horizon.

The other news in the Columbian article is that Benjamin Netanyahu, the Likud leader and ex-prime minister, will have to deliver his keynote speech by video hook up.

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