Andrew Sullivan’s Election Prediction
For those keeping score at home
January 23, 2013
No introduction necessary. Emphasis mine. From The Dish:
But the core battle between Western democracy and theo-political fundamentalism is as real as it is vital. In the US, thanks in large part to Obama and the younger generation, fundamentalism is losing the battle for hearts and minds for the time being, but remains dangerously irrational in its deep, panicked and bewildered hostility to modernity. In the Muslim world, it is waxing turbulently – from Pakistan to Egypt – and has killed thousands in its murderous wake. But it is also true that Greater Israel is, alas, an increasingly fundamentalist project, built on the most dangerous fusion there is: land and monotheism. All religions have the fundamentalist temptation, and Christianity has historically been one of the worst, but the point is not to single out any specific faith tradition, but to note this danger in all of them, and the distinction between a confident live-and-let-live faith and the neurotic need to enforce religious doctrine through civil law on others – a temptation that Jesus warned so often against.
Next week’s Israeli election will almost certainly mean the end of even the illusion of any two-state solution ever happening – and of a secular country able to make peace with its neighbors, let alone relent in its aggressive re-population of the occupied territories. It looks as if it will empower the fundamentalist, racist far right in ways we have not yet seen. Which is to say: If you fear a nuclear-armed theocracy emerging in the Middle East, Iran should not be your only worry. The slick and truly modern theo-fascism of a man like Naftali Bennett bears all the hallmarks of modern fundamentalism. Including its tendency toward violence when challenged.
Israel’s Fundamentalist Temptation [Daily Beast]
Adam Chandler was previously a staff writer at Tablet. His work has appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic, Slate, Esquire, New York, and elsewhere. He tweets @allmychandler.