At his God and Country blog, Dan Gilgoff thinks he smells a whiff of Christian Zionism in Vice President Joe Biden's AIPAC speech.
I don't think so.
Gilgoff notes how the vast majority of American Jews are Democrats and wonders if Biden were trying to tap into Republican ties with evangelicals. "It sounded as if the vice president were trying to break the GOP lock on the evangelical-Israel alliance, sometimes speaking in 'Christianese'" with comments like "my commitment [to Israel] began at my father's dinner table. My father was what you'd refer to as a righteous Christian."
Gilgoff reads far too much into Biden's comments. They're standard fare for a Christian politician, even a Democrat, speaking on American-Israeli relations. There's a big difference between that and an effort to appeal to evangelical Christian Zionists, who would reject, out of hand, Biden's call for a two-state solution, "Christianese" notwithstanding.
If Biden had wanted to court them, he would have cited chapter and verse on no land for peace and no division of Jerusalem. Anything short of that is, shall we say, not kosher enough for that crowd. As for more moderate evangelicals who do support a two-state solution, they're less moved by perfunctory religious rhetoric than they are by real movement toward peace.
--Sarah Posner
