The Rev. Pat Robertson, the prominent American televangelist and "Christian Zionist," says the felling of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon with a massive stroke is punishment from God "for dividing the Land of Israel." According to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Robertson, speaking on the 700 Club on Thursday, said that both Sharon and former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin murdered by an Israeli extremist in 1995 were victims of retaliation by God Himself. Saith Robertson:

"He was dividing God's land. And I would say, Woe unto any prime minister of Israel who takes a similar course to appease the E.U., the United Nations, or the United States of America. God says, This land belongs to me. You better leave it alone."

Robertson, the Protestant dispensationalist fanatic who is a more fervent Zionist than even the prime minister of Israel, speaks of "appeasing" the United States of America as if it were a foreign country or, at any rate, not his country, but something equally foreign and, presumably, repugnant to him as the EU and the UN.

The charge of "dividing God's land" is a reference to the withdrawal of Israeli military units from Gaza: that this "withdrawal" was accompanied by simultaneous announcements of yet more Israeli "settlements" populated by ardent Zionists from Brooklyn, and paid for by U.S. taxpayer dollars, does nothing to placate the Ayatollah Robertson and his flock. Their belief that the ingathering of Jews in Palestine is a sign that the Second Coming of Christ is imminent is rooted in a literal interpretation of the Bible, and the firm belief that the End of the World is nigh. According to dispensationalist theology, with the "rapturing" up into heaven of the Christian elect, the "new dispensation" of the Almighty on earth is no longer the Church, but the Jews,God's chosen people.

The enmity between such ardent Zionists as Robertson and Sharon ¨C reflected in Sharon's split with the ultra-right wing of the Likud Party and the creation of a new, Sharon-centric formation, the Kadima Party, is rooted in the Israeli leader's acquiescence to American pressure for a Palestinian state. Ironically, the anti-Americanism behind Robertson's charge that Sharon is too eager to "appease" the U.S. was formerly shared by the ailing prime minister, who once compared George W. Bush's peace plan for the Middle East to the 1938 Munich agreement, and angrily declared that Israel would not be sold down the river "like Czechoslovakia." (A statement with which neocons like Bill Bennett dutifully agreed.)

Sharon's subsequent revision of the old Likud agenda of a Greater Israel ¨C extending "from the Nile to the Euphrates"

was as intolerable to Israel's religious fundamentalists as it was to our own, since both see their views as a matter of theology, rather than mere politics. It is God's will that Israel shall be undivided and that it should encompass the same geographical dimensions as mentioned in the Bible: on this, and much else, the Likudniks and Robertson's followers agree. Known as "the Bulldozer" for his policies of decimating Palestinian communities in order to make way for Israeli "settlements,"

Sharon rose to power on the strength of this vision. Today he can credibly claim that it is largely accomplished: in exchange for ungovernable Gaza and a few strips of bantustan-like enclaves that resemble America's Indian reservations more than a legitimate sovereign entity, Israel's power and influence does indeed almost extend "from the Nile to the Euphrates," as the old Zionist slogan put it, or, at least, as Seymour Hersh reports, from the River Jordan to the Tigris, which is in Kurdistan. Even if he had to compromise on the key question of Jerusalem's status, or, at a minimum, kick that can down the road ¨C the cagey old warhorse clearly saw that he was getting the better part of the bargain.

That bargain, struck informally between Bush and Sharon, involved a simple trade: the invasion of Iraq and subsequent start of a whole new era in the Middle East in return for the shell of a Palestinian "state", and a peace plan signed, sealed, and delivered by Bush II.

I won't reiterate the case for believing that the main motive for the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq was rooted in American support for Israel. Suffice to say here that the other ostensible reasons for such a misdirected effort in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, oil, Iraq's links to al-Qaeda, "weapons of mass destruction" all dissipated rather rapidly after the president declared "mission accomplished."

The oil that Paul Wolfowitz assured us would pay the full cost of this war has disappeared, and in Iraq a gas shortage has everyone lining up at the pumps. Furthermore, as the 9/11 Commission concluded and the evidence shows, Iraq never had anything to do with Osama bin Laden and his Islamist followers, contrary to this administration's clear intent in linking the two. As for those fabled WMD: like Shangri La and the Abominable Snowman, this Holy Grail of the War Party has yet to show up anywhere, although the most deluded wing of the War Party is still insisting in television ads, yet that these weapons really, really do exist, just you wait and see.

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So why did we invade and occupy a country that had never attacked America, and was no military threat to us, incurring thousands of casualties and costing hundreds of billions so far? Stephen Zunes, a professor of political science at San Francisco State University and a longtime antiwar activist, says it couldn't have been due to pressure from Israel because¡­ well, because to say so would appear to mimic classic anti-Semitic tropes. As he puts it:

"Because this particular theory parallels dangerous anti-Semitic stereotypes which exaggerate Jewish power and influence, however, it is a particularly grievous misinterpretation, not just because it reinforces longstanding oppressive attitudes against a minority group, but because it diverts attention away from those who really are responsible for the unfolding tragedy in Iraq."

Aside from Zunes' conflation of "Jewish" and "Israeli," which diverts attention away from Israel's ruthless support of its national interests, one has to ask: who is "really" responsible? Why, the U.S., of course: it's the Americans who really are in the saddle when it comes to the "special relationship" between the U.S. and the Jewish state. Israel, according to this classic leftist view, is a "colony" ,specifically, a "settler colony," made possible first by the British and today by the American "ruling class." This view, however, neglects the growth of Zionist power in its own right as an independent force in world politics. It also presupposes an identity of U.S. and Israeli interests, a view also held by Israel's most fervent partisans, albeit coming from a different perspective than Professor Zunes. The neoconservatives and their Christian evangelical amen corner proclaim this perfect congruence of interests as a matter of pride, while Zunes and the Left point to it as a sign of capitalist America's universal malignity. Yet the reality is much more complicated than that and has lately, especially since 9/11 has undergone a considerable evolution, much of which has taken place out of sight, occasionally rising to the surface in the form of seeming rifts in the "special relationship."

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