Blimp deflator: Letting out the gas

This article was published in Challenge Weekly, New Zealand’s Christian newspaper, on November 30, 2009. It’s typical of the articles on Israel that are published by Challenge, and contains a routine reiteration of the Christian Zionist crackpot eschatology that Challenge apparently espouses. Note how it (1) continues to portray Israel – the aggressive nuclear-armed superpower of the Middle East – as the party under threat, and (2) ignores the fact that Israel’s settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank are illegal under international law (and were once acknowledged to be illegal even by the United States). Although Challenge, as an evangelical Christian newspaper, has a limited readership, I think the opinions expressed in its pages, on the subject of Israel/Palestine, are a reflection of the opinions of most New Zealanders. Like most Westerners, New Zealanders avidly follow sport, gossip and other trivia, and let the “authorities” do their thinking for them on serious world issues.