By Elazar Hiller
It is my opinion that the term "religious right" is wrong. There is nothing right with the fundamentalist cults, be they Christian, Moslem or Jewish, that are trying to force their beliefs and prejudices on the rest of us by legislation, terror or judicial decrees.
The fundamentalist cults, and particularly the most conservative Jewish rabbis, are very busy falsely trying to convince their followers that President Obama is an enemy of Israel. His greatest "transgression" is that he advocates a Palestinian state and peace between Jews and Arabs.
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The Star of David that many of us wear to denote our Jewishness has no religious significance. Unlike the crucifix, it does not play a part in religious services, and if we call it by its Hebrew name -- Magen David -- which means the shield of King David or his coat of arms, we refer to a national symbol. It is, of course, no accident that the Star of David is displayed on the national flag of the State of Israel.
As a nonobservant Jew I am a direct descendant of an old and honorable nation. A nation that contributed greatly to the advancement of humanity for thousands of years. It is hard to imagine the state of Western Civilization today if it were not guided by the teachings of the writers of the Bible, the preaching of Jesus, the interpretations of Maimonades and Spinoza, the insights of Freud, or the inquiring mind of Einstein -- to name but a few great fellow Israelites in the last two thousand years.
We should not stain a long and honorable history by spreading uninformed and hateful gossip about the President of our country. Let us remember that while the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Natanyahu, and our President do not always see eye to eye, the Israeli defense minister and former Prime Minister, Ehud Barak, declared publicly that President Obama is as good a friend of Israel as there ever was in the White House.
Elazar Hiller lives in Sunrise, Fla.
http://weblogs.sun-sentinel.com/news/opinion/theslant/blog/2011/11/obama_and_me.html