Friend Of Israel (?)

This is one of those Abe Simpson posts, where my extra-curmudgeonly side comes out.

Yes, I am a supporter of the nation of Israel. I think they're within their rights to have a geographically defined nation, and in so doing I think they're within their rights of national sovereignty to defend their soil against foreign and domestic agression.

But I was reading Nathan Moore this morning and happened to catch something in his sidebar. I'm betting a lot of people have it in their sidebars as well, because it looks like one of those "put this html code on your site to support X" things. A fidelity branding type of deal.

In this case it is an American flag beside an Israeli flag appearing to morph into each other. (Right now Blogger is being the stink and won't let me upload the image, so I'm using part of my 1000 word allotment to tell you about the picture. If you wanna see it for yourself, hit the link to Nathan's.)

And that image bugs me. Why? Because it seems to be advancing the notion that a lot of people are complaining about. That you can't tell where one nation (the USA) ends and another (Israel) begins. The lines between us are blurred. I don't like that. Yes, I like Israel. But geopolitically there are things that are in their interest but not ours and vice versa. For instance, I don't think mass illegal immigration from Mexico is really much on the minds of the Israelis. Likewise I don't think that every conflict borne by Israel's multimilleneal feud with her cousins is directly our concern.

The image of our flag blurred with Israel's flag is an innocuous web statement to be sure, but it is totemic of a far more dangerous ideal that I would like to see vanish in the wind. America and Israel are friends. America and Israel are allies. But America and Israel are not one nation.