The Texas-Israel Connection

Good essay by Jonathan Cook about how Texas is continuing to help our "pals" in Israel:

http://dissidentvoice.org/2014/01/israel-aims-to-silence-growing-international-criticism-with-texas-am-deal-in-nazareth/

One day not too long ago, I was taking my wife to a doctor's office in San Antonio, got lost, and somehow wound up in the parking lot of John Hagee's Cornerstone Church. I'm not sure what that means.

[From the linked article: Hagee is the founder of Christians United for Israel, a Christian Zionist organisation with more than a million supporters in the US that is best known for raising money to help extremist settlements in the West Bank, which are intended to destroy any chances of a peace agreement.]

While I was an employee of the state of Texas, I frequently went to training at the University of Texas - Austin campus. In nearly every course I took, the instructor made reference to research done in Israel. Nowhere else, just Israel. I'm not sure what that means.

When Robert Gates needed a job in between his CIA gig and his SecDef gig, he became President of Texas A&M University. I'm not sure what that means.

[From the linked article: Hagee appears to have been at the forefront of the negotiations over the Nazareth campus. He has even boasted that it was he who engineered the first meetings between Texas A&M and the Israeli leadership. Hagee is known to be close to Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.]

When George H. W. Bush was looking for a place to put his Presidential Library and Museum, he chose Texas A&M University, even though he had never been a student there. I'm not sure what that means.

In 2004, with the war in Iraq going from bad to worse, the US drafted in a veteran of Central America's dirty wars to help set up a new force to fight the insurgency. He is, I believe, a Texas Aggie ... and you can read all about him here (but I'm not sure what it all means):

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/mar/06/el-salvador-iraq-police-squads-washington

Rick Perry and many other Texans may be big supporters of Israel, but I strongly question whether they are big supporters of Jesus. Texas boasts some of the biggest "Christian" churches in America, but it also has one of our largest homeless populations. And while Texas has some of the nation's largest military bases, one thing it truly does NOT have is people who are willing to turn the other cheek.