Guatemala's Secret War on Israel

Wackiest anti-immigration argument yet (US edition): Hamas wins when Hispanics are allowed into the United States. At least I think that's what Mark Krikorian is claiming:

David Hazony at Contentions points to a new poll that incidentally illustrates an important result of assimilation. (Complete poll here, in pdf.) The survey found that 82 percent of American Christians felt they had a "moral and biblical" obligation to support Israel, including 89 percent of evangelicals, but also 76 percent of Catholics. It's this last statistic that's striking evidence of Americanization — I haven't seen comparable polls elsewhere, but it seems exceedingly unlikely that even a majority of Catholics anywhere else would agree.Christian Zionism is essentially a Protestant phenomenon, and a statistic like this suggests how thorough was the cultural (though not necessarily theological) Protestantization of American Catholics...

The policy point is this — does anyone think three-quarters of the grandchildren of today's Hispanic Catholic immigrants will be similarly pro-Israel? It's not that Latin immigrants are uniquely anti-Semitic (I suspect they're more anti-Semitic than today's Asians or yesterday's Irish and Italians, but less so than Eastern European immigrants); rather, our ability to Protestantize them (in the sense I'm using it) has declined dramatically compared to a century ago.

I'd like to consider this astonishing but, of course, it isn't really.

Comments

[Jim]

I'm not sure that's fair. Krikorian is an immigration restrictionist, but that doesn't mean that every remark he makes must be read as an argument for restriction. I take this more as an observation about shifting patterns of assimilation. Concerns about declining assimilation are an important part of Krikorian's restrictionism, but it doesn't follow that every observation about assimilation is intended as a direct argument for restriction.

[ndm]

The Contentions blog is the Carstairs of American neo-conservatism.

[Maria]

That doesn't make any sense to me. My family is from Guatemala. The country has always had close ties with the Israeli government, and was the first country to recognize them as a nation in 1949 and to set up an embassy there. Latin America has always been overwhelmingly pro Israel, even more so than Europe and some regions of the US. Of the 37 nations to recognize Israel, 18 were from Latin America. The only reason that some Guatemalan immigrants are angry with Israel is because of its training of the Kaibil death squads who violently oppress the Mayan population. I've experienced more anti-semitism in the US than I ever did in Guatemala.

[Alejandro Esquivel]

I'm from Guatemala and I don't support Israel. My main reason is the atrocities committed against palestinians. I am embarassed that my country played such a strong role in founding Israel, a country that shouldn't exist.

[Hojannat Chebelali]

Why should Guatemala exist ?

14% of today's Israel has not been conquered, but bought by jews. Jews have very strong historical ties to ancient Judea and Jerusalem.

Whereas Guatemala is just a product of european colonialism.

I see much more reasons for Israel to exist, housing a people with with a 3'500 yrs history, rather than so-called 'Guatemala', for a people that does not exist.