Wow

Courtesy of Andrew Sullivan, a look inside a possible justification for why Israel is so fixated on preventing Iran from going nuclear. Money quote:

The invocation of scripture to justify war has infected the US military and is obviously the main force behind global Jihad. But it is also a dangerous element in Israeli politics and culture. After all, the West Bank settlements are often a function of religious zeal, and often defended for religious reasons, and Netanyahu is far more indebted to his religious nut-jobs than even Bush was to his. You cannot avoid a religious war by invoking a religious genocide to explain your intentions.

This explains a lot for me. I can't imagine that Israel is not infected with religious fundamentalism, as the Orthodoxy rules over births, marriages, Aliyah, and all things religious. I wonder what my rabbi would say about this?