Evangelicals and Israel.

The NY Times is doing a wonderful series on Israel--today's piece on the relationship between American evangelicals and the Israeli State. I've always understood this relationship as utterly ridiculous, and it seems that the more violent things get the more people like Hagee, Dobson, and Robertson become maniacal and stark raving mad.
I do not believe that we must maintain our close relationship with Israel--I think we should maintain our relationship with any marginalized people: including the Palestinians, the Israelis and the Iranians--and everyone else that fits that category. There is a problem with reading the Bible as a blueprint to the world: it leads to a sense of urgency about all the wrong things. People are starving in Africa, Americans and Europeans are apathetic in general, the environment has been forgotten, Russia is enchroaching (yet again) on civil rights, but here are the great leaders of the evangelical movement in America setting their sights on the end of the world. It all seems too easy: forget the present, live as a "chosen one" and strive to bring about Armageddon. There is something missing here.