Fox News this morning (24 Feb. 10) showed a film clip of the Israeli ambassador to the United States being shouted down by Muslim students during a speech he was invited to make at a university in California. Fox’s announcers took the ambassador’s side in the name of free speech and the fact that he had been formally invited to give the talk. I agree with that argument, and believe that almost any suppression of free speech is a sure road to civil violence over the long term.

But the real question raised by the film clip, at least in my mind, is why none of the commentators — and I believe this to be true not only of Fox but of almost all news organizations — expressed any concern with the obvious; that is, with each passing year the Muslim-Israel religious war is coming nearer to the towns and cities of America. The students who shouted down the Israeli ambassador presumably have taken umbrage at the Israeli government’s actions to slow or stop the flow of food, fuel, and water into Gaza and its apparent killing of a Hamas commander in the Gulf. The Israeli ambassador, on the other hand, could legitimately cite the long history of attacks on Israel and Israelis by secular and now Islamist Palestinian insurgents. Both sides have a dog in the fight, but no news commentator or journalist ever notes another point that is equally clear — the United States does not have a dog in the fight.

Neither Israel nor Palestine contribute anything to the United States that we could not easily live without. Indeed, both are unnecessary expenses for our national purse. The correct U.S. policy is simply neutrality. Wish both sides well, and let them fight it out. Both have an absolute right to defend themselves as they see fit; neither they nor the U.S. nor any other nation has a right to exist; and if one, the other, or both disappeared they would merely join a very long list of once thriving but now defunct nation-states.

The fact of the irrelevancy of the Israel-Muslim war to genuine U.S. interests, however, is clouded by groups of U.S. citizens who support one or the other side and have formed politically active organizations in the United States that fuel the lust of U.S. leaders in both parties to intervene overseas wherever an opportunity exists. U.S. citizen Israel-Firsters have a head start on their fellow Muslim U.S. citizens. The Israel-Firsters, AIPAC, and their media operatives have pretty thoroughly corrupted the U.S. political process and now own any number of senators, congressman, and federal bureaucrats who — by their public words, actions, and depletion of the U.S. Treasury on Israel’s behalf — seem to rank their allegiance to Israel as their major obligation, far ahead of any obligation to the American people. And to date, these Israel-Firsters have managed to prevent any major media organization from covering and analyzing the at least three major books published in recent years that document the criminal activity of U.S. citizens working on Israel’s behalf.

But the Israel-Firsters? dominance is slowly eroding. The growth of the American Muslim community in numbers, wealth, education, and political influence is proceeding apace, as are the growth of organizations like CAIR, a group that seems bent on becoming the Muslim answer to AIPAC. And it is in this context that the Fox film clip should be viewed and analyzed. These two groups of U.S. citizens — pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian/Muslim — have exceedingly strong overseas allegiances and show every sign of wanting to keep Washington intervening at the sites of their battles abroad and to keep fighting them out inside the United States, rhetorically for now. But take a look at that film clip and note the understandable rage in the faces of those heckling Muslim students — a rage we must assume is understandably matched in the minds of university-age students of U.S. Israel-First parents — and it becomes clear that no one can confidently bet that the future will see this domestic Israel-Muslim contest remain limited to harsh rhetoric.

Thanks to Washington’s relentless bipartisan intervention in this religious war, the Israel-Muslim issue is no longer a far away problem for the citizens of the United States. The issue is now part of our domestic politics and it will, I fear, bring violence to America’s streets in the not too distant future. Dr. Paul and others who oppose the U.S. government’s unnecessary intervention overseas have long pointed out the direct and irrefutable correlation between that intervention and unnecessary wars that drain our treasury, kill our soldier-children, and undermine our national security. Americans, if they are paying attention, are now observing a case where that unnecessary intervention is bringing to our shores an alien religious war, one in which we Americans have no genuine, live-and-death interests.