For me, this is probably the work that got the Israeli PR thinkers to seeing the possibilities for a beautiful friendship between Zionism and fundamentalism: Hal Lindsey’s 1970 “The Late, Great Planet Earth.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Late_Great_Planet_Earth
I remember hearing about this while we were still in high school, and wondering what in the hell kind of foolishness is this? Up till then, I had never heard such stuff, even though we were steeped in Southern Baptist culture and lingo (albeit a vintage variety — my parents have been kinda frozen in a 1950s time warp ever since they left the USA). I’m guessing mainstream Christianity felt so marginalized by communism, atheism, and science that they opted for a Rodney King “Why can’t we all just get along?” moment instead of confronting what was clearly codswallop of the snake-handling and poison-drinking backwoods variety.
Like I said, we can’t blame the Jews for everything, but we tend to fail to examine the underlying reasons for why they get away with so much. Why are so many Americans willing to go along with (or shrug off) behaviors that would be considered treasonous coming from any other sector of its citizenry? A manufactured sensitivity about the Holocaust helps (we don’t give a rip about Armenians or American Indians or Africans who died in the Atlantic slave trade), but there is something else that has become an unacknowledged part of America’s spiritual fabric, that resonates deeply with fundamentalists (and those who have been influenced/seduced by them). Until respected Christian thinkers (and there are some, contrary to what secularists think) rip it out by the roots and publicly consign it to the rubbish bin of loony ideas, Israel and its supporters are going to get away with murder. Literally.