Wondering About the Sanity of Today's World

Why wouldn't an American Congressman strip off all his clothes and swim naked in the Galilee where Jesus, the Messiah of the Christians, walked on water and prepared for his crucifixion?

That's exactly what conservative Republican Congressman Kevin Yoder from the 3rd District in Kansas did while in Israel recently. He jumped in the lake naked and swam without regard for the significance of where he was and what he was doing.

Isn't that what most members of Congress do? Act irresponsibly?

Congress gives billions of American taxpayer dollars every year to Israel, even during the worst of times as the economy stumbles through recession, so why would anyone expect members of Congress to act responsibly?

Congressmen are not responsible when it comes to managing hard-earned American dollars. They are even less responsible when it comes to respecting things like the International Rule of Law, the human rights of oppressed Muslims and Christians in Israel, or even respecting sites that are important to their religion.

It's strange that Congress doesn't care too much about Christians, because most of the 535 members of Congress are Christian. There are only 39 members who are Jewish, making you wonder why Israel gets the most foreign aid of any foreign nation. Only two members of Congress are Muslim.

So, to thank Congress for giving Israel billions every year in American tax dollars, which some might argue are better served feeding the millions of poor and hungry Americans, Israel's lobbyists take them on free trips to — you guessed it — Israel.

Well, the all-expense-paid trips to Israel are not really free. Members of the trip, which is funded by one of the many lobbying groups under the AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee), are expected to give Israel their votes in return — blindly, and without regard to things like morality, principle and justice.

So who is surprised that some of those members of Congress on a trip that took place more than a year ago, involving 30 members of Congress and their families, would act like giddy children?

The debauchery of the AIPAC-paid trip is best symbolized by the conduct — or misconduct — of a Congressman Yoder who, while on the boondoggle, decided to join others and swim in the Sea of Galilee. Except Yoder thought it appropriate to remove all of his clothing and swim in the holy waters naked.

Yoder is a Christian, and you might have forgiven him if he felt compelled to enter the waters in observance of Christian Biblical tradition. It was on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, which was occupied by Israel in 1948, that Jesus performed many of his miracles, including "walking on water" and feeding thousands of followers with only one loaf of bread.

Yet it took one year for the story to finally rise to the occasion of Christian outrage in America, the land of the Christian people.

You see, AIPAC-funded trips for members of Congress are so common and routine that no one bothers to ask about the ethics, or the lack of ethics, of allowing an entity dedicated to the policies of a foreign country to pay for the all-expense-paid trips, and presumably, the daunting naked swim in the Sea of Galilee, where the principles of Christianity found its roots.

Oh, the members of Congress who returned from the overseas vacation that was billed as a "fact finding trip" laughed and joked about the incident for more than a year until it finally made a political news website only a few months before Americans will go to the polls and vote to elect a president.

Will it be Mitt Romney, the Republican who is Mormon? Or might it be the re-election of President Barack Obama, who is Christian but who many Americans believe is a Muslim?

Meanwhile, back on the home front, American newspapers published stories of how Muslims in Pakistan and in Egypt are oppressing Christians and ignoring the many more incidents of how Christians are oppressing Muslims and Christian Arabs whom Americans treat as Muslims.

Last week, an Arab Muslim gravesite in suburban Chicago was vandalized by unknown suspects who scribbled ugly racist stereotypes on the tombstone of Hassan Abdallah, a former diplomat of the Arab League.

The extremist or extremists misspelled their hateful message on Abdallah's tomb, writing "Raghaed Killer." It's not uncommon for racists and bigots to be illiterate and uneducated.

As the holy Muslim month of Ramadan came to a close last week, mosques around America were vandalized, burned and defaced by vandalism and racial epithets that can't be repeated.

All these are incidents that make you wonder about the sanity of our world, although in truth, it does kind of explain the insanity of the U.S. Congress.

Ray Hanania is an award-winning Palestinian American columnist. To find out more about Ray Hanania and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit www.creators.com.