=== you will finally be able to go through life with an objective (and therefore consistent) position on Israel :o)
That, I have already achieved. Remember, it is you who believe Israel is special in that all is fair where "God's will" is concerned.
You are right to sense a reluctance on my part to read the books in the first place. I'll tell you why that is.
My being accused of "hating" the Bush Dynasty dates almost exactly to the posting of a thread I excerpted from the Barbara Bush autobiography which was sitting in our firm breakroom one day. Honestly, the last thing I need is more ammunition for my arguments ... particularly that of a "personal" sort.
I'm fine sticking with public domain facts, the food for thought I've received from Jews (both pro-Israel and not-so-pro-Israel) and perfectly Reasonable (largely Thomist) logic where the recognizing and respecting of acts as essentially evil or essentially good is concerned.
There never was, is not and never will be such a thing as good or "humanitarian" research using artificially manufactured and purposefully-destroyed lives.
There will never be such a thing as committing "pre-emptive" evil acts in God's name so to bring about "God's will."
On occasion, Just War and the sanctity of life (particularly that of the innocent and helpless) obligate a person to commit evil by defending themselves or another to the death and/or seeking to slay an unjust aggressor. The only way in which justice and truth (and mercy) remain a part of this equation is to keep one's perspective on good and evil absolutely intact by recognizing always that infliction of death is an evil to be avoided at all costs. I see nothing wrong, in other words, with placing more emphasis on Father Abraham's haggling with God on behalf of the Good Men of Sodom than I do the instances of "kill them all, let God sort them out" express approvals to lay waste to entire settlements of men, women and children. How anyone with an appreciation of the Covenant made new do otherwise? Are we to read the Old Testament with the same understanding and insights of a man born a thousand years before Christ?
And would you have whipped out your sword to defend Christ in the Garden? I bet I would have. Even if I had somehow managed to think I understood what He was telling me at the Passover meal only hours before, it would have been the perfectly natural thing to do ... to defend with force a man I knew was innocent.
But God's will -- as evidenced by His healing the soldier's ear -- was that man should understand the willing nature of His self-sacrifice, the supreme turning of the other cheek, and learn that there is and should be room for forgiveness of those who, being ignorant, know not what they do.
It's a New Covenant thing. Those of the Old Covenant should have been expecting this all along. To my knowledge, many still are awaiting a Messiah to ride an ass into Jerusalem.
Lastly ... if you'll remember, Christ came to bring that New Covenant to his own -- the only who had an Old Covenant to make new. And He even went so far as to describe the Gentiles as dogs under the table worthy only of the scraps of the Children, perhaps, once the Gentile woman begged for same.
Any so-called Reprobate can beg like a dog and become one of God's Chosen. Remember that. It's the reason mercy---not vengeance or desire to re-form others in our own not-so-godly image, or rationalizations, with all due pragmatism, of the deals cut with the likes of Stalin, the bombing of Nagasaki or Dresden or the tit-for-tat "collateral damage" to innocents--must be the overriding element of any truly Just War.