Bush-backing fundamentalists are among Ariel Sharon?s best friends. A few years ago, Sharon was taped by Haaretz newspaper assuring a colleague who had asked him: ?Why are you working with them? Don?t you know that these Christian evangelicals want us to convert at the Second Coming??

?Yes,? Sharon said into a live mike. ?We?ll worry about that then. We need them now.?

The belief among Christian fundamentalists is that the revival of the Israeli state is a precursor to the Second Coming. For this to happen, the Christian fundamentalists want Jews to recognize the First Coming and save themselves from eternal damnation. Israel passed laws against that kind of evangelizing decades ago, but these days the Jerusalem Post, like the government, appears less concerned with the hereafter than the here and now.

The paper is also said to be in financial straits. Another reason, says the British Guardian newspaper, as to why it is getting together with the International Christian Embassy (ICE) in Jerusalem ? an organization that says it exists to ?comfort Zion? and ?declare the purpose of God to the Jewish people? ? to publish a monthly Christian edition from January principally aimed at American fundamentalists.

?The content is going to be jointly put together by the Jerusalem Post and the International Christian Embassy,? the Post?s editor, British-born David Horowitz, told the Guardian. ?It?ll be things like archaeology and tourism and ideological arguments and dilemmas and so on. Obviously, when your predominant mindset is a Jewish audience there are different stresses that go into providing content, whereas if you?re doing it for a Christian audience there are going to be very different emphases and different focuses.?

The paper?s sharp turn to the right surprised some of its own readers last year by calling for the assassination of Yaser Arafat. Its columnists spend a good deal of time insisting that there never was a country called Palestine, and therefore there never should be one.

But Horowitz admits that an overt relationship with the evangelists requires some caution. ?The International Christian Embassy has been operating in Israel for many years and they are very aware of the framework. There are laws in Israel against giving inducement to people to convert and that organization has operated within the framework to the satisfaction of the Israeli government. That is actually very important to me.?

The Israeli government has found allies for their Likud causes. The ICE today launches a campaign against the growing support within the Presbyterian and other churches to divest from Israel in protest at the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories.