Why Do Some Christians Put Israel's Interests Ahead of America's?

Following up on the previous posting, I don't understand the position of many fundamentalist Christians who believe that Israel's future is more important than America's. One of these is apparently House Majority Leader Tom DeLay.

According to his own Congressional website, "DeLay has increasingly taken a leadership role in foreign affairs through his work to expand freedom and his articulation of democratic principles. He was a forceful advocate of President Bush's decision to confront Saddam Hussein's aggression and received the Friend of Israel award this April from the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews."

According to MSNBC, during the Republican Convention, DeLay staked "the Republican appeal to Jews on Bush’s removal of Saddam Hussein, his commitment to Israel and his ongoing crusade against Islamic fanatics. 'My friends, there is no Palestinian-Israeli conflict. There is only the global war on terrorism,' DeLay told the crowd at the Plaza Hotel Monday." The report continued, "'If Israel falls to the terrorists, the entire free world will tremble. To forsake Israel now would be tantamount to forsaking Great Britain in 1940,' DeLay declared Monday. 'It is unthinkable, and it is unthinkable because the world wants to know if we believe freedom is worth fighting for.'"

As a Christian, I don't see why the the US should tie itself so tightly to a country that is based on non-Christian ideas. Certainly Christianity includes a lot of Jewish ideas, e.g., the Ten Commandments, but it also goes beyond these ideas, e.g., Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. Why do fundamentalist Christian Americans reject Jesus' teachings, like the Sermon on the Mount? I don't get it. These uniquely Christian ideas go to the heart of what America is about, or used to be about. Maybe that's why torture upsets me, but not the majority of Americans, who seem to have forsaken Christianity for Judaism, with its eye-for-an-eye morality, unlike the Christian turn-the-other-cheek morality.