Whoa! Was John Kerry being too messianic or Messianic?

Holy dictionary! Talk about leaving a crucial term in a story undefined, unexplained, unattributed or all of the above.

I almost spit my Diet Dr Pepper all over my iPad this morning (which is easier to clean than a computer keyboard, just sayin’) when I read the top of this Los Angeles Times report about Secretary of State John Kerry’s ongoing, some would say “relentless,” campaign to make headlines in the Middle East.

Spot the land-mine term in this opening:

WASHINGTON — The White House on Tuesday condemned as “offensive” the reported comment of Israel’s defense minister that Secretary of State John F. Kerry’s campaign for Mideast peace grows from his “messianism.”

In an incident that may deepen strains between the two governments, Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon was quoted in the Israeli daily Yediot Aharonot as saying that Kerry is “inexplicably obsessive” and “messianic.” He added that “the only thing that may save us is if Kerry wins the Nobel Prize and leaves us,” the article said.

OK, hold it. It is one thing to say that Kerry has a bit of a “messiah complex” when it comes to engineering a breakthrough. It is also possible to say that he is hunting this white whale of foreign policy with “messianic fervor.”

But who took a colorful use of messianic language and turned it into the noun “messianism”? Was this someone in this particular newsroom?

Also, since the status of Palestinian Christians in Israel and in the wider Middle East is such a hot-button issue, is there any chance that Yaalon deliberately used hot-button language that hinted at Messianism with a big “M,” as opposed to with a tamer small “m”?

Does that matter? Let’s look at a typical online dictionary for guidance on this question:

mes·si·a·nism … noun

1. (often initial capital letter) the belief in the coming of the Messiah, or a movement based on this belief.

2. the belief in a leader, cause, or ideology as a savior or deliverer. …

Meanwhile, I am seeing some interesting variations on the actual Yaalon quotation. Consider the top of this report in USA Today:

WASHINGTON — The Israeli government apologized on Tuesday after the White House took offense to a news report in which the country’s defense minister was quoted describing Secretary of State John Kerry’s efforts to win an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement as driven by “misplaced obsession and messianic fervor.”

Again, there is a big difference between a colorful “messianic fervor” reference and an accusation, especially in Israel, of “messianism” or even “Messianism.”

Later on in it’s report, the USA Today team notes:

Yaalon dismissed the American security plan for the region as “not worth the paper it’s written on.”

“Secretary of State John Kerry — who has come to us determined and is acting out of an incomprehensible obsession and a messianic feeling — cannot teach me a single thing about the conflict with the Palestinians,” Yaalon was quoted as saying. “The only thing that can save us is if Kerry wins the Nobel Prize and leaves us alone.

Glancing through a variety of news reports on this controversy, I think it’s safe to question whether the term “messianism” was even used by Israel’s defense minister.

Was this term introduced — inside direct quotes, no less — by someone inside The Los Angeles Times? Did anyone there actually know what the word means, especially in a Middle Eastern context?

Just asking.