Religion, Nationalism, and Terror

Inside Pastor John Hagee’s 2008 Washington Summit – a JewsOnFirst.org video, August 15, 2008

Iran and the End Times at Pastor John Hagee’s 2008 Washington Summit
JewsOnFirst.org reporters’ video from inside and outside the July 2008 summit of Hagee’s Christians United for Israel

When John Hagee’s organization, Christians United for Israel (CUFI) held its July 2008 summit at the Washington DC Convention Center, JewsOnFirst.org reporters were inside and outside. This video shows some of what we saw and heard, despite CUFI’s extraordinary efforts to shield the meeting from public scrutiny.

Asner’s narrative in this 16-minute video–posted on July 18, 2008 by “JewsOnFirst.org, the Jewish Response to attacks on the First Amendment”–is not perfect. But the video does provide a revealing view of Hagee’s worldview. He declares, for example, that the Antichrist “will be partly Jewish, as was Adolf Hitler and as was Karl Marx.” Hagee also says that the Antichrist will be a homosexual. In a 1997 sermon, he declares that America is controlled by “an unseen hand.” He goes on to explain that the US is controlled by the Federal Reserve System, which is in turn controlled by “a group of class-A stockholders, among them mostly Europeans, the Rothschilds, and David Rockefeller.”

I received a message saying “This site has been temporarily disabled” when I tried to access http://www.jewsonfirst.org/ at 4:15 on Aug. 2, 2008. But the video is still accessible by clicking here.

Ali Gharib, Going Undercover at Mad Pastor Hagee’s Christians United for Israel Summit, AlterNet, July 26, 2008

For Christians United for Israel and its founder, John Hagee, this year’s Washington-Israel Summit was supposed to serve as a rallying call for Christians to stand up for Israel. The controversies surrounding Hagee’s teachings that inspire his politics, particularly his End Times theology and its implications for the Jews he purports to love and protect and his religious interpretations of the Catholic Church and Hitler, were meant to take a backseat to the conference’s aims of demonstrating political support for Israel and actions against its enemies.

Hagee did not want the events at this year’s summit to be brought to the wider public. All but one event in the two-day session at the cavernous Washington Convention Center were closed to the press. Press passes were issued to Tuesday’s Night to Honor Israel — a bizarre fete attended by an announced crowd of 5,000 — but access to participants and speakers by journalists was strictly monitored and restricted. The reasons became abundantly clear in the question-and-answer session after the first panel, when a woman asked how she would know if it was time to start up a “Christian militia” to return the country to conservative values. “Let’s not use the term militia,” Hagee responded, firmly establishing a thread that could be observed over both days of meetings: Control the message.

Armed with a full-fledged participant’s pass and a Christians United for Israel (CUFI) notepad included in my registration pack, I attended both full days of the summit undercover and spoke freely with participants and speakers. The picture that emerged was very different from the one put on for the world on Tuesday night. Message control was constantly stressed to participants to conceal some of the more controversial themes of Hagee’s teachings and theology. But in candid interviews, conducted both as a fellow participant and as a member of the press, Hagee’s fervent following stayed on message with the full spectrum of his teachings, not just those slices made available publicly.

Away from the watchful eye of Hagee’s Manhattan PR firm (many interviews with participants were broken up), some summit attendees, despite specific and repeated instructions not to talk to the press, were eager to discuss the End Times — a belief in final judgment and the end of the World — and what it meant for Jews.

Attendee Dean “Vernon” Melvin of New Mexico told me about Jesus’ second coming and the subsequent end of the world. “When Jesus returns in the sky above us,” he said, “those of us who are already saved and have died will come up out of our graves and go into the sky with him.”

Randy Driskill divided Jews into only two categories: “The Orthodox believe that their messiah hasn’t come yet. The messianic think Jesus is their savior.”

The “Orthodox Jews,” said Driskill, had “scales over their eyes. They’re blinded by scales right now,” he told me with a deadly serious look on his face. “That’s why they don’t accept Christ.”

Anyone wishing to understand Christian Zionism should see Max Blumenthal’s video of the 2007 Christians United for Israel conference entitled “Rapture Ready: The Unauthorized Christians United for Israel Tour.” It is, as Nat and Natalie Cole might put it, unforgettable in every way. It is among the videos that Hagee’s lawyers have had removed from YouTube, although it is still accessible elsewhere. One can safely assume that Hagee’s security people will make sure that Blumenthal does not attend the 2008 conference.

Hagee’s Revenge? Videos Of Controversial Pastor Removed From YouTube, AlterNet, July 8, 2008

Late last week, with no prior notification, lawyers for the controversial evangelist John Hagee had a series of videos concerning the pastor removed from YouTube. The clips spanned from the contentious to the mundane; some included footage lifted from sermons Hagee had already made public, others involved documentaries made by filmmakers inside Hagee’s conventions. All told more than 120 videos were taken down in the abrupt sweep.

The timing was, perhaps, more peculiar than the move itself. Clips that had been online for well over a year were now being subjected to “third-party” copyright infringement claims. And while Hagee had not been in the mainstream press since he and Sen. John McCain ended their official relationship a month prior, Hagee’s Christians United for Israel annual summit is just days away, and at least one prominent McCain backer (Sen. Joseph Lieberman) is set to be in attendance.

Two individuals who have documented Hagee and posted clips on some of his more noteworthy sermons (including those interpreted as anti-Semitic, anti-Muslim, and anti-gay — Hagee, Wilson noted, once claimed that the Anti-Christ will be German, gay, a “blasphemer” and “partly Jewish – as was Adolf Hitler, as was Karl Marx”) believe that nefarious motives were behind the YouTube shakedown.

“Obviously Hagee’s minions orchestrated this move to suppress bad publicity ahead of their July summit,” said Max Blumenthal, a freelance writer and videographer whose documentary on last year’s Christians United for Israel summit was viewed by hundreds of thousands. “This is a response to the McCain debacle and concern over bad publicity for Lieberman’s appearance,” he charged.

Bruce Wilson, Talk To Action | Reclaiming Citizenship, History, and Faith, May 15, 2008

Yesterday I discovered an astonishing audio recording of a sermon, by controversial McCain endorser Pastor John Hagee, in which Hagee elaborates on his view that Hitler and the Nazis were divine agents sent by God to (with gruesome inefficiency it would seem) chase Europe’s Jews towards Palestine. In his 2006 book “Jerusalem Countdown”, Hagee proposed that anti-Semitism, and thus the Holocaust, was the fault of Jews themselves – the result of an age old divine curse incurred by the ancient Hebrews through worshiping idols and passed, down the ages, to all Jews now alive.

McCain Rejects Pastors Backing Over Remarks – washingtonpost.com, May 23, 2008

STOCKTON, Calif., May 22 — Sen. John McCain on Thursday repudiated the presidential endorsement of the Rev. John Hagee after learning about a sermon in which the megachurch pastor from San Antonio declared that God allowed the rise of Adolf Hitler because it resulted in returning Israel to the Jewish people.

The Arizona Republicans decision to distance himself from Hagee came after months of mounting criticism, particularly from Roman Catholics, over his acceptance of Hagee’s endorsement in late February. Hagee has called the Catholic Church a “false religious system” and a “false cult system” and has suggested that the church played a role in the Holocaust.

Tikun Olam-תקון עולם. March 29, 2008: Make the World a Better Place » Evangelicals: ‘Killing’ Jews With Christian Kindness

A group called World Evangelical Alliance bought a full-page N.Y. Times ad (at least $120,000) this week. A bigger waste of money I’d have a hard time conceiving. Nearest I can tell, the basic message is: “Jews, we love you. But we don’t love you enough to stop proselytizing you or converting you. In fact, we really don’t care what you think of that, since it’s more important to us to keep doing this than it is to respect your wishes that we not do so.” And the real kicker was the evangelical signatories who insisted that converted Jews like Jews for Jesus and messianic Jews are still authentic Jews who despite becoming Christian have a right to call themselves Jews for the purpose of insinuating themselves into the lives of unsuspecting Jews they seek to convert.

The ad is quite a performance. Full of fake love and respect attempting to conceal presumptuousness and condescension toward Jews. The odd thing is that the ad pretends it is directed as a friendly communique to Jews. I actually took it as a declaration of war. So if it was supposed to say anything positive toward Jews it failed miserably on that score. In truth, I think it was meant more for an evangelical audience to reconfirm their certainty that they are right in their efforts to convert the Jews.

The ad begins well enough:

As evangelical Christians, we want to express our genuine friendship and love for the Jewish people. We sadly acknowledge that church history has been marred with anti-Semitic words and deeds; and that at times when the Jewish people were in great peril, the church did far less than it should have.

We pledge our commitment to be loving friends and to stand against such injustice in our generation.

But it quickly goes downhill:

• At the same time, we want to be transparent in affirming that we believe the most loving and Scriptural expression of our friendship toward Jewish people, and to anyone we call friend, is to forthrightly share the love of God in the person of Jesus Christ.
• We believe that it is only through Jesus that all people can receive eternal life. If Jesus is not the Messiah of the Jewish people, He cannot be the Savior of the World (Acts 4:12).

State Rep. Jason Bedrick, left, hosted a house party for presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, right, in October 2007. Rabbi Moshe Bleich of the Wellesley Chabad also attended the event. (Yeshiva World News)

Munson: Huckabee makes some seemingly sensible statements in his article in the January-February issue of Foreign Affairs. For example, he writes: “The Bush administration’s arrogant bunker mentality has been counterproductive at home and abroad. American foreign policy needs to change its tone and attitude, open up, and reach out.” He also writes that if the US “attempts to dominate others, it is despised.” These statements are reminiscent of the seemingly sensible things George W. Bush was saying when he ran for the GOP presidential nomination in 2000. But other parts of Huckabee’s Foreign Affairs article could have been written by a neoconservative. As for Huckabee’s advocacy of a Palestinian state in Egypt or Saudi Arabia, the Yeshiva World News notes that “when asked about a Palestinian state, Gov. Huckabee stated that he supports creating a Palestinian state, but believes that it should be formed outside of Israel. He named Egypt and Saudi Arabia as possible alternatives.” That one of the leading candidates for the Republican presidential nomination–according to recent polls –should spout such nonsense is disturbing. But the rhetoric of his main competitors is equally obtuse when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Huckabee’s rise puts focus on religious rhetoric – JTA, December 24, 2007

NEW YORK (JTA) — Mike Huckabee was a barely known former governor of Arkansas when he attended an October house party on his behalf at the home of Jason Bedrick, New Hampshire’s first Orthodox Jewish state representative.

Despite the candidate’s long odds, Bedrick was brimming with confidence in an interview he gave to an Orthodox news Web site.

“No one had ever heard of the last governor from Hope, Ark., Bill Clinton, the summer before he was elected,” Bedrick told Yeshiva World News. “Huckabee is polling well in all the early states. He’s a long shot, but he’s the best shot we’ve got.”…

To boot, the New Hampshire lawmaker added, Huckabee is pro-Israel: He has visited the Jewish state nine times, and told the crowd at the Bedrick house party that he favored the establishment of a Palestinian state — in Egypt or Saudi Arabia.

On CNBC’s The Big Idea, Coulter said that “we” Christians “just want Jews to be perfected”, Media Matters, October 10, 2007

During the October 8 edition of CNBC’s The Big Idea, host Donny Deutsch asked right-wing pundit Ann Coulter: “If you had your way … and your dreams, which are genuine, came true … what would this country look like?” Coulter responded, “It would look like New York City during the [2004] Republican National Convention. In fact, that’s what I think heaven is going to look like.” She described the convention as follows: “People were happy. They’re Christian. They’re tolerant. They defend America.” Deutsch then asked, “It would be better if we were all Christian?” to which Coulter responded, “Yes.” Later in the discussion, Deutsch said to her: “[Y]ou said we should throw Judaism away and we should all be Christians,” and Coulter again replied, “Yes.” When pressed by Deutsch regarding whether she wanted to be like “the head of Iran” and “wipe Israel off the Earth,” Coulter stated: “No, we just want Jews to be perfected, as they say. … That’s what Christianity is.

Dougherty, Zealous for Zion, American Conservative, Aug. 27, 2007.

Tonight, Christians United for Israel will hold a celebration to supercharge thousands of Christian Zionists as they prepare to meet their senators and congressmen the next day on Capitol Hill.

In February 2006, televangelist John Hagee founded CUFI to “respond instantly to Washington with our concerns about Israel,” telling reporters to “think of CUFI as a Christian version of AIPAC [American Israel Public Affairs Committee].” In just over a year, Hagee, with help from charismatic pastors, is turning CUFI into the largest grassroots Christian political organization in the country. The second annual summit in Washington grew from just over 3,000 attendees last year to 4,500 this July.

Christians, Jews in Holy Land alliance – CNN.com, August 21, 2007