Right-wing Christian Evangelicals, End Times and Israel
by JewsOnFirst, July 31, 2006
UPDATE August 18, 2006: JewsOnFirst leads discussion on CUFI's Nights to Honor Israel. See below
Links to reports and documents cited in this report immediately follow it.
Christian Zionists -- Christian evangelicals who avow support of Israel based on a belief in Biblical end-times scenarios -- are whipping their followers into a fervor in favor of an attack on Iran. In a related development, conservative commentators like former House Speaker Newt Gingrich have been beating the drum for a US attack on Iran, characterizing the current conflict in Lebanon as the start of "World War Three."
The calls for aggressive action against Iran wouldn't amount to much more than laugh lines for Comedy Channel newscasts, were it not for the involvement of some highly influential, right-wing Christian evangelical leaders in a new Christian Zionist organization, Christians United for Israel, or CUFI.
Religious right groups typically support aggressive foreign policies because of their identification with the Republican Party and their interest in missionizing where the US intervenes. But CUFI, which recently brought 3,500 citizen-lobbyists to Washington, is advocating confrontation with Iran based on "cherry-picked" Biblical interpretations.
CUFI's founder, Rev. John Hagee, is leading this push for aggressive US action, purportedly based on Biblical principles. Hagee heads the Cornerstone megachurch in San Antonio and a big evangelical television operation. He founded CUFI in February and packed its leadership with luminaries of the religious right.
<snip>
Hagee has been promoting war with Iran since February. His book on the subject, Jerusalem Countdown: A warning to the world, has sold 700,000 copies, the Wall Street Journal reports. Speakers at CUFI's July 18th kickoff banquet hurled imprecations at Iran.
More:
http://www.jewsonfirst.org/06b/cufi.htmlSee also:
What is Christian Zionism?
by Rabbi Haim Dov Beliak, JewsOnFirst, July 31, 2006Christian Zionism is a movement within Protestant fundamentalism that understands the modern state of Israel as the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy and thus deserving of political, financial, and religious support. Christian Zionists believe that when all Jews are gathered in Israel, Jesus will reappear; there are varying "end times" scenarios for what follows. (For more, please see the Institute for the Study of Christian Zionism.)
Christian Zionism is an extreme modern apocalyptic movement that shares with Nazi philosophy the paranoid idea that Jews and Judaism are the central actors in the world. Both movements seek the eventual dismantling of the Jewish people and Jewish faith - Nazism by death and Christian Zionism by conversion to Christianity of a remnant of Jews, who will finally learn their "lesson" from the death of most of the Jewish people at Armageddon (Ir Megiddo); then the "left-behind" remnant is expected to commit apostasy by converting to Jesus worship.
All the Christian Zionists' expressions of love and friendship (for example, Pat Robertson saying "We love the Jewish people") -- all their farm aid (including red heifers to use in revived temple sacrifices) and help for Russian Jews to immigrate to Israel -- are preparations for genocide by remote control.
Rabbi Barry Block of Temple Beth El, located in Christians United for Israel leader John Hagee's home town of San Antonio, writes for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that "
and his group's partners hew to a theology that mainstream Americans of every faith reject and often abhor. Even as they speak to large congregations, Hagee and his ilk are repudiated by tens of millions of Christians, including evangelicals, and for good reason. The group's advocacy for Israel will harm everything we hold dear, as Israel and the Jewish people are tarnished by association."
Christian Zionism entirely ignores Jewish/Zionist aspirations for normalcy. Zionism was to be a new start for Judaism and the Jewish people living enlightened lives in peace. Instead Christian Zionism encourages the Israeli government and the US Jewish organizational leadership on a path toward enmity with the Palestinians and disrespect for Islam. In his book End of Days: Fundamentalism and the Struggle for the Temple Mount, Gershom Gorenberg pointed to the triad of Christian, Muslim, and Jewish fundamentalisms goading and threatening each other.
Many Jews are puzzled by Hagee's Christian Zionism. Many do not understand how it differs from altruistic support of Israel. Nonetheless, they welcome it and its blandishments of friendship in the face of so much opposition to Israel.
Most of what has been written about Christian Zionism by Jews (for example, Yechiel Eckstein's The Journey Home, and CUFI Executive Director David Brog's Standing with Israel: Why Christians support the Jewish state,) is also not helpful because it projects a romantic version of Zionism that assumes maximum claims for land and barely nods to pragmatic political considerations. Virtually the entire pantheon of Zionist thinkers from Theodore Herzl to David Grossman and Amos Elon saw peace with Arab neighbors as the culmination of the Zionist dream, not as an impossibility.
That peace demanded compromise in resolving disputes, not preparation for endless wars and "end-times" scenarios.
More:
http://www.jewsonfirst.org/06b/cufi.html
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
