Evangelical Split Over Israel Batters Bush

Evangelical Split Over Israel Batters Bush
By Larry Cohler-Esses
The Jewish Week

Evangelical Christians, long seen as a monolith in lockstep support of Israel, publicly fractured last week as two significant evangelical factions lobbied President Bush with criticism of Israel from opposite points of view.

For the first time, Christians United for Israel, a major Christian Zionist group with strong ties to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, lobbied President Bush against the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — a solution advocated by Israel, the Bush administration and the pro-Israel Washington lobby itself.

Meanwhile, some 30 Evangelical leaders, including prominent activists and intellectuals, publicly lauded Bush’s stand in favor of two states: Israel and a seperate state in the West Bank and Gaza for Palestinians. They also urged Bush to get involved more actively to make this happen. But this group pointedly noted that both Israelis and Palestinians “have committed violence and injustice against each other.”

The two groups’ dueling letters to the president, each critical of Israeli policies from respective viewpoints, marked a new, more complex phase in evangelical Christianity’s political stand towards Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, observers and partisans from all sides agreed.

The letter from Christians United for Israel, whose leader, Pastor John Hagee, was a keynote speaker at AIPAC’s Washington policy conference this year, lectured Bush, “Simply stated, land for peace is a failed policy of the past that has produced nothing but more war. Under the current circumstances, we feel a two-state solution would be unwise.”

Rev. Hagee’s letter, signed by himself and 50 other CUFI ministers, marked the well-funded new group’s first official effort against Israeli and U.S. policy. It was a step that Jewish groups that have worked with CUFI had earlier worried about and came just one week after its own national conference in Washington, where key officials sounded a similar theme. Representing a key constituent of Bush’s base, CUFI’s White House lobbying is likely to compel administration attention.

Josh Block, a spokesman for AIPAC, declined to comment on the letter saying he had not had a chance to read it. But Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, said CUFI’s stand should not cause Jewish groups to waver in their welcome of the group’s support.

But he’s entitled . . . . He does not make his support of Israel at this time conditional on Israel accepting a one-state solution.”

In contrast, Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, the largest of American Judaism’s religious streams, said that by embracing Hagee, as many Jewish groups have done locally and nationally, “We are thereby embracing a radical position that will ultimately discredit Israel, not strengthen it. We are embracing a faction that says no to concessions; no to a two-state solution.”

In an opinion piece in The Forward last May, Yoffie charged that Jewish groups, particularly Jewish federations, have embraced CUFI under the influence of large contributions to federation fundraising campaigns by groups under Hagee’s control.

The CUFI letter arrived at the White House just one day ahead of the letter from 30 other Evangelical leaders in support of the Israeli and U.S. two-state position. That letter, organized by Ronald Sider, head of Evangelicals for Social Action, stated: “We affirm your clear call for a two-state solution. ... We also write to correct a serious misperception among some people, including U.S. policymakers, that all American evangelicals are opposed to a two-state solution.”

In lobbying Bush against a two-state solution, CUFI, which portrays itself as a staunch defender of Israel, set itself in clear opposition to the Jewish state’s official policy. But the writers of the second letter also upheld the value of criticizing Israeli policies in other respects, noting, “As evangelical Christians we embrace the biblical promise to Abraham: ‘I will bess those who bless you.’ And precisely as evangelical Christians committed to the full teaching of the Scriptures, we know that blessing and loving people (including Jews and the present state of Israel) does not mean withholding criticism when it is warranted.”

The letter stated: “Both Israelis and Palestinians have legitimate rights stretching back for millennia to the lands of Israel/Palestine. Both Israelis and Palestinians have committed violence and injustice against each other.”

The letter deplored the “tragic cycle of violence” which, it said, could be ended only through a negotiated agreement that would require concessions by both sides and “robust leadership” from Washington.

In a response quoted by The New York Times, Rev. Hagee appeared to excommunicate the pro-two-state writers from Christianity: “Bible-believing evangelicals will scoff at that message,” he said.

Asked why Jewish groups were embracing Rev. Hagee, who opposed Israel’s two-state policy, while the signers of the second letter enjoyed no such cache, Foxman said, “I’d say they’re new to advocating support for Israel. They’re even-handed in their approach to a two-state solution. But all of a sudden for them to surface on this issue is a little surprising.”

Rabbi Yoffie said, “I don’t agree with every word of that letter. I thought it came off as much too evenhanded, though that may not have been their intent. It read like there was equal fault on both sides. There is not. The Palestinians bear the bulk of the blame for the current situation.”

But Rabbi Yoffie lauded the letter’s “fundamental point about a two-state solution. That’s the political reality in America, in the Bush administration and with the government of Israel. There is no disputing that, even if you have issues with the tone of the letter.”

The letter signers include, Leighton Ford, a prominent evangelical minister; Richard Mouw, president of Fuller Theological Seminary, one of the county’s leading Evangelical schools; and Robert A. Seiple, who served as Bush’s special ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom earlier in his administration.

One of the signers, Gary M. Burge, is author of “Whose Land? Whose Promise? What Christians Are Not Being Told About Israel and the Palestinians,” a book strongly critical of Israel and sympathetic to the Palestinians.

The two letters come just a few months after Janet Parshall, a prominent fundamentalist radio personality long known for her support of Israel, publicly broke with the Christian pro-Israel movement for other reasons. Last March, Parshall dropped out of a Jerusalem conference sponsored by a Knesset caucus advocating ties with the Christian Zionist movement after the caucus condemned evangelization of Jews in Israel.

“I thought, wait a minute. We can’t just blindly support Israel,” she said then in a public statement. “We have to be able to tell them as a friend, you can’t do that. You can’t silence us.”

Israel, said Parshall, was telling the movement, “We’ll take your aid, your support and your tourist dollars, but we won’t take your Jesus.” She criticized the Christian Zionist movement for what she termed “a kind of blind support that says no matter what Israel does, Israel can do no wrong” and charged that some leaders in the movement fostered a belief that Jews could be saved outside of Jesus. “That’s not true,” she said.

Richard Cizik, vice president of the National Association of Evangelicals, said that Parshall’s view was “gaining traction” in the evangelical world. “That’s a common argument nowadays,” he said. “I hear that a lot.”

Like others, Cizik also said the two letters to Bush last week reflected a deepening split within evangelical Christianity with underpinnings more theological than political. CUFI, with its staunch stand against those advocating territorial concessions by Israel, tended to attract believers in an apocalyptic endtimes scenario involving the Jewish state, he said. Those associated with the other letter tended not to see the modern state of Israel as as being implicated in end-time scenarios but subject to standards of justice no different than any other state.

In this end-time scenario, derived from interpretations of parts of the New Testament and the Hebrew Bible, the return of Jesus must be preceded by the ingathering of all Jews to Israel, defined by its biblical borders. This is to be followed by an international conflagration centered on the Jewish state that will result in the slaughter of all but a fragment of the Jewish people. This fragment will then convert to Christianity with the second coming of Christ.

Because of these beliefs, said Cizik, “They out-Likud the Likudniks. I think they’re more adamant about the land than Israel itself.”

Indeed, in a short video documentary of CUFI’s conference last week by left-leaning journalist Max Blumenthal, many participants invoked such end-times beliefs when asked why they supported Israel.

“There are dispensationalists in our movement,” he acknowledged, using the theological term referring to those who believe the apocalyptic scenario involving Jews and Israel is being played out today with the modern Jewish state. “But not all who support Christian Zionism are dispensationalists. Christian Zionists don’t support Israel based on a speculative end-time scenario in the future, but based on God’s [biblical] covenant with the people of Israel in the past.”

“Conversion is not our goal,” he said. “Our goal is to support Israel in matters related to biblical issues.”

Hutchens also charged that the signers of the pro-two-state letter were “supercessionists,” a term referring to those who believe that with Christ’s arrival, God’s biblical covenant with Israel was replaced by His covenant with the Church.

“Most of the people [who signed the opposing letter] regard Israel like they would any other Third World country that should be treated like anyone else who’s rejected Jesus Christ as messiah,” he said. “It [the letter] fails to recognize God has an inviolable covenant with the Jewish people, and it includes the land.”

Sider, who organized the pro-two-state letter, replied, “I have no idea what all the people who signed our letter would think on supercessionism.”

More importantly, he stressed, “We’re not in any way anti-Israel. We want Israel to have a secure base as a secure nation; and also the Palestinians. That will only happen with strong U.S. involvement.”

This is the unknown Legacy of the Mufti of Jerusalem

This is an excerpt of a very profound interview that Pamula (PG), the blogger AtlasShrugs had with Bat Ye’or (BY) , author of “Eurabia” and “The Dhimmi”

http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2007/07/bat-and-me.html

PG: Now in “Eurabia” you outlined the Euro-Arab axis, that it wasn’t an accident, but there was a deliberate plan, and was the object? What was the objective?

BY: Well, in this book I examined particularly this policy of appeasement that was conducted by Europe, the European community. This time it was the nine countries, and it started in part after the Kippur War in 1973, and it was in fact a French plan. France didn’t want to lose their colonies, and they want to have good relations with their Arab colonies — you know that France had huge Arab colonies — and after the Algerian war of liberation they lost all their colonies. They lost Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, the last one. They wanted to have good relations with these countries, and they went along they have tacted. The plan drawn by the Mufti, the Mufti of Jerusalem.

PG: Right, and he was with the Nazis?

BY: He was with the Nazi. There were many Nazi also in Egypt, and Egypt was part, also, of this plan, and the plan was to build up a strong alliance with France and the Arab countries, and against America and against the protestant people.

PG: Now, why against America? As a counter-power?

BY: Yes, first of all as a counter-power, but because America has saved the world from Nazism. It is thanks to America that the dictatorships like fascism, like Nazism were defeated. So America was the big enemy. It was a democratic and it was the big enemy of dictatorship and of the fascism regimes. Now, there were many Nazi people who has immigrated in Egypt and lived in Egypt under the Nasser regime, and of course they were very friendly with the Mufti, so this plan was built up against America and against Israel. Now de Gaulle, who was part of this sought to bring not only France, but the European community. Then the nine countries. Because this time de Gaulle and Germany were building together the European community; the integration.

PG: Yes, the integration, it would eliminate the European countries, so to speak.

BY: Not only that. It would make out of Europe a huge block, because it would not be only France, it would be nine countries allied with twenty-two Arab countries. It would have make a fantastic block which would be more powerful than America, and this was the object, and for the Arabs, not so much for the French although there were many anti-Semites still in France … . France was in ally with the German regime, the German Nazi regime, so it has collaborate in deportation of Jews and extermination of Jews.

PG: But the people in Europe really were not onboard with this, they didn’t know that this was happening.

BY: No, they didn’t know but still there were people who were very favorable to such a position, because from the beginning of the century there was such an anti-Semitic climate in France and in whole of Europe. If it wouldn’t have been, there wouldn’t have been also the genocide of the Jews, if the climate was not so anti-Jewish. And it is not because the American and the ally with the allies’ troop succeeded in crushing down Nazism that all those feelings disappeared from one day to another.

PG: Oh no, it could never happen!

BY: So it has continued under another name, and this was of course the anti-Zionists and the hate of the state of Israel, but it was the same anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism. So what happened then? After the Kippur War, the European countries that were reluctant to follow the French plan accepted, because they were faced with the oil boycott.

PG: Yes, in the 70th.

BY: Yes, and not only that but with Palestinian terrorism which started in 1968 in Europe, in several cities of Europe.

PG: And they handled it very badly.

BY: Yes, and they didn’t know. It was the first time it happened so they didn’t know how to answer on that.

PG: They should have crushed it!

BY: Yes, but how to crush it? They didn’t know, so they thought: “Okay, we’ll go into that plan, we do this appeasement policy“…, because this was the European countries who wants to have good relations with the Arab world, and with the sheikdom, and with the countries now producing so much oil, so they needed oil for their economy. So they say: “Okay, we go into this alliance with the Arab world, and we shall do business with them”, but the Arab league countries put as a condition to open a dialogue with the European countries on two conditions; that Europe will recognize Arafat as the only representative of the Palestinian people and that they will support the PLO, which was a terrorist organization and have a policy contradict to that of America. So they enter into this dialogue.

PG: Yes, … the deal with the devil.

BY: Yes, the deal with the devil. And from that moment Europe changed it policy against Israel, but I think its soul changed because…

PG: Europe’s soul changed. That’s important; an important quote.

BY: Yes. Because it has to support the Palestinian war, jihad against Israel.

PG: It has to support barbarism.

BY: Which is support barbarism, which is to support jihad ideology which is, as well, as much anti-Jewish as anti-Christian, and which is legitimized by the evilness of the Jews and Christians or of the infidels also. It is based on that, so when Europe support this and legitimize it intellectually, and also with its heart, its soul and heart support the destruction of the state of Israel, it supported also its own evilness and its own destruction. And since this moment it follows therefore the Palistinization of Europe, of the whole mentality of Europe — the whole vision and interpretation of history and of events according to the Palestinian vision , which is the eternal evilness of its enemy Israel, which is linked also to the Christian and the West. So Europe destroyed itself. It destroyed its own, first of all, Christianity, and give in to the Palestinians to attack the Christianity in Lebanon. Because the Palestinian war was not only against Israel. The Palestinian, you have to see them as a tool or as an instrument of the Arab world to destroy Israel, and also as a channel to penetrate into Europe and Islamize Europe. It is exactly what they have done.

PG: I understand, but even the word Palestinian is a marketing term. What was really the Palestinians? The Arabs living in Gaza but were Egyptian Arabs.

Yes.

PG: So they came with this term in 1967. It’s a myth. It’s an Arab narrative.

BY: Yes. You phrase it totally. I think the Palestine and the myth of the Palestinian was created by European; by European anti-Semite, like Jacques Berque, for instance, who is a great islamologue and arabist who is teaching on the Institute Francaise. He’s very well known because he was he champion of this anti-Israeli policy of the French government, but there was others also in England and in other countries. But in Europe the leftist movement… of course the communist were behind the Palestinians, so all the communists and the leftist movement supported the Palestinians, supported this vision because they were anti-American. So at this moment there was a real polarization of the political life in Europe, with the left, the communists, the socialists supporting the Palestinian and the destruction of Israel and the fight against America.

PG: Yes, but there are people, the people of Europe, they don’t like what’s going on. I mean, do you think they can actually, at any point wall off their cities? I mean, this is evolving, this is not static, this is fluid…

BY: Yes. I mean what happen to people, the European people, it is that all this is a policy that was created by networks and went through — was imposed — to the European through the universities; through institutes that were created, through media…

PG: It’s America!

BY: Exactly, and with false justification, a mythological justification.

PG: Yes, it’s an Arab narrative.

BY: Yes, with a political agenda, supporting the Palestinians, and whoever would say the contrary, would oppose, would lost his work, would be boycotted, he wouldn’t be able to be published and so on. So this was a censorship also, under reality and on the opposition. Now, what the European people thought of that were many intellectual people saw very well, and many religious also; priests and reverence in the reform churches. They were totally opposed to that, and they fought very strongly against it. They saw it. They saw that the ancient anti-Semitism, which they had so strongly vote against, in the preceding years and the Nazism — because not everyone that was the anti-Semitical [newhop? UNKNOWN time=24:24]. There were many people who opposed that movement, but they were taken into it and they were prisoners of that. You know, when you see a blockage of everything; you can not write in the newspaper, you can not speak on the television. Your voice is not, has not…

PG: Is silent.

BY: Is silent! They silence you through censorship all the time. But Nevertheless these people fought with whatever possibility there was. So the resistance against anti-Semitism, against anti-Americanism, against this policy was there, but was not listened to; do not appear.

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