View from America: A different kind of blame game (Hagee)

Jerusalem Post ^ | June 16, 2008 | JONATHAN TOBIN

[rightwingintelligentsia]

Some 10 years ago, a prominent Christian clergyman gave a sermon that was recorded for posterity. In it, Rev. John Hagee, the leader of a group called Christians United for Israel, speculated about the cause of the Holocaust.

His answer was to see it as divine punishment of the Jews.

The unforeseen consequences of his comments were considerable.

The man who will be the Republican nominee for president this year, Sen. John McCain, formally rejected Hagee's endorsement following the re-emergence of Hagee's statement.

Some Jewish leaders, notably the Reform movement's Rabbi Eric Yoffie, joined in the condemnation. Yoffie wrote that "to blame the victims for the Holocaust and to suggest that they brought it on themselves is a desecration of their name and their memory, and an insult to the survivors and their descendants."

Moreover, Jewish Democrats had been suggesting for months that Hagee was the moral equivalent of Barack Obama's former pastor and mentor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Now they were calling for all Jews to disassociate themselves from Hagee and his organization. Considering that Hagee was greeted with acclamation at the annual American Israel Public Affairs Committee convention just last year, such a banning would be no small thing.

[presently no screen name]

This propaganda, again? Anyone who is informed knows that Pastor Hagee is the biggest supporter and loudest voice for Israel. He tread where no one else has.

[rightwingintelligentsia]

If you read further into the article, you will see that that is one of the author's exact points.

HAGEE HAS a long record of philo-Semitic and pro-Israel activism in an era when the Jewish people badly needed friends. It should also be acknowledged that Zionism, oddly enough, motivated his convoluted theology about the Shoah. The "sin" of which he speaks is the unwillingness of European Jewry to make aliya before World War II - though you have to wonder whether he thinks the same lesson should apply these days to his buddies at the ZOA.

[F15Eagle]

Yes, but the left must try to continue to distract from Jeremiah Wright where Obama sat for about 20 years. And who was officially on Obama’s team, until the political liability was too great.

[gunnedah]

But this is what happens when you set yourself up to speak for the Lord. He could be right but only God knows.

[Ron Jeremy]

Hagee is a nutjob.

[onedoug]

‘Good thing politics is clear of them, huh?

[presently no screen name]

I agree. That’s what it is all about. What has Wright ever done for Israel. He should know what God commands.

[presently no screen name]

Are you saying that those that are called by The Lord to preach/teach His Word/The Good News - don’t know God’s Ways and should not speak what The Lord has already spoken?

[presently no screen name]

What makes you say that?

[presently no screen name]

Oh, I see - a ‘fair and balanced’ trick. Something that couldn’t be omitted since it’s so widely known.