McCain kicks Hagee to curb for Hitler remarks

It seems John McCain has tired of John Hagee, and rightfully so after it was reported that the leader of Christians United for Israel considered Hitler a divine agent, called by God to return the Jews to the biblical Land of Israel. Those six million butchered in the Holocaust? Collateral damage, I guess. Via CNN:

“Obviously, I find these remarks and others deeply offensive and indefensible, and I repudiate them. I did not know of them before Reverend Hagee's endorsement, and I feel I must reject his endorsement as well,” McCain said in a statement to CNN Thursday.

He added that his relationship with Hagee did not compare with Obama’s lengthy association with Rev. Jeremiah Wright. “I have said I do not believe Senator Obama shares Reverend Wright's extreme views. But let me also be clear, Reverend Hagee was not and is not my pastor or spiritual advisor, and I did not attend his church for twenty years. I have denounced statements he made immediately upon learning of them, as I do again today,” said McCain.

Now, what to do with Rod Parsley?

Einstein found the Bible 'primitive, childish'

As a teen, I was told several times by fellow Christians that Charles Darwin recanted his theory of evolution on his deathbed. This 125-year-old legendwas believable because it played into the idea that no matter how wicked a life someone had led -- and we believed Darwin to be a vile man -- God would welcome them back, even in their final moments.

For Albert Einstein, who I will admit is one of my heroes, nearing the end did not make him a more religious man. His vague language on God had long been interpreted by the faithful that Einstein was a fellow believer. But, in a letter being auctioned in England, Einstein was quite critical of religion and the Jewish people, of which he was a proud member. From The Guardian:

Einstein penned the letter on January 3 1954 to the philosopher Eric Gutkind who had sent him a copy of his book Choose Life: The Biblical Call to Revolt. The letter went on public sale a year later and has remained in private hands ever since.

In the letter, he states: "The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this."

Einstein, who was Jewish and who declined an offer to be the state of Israel's second president, also rejected the idea that the Jews are God's favoured people.

"For me the Jewish religion like all others is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything 'chosen' about them."

Avoiding Einstein's frank review of his people, I disagree with his interpretation of the Bible. Yes, Jesus spoke highly of a childlike faith, but does that mean the Bible's stories are "primitive" and "childish?"

Hardly. Even if you don't believe its accounts of Jewish history, the Gospels and the epistles, the complete book, covering 4,000 years from the Beginning to the End, is the greatest literary work ever.

It's more enjoyable, though, if you believe it.

Pope urges Israel to help Christians in Mideast

Pope Benedict XVI on Monday asked Israel to ease travel restrictions for Mideast Christians, who in Gaza and the West Bank and places like Lebanon have been under attack.

Benedict has made concern over the future of Middle East Christians a
priority. Economic problems as well as violence in the Holy Land and Iraq have led Christians to emigrate from the region.

"I pray that, in consequence of the growing friendship between Israel and the Holy See, ways will be found of reassuring the Christian community that they
have a secure future in the region," Benedict said.

He said problems facing Christians are related to Israel-Palestinian tensions.

The Holy See recognizes Israel's legitimate need for security and self-defense and strongly condemns all forms of anti-Semitism, the pope said.

At the same time, he urged Israel to alleviate travel restrictions causing hardships for Palestinians.

The ambassador, in his remarks released by the Vatican, said Israel would do its utmost to help strengthen the Christian communities in Israel as their essential presence in the Holy Land is deeply rooted and historically self-understood.

This is a bit of a different tone from the Holy See than when the Vatican's former ambassador to Israel said, "relations between the Catholic Church and the state of Israel were better when there were no diplomatic relations."

Messianic Jew causes boycott call from Bible Quiz

And you thought Jeopardy! was dramatic:

A group of religious Zionist rabbis have called for a boycott of this year's International Bible Quiz after discovering that one of the four finalists from Israel is a Messianic Jew who believes Jesus is the true Messiah.

"Messianics are missionaries who proselytize in very sophisticated ways," said Rabbi Shlomo Aviner, one of the rabbis calling to boycott the quiz.

"It is forbidden to give them legitimacy by allowing them to take part in the quiz."

Other rabbis that have called to boycott the quiz include Shmuel Eliyahu, chief rabbi of Safed, Ya'acov Yosef, son of Shas mentor Rabbi Ovadia Yosef and Rabbi Tzvi Tau, head of Har Hamor Yeshiva.

The call to boycott the quiz came after Yad L'Achim, a haredi anti-missionary organization, discovered that one of the finalists, Bat-El Levi, an 11th grader from a high school in Pisgat Ze'ev, was a Messianic Jew.

Levi won this year's national bible quiz for state schools and will be one of four finalists from Israel competing for the International Bible Quiz Championship on Independence Day.

The Education Ministry said in response to a query from The Jerusalem Post that the "Global Bible Quiz for Jewish Youth" was open only to Jewish pupils. Regarding Messianic Jews, the pupil in question was Jewish, and therefore, according to the ministry's legal department, was not disqualified from participating.

That is an interesting argument made by the Education Ministry, because my understanding has been that most Jews consider Messianics to be Christians, not Jews. Messianics, generally, consider themselves to be Jews who believe in the divinity of and salvation offered by Yeshua; I've attended a few services and rarely heard the words "Jesus," "Christ," or "Christian."

Reuters appears to have spoken with a relative of Levi, who said the family was unfairly being attacked by the anti-missionary organization.

The relative, who declined to be named, confirmed that Levy and her family “believe in Yeshua Ben-David, the saviour from Nazareth” — Jesus’s Hebrew name. But Yad L’Ahim was wrong in branding Levy a missionary, the family member said.

“The family keeps its faith to itself. To these people, anyone who disagrees with their version of Jewish belief is the enemy. I hope God pays them back in kind,” the relative said.

Jews, power and the Palestinian refugee crisis

At the Hillel Summit in Washington last month, I listened to Ruth R. Wisse, a Harvard professor of Yiddish and author of "Jews and Power," deliver a passionate 40-minute lecture on why American Jews should stand up for that imperiled sliver of Mediterranean coast we have been fortunate enough, for almost 60 years now, to call Israel.

You can listen to the lecture here.

Wisse's talk was moving, and I had wanted to read her book, so I picked a copy up on the way out and worked through it on my flight back. (It's 184 pages and a very quick read.) In "Jews and Power," Wisse makes a point that she repeated during her speech -- that Arab countries, not Israel, are responsible for the Palestinian refugee crisis. From pages 140-141:

Palestinian Arabs are to be pitied with the tens of millions of refugees of the twentieth century. But Palestinians are doubly unfortunate because theirs is the only such displacement that is prolonged for political advantage. Originally, the Palestinians who fled from their homes in 1948 were a relatively small and easily assimilable group, moving often no more than several miles among people who spoke their language and shared their religion and culture. Leaving aside the refugees of the two world wars, as well as Jews driven from Arab lands in numbers equal to the Arabs who fled from Israel, the two massive conflicts that framed Israel's War of Independence -- India's war over the creation of Pakistan in 1947 and the Korean War of 1950-53 -- produced more than 20 million refugees between them, yet most of those refugees were reabsorbed within a generation. Only in the Arab case did a coalition of rulers, with millions of square miles and great wealth at their disposal, foster and cultivate the state of emergency as a means of sustaining a casus belli.

Look no further for an example of such politicking than the life and times of Yasser Arafat, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize and common crook. The consequences, of course, have been significant and seemingly incessant.

Less than a week after I returned, I came across this article, and this image, in the New York Times:

GAZA — In the Katib Wilayat mosque one recent Friday, the imam was discussing the wiliness of the Jew.

“Jews are a people who cannot be trusted,” Imam Yousif al-Zahar of Hamas told the faithful. “They have been traitors to all agreements — go back to history. Their fate is their vanishing. Look what they are doing to us.”

At Al Omari mosque, the imam cursed the Jews and the “Crusaders,” or Christians, and the Danes, for reprinting cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. He referred to Jews as “the brothers of apes and pigs,” while the Hamas television station, Al Aksa, praises suicide bombing and holy war until Palestine is free of Jewish control.

Its videos praise fighters and rocket-launching teams; its broadcasts insult the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, for talking to Israel and the United States; its children’s programs praise “martyrdom,” teach what it calls the perfidy of the Jews and the need to end Israeli occupation over Palestinian land, meaning any part of the state of Israel.

Such incitement against Israel and Jews was supposed to be banned under the 1993 Oslo accords and the 2003 “road map” peace plan. While the Palestinian Authority under Fatah has made significant, if imperfect efforts to end incitement, Hamas, no party to those agreements, feels no such restraint.

Hardly an eye-opener -- in fact, a bit surprising in its gee-whiz tone -- this article reiterated what we already know. But it made me think of Ruth Wisse, whose latest book, without question controversial with the Jewish left, begins its final chapter (page 173) by discussing the contradictions of Jewish power:

Just as no Jewish initiative could have solved the German problem that culminated in Nazism, no Israeli initiative could correct "what went wrong" in Arab societies. Jews could only hope to enhance their own security through the avoidance of fatal mistakes and nudge the Arab world to greater maturity by making it clear that Israel was in the region to stay.

The second -- internal -- problem that could not be alleviated by the creation of Israel alone was the relation of Jews to political power. Zionist thinkers had expected sovereignty to result in political normalization without being able to anticipate the role that a tiny Jewish state might play in the international struggle for power. In trying to withstand the Arab assualt, Israelis, Jews, and concerned third parties tripped again and again over the same issue of power that had impeded the development of Jewish political history to begin with. If historians once mistook the absence of sovereignty to mean that Jews stood outside politics, modern students of the problem too often assumed that the resumption of sovereignty guaranteed political parity between Israel and the nations. Jews were said to have reversed their political fortunes once they began governing themselves and an Arab minority in a country of their own. Equating "statehood" with "power," the new experts confused Zionism's potential with its achievement, as if the acquired option of Jewish self-defense had erased Arab advantages in numbers, resources, and land.

Reform leader asks Jews to abandon Hagee

The leader of the Reform movement of Judaism has, not surprisingly, called on his co-religionists to step away from the fire-and-brimstone pastor who leads Christians United for Israel (you know him better as the Rev. John Hagee).

Rabbi Eric Yoffie , who over the past two years made headlines when he spoke at the Rev. Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University and at the convention of the Islamic Society of North America, drew a sharp distinction between dialogue and political alliances which he said “demand of us a higher standard and which require both common values and common interests.” Yoffie made his comments during a panel discussion before the Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR) meeting here this week.

Hagee founded CUFI two years ago and has, since then, run “Night to Honor for Israel” events across the country, where he has been warmly received by Federation audiences. In his address tonight, Yoffie focused on the problems with Hagee’s form of Christian Zionism and why the Jewish community needs to reject it.

Yoffie gave two primary reasons not to engage in alliances with Hagee. The first is Hagee’s vitriolic attacks on other religious traditions, particularly Muslims and Catholics. But even more important, Yoffie said, is Hagee’s stance on Israel.

“What [Hagee and his allies] mean by support of Israel and what we mean by support of Israel are two very different things,” Yoffie said. Their vision of Israel rejects a two-state solution, rejects the possibility of a democratic Israel, and supports the permanent occupation of all Arab lands now controlled by Israel,” he continued. “If implemented, in fact, these views would mean disaster for Israel, and would lead to diplomatic isolation, increased violence, and the loss of Israel’s Jewish majority.”

The tale of three former terrorists

InFocus is a relatively new monthly newspaper for the Muslim community in Southern California that circulates 25,000 copies to Muslim businesses and mosques. In the same way that one would expect Jewish publications to be pro-Israel, it is clearly pro-Palestinian and uses the dateline "Occupied Jerusalem."

In the current issue, InFocus' senior writer -- like a Muslim me, though I don't think he's Christian -- has a story that questions the authenticity of three speakers on the ex-terrorist circuit. Well, it doesn't so much question their story as it does indict them for being fallacious Islamophobes.

For self-proclaimed "former terrorists" Walid Shoebat, Kamal Saleem and Zachariah Anani, all with a history of alleged blood and murder, nothing even close to legal action has ever been taken against them. On the contrary, the trio has, for the past few years, actively been appearing on TV shows across the nation, speaking at conferences and fund-raisers in churches and synagogues and openly proclaiming their so-called bloody past to anyone who is willing to listen.

As recently as last month, the three, whose stories are riddled with lies and inconsistencies according to critics, were invited by the prestigious United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, which held its annual conference on terrorism, to speak about the dangers of "Islamic terrorism." The appearance of these individuals drew the ire of Muslims and religious freedom organizations alike. The former were incensed by the fact that the speakers were notorious Islamophobes cashing in on the post-9/11 Islam-bashing industry, and the latter worried by the increasing presence of evangelicals in the armed forces.

"It’s a puzzle as to why the Air Force would invite these three Muslim bashers," said Ibrahim Hooper, communications director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations. "We see a history, unfortunately, of proselytizing for particular faith groups and this seems to have been part of that whole effort."

Maj. Brett Ashworth, a spokesman for the academy, told the New York Times that the three would be paid a total of $13,000 for their appearance, some of it from private donors. Ashworth justified the invitation saying "they offered a unique perspective from inside terrorism." The findings of the conference will be compiled into a report on methods to combat terrorism that will be sent to the Pentagon, members of Congress and other influential officials, he added.

A group that calls itself the Military Religious Freedom Foundation is suing the federal government for what it calls "creeping evangelism in the armed forces." The group accused the Air Force Academy of constantly inviting born-again Christians, rather than experts, to address cadets on terrorism.

"This stuff going on at the academy today is part of the endemic evangelical infiltration that continues," David Antoon, a 1970 academy graduate and a foundation member, told the Times.

On his own web site, (www.shoebat.com) Shoebat claims to have belonged to the Palestinian Liberation Organization early in his life and to have committed "acts of violence and terrorism against Israel." In his bio, Anani, who now resides in Canada, claimed to have joined a militant group in Beirut, Lebanon, when he was a teenager and boasted to have killed 223 people at a tender age, most of them with a dagger. Saleem claims to have been recruited by the Muslim Brotherhood when he was just 7 years old, and then later as a teenager to have joined the PLO.

However, to most, the trio’s stories seem more fiction than fact.

"You have three people who are openly claiming to be former terrorists," said Hooper. "I don’t think that in any other case, law enforcement officials would look at the word ‘former’ and excuse people. If these three people are indeed former terrorists, why aren’t they in jail or at the very least deported?"

Not to dismiss the possibility that some opportunists are using the religious speaking circuit to make a buck -- it has happened, oh, a few times before -- but the speculative "evidence" here feels pretty weak.

Conditions worsen for Palestinian Christians

I've mentioned before the plight of Palestinian Christians. Here's the latest from Christianity Today:

Gaza Baptist Church used to draw hundreds of Palestinian worshipers to its two Sunday services. But on a recent Sunday in January, less than 10 people risked attending the only evangelical church in the 25-mile coastal strip.

Palestinian evangelicals, a group of hundreds living among 1.5 million Muslims, have been fleeing the Gaza Strip for the West Bank in response to increased violence and threats from Islamic extremists. In October, Rami Ayyad, the 29-year-old manager of Gaza's only Christian bookstore, was kidnapped and murdered. Then on February 15, a group of 14 masked gunmen forcibly entered the ymca offices and set off a bomb in the library, burning thousands of books.

"In Gaza, when you say, 'The Lord is my shepherd,' you have to mean it literally," said Hanna Massad, displaced pastor of the Baptist church. "The Lord is the only one who can protect you." Massad left Gaza in November for personal safety; eight families in his church fled with him.

Life for Gazan Christians became more difficult when Hamas seized control of the 140-square-mile territory in June. Conditions have also worsened due to Israel's security efforts, which have constricted the incoming flow of food, electricity, and fuel. Israel tightened security in response to ongoing Hamas rocket attacks and the first suicide bombing in Israel in three years.

"This is one of the toughest times we have seen," said Massad. His church has been seized twice by police forces and suffered a collapsed roof six times from Israeli missile strikes.

Mainline churches at odds with Israel

Tensions are re-emerging between Jewish organizations and some mainline Protestant churches in the wake of a renewed drive for churches to divest from companies doing business with Israel.

The United Methodist Church opened discussions last Friday on a resolution calling for divestment from Caterpillar, the tractor manufacturer, because the company supplies Israel with bulldozers used in building the separation barrier and in demolishing Palestinian homes. The divestment resolution comes only months after the publication of a church-sponsored report referring to the creation of the State of Israel as the "original sin."

Relations with the Presbyterian Church (USA) are also strained, following remarks by church officials criticizing Israel because of the Gaza closure. A recent study by an affiliate of the Presbyterian Church called on American Jews to "get a life" instead of focusing on defending Israeli policies.

"This reflects a very disturbing trend in these churches," said Ethan Felson, assistant executive director of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs. "These developments are a result of work of several very wicked forces that play in the church."

This report is from The Forward. I don't know what these "wicked forces" are, but if Christians are going to use insincere metaphors like comparing Zionism to the Fall of Man, I guess Jews are afforded similarly inflammatory language. Though I'm not sure what good dissolving this disagreement into a diatribe would do.

Most Jews have assumed the drive by mainline denominations to divest from Israel was over. But from what I understand, it's just picking up again and a divestment resolution will be discussed at the United Methodist Church's general conference next month. Such a move might encourage the PCUSA to reconsider the resolution it passed two years ago but then set aside.

For years, the chasm between mainline Protestants and their evangelical and Pentecostal counterparts has been growing in terms of their relationship to Israel. Not every evangelical is the gentile Maccabi John Hagee, who coincidentally gives much of the Jewish community the creeps, but during the past year I've encountered a number of Christian groups that have a more profound love for, and unconditional defense of, the Holy Land than many American Jews.

Last summer, the same week that Walt and Mearsheimer's "The Israel Lobby" was published, Christianity Today explained why Christians should love not only God's promised land but his chosen people too.

The key complaint offered against dispensationalists is that they talk as though God had separate plans for saving Israel and the church. And contemporary Reformed Christians are accused of having a "replacement theology" in which the church takes the place of Israel, inheriting all of God's promises with no remainder for the Jewish people. The one view tends to find no fault with Israeli government decisions as long as they do not compromise dispensational theology. The other view tends to consider the continued existence of the Jewish people a historical anomaly with little theological significance.

But we cannot read the New Testament without seeing that the Jews continue to have a place in God's economy. Gentile Christians do not replace the Jews, but are joint heirs and wild branches grafted onto the Jewish olive tree. God's ultimate purpose in saving Gentile Christians is to save the Jews (Rom. 11).

The evangelical mainstream needs to do some rigorous theological work on its relationship to Judaism, to the Jewish people, and to the state of Israel. The concerns we must address include:

The need to learn how Judaism and the Jewish people understand themselves. ...

The fundamentally Jewish character of God's revelation in Jesus. ...

What justice means for a Jewish state and its neighbors. ...

What kind of theological and ethical significance evangelicals can give the state of Israel before the return of Messiah Jesus. ...

Optimism for a negotiated solution to Israeli-Palestinian tensions fluctuates with the news. But Christians must hope in God's covenant faithfulness. Meanwhile, we should keep reminding those involved in direct negotiations that we long for a solution that provides a secure Jewish homeland and self-determination and prosperity for Palestinians. In God's eyes, the peace of Jerusalem is to bless all peoples.

Hagee says the darndest things

In the wake of the "controversy" surrounding the Rev. John Hagee's endorsement of John McCain for president -- comparisons have been made to Farrakhan's desire for a black president, a veiled endorsement that Barack Obama repudiated -- The Forward offers a run down of some of Hagee's most explosive comments.

On Hurricane Katrina: “All hurricanes are acts of God, because God controls the heavens. I believe that New Orleans had a level of sin that was offensive to God, and they were recipients of the judgment of God for that… I believe that Hurricane Katrina was, in fact, the judgment of God against the city of New Orleans.”

On the Catholic Church: “Most readers will be shocked by the clear record of history linking Adolf Hitler and the Roman Catholic Church in a conspiracy to exterminate the Jews.”

On Muslims: Asked whether he believes that Muslims have a mandate to kill Christians and Jews, Hagee replied, “Well, the Koran teaches that. Yes, it teaches that very clearly.” On women: “Do you know the difference between a woman with PMS and a snarling Doberman pinscher? The answer is lipstick. Do you know the difference between a terrorist and a woman with PMS? You can negotiate with a terrorist.”

On the Antichrist: “He’s going to make a seven-year treaty with Israel and set up his image to be worshiped in Israel. And that is where I’m convinced that a Jewish person who understands who he is shoots him, because the Bible says he’s wounded in the head and recovers wondrously, emulating the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. At this point in time when he comes back to life he has the personality of a Hitler. He now pursues the Jewish people. The Jewish people then go to Petra, which is a place in Jordan that is a natural fortress. And that God is going to provide for them there protection from him. And as he gets ready to pursue him, the Bible says that he, the Antichrist, hears tidings from the east that disturb him. The tidings from the east is that… the Chinese army is marching up the Euphrates River, 200 million of them, and they’re moving toward the battle of Armageddon, because they want the oil that will make them a superpower.”

On the Israeli-Palestinian peace process: “When the Annapolis Conference was being planned and the topic of dividing Jerusalem came up, one man asked me, ‘Where do you stand on this based on the Bible?’ I responded that ‘the plan of the Antichrist is to divide Jerusalem.’ If America puts pressure on Israel to divide Jerusalem we are following the blueprint of the Prince of Darkness. Amos 3:2 states that any nation that divides the Land of Israel will come under the severe judgment of God.”

Hagee, the head of Christians United for Israel, will speak next week at Stephen S. Wise Temple in Los Angeles.

Previously in Outlandish Opinions, The God Blog mentioned Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Israel whoppers. And here's a kid saying the darndest thing.

'Pornographic' Jesus sculpture protested at London Shabbat service

The strangest story about Jesus and art since the chocolate messiah is this one involving a Jewish art collector in London and a statue she owns "depicting Jesus with a phallus."

An advocacy group called Christian Voice has been up in arms over the "blasphemous" and "pornographic" sculpture, and has added a clock to the top of its home page counting:

Time which billionaire Jewish art collector (and friend of the Chief Rabbi) Anita Zabludowicz has had to destroy her blasphemous, pornographic statue of Jesus Christ with a phallus attached, since getting it back from the Baltic Centre in Gateshead at 6.00pm on Saturday 20th January 2008.

Christian Voice has written letters to the chief rabbi and distributed fliers outside the synagogue as people should up for minchah last Shabbat. Christian Voice's leader explained:

“Just as the sin of Achan in taking a valuable but accursed thing from Jericho brought judgment on the whole community of Israel, so his [Mr Zabludowicz’s] actions and those of his wife, in clinging on to this valuable but accursed statue, is bringing the slur of blasphemy against the whole Jewish community.

“The rest of the council too are complicit in his and Anita’s continuing scorn for the One whom Christians hold most holy of all, and that includes the Chief Rabbi, who appears to have told them to ‘Carry on blaspheming’.”

(Hat tip: Bintel Blog)

Gunmen bomb Gaza YMCA library

Stories like this reminds me that militant Islamist groups -- not to be confused with righteous Muslims -- don't just hate Jews and Israel, but all who disagree with their vision for world supremacy. (Remember what Hamas did to its Fatah brothers in June?)

A band of 14 masked gunmen forced its way into YMCA offices in the Gaza Strip and exploded a library there, Israel Radio reported Friday.

Thousands of books were reportedly burnt in the ensuing fire. The YMCA in Gaza also operates a gym and a wedding hall.

The gunmen laid a second explosive device near a computer in the library but it failed to detonate. Two security guards on the scene were not able to block the intruders; they were taken by them from the YMCA and later released in the northern Gaza Strip.

The latest incident is another link in an ongoing chain of attacks against Palestinian Christians which has worsened since Hamas took power of the Gaza Strip last June.

How Jewish hawks won the advocacy war

The seminal moment in the transformation of pro-Israel advocacy occurred in the summer of 1993, when the Oslo accords were finalized, and then signed, on the White House lawn.

"The Jewish community essentially had trained itself in one direction and was being asked to turn around immediately," said Michael Berenbaum, an adjunct professor of theology at American Jewish University. "It had advocated that the enemy was the PLO, and the question was, if all of the sudden [the PLO] are friends, they felt betrayed."

It was at this moment that the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) broke a decades-old code and criticized the Israeli government. While most Jewish American organizations got behind the landmark peace agreement, ZOA President Morton A. Klein predicted the accords would not only fail, but that they would empower Yasser Arafat and endanger Israelis.

"They were completely wrong and we were completely right," Klein said last week. "Peace is impossible."

Seven years and 300 murdered Jews after Oslo, the Second Intifada broke out, rupturing the ground beneath American Jewry. Within one more year, 19 Muslim terrorists would hijack four American planes and inflict the worst domestic attack in U.S. history; Jews and the West found a common enemy in the Muslim world, and the crack in the Jewish community severed into two pieces -- hawks and doves, hardliners and peaceniks, right and left.

In Los Angeles, the American Jewish Congress had dissolved its local office in 1998 and reformed the following year as the PJA, a liberal organization concerned mostly with domestic issues related to social justice. But the AJCongress reopened here in 2000, bearing little resemblance to its former self.

"People who believed that we could have peace with the Palestinians were shaken out of their misguided view and realized they had no desire for peace," said Gary P. Ratner, the group's western region executive director. "Their goal was what they stated openly: The destruction of Israel, whether through the violence of groups like Hamas or through negotiations, that will weaken Israel. I think some of us woke up to the fact that Oslo was a disaster and the peace process would only lead to the destruction of Israel."

The Jewish state was under attack with no partner for peace; the old model of resolving conflict through compromise had failed. With climbing anti-Israel rhetoric on American campuses and the perception that international media had joined liberal Christians in taking up the Palestinian cause, the hardliners quickly captured the upper hand among Jewish groups in the debate on what it meant to be pro-Israel.

"It's a painful moment in Jewish life, because there isn't a place for honest and open discourse," Gerald Bubis, founding director of the Irwin Daniels School of Jewish Communal Service at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, told this paper in a 2002 article titled "The Silencing of the Left?" "People can have very strong differences of opinion about where to go and how to resolve things, but that discourse does not have a place right now. Rather, there is a vituperative argumentation and excoriation."

Amid this climate, major Jewish organizations slid into the shadows, abdicating their leadership.

"Whatever they said would upset somebody," Jonathan D. Sarna, a professor of American Jewish history at Brandeis University, said. "As a result, Jews who were frustrated, who wanted to defend Israel and didn't really know how or didn't have the ability, they gravitated toward The David Project and its sort of counterpart in StandWithUs."

That is a portion of my cover story for this week's paper, mentioned here and here and here, about the ascendacy of organizations that have redefined what it means to be "pro-Israel," of which I focus on StandWithUs. In seven years, a gathering of 50 L.A. Jews has grown into an international organization with a major presence on college campuses, where they claim pro-Palestinian professors and student groups intimidate and harass Jewish students. The rest of the story is here.

He may be no philo-Semite, but he's not Hamas

Rob Eshman, in this week's column, argues that it is better to deal with the bad -- i.e. those who don't agree with Jews on a reasonable peace plan -- than the ugly -- i.e. those who don't even recognize Israel. I've got to say I agree.

For the past couple of weeks, the Boston-based pro-Israel media watchdog group CAMERA (Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America) has been riling up rabbis, congregants and any Jew with an e-mail address to pressure the All-Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena to cancel the appearance of a prominent Palestinian activist, the Rev. Naim Ateek.

Ateek, an Israeli Arab who lives in Jerusalem, is scheduled to speak at the liberal church Feb. 15-16. As founder of the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center and its sister organization in the United States, Friends of Sabeel North America (FOSNA), Ateek has championed the cause of nonviolent resistance to Israel in the West Bank. His writings are numerous and explicit: Ateek wants an end to occupation according to U.N. Resolution 242, and reconciliation between Israel and a Palestinian state.

"We want Israel to live in peace and security within its pre-1967 borders," he said in a sermon at Boston's Old South Church last year. "At the same time we want justice for the Palestinians in accordance with international law and the creation of a Palestinian state living in peace and security alongside the state of Israel. There is no other way."

CAMERA and other Jewish organizations vehemently protested Ateek's appearance in Boston and elsewhere. Their critique focuses less on his vision of a future settlement than on his language and methods. In his sermons and writings, Ateek uses imagery that portrays Palestinians as suffering under Israel as Jesus and the early Christians suffered -- raising disturbing images of the ancient anti-Semitic canard of deicide. He has also championed comparisons of Israel to apartheid South Africa and has promoted divestment as a nonviolent tool to bring pressure upon Israel.

These are disturbing tactics and unsettling words. But, man, it sure beats Hamas. It beats Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the armed wing of Fatah by a mile. I'll take a man who writes that the occupation is the equivalent of the stone blocking "Christ's tomb" and that "The Israeli government crucifixion system is operating daily," over a suicide bomber any day. This is an opponent you can debate, propogandize and educate.

This is the Palestinian resistance that, had it taken root in the Palestinian body politic 45 years ago instead of that cancer called Arafat, the history of that region would have been much different, much better.

The search for biblical history

I read "Walking the Bible" on my flight to and from Israel last summer and thoroughly enjoyed it, and on my short blogroll I link to David Plotz' Blogging the Bible. Last week, I found on Slate that Plotz has returned with "Digging the Bible."

So, it's not exactly the Ark of the Covenant. In fact, it's not exactly much of anything—just a dirty shard of pottery the size of my big toe. But I found it. I had been scraping the floor of this Israeli cave when I spotted its sharp edge. I fished the piece out of the dirt and pushed on it, as instructed, to see if it crumbled. If it did, it was probably just the local limestone, which is as soft as a bar of soap. But my piece firmly resisted, so I brushed off the dirt until I could see smooth pottery, one side black, the other brick red. I'm the raider of the lost pot.

I hand it to my digging partner Ian Stern, the archaeologist in charge of this site. He glances at it and says, "Cooking pot. See the black part? That's where it carbonized. Probably 2,200 years old, time of the Maccabees"—the Jewish heroes of the Hanukkah story. He tosses my shard into a plastic collection bucket. "That's why this place is so great. It has instant gratification. There's a biblical connection. There's a Hanukkah connection. It takes it out of the realm of the abstract and makes it tangible. You can come here and dig up pottery from the time of Judah Maccabee. He fought a battle near here. Now, I'm not saying he ate out of that pot, but you see and hold this pottery, and he is not a fairytale figure anymore. He is real."

I've spent much of the last year blogging the Bible for Slate, writing about reading the Good Book for the first time. Now I've come to Israel to see the Bible, to dig it. I've read the stories. Now I want to see where they happened and to learn if they happened—to experience the Bible through archaeology, history, politics, and faith.

This is a similar premise to "Walking the Bible," which contains quite a few passages where Bruce Feiler is wrestling with the lack of historical evidence for major events like the Flood and the Exodus or whether Moses really existed:

The unusual circumstances of this story -- the fact that Moses gets his name from an Egyptian and is raised in the pharaonic court, the fact that he claims not to speak well -- have led many to speculate that Moses wasn't an Israelite at all. Sigmund Freud, in his influential book "Moses and Monotheism," says that Moses was an Egyptian who learned monotheism from Akhenaten and was inspired to lead a revolt of foreign slaves out of a desire to overthrow his symbolic father. Freud says Moses gave the slaves the idea that they were a chosen people, which in turn led to anti-Semitism. "It was one man, the man Moses who created the Jews. To him his people owes its tenacity in supporting life; to him, however, it also owes much of the hostility which it has met and is meeting still.

Leaving aside Freud's psychological interpretation, many scholars agree with his underlying thesis, that Moses might have been an Egyptian.

First off, lots of scholars have lots of contradictory theories. This is the academic process. But after reading this, I jumped onto my computer and ordered Jonathan Kirsch's book, "Moses: A Life," which I anticipate will add to the discussion (though in half a year I have yet to crack).

The passage reminded me of Rabbi David Wolpe's famous Passover sermon a few years ago, when he let members of Sinai Temple know that most scholars don't believe the Exodus actually occurred. The declaration dropped on LA Jewry like an A-bomb (little hyperbole intended), thanks to the LA Times, which played the story as a Column One:

Wolpe's startling sermon may have seemed blasphemy to some. In fact, however, the rabbi was merely telling his flock what scholars have known for more than a decade. Slowly and often outside wide public purview, archeologists are radically reshaping modern understanding of the Bible. It was time for his people to know about it, Wolpe decided. After a century of excavations trying to prove the ancient accounts true, archeologists say there is no conclusive evidence that the Israelites were ever in Egypt, were ever enslaved, ever wandered in the Sinai wilderness for 40 years or ever conquered the land of Canaan under Joshua's leadership. To the contrary, the prevailing view is that most of Joshua's fabled military campaigns never occurred--archeologists have uncovered ash layers and other signs of destruction at the relevant time at only one of the many battlegrounds mentioned in the Bible.

Today, the prevailing theory is that Israel probably emerged peacefully out of Canaan--modern-day Lebanon, southern Syria, Jordan and the West Bank of Israel--whose people are portrayed in the Bible as wicked idolators. Under this theory, the Canaanites took on a new identity as Israelites were perhaps joined or led by a small group of Semites from Egypt--explaining a possible source of the Exodus story, scholars say. As they expanded their settlement, they may have begun to clash with neighbors, perhaps providing the historical nuggets for the conflicts recorded in Joshua and Judges.

"Scholars have known these things for a long time, but we've broken the news very gently," said William Dever, a professor of Near Eastern archeology and anthropology at the University of Arizona and one of America's preeminent archeologists. Dever's view is emblematic of a fundamental shift in archeology. Three decades ago as a Christian seminary student, he wrote a paper defending the Exodus and got an A, but "no one would do that today," he says.

The Jewish Journal followed the next week with a cover package dedicated to Exodus-doubting fallout, including conservative columnist Dennis Prager arguing that no Exodus = no Judaism, just as Christians would say that without the resurrection, Christianity is dead. But if Christianity is built upon the Torah, upon the stories of Jewish history, does it also need a literal, factual, historical Exodus?

And if we the faithful are willing to dismiss some historical findings, what is the value of biblical archeology?

Pastor Hagee the gentile Maccabi

The Dallas Morning News recently profiled John Hagee, a megachurch pastor and the leader of Christians United for Israel. Hagee is a controversial figure in Christian and Jewish circles; his influence is important for Israel but his love for the Jewish state is clearly based on his understanding of the End Times.

Mr. Hagee said he is following the Bible's mandate to protect Israel. He espouses an end-times theology in which he connects Iran's nuclear threat with the Apocalypse, the final battle of good and evil on earth.

In his book, Jerusalem Countdown, he writes: "Before us is a nuclear countdown with Iran, followed by Ezekiel's war and then the final battle – the Battle of Armageddon. The end of the world as we know it is rapidly approaching."

His message fits neatly into the calls to strike a nuclear facility in Iran.

"Iran is Germany," he said, and its president, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, "is the new Hitler."

"He intends to attack Israel first and then bring the nuclear fight to America," he said. "His terrorist-trained people are in Iraq right now killing a third of U.S. forces there. That's an act of war.

Biblical prophecy is not new. But Mr. Hagee, the nation's leading Christian Zionist, seeks to channel biblically inspired devotion to Israel into organized efforts to affect politics and public policy.

His group, Christians United for Israel, lobbies Congress on behalf of policies that support the state of Israel. The organization claims 50,000 members from churches representing 2 million people and conducts Night to Honor Israel rallies at Christian churches and hotel ballrooms – 75 cities last year.

Christians United's second annual Washington event in July drew 4,500 supporters. President Bush provided a welcoming statement, and speakers included Sen. John McCain of Arizona and Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut. Mr. Lieberman brought the crowd to its feet by comparing Mr. Hagee to Moses.

"Like Moses," the senator said, "he's become the leader of a mighty multitude – even greater than the multitude that Moses led from Egypt to the Promised Land."

The story quotes Barry Lynn of Americans United for Separation of Church and State saying that Hagee's influence is bad. That's clearly not a lone opinion, but I'm not sure why the reporter quoted Lynn here, who, as I've mentioned before, is really a fringe figure in Christianity.

'The New Wars of Religion'

THE four-hour journey through the bush from Kano to Jos in northern Nigeria features many of the staples of African life: checkpoints with greedy soldiers, huge potholes, scrawny children in football shirts drying rice on the road. But it is also a journey along a front-line.

Nigeria, evenly split between Christians and Muslims, is a country where people identify themselves by their religion first and as Nigerians second (see chart 1). Around 20,000 have been killed in God's name since 1990, estimates Shehu Sani, a local chronicler of religious violence. Kano, the centre of the Islamic north, introduced sharia law seven years ago. Many of the Christians who fled ended up in Jos, the capital of Plateau state, where the Christian south begins. The road between the two towns is dotted with competing churches and mosques.

This is one of many religious battlefields in this part of Africa. Evangelical Christians, backed by American collection-plate money, are surging northwards, clashing with Islamic fundamentalists, backed by Saudi petrodollars, surging southwards. And the Christian-Muslim split is only one form of religious competition in northern Nigeria. Events in Iraq have set Sunnis, who make up most of Nigeria's Muslims, against the better-organised Shias; about 50 people have died in intra-Muslim violence, reckons Mr Sani. On the Christian side, Catholics are in a more peaceful battle with Protestant evangelists, whose signs promising immediate redemption dominate the roadside. By the time you reach Jos and see a poster proclaiming “the ABC of nourishment”, you are surprised to discover it is for chocolate.

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In fact, religious front-lines criss-cross the globe.

Most obviously, Americans and Britons would not be dying in Iraq and Afghanistan had 19 young Muslims not attacked the United States in the name of Allah. The West's previous great military interventions were to protect Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo from Orthodox Serbs and Catholic Croatians. America's next war could be against the Islamic Republic of Iran. Other conflicts have acquired a new religious edge. In the poisonous war over Palestine, ever more people are claiming God on their side (with some of the most zealous sorts living miles away from the conflict). In Myanmar (Burma) Buddhist monks nearly brought down an evil regime, but in Sri Lanka they have prolonged a bloody conflict with Muslims. If India has an election, a bridge to Sri Lanka supposedly built by the god Ram (and a team of monkeys) may matter as much as a nuclear deal with America.

The Economist, not often a magazine I'd turn to for religious reportage, just published this 18-page special report on "the new wars of religion," complete with nine stories and a disclaimer that concludes the main article:

First, many numbers in religion are dodgy: most churches inflate their support and many governments do not record religion in their censuses (in Nigeria the best source is health records). Second, in a field where many believers claim to know all the answers, it poses mainly questions. And lastly, given the emotion the subject arouses, the chances are that some of what follows will offend you.

I could hardly discuss all the stories here, but here's one of the sidebars "Holy Depressing."

SHEIKH Yazid Khader and Rabbi Yaacov Medan both live in the occupied West Bank. Both are devoutly religious men who feel they have been betrayed by secularists. The sheikh, a local Hamas leader, has just emerged from another bout of Fatah custody (depressing when the rival Palestinians, he says, should both be fighting “the Zionist enemy”). The rabbi, a leader of the settler movement, is still seething about the Israeli government's forcible ejection of its own settlers from Gaza. Both men are obstacles to any chance of peace in the Middle East.

Not that they see it that way. Both insist that their religions are peaceful ones and each has solutions to the current impasse. Of course Israel should keep its settlements in the West Bank (illegal under international law), argues the rabbi: it is part of the land God gave it. But a system of tunnels could be constructed for the Palestinians to find their way round them. For his part, the sheikh refuses to accept Israel's right to exist: Palestine is a waqf, land placed by God in Muslim hands for eternity. But if Israel retreats to its 1967 borders, Hamas would generously grant the infidels a hudna or truce, initially for ten years.

If you are concerned about religion's effect on politics, there is no more discouraging place to visit than the tiny sliver of land that is Israel-Palestine. Forty years ago the trouble there amounted to a territorial dispute between two fairly secular tribes. Religious Zionism—as opposed to the traditional, secular kind—was a fringe movement. Many of the Palestinian leaders were Christians or Marxists. But the six-day war of 1967 set off a chain of sectarian reactions on both sides. Polls show that most people on both sides still want a two-state solution, but many of the growing number determined to stop such an outcome now enlist God on their side of the argument.

They're right: That will definitely offend some people.

Conversations with a Pharisee and a Christian

In 1964, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote: "I am ready to go to Auschwitz any time, if faced with the alternative of conversion or death." The prominent Jewish theologian was protesting a reference to the future conversion of the Jews in a Vatican II working document on Catholic-Jewish relations. Both The New York Times and Time magazine picked up on Heschel's letter, which alienated many of his Christian friends.

That was 1964. This is 2007. Jews still find the subject of conversion extremely painful. For them it is, as Heschel said, tantamount to annihilation. Christian hopes for conversion can be a deal breaker in interfaith friendships.

Yet a few Christians and Jews have found a way to be friends despite this Christian hope (Romans 11:25ff). Among them are R. T. Kendall and Rabbi David Rosen. In their book, The Christian and the Pharisee (Warner Faith), they model a warm friendship as they "debate the road to heaven."

This is from Christianity Today. What follows is a sampling of the interview CT editor in chief David Neff did with the two.

In your first meeting, it was your different understandings of Pharisee that sparked conversation. What understanding do you each now want Christians to associate with the word?

Rosen: My hope would be that Christians would associate Pharisee with a good Jew, one who lives in the sense of the divine presence and seeks to fulfill the divine Word and will in his or her daily life. But I think we've got too many centuries of negative indoctrination.

Kendall: So one of the major reasons you had for writing the book was to make Pharisees look a lot better?

Rosen: It was to take away the unfair stigma. The argument between Jesus and some of the Pharisees is a legitimate family dispute. This is like when the ancient prophets condemn the children of Israel. They talk about the bad behavior, but they don't disassociate themselves from Israel. They see themselves as part of it.

So I believe that Jesus was a Pharisee who knew that there were wonderful Pharisees around, probably the majority, but there were some who were actually desecrating the name, the message, and the tradition they were meant to be the custodians of.

Kendall: When we started the book—don't laugh—I wondered if he was a secret believer. I mean, his spirit is so great. I thought, You certainly do make Pharisees look a lot better. But then, halfway through the book, when you stopped debating Scripture and started putting forward the rabbinic authorities instead, I said, "Ah, you're somewhat like the Pharisees after all."

Jesus said to the Pharisees, "You make the Word of God null and void through your traditions." And they only quote the authorities; they didn't want to quote Scripture.

Rosen: I think that Jesus would have understood—as all Jews would have understood—that it is not possible to understand all of the biblical text totally literally. Interpretation is necessary.

As you wrote this book, both of you remained firm in your own traditions. Why is it important in inter-religious dialogue for people to be rock solid in their beliefs?

Rosen: I believe that a real dialogue is most authentic when people are deeply committed to their faith. To say that my truth is my truth does not mean that my truth is the only truth, but it is truth.

Kendall: I don't see this as only dialogue. I had one sincere desire, and that was to present the gospel to David with the love I feel for him so that the Holy Spirit would arrest him like Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus.

Who knows whether God can use a man like this to precipitate the lifting of the blindness described in Romans 11. I know that's grandiose, but I thought what if, somehow, God got to this wonderful, learned, world-famous man. Of course, I annoyed him a bit along the way, though we stayed friends.

Rosen: Our motives were different. For me, dialogue doesn't mean, as some people suggest, any kind of relativism. And it certainly doesn't mean any weakness in one's own tradition. Communication is a value in and of itself. But I want R. T. to be a good Christian. I don't want him to change. I just want him to let me be a good Jew and to be satisfied that that's my way to God and that God is very happy with me living the way I live.

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Many Jews have a deeply negative view of Jesus' followers. What would it take to rehabilitate that view for Jews?

Rosen: That rehabilitation has started to take place. Within the Catholic church, that happened with the Second Vatican Council and Nostra Aetate. After the visit of the Pope to Israel in the year 2000, for the first time Jews really began to understand that there is a change. What would it take? The answer is very simple for a Christian.

Kendall: And that is?

Rosen: And that is love. The more love Christians show Jews, the more they will be able to overcome the tragedies of the abuse of the past in their name.

But that's very difficult for someone like R. T. to be able to do effectively, because even though he is genuine about demonstrating love on our personal level—I genuinely feel it—from a collective point of view as a religion, if he's relating to me as someone who's going to burn in hell, then I can't really see that as genuine love toward my people and my faith.

I am suggesting to those evangelicals who could hear this, out of your sense of duty to the people from which your Savior came, and out of your sense of responsibility for the terrible abuse that's been done in your name historically, suspend your proselytizing and allow the Almighty to do whatever the Almighty thinks in his wisdom is the thing to do in his own time.

Kendall: If I have failed you, it is because I haven't loved you enough. As I re-read what I wrote, I think I was trying to make you see it intellectually. And that isn't the way a person comes to Christ.

Rudy talks the the talk with Jewish hawks

He's not the apple of evangelical Christians' eyes, but Rudy Giuliani is clearly the Republican Jewish Coalition's guy, what with his terrorist-fighting image and his employment of Norman Podhoretz and Daniel Pipes. Giuliani spoke to the RJC in Washington this morning. Here's some excerpts, via JoinRudy2008:

A lot of you are the first Republicans in your families, right? Am I right?

A lot of you get grief for being Republicans, right? As a three-time candidate and eight-year mayor of New York City, I know what you’re talking about. Wow.

I remember this happened so many times, I get all the incidents confused. But one that was particularly poignant was this man who was very, very old and frail came up to me and he grabbed my hand and he said, You’re the first Republican I ever voted for. I said, How old are you? He said, I’m 92 years old.

I said, In over like 80 years of voting or whatever, you couldn’t find another Republican to vote for? He said, I thought it was sinful.

Wow, has Giuliani been taking speaking lessons from President Bush? From here, he didn't take long to mention Sept. 11, and then he started hitting the right notes for many Jews, Republican and Democrat.

We’re the ones that really want peace in the Middle East, real peace, what it really means. Peace has to be based on realism, not romance. It’s shocking that 60 years after the Holocaust, the Jewish people are still required to negotiate for the right to exist.

This should be beyond negotiation. Someday I hope that Jews and Arabs can sit down together to negotiate borders, water, trade. It’s going to happen, but it’s going to happen more quickly if we remain strong and we remain really, really clear.

You cannot negotiate with someone who is threatening to destroy you and your family.

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What are you going to negotiate with them about? How many of your kids they’re going to kill or when they’re going to do it?

You’ve got to negotiate with people that at least make a step toward giving a reasonable possibility of getting a sensible result.

In the case of the Palestinians, here’s what it is, two big ones. First of all, the Palestinians have to say and acknowledge and mean it that Israel has a right to exist as a Jewish state.

Number one, because Israel’s already negotiated its existence. That negotiation happened a long time ago and that’s over and they’ve just got to kind of move on.

Second, second, they have to be willing to say, We forsake terrorism and we’re going to help to reduce and eliminate terrorism and they need to show their good faith by that condition remaining that way for some period of time. It’s as simple as that — or as hard as that.

Coulter: Jews need 'perfecting'

I hesitate to quote Ann Coulter, but Monday night on CNBC she told Donny Deutsch, who is Jewish, that the United States would be better without Jews. (DISCLAIMER: Crazy Coulter is not an official ambassador of Christianity; unfortunately, though, all Christians fall into the unofficial-ambassador category.) Really, it's just not easy explaining my beliefs to non-Christians when kooks like Coulter and alleged crooks like Tom Delay are in the public eye.

DEUTSCH: Christian -- so we should be Christian? It would be better if we were all Christian?

COULTER: Yes.

DEUTSCH: We should all be Christian?

COULTER: Yes. Would you like to come to church with me, Donny?

DEUTSCH: So I should not be a Jew, I should be a Christian, and this would be a better place?

COULTER: Well, you could be a practicing Jew, but you're not.

DEUTSCH: I actually am. That's not true. I really am. But -- so we would be better if we were - if people -- if there were no Jews, no Buddhists --

COULTER: Whenever I'm harangued by --

DEUTSCH: -- in this country? You can't believe that.

COULTER: -- you know, liberals on diversity --

DEUTSCH: Here you go again.

COULTER: No, it's true. I give all of these speeches at megachurches across America, and the one thing that's really striking about it is how utterly, completely diverse they are, and completely unself-consciously. You walk past a mixed-race couple in New York, and it's like they have a chip on their shoulder. They're just waiting for somebody to say something, as if anybody would. And --

DEUTSCH: I don't agree with that. I don't agree with that at all. Maybe you have the chip looking at them. I see a lot of interracial couples, and I don't see any more or less chips there either way. That's erroneous.

COULTER: No. In fact, there was an entire Seinfeld episode about Elaine and her boyfriend dating because they wanted to be a mixed-race couple, so you're lying.

DEUTSCH: Oh, because of some Seinfeld episode? OK.

COULTER: But yeah, I think that's reflective of what's going on in the culture, but it is completely striking that at these huge megachurches -- the idea that, you know, the more Christian you are, the less tolerant you would be is preposterous.

DEUTSCH: That isn't what I said, but you said I should not -- we should just throw Judaism away and we should all be Christians, then, or --

COULTER: Yeah.

DEUTSCH: Really?

COULTER: Well, it's a lot easier. It's kind of a fast track.

DEUTSCH: Really?

COULTER: Yeah. You have to obey.

DEUTSCH: You can't possibly believe that.

COULTER: Yes.

DEUTSCH: You can't possibly -- you're too educated, you can't -- you're like my friend in --

COULTER: Do you know what Christianity is? We believe your religion, but you have to obey.

DEUTSCH: No, no, no, but I mean --

COULTER: We have the fast-track program.

DEUTSCH: Why don't I put you with the head of Iran? I mean, come on. You can't believe that.

COULTER: The head of Iran is not a Christian.

DEUTSCH: No, but in fact, "Let's wipe Israel" --

COULTER: I don't know if you've been paying attention.

DEUTSCH: "Let's wipe Israel off the earth." I mean, what, no Jews?

COULTER: No, we think -- we just want Jews to be perfected, as they say.

This is not to be confused with atheist Richard Dawkins' Jews-control-America comment. But, more importantly, what megachurch pastor would invite such an insidious mind and insincere tongue into their sanctuary?