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.

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."

Christians and Jews together on Israel

The Forward has a biting piece tomorrow about the newfound friendship between "John Hagee, the firebrand evangelical Christian minister from San Antonio, Texas," who stole the show at Aipac's convention in March, and a growing number of Jewish federations:

“If you search through Jewish stories around the U.S., a lot of us have pieces of personal memory where non-Jews were there for us — not because they had a hidden agenda, but because they believed it was the right thing to do,” said Michal Kohane, the Israeli-born executive director of the Jewish Federation of the Sacramento Region. “There is a strong aspect of CUFI in which they are the descendants of that ideological concept.”

Just as liberals have criticized Aipac for giving Hagee the dais, they are now speaking out against the pastor’s grass-roots fundraising dinners. Most recently, a Democratic congresswoman from Minnesota, Betty McCollum, declined an invitation to attend an April 29 “Night To Honor Israel” in Brooklyn Park, a suburb of Minneapolis, citing what she called “Hagee’s extremism, bigotry and intolerance.”

Critics complain that Hagee’s hawkish, biblically based views on Israel do not serve the Jewish state, and that his conservative domestic agenda — including opposition to gay marriage, abortion and immigration — is squarely at odds with the liberal views of most American Jews.

“I don’t like that they would not like to see Israel trade land for peace, because in my view that’s a very important formula,” said Rabbi Jonathan Biatch of Temple Beth El in Madison, Wis. “The real bottom line is the fact that this organization would like to exacerbate tensions in the Middle East so it will lead to Armageddon.”

Evangelicals and Jews have had an unusual alliance over Israel for years -- from the Israel-Christian Nexus, which I encountered at the Israel Independence Day Festival at Woodley Park last Sunday, to the Jerusalem Prayer Banquet being held in Beverly Hills on May 17, which will bring together Pat Boone and Ehud Danoch, among others.

This morning, one of my colleagues asked me why some Christians fervently support Israel. Last November, the New York Times attempted to answer that question under the headline, For Evangelicals, Supporting Israel Is ‘God’s Foreign Policy’.

In short, Christians with a certain reading of the book of Revelation -- theologians call them premillennialists -- believe Christ's 1,000-year reign on Earth, before he takes his children home, will not occur until Israel has been restored to the Jews. (This was a premise of the "Left Behind" book series.)

Why Christians should love Israel

Is it mere coincidence the same week two American academic elites' book criticizing the power of "The Israel Lobby" hit bookshelves that "Christianity Today, the "magazine of evangelical conviction" that I write for often, published an editorial explaining why Christians should love not only Israel but Jews, 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 list continues here.

For more: Check out David Remnick's commentary on Walt and Mearsheimer's book, which StandWithUs likens to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

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.

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.”

Latinos who love Israel, maybe Jews too

Wandering through a sukkah at Sinai Temple, Jesus Alfredo Alfonso, a Pentecostal Christian, wore a navy tie embroidered with the Star of David, a menorah and the words "Amigos de Israel."

"Every day," Alfonso said, "me and my congregation pray three times for you. For Israel."

Alfonso is the pastor of Iglesia Centro Christiano de Los Angeles, a 14-member church he founded two months ago. He was among about 200 Latino evangelical Christians who were guests for a Sukkot meal and Israeli flag ceremony hosted Monday by the American Jewish Committee (AJC) and the Israeli consulate.

The event was designed to strengthen relations between Jews and a specific segment of the Latino community -- evangelicals. On the whole, surveys have found that Latinos harbor stronger feelings of anti-Semitism than most Americans. But among Latino evangelicals there resides a powerful love for Israel and gratefulness to Jewish tradition.

"Ahavat Zion," said Randy Brown, AJC-LA's director of inter-religious affairs. "They are lovers of Israel. They've followed the history; some of them have visited Israel. They clearly are Christian in their faith, but for the roots of their faith they are very appreciative of Judaism."

That's the opening of a story I wrote for today's Jewish Journal, and it's welcome news considering the Anti-Defamation League and Pew Hispanic Center have found that Latinos often don't think warm fuzzies about Jews. A 2005 ADL survey found that 35 percent of foreign-born Latinos held "hardcore" anti-Semitic opinions, down from 44 percent in 2002.

Observers generally blame this on a South American Catholic Church slower to adopt the Nostra Aetate declarations of the Second Vatican Council. But the pentecostal Latinos hanging out at Sinai Temple are more theologically in line with other evangelical Christians who see the state of Israel as part of God's continuing covenant with his children and as the staging ground for the end of the world.

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.

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 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.

(skip)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Second Coming: 'I hope he comes tomorrow'

I've written before about the relationship between Christian Zionists and Jews. Two weeks ago, Max Blumenthal went to the Christians United for Israel conference in Washington. The video is embedded below. Here is a note someone sent me regarding the gist of the conference.

CUFI has an ulterior agenda: its support for Israel derives from the belief of Hagee and his flock that Jesus will return to Jerusalem after the battle of Armageddon and cleanse the earth of evil. In the end, all the non-believers - Jews, Muslims, Hindus, mainline Christians, etc. - must convert or suffer the torture of eternal damnation.

Over a dozen CUFI members eagerly revealed to me their excitement at the prospect of Armageddon occurring tomorrow. Among the rapture ready was Republican Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. None of this seemed to matter to Lieberman, who delivered a long sermon hailing Hagee as nothing less than a modern-day Moses. Lieberman went on to describe Hagee's flock as "even greater than the multitude Moses commanded."

Rapture Ready: The Unauthorized Christians United for Israel Tour from huffpost and Vimeo.

A Christian toast to Israel

They poured into the Beverly Hilton like young politicos at a national convention, in awe at the feet of religious icons and ready to go forth from the Jerusalem Prayer Banquet to promote the gospel of God's love for Israel.

Talking last Thursday about God's chosen people, comparing Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Hitler and lamenting the indifference others express about Israel, these 300-plus Christians each spent at least $125 to pray for peace in the Holy Land and commiserate with Jews about the seemingly never-ending threats to Israel's existence.

(skip)

"God has ordained Israel as a favored nation, and it is important for us to support it," said Fred Broling, a 72-year-old evangelical Christian who flew with his wife from Chicago for the dinner and donated $5,000 to Eagles' Wings Ministries, the organization that hosted the event, placing the couple in the Guardian circle, alongside televangelist Pat Robertson. "God has told us we will be blessed by the fact that we support his people."

Where do the Christian Scriptures say that?

"I don't know," Broling replied. "Somewhere, I'm sure."

That's from a story I wrote this week about the evangelical Christian love affair with Jews -- or at least Israel. Read more about it here and here.

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?

Christians fleeing Lebanon

In the June issue of Christianity Today, David Aikman, a former senior correspondent for Time and regular columnist for CT, writes about the coming exodus of Lebanese Christians. The article is not online, but here is some of what Aikman had to say:

A little noticed but sad news item appeared in London's Daily Telegraph this past March. The report, based on secret Lebanese government information, said nearly half of the country's Maronite Christian community (22 percent of Lebanon's 3.8 million people) want to leave the country. Of these, 100,000 have already requested immigrant visas.

Since Israel's war last July with Hezbollah (a Shi'a Islamic militant organization), the trickle of Lebanese Christians fleeing the country has become a steady stream. Lebanon, once considered the Switzerland of the Middle East and the only Arabic-speaking country that ever had a Christian majority, is slowly bleeding to death.

Lebanon, which was ripped by civil war for 15 years ending in 1990, was a great experiment in Muslim-Christian co-governance, though the country has had no better relations with Israel than the Jewish state's other neighbors.

Changing the tune of this post, I have a short piece in the same CT about Evel Knievel taking possibly his final great leap -- this one of faith.

Is The End near?

I don't know, but it seems I could create an argument one way or the other, write a book about it, and make some OK cash. That's because apocalyptic literature -- fiction and non -- are a popular genre for publishers. We are obsessed with the coming apocalypse.

But Jeff Sharlet, the magazine religion writer and editor of The Revealer, says in book review for the New Statesman that "we" refers not to the small portion of humans (in fact, a small portion of Christians) who have a literal reading of the last book of the Bible and the Armageddon it reveals, "but those of us who find apocalyptic believers - especially American apocalyptic believers - to be a source of sufficient anxiety that publishers churn out explanatory volumes such as Nicholas Guyatt's Have a Nice Doomsday: Why Millions of Americans are Looking Forward to the End of the World."

Guyatt's breezy investigation is only the latest response to the success of books that skip the "why" and go directly to The End, most famously the fundamentalist Left Behind novels that have sold more than 60 million copies around the world. The secular apocalypse business isn't as lucrative, but bestsellers such as Kevin Phillips's American Theocracy and Chris Hedges's American Fascists, and a spate of lesser accounts of apocalypse-minded Christians, have found a sizeable niche for themselves as well. These range from the deliberately comical - Alex Heard's Apocalypse Pretty Soon: Travels in End-Time America - to the densely theoretical - Catherine Keller's Apocalypse Now and Then: a Feminist Guide to the End of the World, a genuine tussle with the questions concerning apocalypse believers that rivals the original Revelation in its feverish imagination.Such books are designed to frighten or to reassure ...

Christians have been trying for centuries to pinpoint when the end will come. But, as I noted last month, even the great Sir Isaac Newton couldn't calculate such a date. Fortunately, Sharlet says, most people who read apocalyptic literature don't agree with apocalyptic theology. But that is only most people.

In five years of travels in fundamentalist America, I've met hundreds of Christian conservative Left Behind fans. Almost all drew careful distinctions between the mysteries of scripture and the black and whites of LaHaye's imagination. No more than a handful took his books literally and even fewer took any steps to adjust for the coming rapture.

Unfortunately, that handful includes some of the most powerful fundamentalists in the US. Guyatt's strongest chapters deal with Hagee, who "looks like a tubby Donald Rumsfeld" and "sounds a lot like a macaw". That's funny, but Hagee isn't: US politicians court his approval and the huge amounts of money that his Christians United for Israel can channel their way. In return, they parrot his prophecies, cleansed of the references that would reveal them as such - Hagee's conviction that the US may have to attack Iran as part of a scheme foretold in the Book of Ezekiel is sanitised as ostensibly sober-minded policy advice based on the needs of the nation rather than the scripture.

Fundamentalists who have a literal understanding of the book Jonathan Kirsch says "has significantly altered the course of history" certainly can speed up the process of Armageddon. Some would say a preemptive nuclear attack would be a good start, others that letting Iran get too far with its nuclear program would begin the end.

But if man brings about the end of the world, will he like the result?

Lamenting Jewish 'exceptionalism'

I like prodding my wife, who is not of Jewish descent, with claims of a special Jewish intelligence. I bring home issues of The Jewish Journal like this one and e-mail her essays like Charles Murray's "Jewish Genius."

But in this week's New Jersey Jewish News (hat tip: Bintel Blog), Editor-in-Chief Andrew Silow-Carroll laments Jewish exceptionalism.

Of course, we have no one to blame but ourselves for the inordinate amount of attention we attract. We learned a lot of things in the desert but never quite got the hang of camouflage. When fate was handing out professions we picked finance, law, medicine, and movie-making. When God was handing out land, we said sure, we'll take that one, the one sitting in the middle of about a gazillion Muslims. Maybe they won't notice.

And we make our own claims for exceptionalism, proudly but not always wisely. We're happy to be included among the world's "Three Great Religions," and then we're shocked by "God's Warriors," a six-hour series on CNN that devotes as much time to our crazies as it does to the Muslims' and Christians'. I'd be happy to be demoted to the list of the world's Not-So-Great Religions if it meant never having to suffer through another Christiane Amanpour interview with a Jewish extremist who is best known for failing to blow up the Dome of the Rock.

But that's the price of exceptionalism: Specious comparisons between a tiny people's relatively marginal record of terrorism, versus state-sponsored mass murderers who have destroyed untold numbers of mosques and shrines in Iraq and Hindu temples in India and Pakistan, not to mention the occasional synagogue.

The problem I have with this statement begins with "When God was handing out land." I don't recall God saying to Moses, "Where do you want to build my kingdom?" It was: "That occupied land over there -- yeah, the one with the giants living in it. That's where I want you to live. Go take it."

Secondly, there were no Muslims then, and there wouldn't be until 500-plus years after the destruction of the Second Temple.

Nonetheless, Silow-Carroll's point is an important one: Jews seems to suffer more as a group and are held to a higher standard than others. Like Silow-Carroll, a lot of Jews have been bemoaning the attention dedicated to the Jewish extremists in "God's Jewish Warriors." Here was what Robert J. Avrech, a Orthodox screenwriter, had to say at his blog, Seraphic Secret:

The whole two hours of this Al Jazeera program is such typical, and poisonous Arab propaganda that Karen and I are kind of fascinated. This huge lady [Christiane Amanpour] with the really bad hair interviews guess who as experts on Israel?

Jimmy Carter. Karen Armstrong. John Mearsheimer. There's the obligatory angry loser from Peace Now — dude, clean your office, it looks like cat litter. And a couple of Israeli lefties who are so far gone they might as well be living in Damascus.

Gee-willikers, Al Jazeera lady forgot to interview Hizbullah/Iranian-proxy strongman Hassan Nasrallah; his views on Israel are pretty much the same as the usual suspects above. He's always ranting about the evils of the Israeli occupation. And he vehemently denies that he's a Jew-hater. Like Carter, Armstrong and Mearsheimer he insists that he's merely anti-Zionist.Yup, Nasrallah gets positively indignant when he's accused of being an anti-Semite. Sheesh, can't anyone criticize and bomb Israel without being accused of being a Jew-hater?

There's this long segment on the — horror musical sting here — Israel lobby. Obligatory shots of well-dressed, um Jews, tables of food, which I suppose is proof of evil, people chatting and looking, y'know, conspiratorial.

I'm waiting for Al Jazeera lady to start quoting The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, because that's really what this segment is all about, but I suppose she's too cool for that. This is after all Al Jazeera. They are , allegedly, civilized.

Then fullback lady pulls out the big guns: Actual Jewish terrorists. She comes up with Baruch Goldstein, Yigal Amir, and a group who rigged explosives to the car of an Arab Mayor they suspected of aiding terrorists and who planned on blowing up an Arab girl's school, Disgusting and wrong, but they were caught and arrested, by Jewish cops, thank G-d.

That's it for Jewish terror.

Personally, I think the Jewish people have shown remarkable restraint in the face of a genocidal enemy.

Back to Silow-Carroll, who notes that Yiddish scholar Ruth Wisse "thinks the world insists on Jewish exceptionalism as part of a 'culture of blame' — as a way for countries and cultures to distract their followers from their real problems." He then concludes with this:

I'm proud of the Jews. I really am. But sometimes I'm with Tevye. "I know, I know. We are Your chosen people," says the hero of Fiddler on the Roof. "But, once in a while, can't You choose someone else?"