(A very significant question here that far too few people are asking. - promoted by Paul Rosenberg)
Christian Zionists believe that Jews are the chosen people and that there must be an "ingathering" of Jews to the Holy Land to precipitate Armageddon and the second coming of Christ. Muslims are usually cast as the satanically influenced villians. As Glenn Greenwald writes:
...large numbers of [US] Christians -- 31% -- believe in "Christian Zionism." In the poll, that was "defined as a belief that Israel must have all of the promised land, including Jerusalem, to facilitate the second coming of the messiah." It thus seems fair -- even necessary -- to assume that at least some sizable support among Christians for the Bush administration's Middle Eastern militarism is due not to their loyalty to U.S. interests, but instead to their theological desire to strengthen Israel in order to bring about the return of the messiah.
Bruce Ivins, the US government biowar scientist who is now the prime suspect in the anthrax murders that came within a week of 9/11 and pumped up war hysteria against Muslims, wrote several letters to the editor that suggest he was a supporter of the rightwing political Christian movement in the US, and that he very much believed that the Jews were the "chosen."
In the wake of John McCain's belated split with controversial "Word Of Faith"* Christian Zionist televangelist John Hagee, pressure continues to mount on Joe Lieberman to sever his ties with Hagee as well, and to withdraw as the keynote speaker at the upcoming conference of Hagee's organization Christians United For Israel. (Petition from J-Street here.)
Pressure on McCain came to a head when it was revealed that Hagee saw Hitler as an agent of God, a "hunter" sent to chase the Jews back to Israel. Extensive research condensed into a powerful YouTube video by Bruce Wilson of Talk2Action.org was instrumental in finally making this a story that McCain wanted no further part of.
But that's only one facet of Hagee's obsessional belief system, that has deep roots in centuries of anti-Semitism and its putatively more benign twin, dispensational philo-Semitism, which embraces most of the same stereotypical and conspiratorial beliefs about Jews, but see them as an integral part of God's plan for Apocalypse. A new Bruce Wilson video, Hagee: AntiChrist Is Gay, German & "Partly Jewish" (digg it here) highlights another highly offensive aspect of Hagee's belief system-his claim that the anti-Christ is "at least partly Jewish":
A further aspect of their obsessional view of the Jewish people, the other side of their thinly-veiled eliminationist fantasy, is a desire to replace them, to become Jewish-God's chosen people-in place of the actual Jews.
There is a long history of similar thinking along two lines. One is the claim by some to actually be Jewish, by descent from the "lost tribes" of Israel. An historically prominent example of this is the tradition of "British Israelism", most notably used to justify the Church of England's break with Rome. An even more extremist off-shoot of British Israelism, Christian Identity, is a thoroughly racist belief that Europeans are the true Jews, that Jews are not Jews at all, and that only "true Jews" (i.e. white gentiles) are eligible for salvation.
* "Word of Faith" is a form of "prosperity gospel" that stands the traditional Judeo-Christian teachings about charity towards the poor on its head, instead insisting on the need to give money to wealthy "men of God," the better to enable them to squeeze their camels--not to mention their private jets--through the needle's eye.
John McCain may have finally broken with Christian Zionist televangelist John Hagee last week, but McCain's close friend Joe Lieberman has not. In fact, Lieberman, who has publicly compared Hagee to Moses and called him "an Ish Elochim," or "a man of God," is still scheduled to headline Hagee's upcoming Christian Zionist Summit on July 22, according to a story by Max Blumenthal at Huffington Post.
Open Left readers are strongly urged to sign the petition, Digg the Huffington Post article, and generally do anything they can to help bring media attention and public pressure to bear on Joe Lieberman.
The idea that someone who sees Hitler as an agent of God can be a friend of Israel is a monstrous lie. Of course there are many monstour lies in the world. But this one is now in the spotlight, and the spotlight can use all the extra intensity that we can bring to bear.
