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04/07/2006:
"Evangelicals Rally Their Flocks Behind Israel"
Charismatic televangelist John Hagee thinks that the Rev. Pat Robertson's suggestion that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's stroke was payback from God for withdrawing from Gaza was "insensitive and unnecessary." But he nevertheless appears to share Robertson's concern that Israel may be giving up too much land to the Palestinians.To prevent the George W. Bush administration from pressuring the Israelis into turning over even more land, Hagee, the pastor of San Antonio's Cornerstone Church and the head of a multimillion-dollar evangelical enterprise, recently brought together 400 Christian evangelical leaders – representing as many as 30 million Christians – for an invitation-only "Summit on Israel."
The result was the launch of a new pro-Israel lobbying group called Christians United for Israel (CUFI).
By 2002, a number of veteran Christian conservative evangelical leaders and Republican Party power brokers had joined forces with conservative Jewish leaders to launch several pro-Israel organizations. But the history of Jewish-evangelical involvement goes back several decades.
According to Rabbi James Rudin, writing in his recently published book, The Baptizing of America: The Religious Right's Plans for the Rest of U.S., "the first [modern] evangelical-Jewish meeting" took place in New York in 1975.
A bevy of issues including "the meaning of Messiah in both traditions, Jesus the Jew, biblical theology, and the meaning of modern Israel and Jerusalem for Christian conservatives and Jews" were discussed.
Rudin points out that "the evangelical commitment to Israel creates some … ambivalence" in the Jewish community, since that "commitment" is built on the biblical belief that "without an Israel, an ingathering of Jewish exiles, [the] major event in Christian eschatology [the Second coming of Jesus to Jerusalem] cannot take place."
"That is why some evangelicals are dismayed at any Israeli withdrawal or disengagement from any area of the biblical 'Holy Land.' That is also why the strong Christian conservative support of Israel is not linked to Middle East realpolitik or America's growing thirst for Arab oil," Rudin says.
Although not as well known on the national political scene as some of his evangelical brethren, Hagee has built an impressive evangelical empire and developed strong political ties to the Republican Party.
Since his 1978 "conversion" to Zionism, he has emphasized establishing and maintaining good relations with Israeli leaders and conservative sectors of the U.S. Jewish community. Over the years, he has met with Israeli heads of state and carved out a special relationship with former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose Likud Party performed dismally in the recent elections in Israel.
"Think of CUFI as a Christian version of American Israel Public Affairs Committee [AIPAC]," the powerful pro-Israel lobby, Hagee told The Jerusalem Post in an interview a few days before his February summit. "We need to be able to respond instantly to Washington with our concerns about Israel. We must join forces to speak as one group and move as one body to [respond to] the crisis Israel will be facing in the near future."
antiwar.com
