← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · weisbrot
Thread ID: 11758 | Posts: 4 | Started: 2004-01-06
2004-01-06 14:21 | User Profile
Just remember to check your Bibles at the border. And for G-wd's sake, don't try to bring in any Christmas gifts!
Ideological tourism, they call it. I'll take Iceland, thanks.
[url]http://www.statesman.com/nation/content/auto/epaper/editions/sunday/news_f37faba0a54c70d5006d.html[/url]
America's Christian Zionists take Israel by storm U.S. evangelical Christians have become influential supporters of the Jewish state
By Craig Nelson
INTERNATIONAL STAFF
Sunday, January 4, 2004
HERZLIYA, Israel -- Christian evangelist Pat Robertson had them in the palm of his hand.
No matter that his audience wasn't predominantly Christian. When the founder of the Christian Broadcasting Network culminated his give-no-ground speech to the elite of Israel's political and military establishment with the ringing declaration, "Be strong! Be strong!" many of his listeners jumped to their feet to give him a boisterous round of applause.
The rapturous response to Robertson in Israel last month is just one example of how a large and growing group of conservative American Christians has entered the Jewish state's political scene with startling vigor, even as the Holy Land's indigenous Arab Christian communities wither because of violence and a dying economy.
Calling themselves Christian Zionists, the evangelicals are increasingly viewed as a political lifeline by influential Israelis who are eager for allies to fight what they see as a rising global tide of enmity aimed at Israel and to blunt suggestions that Israel is the main culprit in the Israeli-Palestinian morass.
They provide not only moral support but also substantial funds to Israel's sputtering economy, and they've proven their political clout in the Bush White House.
Fueling the movement's growth is the belief that a great religious struggle is convulsing the world, one in which the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the main, but not only, battleground.
At stake, Robertson and other Christian Zionists have said, is who has the greater god: Jews and Christians on the one hand, or Muslims on the other.
"This is a war, a war of images that reverberate throughout the world," Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, founder of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, said in Herzliya, where he shared the podium with Robertson. "The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is at the cusp of becoming, God forbid, a worldwide conflict between Jews and Muslims."
Political dividends
High-profile events in recent months underscore the blossoming ties between Israel and some of the estimated 70 million evangelicals in America and 600 million worldwide. In October, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon addressed 3,000 visiting evangelical Christians from 80 countries, including about 450 Americans.
"We love you!" Sharon told the gathering, and in a march through the streets of Jerusalem, the Christians returned the affection, waving signs such as "Oklahoma Loves Israel" and shouting "Hallelujah to the God of Israel!"
The same month, several thousand evangelical Christians flocked to Washington to participate in a "Christian Solidarity for Israel" rally, sponsored by the Christian Coalition.
Just days later, about 16,000 U.S. churches participated in a one-day "Stand for Israel" prayer campaign co-chaired by Ralph Reed, who formerly led the Christian Coalition and is now an Atlanta-based political consultant and Southern regional chairman of President Bush's re-election campaign.
The swelling support of evangelical Christians has paid political dividends for Israel in America, so much so that the Israeli government is considering the creation of a special parliamentary committee to steer Israel's relationship with them.
In a campaign orchestrated by Robertson, the Rev. Jerry Falwell and leading Christian Zionist Gary Bauer, hundreds of thousands of e-mails and letters poured in to the White House last year after Bush, in a Rose Garden speech, appeared to equate Israeli army actions in the West Bank with Palestinian violence.
In April, Bush's call on Israel to remove its tanks from Palestinian territories in the West Bank triggered a similar flood.
A month later, as Bush was rumored to be preparing to pressure Sharon to make concessions in the interest of the U.S.-backed "road map" for peace, Bauer and other evangelical leaders warned in a letter that any attempt to be evenhanded between the Israelis and the Palestinians would be "morally reprehensible."
Such persistent pressure by this bedrock Republican constituency has helped achieve some of Israel's primary goals, such as the discarding of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat as a negotiating partner and the White House's hailing of Sharon as a "man of peace."
'Ideological tourism'
And Israel receives more than political support from the movement. Eckstein's Chicago-based International Fellowship of Christians and Jews is Israel's largest private philanthropy organization, according to a survey conducted this month by the Israeli daily newspaper Ha'aretz.
Last year, the organization and its 250,000 evangelical donors gave $20 million to various Israeli causes, including assistance to the elderly, a soup-kitchen network and a rescue service operated by Israel's ultra-Orthodox Jewish community.
To make up for the drop in tourism because of the ongoing violence, Israel's Tourism Ministry began targeting evangelical Christians this year with appeals based on theology and politics.
It is buying time on Christian radio stations in the United States and sending representatives to U.S. evangelical churches to air the pitch: Show your support for Israel in its travails by vacationing there.
Israeli tourism officials say the campaign has been a resounding success, despite a State Department travel advisory issued Oct. 20 warning U.S. citizens against traveling to Israel because of violence.
"It's ideological tourism," explains David Parsons, spokesman for the International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem, a Christian Zionist outreach organization in Israel. "Evangelicals want to come out of a sense of solidarity and mission. They know the country needs their help. We've advised the Tourism Ministry on how the appeal should be structured."
Not all Israelis are knowledgeable about, let alone comfortable with, the support from Christian Zionists. But in a primer on the movement to the Herzliya gathering last week, Eckstein tried to debunk what he described as myths about it.
"Contrary to the impression -- I would say the stereotype, even the prejudice -- that many of us have, (Christian Zionists) are not Southern rednecks. They are educated, they are well-to-do, and they are committed to Judeo-Christian values." Furthermore, Eckstein said, "they have a huge network in the media" and "are continuing to grow in influence (on) public policy."
Eckstein accused the media of propagating the notion that Christian Zionists support the Jewish state only as a prelude to the Second Coming of Jesus Christ when, according to some interpretations of the Bible, all Jews will be converted to Christianity or wiped out in Armageddon.
"It is incorrect," he told the Israeli audience, despite repeated statements by some Christian Zionist leaders to the contrary. "The real reason (Christian Zionists) support Israel is because of the Bible: `God will bless those who bless Israel, curse those who curse Israel.' "
Winning friends
Nonetheless, apocalypse wasn't far from Robertson's mind.
"The entire world is being convulsed in a religious struggle. Oh, the struggle is whether Hubal, the Moon God of Mecca, known as Allah, is supreme, or whether the Judeo-Christian Jehovah God of the Bible is supreme," the evangelist and former Republican presidential candidate told his Israeli listeners.
Against the encroachment of what Robertson called a "fanatical religion intent on returning to the feudalism of eighth-century Arabia," Israel's sovereignty over the Holy Land must be preserved at all costs, he argued.
Robertson delighted many Israelis when, in remarks to local reporters, he called for the "elimination" of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and warned that any attempt by Bush to force Israel to cede east Jerusalem to the Palestinians would cost the president "an enormous amount of support among the evangelical votes in the U.S."
Ironically, Robertson has faced past accusations of anti-Semitism. His 1992 book, "The New World Order," expounded conspiracy theories about all-powerful Jewish bankers.
He later apologized, but some doubt that Robertson's and other evangelical Christians' embrace of the Jewish state is sincere.
"Christian Zionism is a sick ideology. Its scenarios for apocalypse are anti-Christian, anti-peace, anti-justice and anti-reconciliation. And while Christian Zionists pretend to be pro-Israel, in the long run they are anti-Semitic," said Dr. Munib Younan, the Lutheran bishop of Jordan.
But such criticism hasn't dogged Robertson in Israel, says Rabbi David Rosen of the American Jewish Committee. Most Israelis aren't familiar with it, Rosen says.
"Even if they did, it wouldn't make any difference. The past three years have elicited reminders of the historical traumas of the Jewish people. Israelis say, `We can't be too picky or discriminating about our friends when there is such hostility toward us.' "
[email]cnelson@coxnews.com[/email]
2004-01-06 14:32 | User Profile
Thanks for that, it was one of the best articles I've read in a long time.
2004-01-06 17:33 | User Profile
[QUOTE=weisbrot]Eckstein accused the media of propagating the notion that Christian Zionists support the Jewish state only as a prelude to the Second Coming of Jesus Christ **when, according to some interpretations of the Bible, all Jews will be converted to Christianity or wiped out in Armageddon. **
"It is incorrect," he told the Israeli audience, despite repeated statements by some Christian Zionist leaders to the contrary. "The real reason (Christian Zionists) support Israel is because of the Bible: `God will bless those who bless Israel, curse those who curse Israel.' "
Winning friends
**Nonetheless, apocalypse wasn't far from Robertson's mind...................
Ironically, Robertson has faced past accusations of anti-Semitism. His 1992 book, "The New World Order," expounded conspiracy theories about all-powerful Jewish bankers.
He later apologized, but some doubt that Robertson's and other evangelical Christians' embrace of the Jewish state is sincere. **
"Christian Zionism is a sick ideology. Its scenarios for apocalypse are anti-Christian, anti-peace, anti-justice and anti-reconciliation. And while Christian Zionists pretend to be pro-Israel, in the long run they are anti-Semitic," said Dr. Munib Younan, the Lutheran bishop of Jordan.
But such criticism hasn't dogged Robertson in Israel, says Rabbi David Rosen of the American Jewish Committee. Most Israelis aren't familiar with it, Rosen says.
"Even if they did, it wouldn't make any difference. The past three years have elicited reminders of the historical traumas of the Jewish people. Israelis say, `We can't be too picky or discriminating about our friends when there is such hostility toward us.' "
[/QUOTE]As if to add insult to injury, jews stil accuse the Christian Zionists of being anti-semitic, and basoically all but openly admit that that they privately despise them but need their support now.
Still, Christianity is ultimately viewed as the source of all judaism's troubles, in spite of anything Pat & Co can do, as I noted.
[url=http://forums.originaldissent.com//showthread.php?t=11656]Are Robertson and Falwell Responsible for Rise of Far-Right?[/url].
When "The Moor has done his duty" he will go back to the Moor's proper place.
2004-01-07 09:55 | User Profile
"Christian" Zionists are kicking against the female pricks.
From Phyllis Chesler's "The New Anti-Semitism" (p. 28):
"There is no way that Jews can accept the sacrifice of God's own son or that such a sacrifice, by definition, can redeem humanity."
"The Jews have been accused not only of killing God, but also of running the worlds newspaper, controlling all governments, and oddly enough, of plotting communist revolutions." (p. 41)
This is one sassy lassie. If we could get a nude photo... (actually, she seems to be sick in the mind in this book)