Hagee - 'Hitler Was Fulfilling God's Will For Israel'
“It’s an ageing leadership. Hagee is in 80s. As the leadership turns over, there might actually be a big shift on this. But as we’re sitting here today, in 2023, the majority of the evangelical world is very pro-Israel.”
“When Israel’s former ambassador to the US said his country should worry less about what American Jews think and concentrate on Christian evangelicals as the “backbone” of support for the Jewish state, he had in mind the Texas megachurch pastor John Hagee.
Hagee founded Christians United for Israel (CUFI), a group that claims 11 million members, who have had a significant influence on Republican party politics and in hardening Washington’s already strong support for Israel.
President Donald Trump made no secret of his desire to keep Hagee and Christian Zionist voters happy as a key part of his base by abandoning even the pretense that the US was a neutral player in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Former South Carolina governor and current White House hopeful Nikki Haley recognised Hagee’s power within the most important religious bloc of Republican voters and their influence over political priorities, from anti-abortion laws to Israel policy, when she invited him to give the invocation at her presidential campaign launch last month.
“Pastor Hagee, I still say I want to be you when I grow up,” she enthused.
Left largely unmentioned by Haley and Hagee’s Israeli allies were his antisemitic views, including calling Hitler a “half-breed Jew” who was sent by God to drive the Jewish people to Israel. He has also suggested that Jews brought centuries of persecution on themselves by disobeying God.
None of that discouraged Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, from addressing a CUFI summit in Washington in 2019…
Former vice-president Mike Pence is an evangelical who once suggested that God sent Trump to save Israel. Trump’s top diplomat, Mike Pompeo, overturned longstanding legal advice that declared Israel’s settlements in the West Bank unlawful and then became the first US secretary of state to visit one of them.
Last month, Pompeo defended Israel’s decades-long control of the Palestinian territories by claiming it has a biblical claim to the land.
“[Israel] is not an occupying nation. As an evangelical Christian, I am convinced by my reading of the Bible that 3,000 years on, now, in spite of the denial of so many, [this land] is the rightful homeland of the Jewish people,” he said.
Even with Trump gone, the consequences linger. President Biden has not reversed the embassy move nor revived the position that Israeli settlements are illegal.
Still, Hummel said change may be on the horizon, albeit a distant one.
“There is a difference generationally. The younger, under-40 evangelical community is far less supportive of Israel and far more interested in social justice ways of thinking about the Middle East, which would side more with the Palestinians than the Israelis. And that may cause a massive change in the way we talk about evangelicals and Israel in 10 or 15 years,” he said.
“It’s an ageing leadership. Hagee is in 80s. As the leadership turns over, there might actually be a big shift on this. But as we’re sitting here today, in 2023, the majority of the evangelical world is very pro-Israel.”
MORE AT:
The Guardian
Evangelical Christians flock to Republicans over support for Israel
Powerful voting bloc looking to back pro-Israel politicians in hopes of dictating policy that fits their theological views
Mon 6 Mar 2023 03.00 EST
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"Hagee’s views on Israel are closely tied to his belief that the apocalypse is imminent and the Antichrist will soon come to power. As Sarah Posner writes, “Hagee is ultimately less concerned with the fate of Israel or the Jews than with a theocratic Christian right agenda.”
Back in 2008, John McCain was forced to reject Hagee’s endorsement after Hagee’s extreme record gained national media attention. In one sermon that came to light during the 2008 campaign, Hagee said that God sent Adolf Hitler to the world in order to be a “hunter” of Jews, advancing a divinely inspired plan to push Jews back to the land of Israel:
Theodore Herzl is the father of Zionism. He was a Jew who at the turn of the 19th century said, this land is our land, God wants us to live there. So he went to the Jews of Europe and said ‘I want you to come and join me in the land of Israel.’ So few went that Hertzel went into depression. Those who came founded Israel; those who did not went through the hell of the Holocaust.
Then God sent a hunter. A hunter is someone with a gun and he forces you. Hitler was a hunter. And the Bible says — Jeremiah writing — ‘They shall hunt them from every mountain and from every hill and from the holes of the rocks,’ meaning there’s no place to hide. And that might be offensive to some people but don’t let your heart be offended. I didn’t write it, Jeremiah wrote it. It was the truth and it is the truth. How did it happen? Because God allowed it to happen. Why did it happen? Because God said my top priority for the Jewish people is to get them to come back to the land of Israel.
Hagee has also claimed that the Roman Catholic Church is an “Antichrist,” “false cult system,” and “The Great Whore”; blamed homosexuality for Hurricane Katrina; and said that God was punishing America for Barack Obama’s Mideast policies with civil unrest, terrorist attacks, and the Ebola virus."
FROM:
Right Wing Watch A Project of People for the American Way
Mike Pence To Speak At Conference Hosted By Radical Pastor John Hagee
By Brian Tashman | May 30, 2017 5:01 pm
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For a few decades I worked in Elkins Park, PA.
When Russia was part of the Soviet Union my dentist was deeply involved with bringing Jews to the United States, many of them were Ukrainian and settled in the Elkins Park area. I worked in dental laboratories in Elkins Park. As a result I knew several people from Ukraine. None of them appeared to be interested in politics.
In about 1976 I worked with Valeri a man who came over from Ukraine. In Russia he was a dental technician making crown and bridge work. He had a clandestine business making crown and bridge work for wealthy people in Russia and Ukraine. This was illegal and if the KGB found him he could be put in a Russian Gulag.
To more than survive in the Soviet Union you needed to be an extraordinary person. Valeri was on the 4th floor of a terraced restaurant. He punched a guy and then realized the guy was KGB. Val jumped from the 4 story terrace to the shrubs below.
He said in Ukraine I was a millionaire. But the KGB was on to him and he had to come to United States to keep out of prison. His wife was Jewish and that was his ticket to the United States.
He told me the Soviet union would break up. He said the communists are all old men.
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Wednesday, February 23, 2022
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