“Night to Honor Israel” extravaganza
By Mary Rizzo • May 6th, 2008 at 9:10 • Category: Analysis, Hasbara Deconstruction Site, Israel, Religion, ZionismWritten by Charles Carlson From Religious Rant to Political Bombast to Spiritual Emptiness and Deception 
If John Hagee’s “Night to Honor Israel” extravaganza is any indication, Christian Zionism is a misnomer. From happy-clappy Jewish praise music, to love songs crooned to and about Israel, to a kitschy Hava Nagila; from invocations and benedictions that turn out to be sermons; from Muslim-bashing to Israel lauding; from dramatic processions to keynote addresses; from offerings taken and offerings given — there was not a shred, a trace, a scintilla of Christianity in the proceedings. The PTA or the Rotary Club could well have sponsored it.
Of course, if Hagee wants to honor Israel and give it gobs of non-governmental funds that is certainly his privilege. But to promote this under the aegis of “Christian” is, frankly, fraudulent. But the “Night to Honor Israel” was worse than a fraud — it was idolatrous, and this in two ways.
First, what was worshiped was the state of Israel, and more particularly, Jerusalem. Select passages culled from the Hebrew Bible, referring to Israel’s “right” to the land — all of Palestine — and an undivided Jewish Jerusalem were repeated again and again ad nauseam. What were not quoted were those passages that speak of the obligation to do justice and practice mercy. Part of the problem is in the word “prophecy.”
Christian Zionists, as well as most fundamentalists and millennialists, use that word almost exclusively as a means to understand present, and predict future, events. [Jewish understanding of "prophecy" also differ from Christian Zionists.] Contemporary events, seen through the spectacles of “prophecy,” lead to “Rapture” and “Tribulations” and “Second Comings” and “Armageddon.” Biblical passages are interpreted to coincide with that scenario.
On the other hand, prophecy in its initial sense is a human agent (the prophet) who speaks God’s word for a particular existential situation.
Christian Zionists would be well advised, for example, to read the book of the prophet Amos as a corrective to these skewed interpretations of various passages often quoted from Ezekiel. Daniel, and Revelation.
Second, the adulation of John Hagee, as one who is becoming the most important leader of contemporary Christian Zionism, if not idolatry, comes awfully close to it. This cult of the personality was most striking at the “Night.” David Brog, Executive Director of CUFI [Christians United for Israel] extolled the virtues of Hagee in the words, “Pastor John Hagee is not an important man. Pastor John Hagee is a great man!” With the cheering and clapping and whistling and stomping of feet and raised arms of the 3000 disciples at this announcement, I was reminded of Leni Riefenstahl’s film, Triumph of the Will, about the Nuremberg rallies in Nazi Germany. Hitler had his Gobbles; Hagee has his Brog.
Interspersed with religious rant from misinterpreted Hebrew Scriptures (the New Testament was not mentioned once, nor was Jesus; God got a tip of the hat only occasionally) was political bombast. Malcolm Hoenlein, Executive Vice President of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, supplied this.
Two things were most disturbing: the advocating of violence and the racism of the Christian Zionist movement. Time and again Hoenlein, as well as Hagee, called for the bombing and possible invasion of Iran. Diplomacy is not an option since it simply conveys weakness to the 300 million (count ‘em) Muslim terrorists who “hate freedom” (that old canard) and who, if not stopped in Iran, will eventually come to our shores with suitcases full of nuclear bombs.
What is inherent in this scenario is the racism that declares the superiority of the West and western culture over against the East (read Middle East). And that racism is Manichaean — in stark terms “they” are evil, “we” are good (so Hoenlein). The good must not only defend itself against the evil, it must wipe it out; it must obliterate it.
Finally, I am struck by the fact that throughout the speeches and the hoopla the centuries-old complaint of Jewish victim hood was juxtaposed with Israeli military triumph (also of the will), which (God?) will grant Israel. Victim or conqueror: You can’t have it both ways. Hagee closed his speech with “God bless Israel and God bless the United States of America.” Implied is “and God damn all those who are not us.
Mary Rizzo is an art restorer, translator and writer living in Italy. Editor and co-founder of Palestine Think Tank, co-founder of Tlaxcala translations collective. Her personal blog is Peacepalestine.
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On November 6, 2007, I traveled to Miami’s James L. Knight Center for a John Hagge cult conference.
The hall was packed to the rafters with Hagee’s tribe of Christian Zionists and south Florida’s right wing Jewish community. Zion’s Fire Banners, dancers, singers and a band whipped the crowd into a frenzy of spinning, jumping, clapping, twirling and moved the rotund Hagee to link arms with men in skull caps and dance the Hora-not to Hava Nagila, but to repeated choruses of:
Shout for joy and victory! Bat Yerushalyim
From one end of the stage to the other, the largest American and Israeli flags I have ever seen were draped side by side and by the end of the evening I imagined every star on the red-white-and blue had morphed into the Star of David.
[See photo on WAWA homepage]
Miami-Dade County Commissioner Joe Martinez pointed to the flags and exclaimed: “Isn’t that beautiful up there together? I get goose bumps! All nations have been created by an act of man, except Israel was created by an act of God.”
Rabbi Freedman delivered the Invocation, “We are all friends of the only democracy in the Middle East.”
I immediately recalled what American Israeli, Jeff Halper, the Founder and Coordinator of ICAHD/Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions told me during one of my five journeys to Jerusalem:
“Israel is a not a democracy but is an Ethnocracy, meaning a country run and controlled by a national group with some democratic elements but set up with Jews in control and structured to keep them in control.”
Rabbi Freedman continued on, “From Mount Sinai to Mount Zion to Mount Vernon we are all Zionists! Israel is second to America in how many immigrants we have absorbed.”
Immigrant absorption in Israel comes with perks and is called Aliyah, ["go up"] and is a fundamental concept of Zionism enshrined in Israel’s Law of Return, which permits any Jew from any where in the world the legal right to government assisted immigration and settlement in Israel, automatic Israeli citizenship, unemployment benefits, free medical, and subsidized housing. Young adult immigrants receive free room, utilities, and three meals a day for the first five months and 100 percent of their tuition is paid by the government.
Hagee’s mastery of manipulating the fears of his audience garnered him a standing ovation as the shofars blew, “Israel was re-born by an act of God and Israel lives! The Jews have suffered great persecution and survived slavery and the Final Solution! God Jehovah will bury Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran! The flag of Israel will fly over the undivided Jerusalem and be the praise of all the earth! It’s 1938 again and the new Hitler is Ahmadinejad! Radical Islamisicts are threatening to develop nuclear weapons in order to destroy Israel and then the USA! But we are indivisible and we are both here forever!”
The oft repeated comment ascribed to President Ahmadinejad, that “Israel must be wiped off the map,” was addressed by Virginia Tilley, Professor of political science who wrote:
“In his October 2005 speech, Mr. Ahmadinejad never used the word “map” or the term “wiped off”. According to Farsi-language experts like Juan Cole and even right-wing services like MEMRI, what he actually said was “this regime that is occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time.”
“In this speech to an annual anti-Zionist conference, Mr. Ahmadinejad was being prophetic, not threatening. He was citing Imam Khomeini, who said this line in the 1980s (a period when Israel was actually selling arms to Iran, so apparently it was not viewed as so ghastly then). Mr. Ahmadinejad had just reminded his audience that the Shah’s regime, the Soviet Union, and Saddam Hussein had all seemed enormously powerful and immovable, yet the first two had vanished almost beyond recall and the third now languished in prison. So, too, the “occupying regime” in Jerusalem would someday be gone. His message was, in essence, “This too shall pass.” http://www.counterpunch.org/tilley08282006.html
Being a Christian of the Beatitudes-sticking to what Jesus actually taught and not worshiping any state or nation, I hope that the zeal of particular Christians for the state of Israel will also pass and because of their love for the Jewish people, I have hope they will have ears to hear the wisdom of the American Jewish progressive political and spiritual community and organization, Tikkun.
Tikkun is Hebrew for mend, repair and transform the world.
Tikkun researched to discover that there are three distinct elements energizing the Christian Zionists:
1. A strong commitment to conservative and ultra-nationalist American politics (so strong, I believe, that if the U.S. were to decide to break with Israel, this part of the Christian Zionist leadership would go along with that and drop its defense of Israeli policies).
2. Dispensationalist religious commitments that lead many of the Christian Zionists to yearn for a cataclysmic “end of history” eschatological war in the Middle East that will precipitate the second coming of Jesus and the Rapture in which all true Christians will go to heaven and all Jews who have not yet converted to Christianity will burn in hell for eternity.
3. A widespread understanding among many Christians that atonement and repentance is needed for 1700 years of murder, rape, and oppression of Jews that was frequently generated by the Church (though, of course, the Evangelicals do not recognize that church as their church). In this category are many Christian Zionists who genuinely feel terrible about what has happened to the Jews and genuinely want to help the Jewish people. Their philo-Semitism is real and sincere. [Rabbi Lerner, Tikkun Magazine page 9, Nov/Dec. 2007]
But in Miami last November, multitudes of misled and misinformed Christian’s celebrated military occupation, violence, power and control and ignored the gospel Jesus preached: “It is the peacemakers who shall be called the children of God.” –Matthew 5:9
Hagee repeatedly cited that all worship the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, but neglected to mention that the first mention of Israel is in Genesis 32:22, when Jacob was renamed Israel for having wrestled and struggled with the Divine.
Hagee threw out the names of all the Hebrew prophets, but not the fact that God raised up prophets to speak truth to power and arrogance and to remind people of what God desires:
“What does God require? He has told you o’man!
Be just, be merciful, and walk humbly with your Lord.” -Micah 6:8
God also raised up prophets to remind them they cannot know the mind of the Mystery of the Universe, for “His thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.”- Isaiah 55:8
God raised up prophets to admonish the “stiff necked people” [Exodus 34:9, Proverbs 29:1] and that “My people are fools, they do not know me! They are skilled in doing evil, they know not how to do good.”-Jeremiah 4:22
Hagee invoked the “Torah Way” but neglected what the Torah commands:
“From Moses to Jeremiah and Isaiah, the Prophets taught…that the Jewish claim on the land of Israel was totally contingent on the moral and spiritual life of the Jews who lived there, and that the land would, as the Torah tells us, ‘vomit you out’ if people did not live according to the highest moral vision of Torah. Over and over again, the Torah repeated its most frequently stated mitzvah [command]:
“When you enter your land, do not oppress the stranger; the other, the one who is an outsider of your society, the powerless one and then not only ‘you shall love your neighbor as yourself’ but also ‘you shall love the other.’” [Rabbi Lerner, TIKKUN Magazine, page 35, Sept./Oct. 2007 ]
Eileen Fleming, Reporter and Editor WAWA:
http://www.wearewideawake.org/
Author “Keep Hope Alive” and “Memoirs of a Nice Irish American ‘Girl’s’ Life in Occupied Territory”
Producer “30 Minutes With Vanunu” and “13 Minutes with Vanunu”
I attended one of these blasphemous zionist rallies this past weekend. It boggles the mind to listen to such hate filled diatribe and wonder where on earth they got this ‘message of peace’. Everything that zionism espouses is in direct opposition to the teachings of Christ. I will post it here and give permission to anyone that would like to use it to confront truths that need to be examined concerning this false doctrine. Judge for yourself whether it is correct.
Putting Israel in Perspective
I would like to ask you to take just a few minutes to consider the information you are about to read. Please read it in its entirety, if you would like to research it further I encourage you to do so.
Much of what we see going on today is the agendas’ of men being carried out and an attempt to legitimize their actions by claiming to represent God or “God‘s will“. We ought to be careful in doctrines that oppose the teachings of Jesus and the nature of God.
If we assign to the Creator anything that does not reflect His nature then we are not doing justice to the position of ‘child of God’. As a parent do we not bring children up to share the beliefs we hold as individuals? And that child brings us great joy when we see that behavior manifested.
We dare not imagine that having the attitude of, “Do as I say, not as I do.” will resolve anything. If we are not good examples to our children they grow up rebellious and defiant.
If we direct our attention to the teaching of ‘the Prodigal Son’ we see that Jesus says that the true repentance of the child brought great joy to the father. Is it not written that God is, ’not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance’? The foolish child set his own desires above those of the father; he also pursued the distractions until he had completely exhausted his ‘inheritance’.
We ought to also look at the historical precedence of biblical information. If we look at how God dealt with disobedience through the Bible we will find that He has dealt with it severely yet had great mercy on those that repented from their disobedience. Look at the severity of judgment against King Saul yet the degree of mercy received by Saul of Tarsus. Both relationships are defined by the right relationship they held with God/ Jesus and the outcome of both reflected their obedience to the same.
If we look at the story of David and Goliath, David triumphed because Goliath boasted in the power of his ‘god’ over the true nature of the Creator. David’s victory was a result of obedience in a right relationship DESPITE the fact that Saul has already ceased to operate as king of Israel as a consequence to his disobedience. Saul/ Paul found mercy DESPITE the fact that he fervently sought to execute all who observed the teachings of Christ.
“Zionism” is purported to be , “the national aspiration for a Jewish homeland”, but in fact it is in direct opposition and disobedience to the revealed nature of God. God expressly says that OBEDIENCE must come first, then His blessing follows. The fruit of these people ought to be most obvious. Isaiah 5 clearly paints a picture of behavior in rebellion to the nature of God.
There was nothing ‘miraculous’ about the creation of a Zionist state, actually it was rather brutal and merciless. Contrary to popular myths Jews, Christians, and Muslims lived in peace as neighbors before the advent of Zionist expansion.
Zionism is a political aspiration that serves secular men. How can that define the teachings of Christ or God‘s nature? Christ warned us of men who would appear as sheep but would be ravening wolves underneath. Zionism does not represent the nature of God OR Christ so how can we blindly follow it?
The Palestinian people have dwelt in the land since the time of Christ. If you look at the Samaritans, they were the people that continued to dwell in Judea after the Babylonian Exile. When the temple was rebuilt the Samaritans were ostracized and forbidden from worshipping in Jerusalem. Jesus spoke quite clearly on this matter also.
If we must abandon all the qualities of God’s nature, what will we become? If we do not stand firm on the rock of the teachings of Christ we shall have no other justification for our behavior. Let your voice be heard for those that cannot speak for themselves.
Yet our eyes failed;
Looking for help was useless.
In our watching we have watched
For a nation that could not save us.
Lamentations 4:17
Thanks for the above James B.
What gets my Irish up about ‘Christian’ Zionism is how multitudes have been so misled to believe the escapist theology of a rapture -such as in the “Left Behind” series of heretical theology and putrid excuse for ‘literature.’
As an American what fuels my ire is these ‘Christians’ are also the neo-con base.
As a Christian of The Beatitudes-meaning one who FOLLOWS what Jesus taught-I grieve for the world that the message from The Prince of Peace [JC's other name] is neglected:
“The Peacemakers shall be called the children of God”-Matthew 5:9
The “Left Behinder’s” cult of ‘Christian’ Zionism is really what the concept of Anti-Christ is all about;
Against Christ’s teachings!
The heretical theology they adhere to is called Premellenial Dispensation and they worship a god of Armageddon and not the God of love, forgiveness and compassion that Jesus/The Prince of Peace taught and modeled.
According to Christ, to be his follower, one must be JUST: and JUSTICE comes from virtue which flows from an open heart.
Christ taught that the only way to resist evil is with good and modeled that one must always work for PEACEFUL resolutions, even to the point of returning violence with compassion and forgiveness, as he did when nailed to a cross and prayed:
“Father forgive them, they do not know what they are doing.”