JONATHAN CHAIT JULY 26, 2010
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Last January, Jennifer Rubin wrote a lengthy story for Commentary lamenting the failure of American Jews to appreciate the greatness of Sarah Palin. (Jews, she argued in an odd adoption of anti-Semitic tropes, hate Palin because they're snobbish toward working-class people, hung up on credentials, and anti-military.)
Now Rubin, continuing her obsession with Republicanizing American Jewry, has a love letter to John Hagee in the Weekly Standard entitled "Onward Christian Zionists." If you had never heard of Hagee before reading Rubin's story, you'd think he was just some wildly philo-Semitic Christian minister who Jews seemed to distrust for no good reason:
Hagee approached the local Jewish leaders to suggest a gala fundraiser. He deadpanned, “They looked at me like I had a serious and contagious rash.” Hagee won them over, held a news conference with an orthodox rabbi announcing the event, and “within hours started receiving death threats at the church. We had the night for Israel, and it was terrific.” ...
Among Jews, there remains some skepticism and some outright hostility. Yet Hagee noted progress among those Jews whose support for Israel is grounded in their faith. “There is a level of comfort between Christians and Jews who believe in and accept the Torah as the word of God.” ...
Hagee is bracingly candid about the historical underpinnings of Jews’ mistrust:
I understand the fear of some Jewish people of Christians because for 2,000 years they were killed under the sign of the cross. When a Jewish person sees the cross he sees an electric chair. When a Christian sees a cross he sees hope and redemption. Two thousand years of suffering won’t be overcome overnight.
In addition, antipathy toward CUFI may be attributable partly to aversion to the rest of the Christian right’s political agenda. As for Jews’ concern about Christian proselytizing, Ortiz says suspicion fades “when they see we are not trying to convert them.”
Huh, so Jews apparently are suspicious of Hagee only because they harbor suspicions of all Christians. That's Rubin's argument, anyway. My alternate thesis is that Jews are very happy, and indeed grateful, to work with non-Jews. But they tend to be suspicious of non-Jews who say things like this:
Mr. Hagee quoted from the Old Testament Book of Jeremiah, Mr. Hagee said in his sermon, according to the Huffington Post, “And they the hunters should hunt them,” arguing this referred to “the Jews.”
He went on to read from the same passage, “From every mountain and from every hill and from out of the holes of the rocks.”
“If that doesn’t describe what Hitler did in the Holocaust, you can’t see that,” Mr. Hagee said.
or this:
How utterly repulsive, insulting, and heartbreaking to God for his chosen people to credit idols with bringing blessings he had showered upon the chosen people. Their own rebellion had birthed the seed of anti-Semitism that would arise and bring destruction to them for centuries to come.
and, while it doesn't specifically single out Jews, there aren't a whole lot of Jews who would agree with statements like this:
All hurricanes are acts of God, because God controls the heavens. I believe that New Orleans had a level of sin that was offensive to God, and they are — were recipients of the judgment of God for that. The newspaper carried the story in our local area that was not carried nationally that there was to be a homosexual parade there on the Monday that the Katrina came. And the promise of that parade was that it was going to reach a level of sexuality never demonstrated before in any of the other Gay Pride parades. So I believe that the judgment of God is a very real thing. I know that there are people who demur from that, but I believe that the Bible teaches that when you violate the law of God, that God brings punishment sometimes before the day of judgment. And I believe that the Hurricane Katrina was, in fact, the judgment of God against the city of New Orleans.
Rubin does not explain these statements away in her article, or argue that Jews should overlook the radical or bigoted views of anybody who supports Israel. She simply pretends those things never happened. If Jews are reluctant to form an alliance with Hagee, it's because they irrationally mistrust Christians. Once again, Rubin has diagnosed the stubborn prejudices of American Jews.
8 comments
Jon, Thank you for being vigilant about this bizarre peddler of lies about American Jews.
- rlgordonma
July 26, 2010 at 10:33am
I meant Rubin, BTW, if that wasn't clear.
- rlgordonma
July 26, 2010 at 10:37am
Jennifer Rubin is a piece of work. She is hoping for a mass political conversion of Jews to the Republican Party. And how does she play her part? By caricaturing Jews in a manner that would fit right into the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. For decades, neoconservatives have been pushing a Jewish-Christianist alliance, frequently overlooking the anti-Semitism of right-wing preachers and figures, as well as barbaric comments like the one John Hagee made about Katrina being retribution for putative immorality in the Big Easy.
- liberal reformer
July 26, 2010 at 11:07am
Jews don't like him because he's stupid. That's my guess. Though, obviously, if he can say things like, "Their own rebellion had birthed the seed of anti-Semitism that would arise and bring destruction to them for centuries to come..." he's worse than stupid. Is the logical next step for Rubin to say that Jews deserve anti-Semitism because they vote Democratic?
- aanassar
July 26, 2010 at 11:49am
Actually, the point Rubin and many of her friends make is that Democrats are the anti-Semitic party in today's America and that Jews should vote Republican for their own safety and welfare. But that's not much of a logical leap to what aanassar predicts would come next.
- wildboy
July 26, 2010 at 12:27pm
Jon. I've been puzzling a bit on how to best speak to your very valid concern. Please understand that it is not my intention to speak in defense of Hagee, Robertson, Orel Roberts or the late Jerry Falwell and those inclined to follow lockstep in their visions and descriptions of universal truth and justice as ministered by Jesus Christ. I will say that their biblical view, training methodology and material do provide a common palette from which to color the canvass of agreement and contentions. A place of meeting if you will in an effort to undo Babel on a more meaningful basis. No small thing by my lights (as humanity just recently crawled out from under the rocks) since we are essentially transversing that which is most precious for travelers. Many are well with it as long as it is my highway and often mistake selfishness for the Will of God..... to include the aforementioned ' ministers '. Goats are a reality but this sorting it out in the psycho/spiritual realms is anything but delusional and unrealistic. In fact it is unavoidable.... so it may as well be the Will of God. While I don't accept collective categoricals as being accurately reflective of the individual reality when standing before truth, I do accept validity in the here and now as having consequence in the necessarily collective world we that we live in. All it takes two and before you know it I/You/We have seven billion.... give or take. Tell you what... let's throw in the individuation processes of an always becoming consciousness and see what happens. Better yet let's find a way to map it without leaving out past, present and future bi-ways and hi-ways. They are all relevant, don't you know, to our little project. I don't know, man... Trust? Personally I don't worry about evangelicals coming to my door with damnation and plague. Often enough they leave my house wishing they had never stopped for my invitation to a conversation. I also don't fear them marking me worthy of murder though I do occasionally flatter myself to think that some regard me as a very dangerous. One gent told me that I was going to bust hell wide open. Imagine the pride with which I entertained having such powers. And, if I didn't mention, I'm not even Jewish.... at least according to the commonly accepted definition these days. But then along these demarcations I'm not a Christian either. There is something happening these days in the Church and it's not the Hagee types that concern me. At least there is a common door by which discuss passage. Anyway, these days
- jacko
July 26, 2010 at 2:21pm
please delete, Anyway, these days...
- jacko
July 26, 2010 at 2:27pm
I wonder if John Hagee also deems his own family members and friends who have died in accidents or natural disasters the recipients of divine punishment for their behavior. How are their deaths any less deliberate than those of the people in New Orleans?
- drheingold
July 27, 2010 at 1:44am