Make no mistake, boys and girls, Pastor John Hagee is being excoriated in Dhimmedia because he is a powerful, chutzpadik Christian Zionist, emphasis on the latter. Yeah, yeah, yeah, they say he's anti-Catholic or anti-gay, but the real -albeit unspoken- reason that he's out on a limb in a storm is because of his support for us, for Jews and for Israel.
I say this with some confidence because I've seen the very same scenario play out before. You may have noticed, as I did, how long Larry Summers lasted as president of Harvard after he made this speech:
President Lawrence Summers
Address at Morning Prayers
Memorial Church
Cambridge, Massachusetts
September 17, 2002
I speak with you today not as President of the University but as a concerned member of our community about something that I never thought I would become seriously worried about -- the issue of anti-Semitism.
I am Jewish, identified but hardly devout. In my lifetime, anti-Semitism has been remote from my experience. My family all left Europe at the beginning of the 20th century. The Holocaust is for me a matter of history, not personal memory. To be sure, there were country clubs where I grew up that had few if any Jewish members, but not ones that included people I knew. My experience in college and graduate school, as a faculty member, as a government official -- all involved little notice of my religion.
Indeed, I was struck during my years in the Clinton administration that the existence of an economic leadership team with people like Robert Rubin, Alan Greenspan, Charlene Barshefsky and many others that was very heavily Jewish passed without comment or notice -- it was something that would have been inconceivable a generation or two ago, as indeed it would have been inconceivable a generation or two ago that Harvard could have a Jewish President.
Without thinking about it much, I attributed all of this to progress -- to an ascendancy of enlightenment and tolerance. A view that prejudice is increasingly put aside. A view that while the politics of the Middle East was enormously complex, and contentious, the question of the right of a Jewish state to exist had been settled in the affirmative by the world community.
But today, I am less complacent. Less complacent and comfortable because there is disturbing evidence of an upturn in anti-Semitism globally, and also because of some developments closer to home.
Consider some of the global events of the last year:
- There have been synagogue burnings, physical assaults on Jews, or the painting of swastikas on Jewish memorials in every country in Europe. Observers in many countries have pointed to the worst outbreak of attacks against the Jews since the Second World War.
- Candidates who denied the significance of the Holocaust reached the runoff stage of elections for the nation's highest office in France and Denmark. State-sponsored television stations in many nations of the world spew anti-Zionist propaganda.
- The United Nations-sponsored World Conference on Racism -- while failing to mention human rights abuses in China, Rwanda, or anyplace in the Arab world -- spoke of Israel's policies prior to recent struggles under the Barak government as constituting ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. The NGO declaration at the same conference was even more virulent.
I could go on. But I want to bring this closer to home. Of course academic communities should be and always will be places that allow any viewpoint to be expressed. And certainly there is much to be debated about the Middle East and much in Israel's foreign and defense policy that can be and should be vigorously challenged.
But where anti-Semitism and views that are profoundly anti-Israeli have traditionally been the primary preserve of poorly educated right-wing populists, profoundly anti-Israel views are increasingly finding support in progressive intellectual communities. Serious and thoughtful people are advocating and taking actions that are anti-Semitic in their effect if not their intent.
For example:
- Hundreds of European academics have called for an end to support for Israeli researchers, though not for an end to support for researchers from any other nation.
- Israeli scholars this past spring were forced off the board of an international literature journal.
- At the same rallies where protesters, many of them university students, condemn the IMF and global capitalism and raise questions about globalization, it is becoming increasingly common to also lash out at Israel. Indeed, at the anti-IMF rallies last spring, chants were heard equating Hitler and Sharon.
- Events to raise funds for organizations of questionable political provenance that in some cases were later found to support terrorism have been held by student organizations on this and other campuses with at least modest success and very little criticism.
- And some here at Harvard and some at universities across the country have called for the University to single out Israel among all nations as the lone country where it is inappropriate for any part of the university's endowment to be invested. I hasten to say the University has categorically rejected this suggestion.
We should always respect the academic freedom of everyone to take any position. We should also recall that academic freedom does not include freedom from criticism. The only antidote to dangerous ideas is strong alternatives vigorously advocated.
I have always throughout my life been put off by those who heard the sound of breaking glass, in every insult or slight, and conjured up images of Hitler's Kristallnacht at any disagreement with Israel. Such views have always seemed to me alarmist if not slightly hysterical. But I have to say that while they still seem to me unwarranted, they seem rather less alarmist in the world of today than they did a year ago.
I would like nothing more than to be wrong. It is my greatest hope and prayer that the idea of a rise of anti-Semitism proves to be a self-denying prophecy -- a prediction that carries the seeds of its own falsification. But this depends on all of us.
Summers never knew what hit him after that. Apparently he didn't have the clarity, foresight or courage he needed and ended up being forced to resign in early 2006. No one ever said it had anything to do with his antisemitism speech, but after he made that address, I watched... and everything went against him after that. It was only a matter of time.
Summers was hard to support. He was weak, he groveled. Not so, Pastor John Hagee.
Here is Hagee's response to (the red herring of) "slanderous accusations about being a religious bigot," March 26, 2008.
[You will not have seen this in the New York Times.]
I feel the need after days of media misrepresentation to respond to slanderous accusations about being a religious bigot. It is truly disappointing to me to see how quickly accusation and rumor crystallize into fact in the hands of media outlets, which do not seem interested in subjecting these claims to serious review in search of the truth.
.... The main claim my critics are making is that I am anti-catholic and that I have made derogatory statements about the Catholic Church.
Anyone who knows anything about me, my life’s work and this church, knows how utterly false this accusation is. Nonetheless, let me state my position as clearly as I can. I am not now, nor have I ever been anti-Catholic.....
I have dedicated most of my adult life to eradicating anti-Semitism from Christianity. As part of this effort, I have criticized the past anti-Semitism of the Catholic Church and the Protestant Church. In fact, I rarely speak about Christian anti-Semitism without denouncing the founder of Protestantism, Martin Luther, whose book, “concerning the Jews and their lies” was a poisoned well of anti-Semitism. Calling Christians to account for our past anti-Semitism does not make me anti-Catholic and it does not make me Anti-Protestant. It simply makes me an opponent of anti-Semitism.
Throughout my life, I have often taught from the Book of Revelation. During these teachings, I have read to you the Apostle John’s writings about the great whore of Revelation 17. In my writings, I have never stated that the great whore is the Catholic Church. Quite to the contrary, the Book Revelation teaches clearly that the great whore will be an apostate church made up of all Christians from all denominations that stray from the path of God and embrace a godless lifestyle including the sin of anti-Semitism.
The media attacks have expanded to include the accusation that I am also anti-gay. The Bible clearly teaches that homosexuality is not a righteous lifestyle. But this doesn’t mean that I and the millions of other bible-believing Christians are hateful toward the gay community. The Bible teaches that there are many sins and that all of us are guilty of committing sin at some point in time.
Does this mean that I hate you, that I hate myself or anyone who comes short of the Glory of God? No, on the contrary. Christ teaches us to love one another, as I have loved you. We follow Christ’ example; we hate the sin and we love the sinner. As most of you know, two years ago, I founded Christians United for Israel. I believed then and believe now that Israel’s friends dare not be silent when Israel is facing such serious threats to her existence.
Ever since I started speaking out for Israel, I have come under intense scrutiny and increasing attack. I did not plan to spend this period of my life in the middle of a political fire storm. Rest assured I will not shrink from our work on behalf of Israel.
I will continue to stand with Israel in the future. (Applause) Thank you very much. Thank you.
It is the work of God for such a time as this. I will continue to preach an uncompromising Gospel and continue to speak out when I feel that my love for America and the State of Israel and the Jewish people deserve it, even when it is not politically correct.
Unlike Summers, Pastor Hagee is a brave and principled man, but that doesn't mean that he couldn't benefit from OUR support, in return, even when it is not politically correct. It's not that he needs us or our support; I have no doubt that Pastor Hagee runs on strength given him by Gd. It's that we need to support him, we need to support him for the sake of our own souls. We need to support Pastor Hagee because it's the right thing to do.
The editors at the New York Times would laugh at me now. Doing the right thing is cool when it's a Spike Lee movie, but religious people? openly supporting Jews... and Israel? in public? Ewww, they must be country bumpkins... and bigots.
Now, I want you to count how many people are "out there," speaking up for Zionism and for Israel, in America. Other than Hagee, I can't think of anyone... who hasn't already been silenced.
I believe that what we are seeing is Gd's "complete concealment." If you - or Pastor Hagee, for that matter - have not read the RaMChal, now would be a good time.
... In this order and ordinance, heed is not paid to merit or guilt, but the ordinance proceeds.... by allowing evil to intensify in order to reveal afterwards the reign of good.
And all the time that evil is intensifying, the righteous too must abide its oppression - not because this is just, but because the time requires it.... In the period of the intensification of the evil... merits will not avail to save them from it.
... not only will the merit of the righteous not avail them to escape from evil, but, to the contrary, wicked men will prosper and fortune will smile upon them while the righteous will be tortured and oppressed, as our sages stated (Sota 49a): In the footsteps [lit., heels] of the Messiah, audacity will prevail, the wisdom of the scribes will be despised...
.... at that time the doers of evil are built up, and the heads of the righteous are lowered to the ground.
Call me a right-wing religious nut, but I believe this stuff. Absolutely.