Monday, June 2nd, 2008
Yes, and how many times must a kook spew hate, before Holy Joe condemns him?*
The answer, my friends, is blowin’ in the wind:
On March 16, 2003, on the eve of the United States’ invasion of Iraq, Pastor John Hagee took to the pulpit to warn of the coming Antichrist. In his sermon, “The Final Dictator,” Hagee described the Antichrist as a seductive figure with “fierce features.” He will be “a blasphemer and a homosexual,” the pastor announced. Then, Hagee boomed, “There’s a phrase in Scripture used solely to identify the Jewish people. It suggests that this man [the Antichrist] is at least going to be partially Jewish, as was Adolph Hitler, as was Karl Marx.”
*snip*
But Lieberman stayed the course, declaring in a prepared statement, “Pastor Hagee has devoted much of his life to fighting anti-Semitism and building bridges between Christians and Jews… I will go to the CUFI Summit in July and speak to the people who have come to Washington from all over our country to express their support of America and Israel, based on our shared eternal values and our shared contemporary challenges in the war against terrorism.”
*snip*
Perhaps these Hagee allies could not fathom that a zealous “supporter” of Israel like Hagee could also be an anti-Semite. They may have believed, as conservative Jewish columnist Jeff Jacoby apparently did, that Hagee’s remarks on the Holocaust, as jarring as they were, were theologically correct, and therefore excusable. “As anyone even fleetingly familiar with the Hebrew Bible knows,” Jacoby wrote, “it is not ‘crazy,’ let alone anti-Semitic, to believe that Jewish suffering can be a punishment from God.” [Sounds a bit like battered spouse syndrome to me… — Ed.]
The answer is blowin’ in the wind…
* With apologies to Bob Dylan. Especially since that last bit probably doesn’t scan as well.
