Posted By James Besser
Two Views on Christian Zionism
An Unseemly Prejudice / David Brog, executive director of Christians United for Israel (CUFI).
For the long and lonely centuries of our Diaspora in Christian lands, we Jews prayed to be left alone. For almost two millennia, all we wanted was for the Christians in whose midst we lived to agree to disagree with us on theology and to let us practice our faith without persecution or coercion.
In America, we have found such an existence alongside our gentile friends and neighbors. And, in recent years, we have found even more than cold neutrality. We are now seeing a growing movement of evangelical Christian Zionists who see past our theological differences and passionately want to focus on what we share as Jews and Christians. These Christian friends have a 3-point agenda:
- To thank us for giving them the fundamentals of their faith, from the Bible to that Jewish Rabbi named Jesus;
- To ask forgiveness for the atrocities committed against us by prior generations of Christians; and
- To stand with us in support of Israel so that future atrocities can be avoided.
But instead of thanking God for answering our prayers, we have found reasons to complain. We are, after all, still Jews. Now we are the ones who are often unwilling to agree to disagree on theology. Representatives of our community now point to various tenets of Christian theology as a basis for rejecting so many hands extended in friendship.
What is even more troubling is the fact that so many of the complaints about Christian Zionists are based on myths about Christian beliefs with no basis in reality.
Many critics repeat the urban myth that Christians support Israel merely to speed the Second Coming of Jesus, at which point the Jews get killed or converted. Others ignore a clear record to the contrary to insist that Christians support Israel merely to convert us in the here or now. Still others look down their noses at Christian positions on social issues and declare that they – open minded people that they are – cannot partner with those who dare to disagree with us on abortion or gay marriage.
This nonsense about Armageddon is particularly offensive. As a people who have suffered persecution flowing from lies about our beliefs, we should be the last to embrace and repeat lies about other faiths. We all know how much Jewish blood was spilled over the libel that Jews need the blood of a gentile to make their matzah. Shame on us if we participate in repeating a new blood libel which claims that Christians support Israel merely to speed the widespread bloodshed that will accompany Armageddon. This claim demonstrates a profound misunderstanding of Christian theology. And it reveals an unseemly prejudice against the religious “other.”
It is odd that we Jews would seek to invent enemies when reality already supplies us with such an abundance of them. Even here in America, the threats are growing. The likes of Jimmy Carter , Walt and Mearsheimer are spreading a very big lie – that if America only abandoned Israel, the terrorists would leave us alone. In the face of this distortion, we find so many fair-weather friends running for the exits. The Christian Zionists, by contrast, want to stand with us and work with us to maintain American support for Israel.
As a people who have had such a solitary walk through history, we are blessed to find ourselves with so many new and enthusiastic allies. If those who don't like our Christian friends wish to remove themselves from the scene and lick their imaginary wounds, this is their right. But they mustn't be permitted to spread lies or misinformation which will poison a very important and beautiful new friendship. Sometimes, even a club that would have us as members is still a club very much worth joining.
Christian Zionism is an extreme modern apocalyptic movement that shares with Nazi philosophy the paranoid idea that Jews and Judaism are the central actors in the world. Both movements seek the eventual dismantling of the Jewish people and Jewish faith - Nazism by death and Christian Zionism by conversion to Christianity of a remnant of Jews, who will finally learn their "lesson" from the death of most of the Jewish people at Armageddon (Ir Megiddo); then the "left-behind" remnant is expected to commit apostasy by converting to Jesus worship.
All the Christian Zionists' expressions of love and friendship -- all their farm aid (including red heifers to use in revived temple sacrifices) and help for Russian Jews to immigrate to Israel -- are preparations for genocide by remote control.
Christian Zionism entirely ignores Jewish/Zionist aspirations for normalcy. Zionism was to be a new start for Judaism and the Jewish people living enlightened lives in peace. Instead Christian Zionism encourages the Israeli government and the US Jewish organizational leadership on a path toward enmity with the Palestinians and disrespect for Islam.
Most of what has been written about Christian Zionism by Jews (for example, Yechiel Eckstein's The Journey Home, and CUFI Executive Director David Brog's Standing with Israel: Why Christians support the Jewish state, and Zev Chafets' A Match Made in Heaven) projects a romantic version of Zionism that assumes maximum claims for land and barely nods to pragmatic political considerations. Virtually the entire pantheon of Zionist thinkers from Theodore Herzl to David Grossman and Amos Elon saw peace with Arab neighbors as the culmination of the Zionist dream, not as an impossibility.
Jewish organization leaders may laugh off their Christian Zionist friends' apocalyptic fixation. These leaders are less convincing when they pass on guarantees from Hagee and his ilk that they will not evangelize the Jews with whom they work. Max Blumenthal's recent video showed the emphasis Hagee followers place on converting Jews to Christianity.
And beyond evangelizing, there is disparagement of Judaism -- notably Hagee's statement last year on Fresh Air casting Jews as Christ killers when he "clinched" a volley with host Terry Gross about the necessity of professing belief in Jesus: He said "Now, when it comes to the Jewish people, Zechariah very clearly says that they are not going to believe that Jesus Christ is the Messiah until they see him. Zechariah says in the 14th chapter `and when they, the Jewish people, see him whom they have pierced'--and the word pierced there actually refers to his rib and side--`when they see him whom they have pierced, they will weep as one weeps for his only son for a period of one week. They're simply not going to believe he is the Messiah until they actually see him, and that's at the Second Coming."