The other day I came across a disturbing article on the Huffington Post about John Hagee’s loony statements. I swear these American evangelical “leaders” really sound just like some of the crazy nuts we have here. I suggest we throw them both together for a nice little episode of… The Holy Room.
So, God sent Hitler to massacre the Jews because that’s His will? Nice Hagee! Very nice!
The first thing that popped into my mind was “hah! I bet McCain will have to get rid of Hagee’s endorsement now. He can’t afford to associate himself with a guy saying this kind of crazy stuff. He can’t risk pissing off Jewish voters. But Rod Parsely and his hateful remarks against Muslims? Naaa, he’ll probably keep quiet. After all, it seems like he enjoys pandering to the evangelical right, and too many of them support that sort of inflammatory talk. Why risk being a Muslim-lover?”
So yes, those were my cynical thoughts, and that’s why I was very surprised yesterday when I came across this at Little Green Footballs:
McCain rejected the months-old endorsement of Texas preacher John Hagee after an audio recording surfaced in which the preacher said God sent Adolf Hitler to help Jews reach the promised land. McCain called the comment “crazy and unacceptable.”
He later repudiated the support of Rod Parsley, an Ohio preacher who has sharply criticized Islam and called the religion inherently violent.
… in an interview with The Associated Press, McCain said he rejected Parsley’s support, too.
“I believe there is no place for that kind of dialogue in America, and I believe that even though he endorsed me, and I didn’t endorse him, the fact is that I repudiate such talk, and I reject his endorsement,” McCain told the AP.
Thank you McCain. You did the right thing. You’re starting to look better now. Although I would really appreciate it more if you could explain to me why you suddenly switched your stance on torture after ranting against it for so long.
But for now, good decision dude.
On a related note, given the religious views involved, I’ve always found the close political relationship between evangelicals and Jews when it comes to supporting Israel very odd.
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{ 25 comments… read them below or add one }
There are reasons to drop Hagee, but this? Not one of them, in my opinion. It’s obvious that for Hagee, everything (or at least the big stuff) is part of a divine plan. So how does the Holocaust enter that plan? How does the planned and deliberate slaughter of millions enter the plan?
Most religious Jews would say they don’t know. Some (like the Rabbi Ovadiya Yossef) raise more mystical issues like reincarnation, the cleansing of souls reborn again into human flesh through suffering in this world… but I digress.
Hagee looks at it as a way of making sure that the Jews succeed at re-founding Israel. Hagee believes that the Almighty gave Hitler and the Nazi Party the reigns of power so that, years down the line, the non-Jewish world would be so horrified by what transpired that it would allow Jews to have their own country. This is built on fairly solid historical foundations, because no one is truly certain that the British would have retained their promise without the UN’s plan and vote, and the UN itself was a product of post-WWII reality, as was the feeling of guilt at having allowed genocide to occur. For Hagee, the Holocaust was part of a divine plan, and the Jews that died in it died so that the generations that follow would live in the Holy Land, independent and prosperous.
This is politics, Drima. Hagee’s sermon was taken in the most simplistic manner possible (G-d wanted Jews to die) to harm McCain. And that was that. Now Parsley was the real scumbag here, at least in terms of the single comment by which he was judged. And that was that, too. Because split-second perceptions are everything here, and everything else, sadly… is just decorations.
Roman, I’m actually surprised that you’re laid back about Hagee’s comments.
I don’t think this is just merely politics. It’s much bigger than that. It goes back to the age old debate of Free Will Vs Predestination.
That the Holocaust was part of God’s plan is something I just can’t swallow. This is what Hagee is basically saying directly and indirectly that yes, God did in fact want (or at least planned) for the Jews to die.
To me, it’s ludicrous.
Okay, so maybe you digress but then again Roman don’t such views bother you? Isn’t the implied idea that the Holocaust was somehow necessary for Israel’s formation sick to you?
Me agreeing or disagreeing with such a view is irrelevant - I simply view it as acceptable.
And it would only be a requirement, in my view, if two factors held sway: humanity being a mess, by and large, and the Jews being so utterly closed in on themselves that doing something independently would be too much for them. These two factors, if left to linger, would eventually result in the slow yet certain destruction of the Jews. It would simply be a matter of time. Thus a bloodbath today would avoid extinction tomorrow, if we sum this argument up.
I personally don’t share this view, but do I discard it out of hand? Do I call it insanity? No. There’s true insanity out there, and this isn’t it. To call this insanity would be to redifine the boundaries of thought to a place I don’t want them to go.
I disagree with this view, Drima, but it doesn’t say “Jews must die”. It isn’t Parsley’s incitement to hatred. It’s merely an attempt to reconcile an event of great evil with a belief in a benevolent deity. For me the event goes beyond my human understanding, but I don’t view Hagee’s beliefs as an insult or an attack.
Drima
I agree with Roman. This seems to me like an extension of the evangelical Christian view that Jews go to hell if not converted to Christianity.
They are not saying that they _want_ Jews to go to hell, they just believe that they will and _shouldn’t_.
In a world where so many people actually think that Jews should go to hell, I can certainly understand why someone might come up with ever weirder explanations for historical events to reconcile them with a benevolent G-d.
God had left us alone
He used to help us before
He made Adam and Eve
He gave us Heaven
we befriended Iblis
we refused it
we want the earth
God made us free
to believe
or disbelieve
God love us the same
Some commit crimes in his name
they kill others in his name
they say they do it in his name
I believe they do it in the Satan’s name
in this case Hitler and al-Bashir
believe in the same
Devil.
Then in that case our disagreement arises out of different philosophical convictions and interpretations of Hagee’s comments.
Like I said, I find ideas like 9/11, the Asian Tsunami, the Holocaust etc. being God’s will or some kind of “divine” plan hard to swallow.
And ras babi babiker, thanks for the poems and all but man seriously, when are you going to start talking without using subtle riddles? Walla shno ya zool? Alsa7a wal ahkbar. Inshalla kullu tamam fi biri6ania.
I think the idea of a divine “plan” assumes that God lives in time, minute by minute, as we do. If you think of God as being eternal and in all of time at once, then it doesn’t have plans, or “want” things to happen. The past, present and future are alike to an eternal, omniscient, omnipotent being.
The past, present and future are alike to an eternal, omniscient, omnipotent being.
Quite so, and this is akin to what Maimonides explains in “Guide to the Perplexed”. And yes, “want” is merely as closely an approximate of understanding what Divine Will is as humans can get. Our interpretation of divinity is closely marked by our own human reflection in infinity, if we were to treat the Infinite as, say, a river or sea into which we gaze.
And yet, we don’t go to the extremes of declaring that because the Divine is Infinite that He is uncaring and so far beyond us that he simply does not notice us. Frankly, it implies that we understand just what He is so much that we’re capable of ascertaining that He does not bother with us after creating the universe (and continuing to recreate it).
We simply attempt to understand just what the “will” in question is…
reality check: a couple of Jews and Muslims are talking Holocaust on a Sudanese blog…and not at each other’s throats. Nah, can’t be.
Seriously, you guys could end all the shit in the ME if there were more of you.
Roman “Rabbi Ovadiya Yossef raise more mystical issues like reincarnation, ” that would be the only way I could put any purpose into it. But it’s just me. I thought reincarnation was the no.1 heresy. If people create their own afterlife, how can you ever scare them with hell ?
“It’s merely an attempt to reconcile an event of great evil with a belief in a benevolent deity. For me the event goes beyond my human understanding,” Same here.
In Judaism, “reincarnation” is usually discussed as a phase a soul goes through on the path to completion - be it of something left undone, or (more often) in attempt to a complete or correct something in the soul itself. The eventual fate of any soul is to be merged with that from what it came - the Infinite and Almighty.
Yet at the same time, other soul - souls of particular righteousness and virtue - return constantly to earthly form, according to Judaism - these souls help maintain the world, and some say that without them the world would perish.
Note that nowhere does anyone *choose* how his fate is handled in the afterlife. Choices are for the living. And further, Judaism doesn’t bother much with talking about Hell - the Jewish “Hell” is closest to the Catholic “Purgatory”, a temporary process of spiritual purification on the path to ascention, which may be more prolonged and more “painful” depending on just how much muck we dip into when alive. Some equivilate the process with human-like suffering, and speak of it to those who seem to be driven by fear and ignorance alone - others speak of it rarely, if ever. I myself see it as a device rather than any central theme, and the equivelance of spiritual cleansing to human suffering as an attempt to explain the unexplainable by reduction to human terminology. I, like the vast majority of Jews, do not view Hellfire as some kind of dogmatic doctrine that must be repeated time and time again lest the sheep forget.
Jews aren’t sheep, by and large. Jews are goats. When someone pulls, we don’t just go. We want to understand the how and why and the when and the if… we’re a hard-headed bunch.
As for the second issue, many Rabbis, respected religious scholars, don’t claim to comprehend the why’s of the Holocaust - and you want me to claim that I do? I’m just human. Or is it that I imply that not everything is Benevolent Divine Will? Just as soon as I understand Divinity, Infinity, and what true Benevolence is, we’ll have this conversation again. I’m a bit too limited by my point of view, living as I do in a material world, thus making the comprehension of spiritual plans, logic, and further concepts, fairly difficult at best.
Thus I have taught my tongue to say “I do not know”. And this way, I might just learn something.
Or I could become a sheep. Judaism has a place for those of pure and simple faith, one of respect… and envy. Because we’re goats, by and large, not satisfied with simple answers - and I admit that this is my preferred path. This is where I will learn, and grow.
“Thus I have taught my tongue to say “I do not know”. And this way, I might just learn something.”
Same here but it still gets damn itchy (hey, I’m tryin!).
Lately I’ve been reading a lot of philosophy. In fact, I even started reading Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. Very complicated but when read slowly, it’s amazing. The Muslim philosopher Averroes is another interesting dude.
I’ve realized some answers will never be truly 100% known. Why? Because philosophers have been trying to understand them for thousands of years and the STILL can’t coherently answer them and agree. What makes *me* think that *I* will somehow find those specific answers out?
Although possibly a hopeless endeavor to some extent, it’s a deeply enriching one intellectually and hence I continue reading.
As for my position on disasters and the condition of man being somehow God’s “will” I think it’s bullshit. Reminds me of Sudan and how many dumb ass religious figures there spit out the idea that Sudan is suffering because it’s God’s “will” and a a test from Him.
Yeah, I’m sure the peoples’ attitude and the government have nothing to do with it. In instances like these I begin to view religion, or to be accurate the dogmatic aspects that religion can and usually does come with, to be control and a cage for the mind that stops people from thinking.
“In instances like these I begin to view religion, or to be accurate the dogmatic aspects that religion can and usually does come with, to be control and a cage for the mind that stops people from thinking.”
That - ya Drima - is European scepticism in a nutshell. This is why “we” are suspicious of ppl who blow the bugle and beat the drum with their religious answers to political questions.
Roman: the Jewish afterlife doesn’t look too bad. Maybe I should convert on my death-bed
Just to play it safe.
“I swear these American evangelical “leaders” really sound just like some of the crazy nuts we have here. I suggest we throw them both together for a nice little episode of… The Holy Room.”
I agree with you, they are scarying people
*shrug* Why convert, Halalhippie? From the Jewish perspective, the Seven Laws of Noah apply to anyone who isn’t Jewish - it’s a matter of believing in a single deity and generally being a good person. You still go to the same place in the end. This is why Jews never quite understood this whole “send out people to convert the infidel” thing.
I am glad to see Hagee being distched by McCain, the other Parsley I am not sure.
Hagee’s deep support for Israel lies on his death wish or damnation of all Jews and unbelievers to hell fire after the second coming of Christ. Hagee is a demagogue of the firt class. He bases all this unconditional support for the state of Israel on the premises that the third temple will be rebuilt in Jerusalem for which the event will usher in the messiah and the golden age of Lord’s peace. This is very crazy my friends. And all these stupid interpretations and death wish ideas because somehow Mr Hagge saw them written in the Book of revelations, written by an early persecuted nutcake on hallocigenenic drugs on the shore of Ephisis. Again Haggee’s preaching is insideous hypocracy at its best. We all know what will happen to Jews after the coming of his messiah. Either you follow the christain way ot die in hell fire. I presume that this messiah will teach a good lesson to Hitler and SS on how the final solution should have been dealt with. It is proposterous and outright racist.
What I have found very disturbing on one of blog from Jerusalem newspaper is the fact that many Israelis like Haggee very much due to his support of Israel. We have to remember that he is pumping thousands if not million of dollars in charity and developmental works in all of Israel. However, this ideological and material support is entirely done for the religious purpose to bring for redemption. He and his supporters in Israel coupled with the Allah’s fools on Hamas and/or palestinian/ Iranian sides are trully the main obstacles for peace.
Christopher hitchens refers to these people on either side of the conflict as the “GODLY”. Both seem to think, beleive and act, in the name of GOD. Who can say anything about this rather morbid agenda based on the name of religion of death? Trylly sorry state of affairs indeed.
Good first step taken by McCain, but there must be more that can be done, which an outright campaign denouncing the charlantans for their demaguogical trappings.
“He bases all this unconditional support for the state of Israel on the premises that the third temple will be rebuilt in Jerusalem for which the event will usher in the messiah and the golden age of Lord’s peace.”
So? Do you think that will actually happen?
I’ll tell you what. It either will or won’t happen.
If it won’t happen, let him support Israel and give money to charities. In a few decades he will die a happy man because he supported Israel and gave to charities and he will believe that he did his bit for the golden age.
That’s perfectly fine.
If it will happen, it means he was right and Jews and other non-Christians are condemned to hell and he tried to do what he could to save the Jews.
That’s less fine than the above but he certainly did the right thing to make it as fine as possible.
Andrew,
I do not understand your trail of thoughts at all. Why do you ask yourself whether it would happen or not? What sort of answer are you expecting? neither “yes” nor “no” or either “yes” or “no”, as if the answer would influence on how one should deal with this nutcake.
These Death Loving preachers of the so-called BOOK are going to make sure that it will happen by ANY MEAN NECESSARY even if it would take a war or the expulsion of people from Jerusalem or famine or calamity. The self-fulfilling prophecy so to speak. They have all to gain from it because they TRULLY TRULLY TRULLY beleive it would happen, and the problem is that THEY WOULD WORK AT IT until their version of second coming happens (unless they get stopped).
You know very well that it is a wishfull thinking and you know for sure that it will not happen if things are let go.
You reductionist and rationalist cost and benefits analysis (if yes then, if no thus sort of deduction) is at best very simplistic. These preachers and Godlies should be stopped. PERIOD. The majority of Israelies know the dangerous game this Haggee is playing, but others feel that he is trully their friends. These credulous people need to wake up from their slumbering hope of redemption and the return to the glory of the past.
If God with his messahia did not bother to save the Jews from the gas chambers you can say good bye to this wishful thinking. In effect, it is only by stopping these nutcakes and their death agenda, from either sides, that we can avoid another more dire holocaust.
Andrew, I enjoy very much debating with you issues, but please do me a favor if you can, I would like for you to stop quoting people all the time then at the end of the quote making small statements afterwards. Why not write in paragraphs and lay out and expand your ideas in a flow without having to regurgitate in quotation marks everyone else sentences.
I cannot just declare that guy a death preacher without looking at what he says and figuring out what it means if he is right and what it means if he is wrong.
What Massiah? What “wishful thinking” are you talking about?
So that guy believes that bad things happen to make good things happen later. That’s disturbing. But it’s not the same as DOING bad things to make good things happen later.
Evangelical Christians have a right to believe what they choose to believe as well. And IF they believe that the Holocaust was part of G-d’s plan to bring about a revival of the state of Israel, they are free to believe that.
I do not have to believe what they believe to agree that that is ONE explanation that reconciles a benevolent deity with dark events.
(I started discussions on Usenet where quoting parts and responding to those parts was customary. I hadn’t realised it had changed over time. I still prefer the Usenet method and still consider newsreaders easier to use than Web browsers and newsgroups easier to follow than Web forums.)
Incidentally, using evangelical logic G-d did not cause the Holocaust, He merely allowed it to happen. Humanity was free to interfere at any time. But humanity chose to wait until nearly the end.
Evangelicals believe, afaik, that G-d sent both a positive agent (Herzl) and a negative agent (Hitler). Ideally, Jews (and the world) SHOULD have followed the positive agent.
Again, that’s not my view, but I don’t see it as preaching death. It’s merely an explanation of why death happened, not an attempt to promote that it should happen. Evangelical Christians clearly wanted Jews to follow Herzl INSTEAD of dying in the Holocaust.
My own personal belief is that the Jewish diaspora is a fact and an important cultural aspect of the Jewish nation. I do not believe that all Jews must or should live in Israel (only that all Jews must or should support Israel). If evangelical Christians help Israel to survive because they believe that all Jews should move there, that’s fine with me, because such extreme Zionism is not as evil as the usual alternatives.
And even if evangelical Christians at some point support deporting all Jews to Israel to fulfill whatever prophecy it is they believe in, that option is STILL better than the alternative Israel and Evangelicals are currently fighting.
It is not an “enemy of my enemy” scenario because both allied sides, Israel and Evangelicals, want Israel to survive for reasons unrelated to the “alliance”, although perhaps for different reasons.
We agree in principles on the issue of Haggee. Yet you fail to understand the undertone of my comments. When I speak of “death” preacher, I mean the overall path of destruction they are taking in which many people will suffer (or what the nutcakes think will happen). Remember the second coming is good for the believers (rewards are many) but it is hell for the unbeleivers (Again this what THEY beleive NOT ME).
Andrew, You have to read what these poeple are saying and what their analyses of current events and the future are. Go on line or see their TV programs and/ or read their literature, before you can post a critique of my comments. By death preachers, I do not mean they are going to kill people as in the killing fields. It is idiomatic what I am using. Perhaps your are not a native english speaker and you do not grasp the intended meaning. Nonetheless, it shows that sometimes you put too much meaning on things as if the people who write them beleive them. Take the issue of the messaih. I made it clear that it is a bullshit stuff and man made fairy tales, yet you reply suggest that I beleive in it.
I am only saying that the nutcakes BELIEVE IN IT.
Your simplistic sort of cost-benefit presentaion of putting things albeit true in general like “this scenario is better than that scenario” is little bit naive. Who is going to disagree with the idea that it is good for Israel that Haggee is helping thousands of jews move to Israel. You need to be a little more reflective of the implications of this for the region and the world given his IDEOLOGY AND BELIEFS and PURPOSE OF THIS DEVOTIONAL HELP to bring Jews back to Israel. Haggee cannot convince the majority of American Jews, yet he is working wonders with the remaining jews of the republic of Goergia, and Russia and Romania, and.
Please, Andrew do not go on giving me a lecture on Jews of Eastern Europe and comparing them with American Jews. You have a tendency to think off-tangent and beleieve that you are making a contribution to the issue while in reality you are taking the issue off-side.
If you think that I fail to understand you, you might want to explain what a “death preacher” is for you.
I was under the impression that since you spoke of “those people on either side of the conflict” a “death preacher” is someone who preaches murder, which is not what Hagee does, afaik.
Perhaps I do not so much “fail to understand” but disagree with you. I do not see Evangelical Christianity as a religion promoting death or trying to bring about the apocalypse.
I also think it is odd that you bring up east-European Jews and then ask me not to compare them to American Jews. Do you not think that there are good material reasons that east-European Jews might want to emigrate to Israel while American Jews are less likely to do so?
As for the Messiah, I didn’t say anything about your beliefs, I just wanted to know which Messiah you are talking about. If you won’t tell me, that’s fine, but it does make your point a bit weird.
So, no, I apparently do not “grasp” the intended meaning of what you write. Perhaps you should be more clear and not use terms randomly (”death preacher”) that are usually used to describe _actual_ preachers of death or refer to a Messiah without telling me which Messiah concept it is you are referring to.
I’m not sure referring to somebody else’s religion as “bullshit stuff” and “man-made fairy tales” makes your analysis of someone’s intentions very believable, even if the religion is evangelical Christianity.
It seems like you are looking at evangelical Christianity and then BLAME evangelical Christians for it, as if their faith would actually influence what will happen. It does not. They are either right or wrong. But if they are right, it’s not their fault if what they believe actually happens.
Yes, it’s possible that evangelical Christians will support murder and other crimes to “help” the world become as they believe it will become. But I certainly won’t condemn them for what they might do but aren’t actually doing.
“As for the Messiah, I didn’t say anything about your beliefs, I just wanted to know which Messiah you are talking about. If you won’t tell me, that’s fine, but it does make your point a bit weird.”
The problem lies in your ignorance of Haggees’s preaching. I do not have to lay out for you everything, I do not have an issue with YOU but with Haggee’s ideas. You seem suggest that you know about him, while the truth is you do not know nothing about his organization. This has nothing to do with “evangelical Christianity” which you seem to know pretty much.
You need to read more about what he writes, preaches and advance in order for you and me to have a constructive discussion.
Um, Zaki? I’ve actually read a bit of what Hagee says and writes. I’ve had some reasons to dislike the man, but you seem to imply that he’s some fanatical supporter of Christianity as a replacement faith to Judaism, and that anyone who doesn’t convert to Christianity will die.
Funny thing is, Hagee actively speaks against replacement theology, which puts him on edge much of the traditional Christian theology of the past 1500 years. Hagee has said on numerous occasions that Jews, being a people of the Covenant, do not require a belief in Jesus.
Frankly, Hagee is pretty much one of the only “fire and brimstone” style evangelical preachers who actively speaks *against* trying to convert Jews - it gets him some bad press in his circle, as you should know. Or not, as you seem to be only superficially familiar with him, seeing him instead as a nutter who would apparently try to turn his semi-prophetic political analysis of a great global conflict centered around Israel to reality - which is a fine conspiracy theory, and yet complete and utter rubbish at that.
Yes, Hagee makes rather amusing claims on how the future will be. Yes, Hagee isn’t really the best friend of the Catholic Church, to say the least. *yes*, he can speak utter nonsense sometimes.
And yet, he’s not some kind of dangerous madman, certainly not as you seem to claim.
Please, Andrew do not go on giving me a lecture on Jews of Eastern Europe and comparing them with American Jews. You have a tendency to think off-tangent and beleieve that you are making a contribution to the issue while in reality you are taking the issue off-side.
I’d like to hear that lecture, being the Moscow-born Jew that I am. We’re a diverse bunch, in case you were wondering. And I have this to say about the Jews of the US, if we’re into generalizations - so liberalized and assimilated that the vast majority of them would put the Democrat card into the ballot no matter who it was at the helm, yet do their very best to tell us in Israel how it is we should run our country based on their own distant logic.
Roman,
Putting aside the prophesies and pro-israel preachings of Haggee, all I know through my readings about his organization is the staggeering amount of money his organization is spending on returning the Jews to Israel, and reinforcing the evangelical church. This by itself is OK (as I said in my earlier comment), but behind the facade of co-existence and brotherly love, some of his preachings are still anti-jewish from a theological stand point. From a political stand point he is a stauch supporter for Israel as a state but his views of the Jewish religion are extremely problematic. Some of his surmons are edited to fit the audiences, he has made some comments that are outright anti-jewish and deicide in nature, although he has made comments to the contrary lately to subdue suspisions and to appear neutral. In the age of Mediatization, one can say things as a deceptive mean, Hamas is good at this too.
This is what bothers me about him. His sermons and his off-camera interviews (Televangilist radio talk shows) are full of comments about the new kingdom of the Lord and approaching the second coming of Jesus Christ. All eyes are on Jerusalem, that’s where him and his followers are waiting. We all know what that entails in terms ethnic insensibilities being trampled down whether you are from a Greek Armenian, Russian Orthodox, Catholics and muslims living in Israel.
Furthermore due to his religiously based agenda, he has aligned himself with the ultra-nationalist religious groups in Israel, with the added hardliner that no land consessions to the Palestinians will ever be made. If anyone sees in this just a simple marriage of convenience and coexistence and do not see the dangers of escalating violence and (idiomatically DEATH as a result, DUhhh) then I am obliged to rest in utter disbelief.
As for you point about American Jews vs. Russian Jews I am not expert in this field. I am an atheist.
Hagee’s “anti-Jewish” comments have at times brought Conservative and Orthodox American Jews to his defence, because unlike others before him Hagee’s definition of “help” doesn’t involve missionaries and talking about how Jews are really just half-baked Christians, and trust me when I tell you that Orthodox Jews are a great deal more untrusting of various firebrand Christian preachers.
Oh, and mate… Hagee’s main “allies” in Israel, as he views them, are the Likud party, one of the major parties in Israel, about as religious as my bottle of mineral water, and which has, quite frankly, been better at this whole “signing peace agreements” thing than the left-wing Avoda, or the various peacenik fundies that the EU states so often fund (because, after all, Europe Knows Best).
When Hagee allies himself with actual hardline ultra-nationalist religious Jews (such as, say, Baruch Marzel or Feiglin) *then* we’ll have reasons to rediscuss this issue. Frankly, Hagee’s political influence in Israel proper is next to nil, regardless of who he fundraises for (mostly he supports the state in general, or various charities). I don’t really give a damn about his beliefs regarding an eventual apocalypse, or looking towards Jerusalem, or whatever. Neither Hagee nor some of his much less pleasant friends have actively done anything to turn that belief of theirs to reality.
“The problem lies in your ignorance of Haggees’s preaching.”
No, I think the problem lies in your assumption that everyone but you knows nothing about Mr Hagee (not “Haggee”) and that hence everyone but you is wrong about him.
I happen to have read what he said, and I happen to know that you misrepresent what he said AND that I simply disagree with your condemnation of the beliefs of someone who, in contrast to so many so-called religious fanatics, does not advocate murder.
Incidentally, as Roman said, Hagee has been criticised among Christians for his non-fundamentalist beliefs. If you read about his past and what he did, I think you will find that almost everything you told us about him is wrong.
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