"It's Jesus' Foreign Policy": Bible-thumpers Galvanized And Mesmerized Millions oOf Americans
31 January 2018By Khalid Amayreh
The 1970s and 80s were the heydays of evangelical Christian fundamentalists in
the United States. Many of us remember famous (or infamous) fiery evangelist
preachers such as Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Jimmy Swaggart and many
others. These Bible-thumpers galvanized and mesmerized millions of Americans
into adopting extremely fanatical but mostly naïve stands on a host of issues
ranging from abortion and women lib to the Arab-Israeli conflict.
In 1983, I wrote a Master thesis on the centrality of Israel to the
evangelical Protestant religion. A few years earlier, Falwell, founder and
Chairman of the Moral Majority, wrote a book titled the Fundamentalist
Phenomenon in which he highlighted his absolute, total and unlimited support
for Israel, including her occupation of Palestine, invasion of Lebanon and the
wars of aggression Israel had been waging against her neighbors in order to
gain a Lebensraum!. In one of his televised sermons from Lynchburg Virginia,
he declared that God dealt with nations in relations to how they dealt with
Israel.
"We believe that God in Genesis 12:1-3, very clearly promised a blessing for
those who bless Israel and cures for those who curse Israel. I take that as
literally as I take john 3:16 in the New Testament. To stand against Israel is
to stand against God. We believe that…. history and scripture prove that God
deals with nations in relation to how they deal with Israel. My deep
conviction is that America will not remain a free nation unless we defend the
freedom of Israel. We must proclaim this from our pulpits as ministers. (The
Fundamentalist Phenomenon, the resurgence of Conservative Christianity, p.25)
Clearly, for Falwell, "freedom of Israel" included unflinching Christian
support for Israel's Nazi-like repression of non-Jews (including Christians
living under Israeli occupation, calling Jesus "the Hitler of Bethlehem" as
many Talmudic Jews shamelessly do and spitting on Christian crucifixes and
clergymen, a frequent provocation by Yeshiva students of Talmudic colleges
like Bet Harav in West Jerusalem.
"Freedom of Israel," according to Falwell's twisted theology also includes
massacring Palestinian children, women and men en masse like at the Sabra and
Shatilla refugee camps near Beirut in September 1982, massacring Gazans by way
of carpet bombing their homes in 2008-14, and slaughtering Lebanese civilians
at Qana in 1996. This is just to mention a few crimes against humanity.
In short, Falwell, now probably a sort of godfather for many current
evangelical leaders believed that Israel was above the laws of men regulating
relations among the peoples and nations of the word. Israel, he said, was the
nation-state of God and Jews were the ethnic people of the Lord whereas
Falwell and his evangelical followers were the spiritual people of God.
Catholics, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, ET, would go straight to hell.
Falwell and fellow evangelists believed that the creation of the Jewish state
in Palestine in 1948 was a fulfillment of Biblical prophecy and a precedent to
the Second Advent of Christ. Hence, criticizing Israel amounted to disrupting,
even impeding the coming of Christ and attainment of salvation. In Other
words, receiving salvation by the Lord depended solely on enthusiastically
embracing Israeli brutality, barbarianism, and criminality.
Sometimes, evangelical infatuation with Israel assumes clearly maniacal tones.
For example, one preacher from Texas was quoted as saying that the best place
under the sun to make witness for Christ was to work at an Israeli munitions
factory to make sure that as many Palestinian kids as possible would be
killed, maimed and mutilated for Jesus! (Italics added).Does Jesus love the
incinerated flesh of murdered babies? Let's ask President Trump and vice
President Pence?
This is the sick religion of Trump and Pence who embrace Israeli Nazism
against the Palestinians without the slightest compunctions.
Indeed, without understanding this background about the ideology of Christian
Zionism, we would never be able to understand the recent unprecedented moves
of the Trump administration against the Palestinians.
I am strongly convinced that the likes of Trump and Pence are a cancer upon
the conscience of Christ because they embrace evil, injustice, inequity
oppression, hatred, and racism, all in the name of Jesus. They are the
modern-day Pharisees and Sadducees whom Jesus railed against calling them:
"Serpents! Offspring of vipers! How shall you escape from the sentence of
Gahanna?" (Matthew 23-33)
I don't know how many crimes have been committed in the name of Jesus.
However, I do know that Jesus is totally innocent of the Nazi-like policies
and crimes against humanity Israel is and the United States of Inequity are
carrying out against the Palestinian people.
Now the pseudo-Christians call America's dark embrace of Israel's lebensraum
and fascism "Jesus' foreign policy." This reminds me of the extermination of
millions of Native Americans at the hands of Trump's and Pence's forefathers.
It is the gargantuan genocide Americans love to call "Manifest Destiny!"
- Khalid Amayreh is a veteran Palestinian Journalist living in occupied
Palestine
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