[News] America's Christian Zionists take Israel by storm

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America's Christian Zionists take Israel by storm

U.S. evangelical Christians have become influential supporters of the
Jewish state

By Craig Nelson

INTERNATIONAL STAFF

Sunday, January 4, 2004

http://www.statesman.com/nation/content/auto/epaper/editions/sunday/news_f37faba0a54c70d5006d.html


HERZLIYA, Israel -- Christian evangelist Pat Robertson had them in the
palm of his hand.

No matter that his audience wasn't predominantly Christian. When the
founder of the Christian Broadcasting Network culminated his
give-no-ground speech to the elite of Israel's political and military
establishment with the ringing declaration, "Be strong! Be strong!" many
of his listeners jumped to their feet to give him a boisterous round of
applause.

The rapturous response to Robertson in Israel last month is just one
example of how a large and growing group of conservative American
Christians has entered the Jewish state's political scene with startling
vigor, even as the Holy Land's indigenous Arab Christian communities
wither because of violence and a dying economy.

Calling themselves Christian Zionists, the evangelicals are increasingly
viewed as a political lifeline by influential Israelis who are eager for
allies to fight what they see as a rising global tide of enmity aimed at
Israel and to blunt suggestions that Israel is the main culprit in the
Israeli-Palestinian morass.

They provide not only moral support but also substantial funds to Israel's
sputtering economy, and they've proven their political clout in the Bush
White House.

Fueling the movement's growth is the belief that a great religious
struggle is convulsing the world, one in which the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict is the main, but not only, battleground.

At stake, Robertson and other Christian Zionists have said, is who has the
greater god: Jews and Christians on the one hand, or Muslims on the other.

"This is a war, a war of images that reverberate throughout the world,"
Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, founder of the International Fellowship of
Christians and Jews, said in Herzliya, where he shared the podium with
Robertson. "The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is at the cusp of becoming,
God forbid, a worldwide conflict between Jews and Muslims."


Political dividends


High-profile events in recent months underscore the blossoming ties
between Israel and some of the estimated 70 million evangelicals in
America and 600 million worldwide. In October, Israeli Prime Minister
Ariel Sharon addressed 3,000 visiting evangelical Christians from 80
countries, including about 450 Americans.

"We love you!" Sharon told the gathering, and in a march through the
streets of Jerusalem, the Christians returned the affection, waving signs
such as "Oklahoma Loves Israel" and shouting "Hallelujah to the God of
Israel!"

The same month, several thousand evangelical Christians flocked to
Washington to participate in a "Christian Solidarity for Israel" rally,
sponsored by the Christian Coalition.

Just days later, about 16,000 U.S. churches participated in a one-day
"Stand for Israel" prayer campaign co-chaired by Ralph Reed, who formerly
led the Christian Coalition and is now an Atlanta-based political
consultant and Southern regional chairman of President Bush's re-election
campaign.

The swelling support of evangelical Christians has paid political
dividends for Israel in America, so much so that the Israeli government is
considering the creation of a special parliamentary committee to steer
Israel's relationship with them.

In a campaign orchestrated by Robertson, the Rev. Jerry Falwell and
leading Christian Zionist Gary Bauer, hundreds of thousands of e-mails and
letters poured in to the White House last year after Bush, in a Rose
Garden speech, appeared to equate Israeli army actions in the West Bank
with Palestinian violence.

In April, Bush's call on Israel to remove its tanks from Palestinian
territories in the West Bank triggered a similar flood.

A month later, as Bush was rumored to be preparing to pressure Sharon to
make concessions in the interest of the U.S.-backed "road map" for peace,
Bauer and other evangelical leaders warned in a letter that any attempt to
be evenhanded between the Israelis and the Palestinians would be "morally
reprehensible."

Such persistent pressure by this bedrock Republican constituency has
helped achieve some of Israel's primary goals, such as the discarding of
Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat as a negotiating partner and the White
House's hailing of Sharon as a "man of peace."


'Ideological tourism'


And Israel receives more than political support from the movement.
Eckstein's Chicago-based International Fellowship of Christians and Jews
is Israel's largest private philanthropy organization, according to a
survey conducted this month by the Israeli daily newspaper Ha'aretz.

Last year, the organization and its 250,000 evangelical donors gave $20
million to various Israeli causes, including assistance to the elderly, a
soup-kitchen network and a rescue service operated by Israel's
ultra-Orthodox Jewish community.

To make up for the drop in tourism because of the ongoing violence,
Israel's Tourism Ministry began targeting evangelical Christians this year
with appeals based on theology and politics.

It is buying time on Christian radio stations in the United States and
sending representatives to U.S. evangelical churches to air the pitch:
Show your support for Israel in its travails by vacationing there.

Israeli tourism officials say the campaign has been a resounding success,
despite a State Department travel advisory issued Oct. 20 warning U.S.
citizens against traveling to Israel because of violence.

"It's ideological tourism," explains David Parsons, spokesman for the
International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem, a Christian Zionist outreach
organization in Israel. "Evangelicals want to come out of a sense of
solidarity and mission. They know the country needs their help. We've
advised the Tourism Ministry on how the appeal should be structured."

Not all Israelis are knowledgeable about, let alone comfortable with, the
support from Christian Zionists. But in a primer on the movement to the
Herzliya gathering last week, Eckstein tried to debunk what he described
as myths about it.

"Contrary to the impression -- I would say the stereotype, even the
prejudice -- that many of us have, (Christian Zionists) are not Southern
rednecks. They are educated, they are well-to-do, and they are committed
to Judeo-Christian values." Furthermore, Eckstein said, "they have a huge
network in the media" and "are continuing to grow in influence (on) public
policy."

Eckstein accused the media of propagating the notion that Christian
Zionists support the Jewish state only as a prelude to the Second Coming
of Jesus Christ when, according to some interpretations of the Bible, all
Jews will be converted to Christianity or wiped out in Armageddon.

"It is incorrect," he told the Israeli audience, despite repeated
statements by some Christian Zionist leaders to the contrary. "The real
reason (Christian Zionists) support Israel is because of the Bible: `God
will bless those who bless Israel, curse those who curse Israel.' "


Winning friends


Nonetheless, apocalypse wasn't far from Robertson's mind.

"The entire world is being convulsed in a religious struggle. Oh, the
struggle is whether Hubal, the Moon God of Mecca, known as Allah, is
supreme, or whether the Judeo-Christian Jehovah God of the Bible is
supreme," the evangelist and former Republican presidential candidate told
his Israeli listeners.

Against the encroachment of what Robertson called a "fanatical religion
intent on returning to the feudalism of eighth-century Arabia," Israel's
sovereignty over the Holy Land must be preserved at all costs, he argued.

Robertson delighted many Israelis when, in remarks to local reporters, he
called for the "elimination" of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and
warned that any attempt by Bush to force Israel to cede east Jerusalem to
the Palestinians would cost the president "an enormous amount of support
among the evangelical votes in the U.S."

Ironically, Robertson has faced past accusations of anti-Semitism. His
1992 book, "The New World Order," expounded conspiracy theories about
all-powerful Jewish bankers.

He later apologized, but some doubt that Robertson's and other evangelical
Christians' embrace of the Jewish state is sincere.

"Christian Zionism is a sick ideology. Its scenarios for apocalypse are
anti-Christian, anti-peace, anti-justice and anti-reconciliation. And
while Christian Zionists pretend to be pro-Israel, in the long run they
are anti-Semitic," said Dr. Munib Younan, the Lutheran bishop of Jordan.

But such criticism hasn't dogged Robertson in Israel, says Rabbi David
Rosen of the American Jewish Committee. Most Israelis aren't familiar with
it, Rosen says.

"Even if they did, it wouldn't make any difference. The past three years
have elicited reminders of the historical traumas of the Jewish people.
Israelis say, `We can't be too picky or discriminating about our friends
when there is such hostility toward us.' "

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