Support Hagee by going to Washington

This is a very strange election season. Who would have thought last summer that Sen. John McCain and Sen. Barack Obama would be their respective party nominees? Didn't the media nearly coronate Rudy Giuliani and Sen. Hillary Clinton as the nominees?

You may remember that I endorsed Gov. Mike Huckabee to be president and I still hold out hope that he may be the vice presidential nominee. I will write about this in an upcoming Strang Report.

But now the focus is on John McCain who received and then rejected endorsements from two friends of mine--Pastor John Hagee and Pastor Rod Parsley.

When McCain wanted and needed to win both the Texas and Ohio primaries, he was happy to get these endorsements from Hagee in Texas and Parsley in Ohio. But then when Barack Obama's radical former pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright became a controversial figure in the election, some liberals looked for controversial clergymen who backed McCain to use to blast him. They latched on to Hagee and Parsley.

I may opine about Rod Parsley in a coming Strang Report. He's well known as a lightning rod (no pun intended) and much of what we believe about God and the fight against good and evil makes perfect sense to us in our churches, but to the unbeliever it sometimes sounds like nonsense. And there are enemies of the gospel who are actually opposed to merely speaking the truth. Look at the attacks on those who preach what the Bible says about sexuality.

But with Hagee I think the attacks go beyond them merely misunderstanding to being downright unfair. That's because Hagee is being called anti-Semitic--a charge so wrong it borders on being ludicrous.

When I heard these charges I had a hard time believing it. Hagee has done more than any other Christian in our generation to show love to the Jews and to stand strong with Israel. Yet he made one comment, taken out of context about Hitler, that some liberal blogger says makes him anti-Semitic.

That makes me mad. First, the comment can be explained. He was searching for reasons why a loving God would let something as horrible as the Holocaust happen. And he said something about it was what God used to give the Jews back their homeland in the Middle East. That doesn't justify the Holocaust. But it is true that the entire civilized world was feeling guilty after World War II for the atrocities against the Jewish people. And in this groundswell of sympathy, Israel was created by the United Nations less than three years after the end of the war.

Meanwhile, a quarter century later, a young pastor went to Israel as a tourist and came home a Zionist. That is how John Hagee described the experience that has propelled him to do more and more and more to help the Jewish people.

Not only has he given away more than $30 million to Jewish charities, but he has inspired many like me to do the same. I'm only just beginning, but I've been responsible for raising $400,000-- a pittance compared to Hagee-- for Israel and it is a direct result of his example and influence.

It’s well known that John Hagee started Christians United for Israel which is the largest Christian pro-Israel group ever established. I have the privilege of being director for four southeastern states--Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina. So I have seen up close and personal all the time, money, blood, sweat and tears that has gone into this organization.

Now the third annual "summit" in Washington DC will be held in about six weeks from July 21-24. I plan to be there and I hope you will too.

John Hagee has done so much for Israel and the recent attacks are so unfair that I hope there is a huge outpouring of support for him. If you hadn't planned to go for any other reason than to show your support, I believe it would be a good thing-- as the Jews call it, a mitzvah-- to support Hagee by going to Washington.

We need to make the naysayers sit up and take notice at the outpouring of support from the Christian community for Hagee. Already the Jewish community has come to his defense. And Senator Joe Lieberman, a Jew, will be at the Summit and has been defending Hagee. Click here to read the statement he has released.

My longtime friend Mike Evans is as mad about this as I am. He fired off the op-ed piece below about Hagee. Take time to read it since he has a somewhat different perspective than me.

And take time to go online to register for the CUFI Washington/Israel Summit in July at http://www.cufi.org/. You can also write Pastor Hagee a note of support on his website http://www.jhm.org/.

I know he'll appreciate it.

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John Hagee is No Anti-Semite
by Mike Evans

John Hagee is no anti-Semite. The secular, liberal, God-hating media has been obsessed with Pastor John Hagee, insinuating that he condones the Holocaust and Adolf Hitler’s actions.

I have been a credentialed Middle East journalist for more than thirty years and I am very familiar with the games the secular media play, especially during election years.

Anyone with a brain knows that when you have a liberal Democratic presidential candidate, Barak Obama, whose pastor Jeremy Wright has, in fact, made numerous anti-Semitic statements, the strategy of the liberal Left media is to find a conservative, Republican-supporting pastor and use him as a scapegoat, no matter what the truth is.

John Hagee was the perfect candidate because of his unapologetic Christian Zionist stand. The truth is, being a Christian Zionist is the only thing the media could accuse Pastor Hagee of with any credibility; but of course, that is old news.

You can’t be a Christian Zionist and be anti-Semitic. That would be akin to being a card-carrying member of the KKK while marching with Martin Luther King, Jr.

The first time I heard the name John Hagee, I was in a meeting with Prime Minister Menachem Begin and his senior advisor, Dr. Ruben Hecht in the fall of 1979. We were discussing the subject of Christian Zionism, naming those who were the strongest Christian supporters with whom Israel could build a bridge.

Dr. Hecht brought up John Hagee’s name and expressed how impressed he was with him. He said Hagee was a very strong Christian Zionist. I did not know John Hagee at the time, but realized Ruben Hecht would certainly have done his homework before making such a statement. Later, Christian journalist Jamie Buckingham met with me and said, “I want to tell you about John Hagee and his uncompromising love for Israel.”

Jamie Buckingham and Dr. Ruben Hecht were right about Pastor Hagee. His support for Israel has become legendary.

As Chairman of the Board of the Corrie ten Boom House in Haarlem, Holland, a locale made famous by the book The Hiding Place and the movie of the same name produced by Dr. Billy Graham, I have spent an enormous amount of time defending the Jewish people and combating anti-Semitism. The Ten Boom family gave their lives to save 800 Jewish men, women and children by hiding them in their clock shop during World War II. Three of the family members have been honored by Yad Vashem in the Hall of the Righteous Gentiles in Jerusalem: Corrie, Betsie and Casper ten Boom.

To accuse John Hagee of being anti-Semitic is as absurd as accusing Casper, Corrie or Betsie. If they were alive today, I am certain they would be speaking up in defense of John Hagee.

To accuse John Hagee of being anti-Semitic is as absurd as accusing Martin Luther King, Jr. of being anti-Semitic. It was Dr. King who said,

“You declare, my friends, that you do not hate Jews, you are merely anti-Zionists. And I say, let the truth ring forth from the highest mountaintops. Let it echo through the valleys of Gods green earth. When people criticize Zionism, they mean Jews. Zionism is nothing less then the dream and ideal of the Jewish people returning to live in their own land.”

Truthfully, the secular media hates pro-Israel Christian Zionists and John Hagee has become the poster boy for that hatred because of his organizations, Christians United for Israel and his Night to Honor Israel Conferences.

Anyone who stands up to the liberal Left media as Hagee has done in defense of Israel is labeled as ignorant, evil, racist and a bigot. The vast majority of the media are secular humanists and liberal democrats. They make excuses for evil, and even worse, deny that evil exists and refuse to confront it.

How in the world can the media sell such stupidity when a pastor has founded the fastest- growing, pro-Israel coalition in America that combats anti-Semitism and lobbies for the rights of the Jewish people?

Before President Ahmadinejad’s last United Nations appearance in New York, his spiritual advisor told me that Ahmadinejad likes Jews; he just hates Zionists. It is more believable to call Ahmadinejad pro-Israel than it is to call John Hagee an anti-Semite.