Pastor John Hagee once said Hitler was sent by God.

Pastor John Hagee once said Hitler was sent by God.

A far-right evangelical pastor is scheduled to take the stage at Tuesday’s “March for Israel” rally on Washington’s National Mall, despite a history of controversial remarks that include claiming Jews were responsible for the Holocaust.

Tens of thousands of demonstrators are expected to attend alongside televangelist Pastor John Hagee, a reputed antisemite, including numerous politicians from both sides of the aisle like House Speaker Mike Johnson, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, as well as Israel’s President Isaac Herzog.

“I am horrified that he was given this platform,” said Hadar Susskind, president and CEO of Americans for Peace Now. “His history of hateful comments should disqualify him from decent company, much less from speaking on stage. He is not welcome and should not speak.”

Previously, Hagee claimed that Hitler came from a lineage of “accursed, genocidally murderous half-breed Jews” and suggested that it was Jews’ “disobedience” toward God that led to their persecution.

Such comments were enough to sour public opinion on Hagee in the past. In 2008, GOP presidential nominee Senator John McCain ultimately shirked Hagee’s endorsement after reports emerged that the minister believed Adolf Hitler had fulfilled God’s will by becoming a “hunter,” driving Jews back to Israel.

“‘Behold, I will send for many fishers, and after that I will send for many hunters. And they the hunters shall hunt them,’” Hagee said during a sermon, referring to Jeremiah 16:16. “That would be the Jews.… Then God sent a hunter. A hunter is someone who comes with a gun, and he forces you. Hitler was a hunter,” Hagee said, according to a transcript of his sermon. McCain subsequently called the comments “deeply offensive and indefensible.”

The war between Israel and Hamas is now in its sixth week. Gaza’s Health Ministry has reported that more than 11,100 Palestinians have been killed in the conflict so far—or one out of every 200 people—with most of the dead being women and children. Approximately 240 hostages still remain in Gaza after Hamas militants attacked a music festival in southern Israel on October 7, killing 1,200 people.

link: https://newrepublic.com/post/176924/far-right-pastor-john-hagee-democrats-share-stage-march-israel

archive link: https://archive.ph/mVRhh

  • grue@lemmy.worldEnglish
    46·
    1 year ago

    Evangelical support for Israel isn’t about support for Jews; it’s about needing the Jews to return to Israel as a precondition for the End Times so that Christians can get Raptured.

    • jmcs@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
      12·
      1 year ago

      Lots of “secular” fascists also put the antisemitism on hold for a bit, because they care more about harming Muslims (which is basically the inverse of what their 1930s predecessors did).

      They will go back to being raging antisemites as soon as pretending to care about Israelis is not politically expedient anymore.

      • grue@lemmy.worldEnglish
        91·
        1 year ago

        I realize I’m being archaic and pedantic, but it just grinds my gears that hating Palestinians isn’t considered antisemitism too. They’re just as Semitic as the Jews are!

      • grue@lemmy.worldEnglish
        31·
        1 year ago

        ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ If they cared about logical consistency they wouldn’t be religious in the first place.

    • XTLEnglish
      23·
      1 year ago

      Maybe they weren’t so much anti-semite as pro-genocide in general.

    • ZILtoid1991@kbin.social
      16·
      1 year ago

      For them, getting rid of the Jews by sending them “back” to Israel is a convenient method. They can deny wanting a genocide, since they instead want a massive relocation. Remember the “peaceful ethnic cleansing” phrase? It’s just like that.

      • RobotToaster@mander.xyzEnglish
        11·
        1 year ago

        Christian zionists like this loon also believe the re-establishment of Israel will cause the start of the rapture, which will conveniently (from their POV) also get rid of the jews.

  • mathemachristian[he]@lemm.eeEnglish
    153·
    1 year ago

    European antisemitism was welcomed by the turn-of-the-century zionists as a good “motivator” for Jews to colonize Palestine. The Revisionist Zionist movement, of which Netanyahu’s party Likud is the modern incarnation, was a fascist ally.

    I can recommend reading https://archive.org/details/jewishradicalrig00kapl/page/158/mode/2up and if you want to see why the current government is clearly fascist refer to the epilogue from page 158 onwards.