Anti-Semites in a Presidential Campaign, 2008

By Matthew Rozsa

Did you know that a prominent clergyman supporting one of the major presidential candidates has hostile feelings toward Jews? Here is a sample:

It was the disobedience and rebellion of the Jews, God’s chosen people, to their covenantal responsibility to serve only the one true God, Jehovah, that gave rise to the opposition and persecution that they experienced beginning in Canaan and continuing to this very day… Their own rebellion had birthed the seed of anti-Semitism that would arise and bring destruction to them for centuries to come…. it rises from the judgment of God upon his rebellious chosen people. (1)

You’re probably thinking that that observational gem came from the mouth of Jeremiah Wright, the wayward former reverend of Senator Barack Obama. Well, guess again. Those words were uttered by John Hagee, the founder and senior pastor of Cornerstone Church in San Antonio and a prominent televangelist. Considering how frequently members of the Christian Right express disdain for the Jewish community, the fact that Hagee would make these remarks should not come as a surprise to perceptive followers of the American political scene. What should cause more alarm, however, is the fact that Hagee is an outspoken supporter of a presidential candidate, Senator John McCain (2).

Those who defend Hagee (and through him McCain) argue that the Arizona Senator cannot be held accountable for the views of those who happen to endorse him, and point to Hagee’s long-standing advocacy for the Zionist cause as a sign of his affinity for the Jewish people. What these arguments fail to take into account, however, is the fact that John McCain actively sought Hagee’s endorsement (3), and that Hagee’s support of Israel is based not in a conviction that Jews have the right to a homeland, but rather in the belief that the Jewish state’s existence will usher in Doomsday, an event that will end rather poorly for everyone “but those who have trusted in Jesus” (4).

If John Hagee were the only disreputable pastor who had endorsed John McCain, that would be bad enough. Unfortunately, McCain has also received the endorsement of Rod Parsley, another televangelist and the founder of World Harvest Church, a Pentecostal Megachurch in Columbus, Ohio. While the venom Parsley spews against Jews may not be as overt as Hagee’s, he can nonetheless be found on YouTube shouting bombastic rhetoric that sounds remarkably similar to the coded Jew-baiting of infamous libelous tracts like The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (5). Rather than denounce such a man, however, McCain has instead praised him as “one of the truly great leaders in America, a moral compass, a spiritual guide…” (6).

John Hagee and Rod Parsley are not the only prominent figures associated with John McCain whose backgrounds may give Jews pause. Take Fred Malek. Hired on April 3, 2007 as McCain’s national finance co-chairman, Malek became notorious as President Richard Nixon’s “Jew-counter” – i.e., a man who, due to Nixon’s conviction that a “Jewish cabal” in the government was skewing data to damage his administration’s economic image, was assigned by the President in 1971 to tabulate how many Jews served in the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Malek followed orders, and of the thirteen Jews he counted, two were demoted. According to one of Malek’s victims, all of the Jews whose names appeared on the list felt demeaned by their own government and country (7). This story, when revealed in 1988, caused Fred Malek to resign from a top post at the Republican National Committee. It did not, however, prevent Senator McCain from appointing Malek to a high-ranking position in his campaign (8).

There is a fourth individual associated with John McCain’s presidential bid who made some disturbing comments pertaining to the Jewish people. When discussing the idea of America having a non-Christian president, this man said “I just have to say in all candor that since this nation was founded primarily on Christian principles … personally, I prefer someone who I know who has a solid grounding in my faith.” This person then added, “But that doesn’t mean that I’m sure that someone who is Muslim would not make a good president.” How can someone whose comment so blatantly excludes Jews from the corridors of presidential power be allowed to work for a major presidential campaign? It’s easy, when the man uttering those comments is the candidate himself, John McCain (9). One has to wonder whether more attention would have been paid to such a deplorable statement had it come from Barack Obama.

The fact of the matter is that anti-Semitism has an unfortunate habit of popping up on both sides of the aisle in American politics – from the far right wing Nazi apologists like Pat Buchanan to the insinuations of Jewish conspiracy by James Moran, neither party is entirely free of history’s oldest form of bigotry. That is why it is the obligation of all decent human beings, Jewish and non-Jewish alike, to draw attention to the pernicious prejudice of anti-Semitism wherever it exists, so that it can be rooted out and condemned along with racism, sexism, homophobia, anti-Catholicism, and other forms of intolerance, all of which are incompatible with the fundamental premises of democratic thought. The purpose of this article is not to claim that one candidate is worse than any of the others, but to make sure that the spotlight which has shined thus far disproportionately on one be more evenly distributed.

I think it would be appropriate to end this article as it began – with a quote from the Reverend John Hagee. In this one, he claims that G-d wanted the Holocaust to happen so that the Jews would return to Israel.

God says in Jeremiah 16 – “Behold I will bring them the Jewish people again unto their land that I gave unto their fathers” – that would be Abraham, Isaac and Jacob – “Behold I will send for many fishers and after will I send for many hunters. And they the hunters shall hunt them” – that will be the Jews – “from every mountain and from every hill and from out of the holes of the rocks.” If that doesn’t describe what Hitler did in the Holocaust… you can’t see that.
So think about this – I will send fishers and I will send hunters. A fisher is someone who entices you with a bait…
Theodore Hertzel is the father of Zionism. He was a Jew that at the turn of the 19th century said – “This land is our land, God wants us to live there”. So he went to the Jews of Europe and said, “I want you to come and join me in the land of Israel”. So few went, Hertzel went into depression. Those who came founded Israel; those who did not went through the hell of the Holocaust.
Then god sent a hunter. A hunter is someone who comes with a gun and he forces you. Hitler was a hunter.
And the Bible says – Jeremiah righty? – “They shall hunt them from every mountain and from every hill and out of the holes of the rocks”, meaning, there’s no place to hide.
And that will be offensive to some people. Well, dear heart, be offended: I didn’t write it. Jeremiah wrote it. It was the truth and it is the truth. How did it happen? Because God allowed it to happen. Why did it happen? Because God said, “My top priority for the Jewish people is to get them to come BACK to the land of Israel”. (10)