McCain’s Christian Zionist, Subprime Mortgage Pimping Problem

There was, at best, token coverage of statements made by two of McCain’s supporters, Rev. Rod Parsley of the World Harvest Church in Columbus, Ohio, and Pastor John Hagee of Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas. Parsley said that America was founded to destroy Islam, which he calls a false religion. Meanwhile, Hagee – who is known for his homophobic, anti-Muslim, and anti-Jewish sentiments – said in a late 1990s sermon that Adolph Hitler was sent by God to hunt the Jews and carry out the Holocaust, leading to the establishment of the state of Israel. In his 1996 book, The Beginning of the End, he expressed praise for Yigal Amir, the assassin of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, and characterized the murder as a fulfillment of prophecy. And on March 16, 2003, Hagee proclaimed that the Antichrist will be gay, will “make Adolph Hitler look like a choirboy,” and “is at least going to be partially Jewish, as was Adolph Hitler, as was Karl Marx.”

J Street, a pro-peace, Jewish political group that hopes to reverse the rightward shift in U.S. Mideast policy and the influence of AIPAC, has called upon Lieberman to withdraw his participation in CUFI’s conference. Perhaps for Lieberman and others, Hagee’s unflinching support of the Israeli government’s hard line policies trumps his intolerance and anti-Semitism. While the media have seemed fixated on one pastor who rightly condemned U.S. foreign policy and racism (Dr. Jeremiah Wright) and another who condemned white-skin privilege (Father Michael Pfleger), very little is said of Hagee. The double standard is clear.