world

Friendly Voices

Christian group steps up
its rousing support for Israel.

Elhanan Miller
Times
of Israel
I

Jacob Kamaras
JNS.org

U

sually after the first event, it's like a
firestorm," said Pastor Scott Thomas,
the Florida director for Christians
United for Israel (CUFI). "The excitement hits,
the understanding settles in:'
That, in short, illustrates the process through
which CUFI has become America's largest pro-
Israel organization in less than a decade of exis-
tence. In January, CUFI announced its member-
ship surpassed the 2 million mark. (The organi-
zation defines members as email-list subscribers
whose addresses do not produce bounce-backs
when messaged.)
Since its founding in 2006, CUFI has held
more than 2,100 pro-Israel events, sent hun-
dreds of thousands of advocacy emails to gov-
ernment officials and trained thousands of col-
lege students to make the case for Israel across
the U.S.
Pastor John Hagee, CUFI's founder and
national chairman, said that when he called 400
Evangelical Christian leaders to San Antonio
in 2006 to pitch them on the idea of CUFI, he
thought his concept of pro-Israel programming
that would "not be conversionary in any sense of
the word" might deter the leaders.
Instead, when he asked them to raise their
hands if they accepted his proposal, "400 men
raised their hands with an absolute unity that
was breathtaking:'
While Hagee planned for the initial group of
400 leaders to advocate for Israel on Capitol Hill
that summer as a "test group:' the leaders spread
the word among their own churches, and CUFI
ended up bringing 3,500 people on the mission
to Washington, D.C.
CUFI continues to grow exponentially, but
Hagee isn't satisfied. He said the organization
hopes to double its membership to 4 million
over the next two to three years.
"A Night to Honor Israel," CUFI's signature
event, significantly predates CUFI. Hagee said
that in 1981, he sought to organize the event as
a one-time gesture to thank Israel for bombing
Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor. But then Hagee
received death threats, as well as a bomb threat
to the venue on the night of the event. His
response? More than three decades of Nights to
Honor Israel.
"I told my wife we're going to do a Night to
Honor Israel until these anti-Semitic rednecks
get used to it," Hagee said. "And 34 years later, it
has grown all over the nation:'
Before CUFI, despite the presence of a "res-
ervoir of instinctive support for Israel" in
America, that base of support "had a hard time
finding a way to express itself," said CUFI board

26

February 12 • 2015

Lebanese Shiite cleric
reaches out to Jews.

JN

On Jan. 19, he posted a video
on Facebook directed at "our
cousins, the children of Isaac,
son of Abraham:'
sraelis usually associ-
ate Shiite clerics in
"We believe that not all
Lebanon with terror group Jews are bad [just as] not all
Hezbollah, a powerful religious Muslims are terrorists. Let us
organization committed to
cousins put our conflicts aside
the destruction of the Jewish
and stay away from evil and
state. But a Beirut-based cleric
hatred. Let us unite in peace
is surprising the public by
and love," he said in broken
spreading messages of peace
Hebrew.
and nonviolence in
Following the
burning alive of
Hebrew on social I
media.
Jordanian pilot
"We call on rab-
Muaz Kasasbeh
bis, priests and
last week by the
Muslim clerics
Islamic State in
— both Sunni and
Syria, Husseini
Shia — to underplay
wrote on Facebook,
religious traditions
"We heard and saw
and texts that call
yesterday how our
Lebanese cleric
brother in humanity
for violence, since
they are more dan- Sayyed Muhammad was burned. Has the
gerous than nuclear All Husseini
Holocaust returned
weapons:' wrote
once again?"
Breaking from the
Sayyed Muhammad
Ali Husseini, secretary general
traditional Shiite loyalty to the
Iranian leadership, Husseini
of the Shiite group the Arabic
Islamic Council, in Hebrew on
has also spoken out publicly
his Facebook page Sunday.
against what he dubbed the
complete Iranian domination
Just days after Hezbollah
leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah
of Lebanon
"It is not new for the Iranian
warned of a possible war with
regime to explicitly proclaim
Israel following an attack by
his organization that left two
its security, economic, political
IDF soldiers dead on the bor-
and even religious control of
der with Lebanon, Husseini
Lebanon:' he told Emirates TV
channel Al-Aan in May 2014.
said that religious texts must
be historically contextualized
"We have warned of this and
rather than used to incite per-
condemned it, and shall never
petual violence.
accept it:'
"Various religious texts
Eddy Cohen, a lecturer
calling for the use of violence
at Bar-Ilan University's
and ruthlessness to achieve
Communications Department
goals are extremely danger-
who has helped Husseini
ous when used by groups we
translate his messages into
have warned against in the
Hebrew, told Israel's Army
past," he continued. "These
Radio on Sunday that he did
texts religiously sanction
not know how representa-
acts of violence and murder.
tive Husseini's ideas are in
Obviously, these are texts that
Lebanon, but noted that the
were implemented in specific,
Shiite cleric seemed uncon-
limited situations; they cannot
cerned about spreading his
necessarily be applied to our
posts in Hebrew and boasted
time, since every situation has
some 1,800 followers on
its own unique circumstances:' Facebook.
This was not the first
"He is a moderate, and most
time that Husseini directly
Lebanese are sick of war and
addressed an Israeli audience.
hostilities," Cohen said.

I

A Christians United for Israel solidarity march
in Jerusalem in 2010. In center in front the
banner, holding American and Israeli flags, is
CUFI founder Pastor John Hagee.

member Gary Bauer, the U.S. under secretary of
education under President Ronald Reagan.
Bauer said CUFI supporters "can come to the
table with all kinds of faith perspectives and, in
some cases, with no faith perspective at all:'
Kasim Hafeez, who addressed a CUFI
Leadership Summit crowd on his jihadist-
turned-Zionist personal story, offered an out-
sider's perspective on both the success of CUFI
and why the organization is a frequent target of
anti-Zionist/anti-Semitic criticism.
"Here's why [anti-Semites] hate CUFI, and one
simple word explains it all: fear:' Hafeez said.
While anti-Semites believe they can eas-
ily bully Jews, he said, CUFI's mobilization of
the much larger Christian community is more
imposing.
"What the haters didn't see was 2015, over 2
million Christians praying for Israel ... Mark
my words, there is no organization, there are
no four letters, that will make an anti-Semite's
blood run cold more than C-U-F-I," said Hafeez.
CUFI is also bolstering its overseas presence,
with plans to start a United Kingdom branch.
Hagee said that in the U.K., CUFI would combat
anti-Semitism by soliciting the help of spiritual
and government leaders "to look this evil tidal
wave eye-to-eye and call it what it is, and get
people to admit that a very lackadaisical attitude
toward the Jewish people and Israel have created
this monster that must be addressed:'
"The message here is that Christians are to
speak out, publicly, in defense of the Jewish peo-
ple and the State of Israel, that we are authorized
to combat anti-Semitism as aggressively as we
possibly can," Hagee said.
He added, "If you took away the Jewish con-
tribution from Christianity, there would be no
Christianity, so fundamentally, Christians owe
the Jewish people everything. Period. Once a
person sees that, he's committed to take action
in defense of the Jewish people:'

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