Anti-Semitism at Lawyers, Guns and Money

Since I've been blogging a bit on left-wing anti-Semitism, I'd be remiss to ignore the blow-up on the left over Lawyers, Guns and Money's anti-Jewish theories of alleged Christian evangelical destruction of Judea.

What's the common ground between evangelicals and the Jews?

Listen; it's not just that Evangelicals value Israel in a strictly utilitarian sense, rather than as a country full of human beings. That's certainly part of it, but it's not the only part, and obviously alliances based on a pragmatism can work. But not to put too fine a point on it, RADICAL APOCALYPTIC EVANGELICAL PROTESTANTISM IS NOT GOOD FOR THE JEWS. Pragmatic calculations change, and when it comes time for Hagee and his crew to sell the Jews down the river, they will do so without a twinge of conscience, and in utter confidence that they are doing God's work. Alliances with people who view your destruction as a stepping stone to Armageddon and who, moreover, hate everything else that you represent (loathing of "latte sipping elitist intellectuals" is recognizable as anti-semitism to anyone with eyes open) will not, in the fullness of time, prove sensible.

Beyond the expressive loathing of alleged ubiquitous Jewish coffee-beverage drinkers (God, who could possible think up this hatred?!!), I get the feeling that LGM would gleefully rejoice in Hagee's alleged prophecies coming true for the furtherance of the left's apocalyptic partisan political purposes.

Never mind that Hagee is not McCain's pastor, or that McCain did not attend Hagee's church. Nope, it doesn't matter: Hagee's the new Wright. The YouTube's will be busting off the screen until November! McCain's anti-Semitic! God, we were right all along ... the GOP's Christian Zionism's really a subterranean plot for the destruction of the Jewish homeland.

And Sadly No!, atop the watchtower, endorses LGM, exept that bit about the loathing of elite latte sippers:

Here’s Robert Farley, in a spectacularly irresponsible parenthetical aside to an otherwise sensible post about the Christian fundamentalist-AIPAC alliance:

loathing of “latte sipping elitist intellectuals” is recognizable as anti-semitism to anyone with eyes open

You have got to be sh***ing me.

This is the sort of gift to the right-wing Identity Politickers and Corporate Whores that only a well-paid, hippie-hating academic can give. In one phrase, Farley’s outdone in spades all the Julia Gorins and David Brookses and Norman Podhoretzes of wingnuttia’s “Let’s Cheapen and Expand the Definition of Anti-Semitism Until it Means Nothing Yet Applies to the Entire Left” brigade and at the same time utterly smeared and potentially hamstrung the entire Left Populist movement.

There's one slight problem: This is not a sensible post.

But let me direct readers to Bruce Wilson, who finds anti-Jewish conspiracies in Japanese comic books:

For several years now, I have been tracking and studying the covert aspects of Christian Zionism but today an anonymous source - a devoted and concerned student of the spread of anti-Semitic ideas within American pop-culture and religious culture - sent to me a product, currently sold at Barnes and Noble bookstores, that suggests the historically covert anti-Semitism within American Christian Zionist culture is mutating, changing and entering a new phase: the anti-Semitism is becoming overt. The Christian Zionism of Tim Lahaye and of Senator John McCain's recently renounced political endorser Pastor John Hagee, which has traditionally perpetrated coded attacks on Jews while also declaring them to be blessed by God, especially if they move to Israel, may be entering a new and very dark phase.

What's Wilson's training manual for the Jews' destruction?

Manga Messiah, a popular Japanese comic book novel. Here's how Focus on the Family describes the book:

Using the manga comic format that is so popular with today's tweens and teens, this book portrays the life of Jesus from the prophecies that foretold his birth to His ascension into Heaven. Adapted from the ancient Scriptures, these 23 stories refer to Jesus as Yeshuah and use more obscure names in referring to his parents ("Miryam" for Mary and "Yosef" for Joseph). While this graphic novel is not a literal word-for-word presentation of the Bible, the text remains true to the Scriptures. Although this book would not typically be categorized as a devotional, for those who wish to dig deeper in their study of Christ's life, the Scripture references listed on the bottom of each page point to the passage(s) on which the action is based. The writer also adds brief descriptions to the dialogue so that the reader will better understand the settings for these stories. Additional comic "bubbles" within the illustrations gives insight into the thoughts and reactions of the characters. True to comic book format, words such as crash, woosh, rumble and thump are also inserted into the drawings to help readers imagine the sounds that accompany the story.

This is not the description of evangelical hatred we get from Wilson:

Pastor John Hagee professes, with great apparent sincerity, even to tears, to love Jews. But Hagee also promotes, in his sermons and literature, conspiracy theories that trace back, in their lineage, to "The Protocols of The Elders of Zion" and Henry Ford's "The International Jew". How, then, can these clashing views of John Hagee be reconciled ? One answer comes, in the form of a question, from the account of Henry Ford and Rabbi Frankel -- what is the nature of friendship and what is the nature of love ? Another answer comes from the field of criminology, which recognizes: love, hate and murder are, all too often, tragically, not far apart.

Hate-masters on the left, like Wilson, and those at Lawyers, Guns and Money, are so quick to denounce conservative Christians that their attacks backfire to illustrate their own true anti-Semitic ideologies and eliminationist political programs. Nothing is beyond the pale for leftists, who hate George W. Bush, John McCain, the GOP, and its evangelical base.

Compare Wilson to Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, of Efrat, Israel, and his words on Pastor Hagee:

Pastor John Hagee is a towering leader in the Evangelical Church who has dedicated a great part of his enormously successful ministry to reaching out in love and loving-kindness to the Jewish people and the State of Israel. He has admirably defended our right to our historic homeland even when our enemies have attempted to disgorge us from our homes and drive us into the sea; he has praised the Lord for having imbued us, the "post-Holocaust dry bones of Ezekiel," with renewed life and vigor even when our arch-enemy and the arch-enemy of the free world has called us a "stinking corpse." He has organized Christian lobby groups for the only true democracy in the Middle East across the length and breadth of the United States even when a former American President and professors from Harvard and Chicago Universities have denounced our own lobbying efforts as un-American and anti-Democratic....

We are living in a world divided between those who believe in a God of love and peace, and those who believe in a Satan of Jihad and suicide bombers. Any attempt to marginalize and slander leaders of the camp of the former will only serve to strengthen the camp of the latter, with the future existence of the free world perilously hanging in the balance. And so I continue to proudly shout from the rooftops that this rabbi in Israel stands firmly alongside -his beloved friend, a true friend of Israel and the free world, Pastor John Hagee.

Note too that Paster Hagee has apologized for any offensive comments he may have made.

I think radical left anti-Semites ought to do the same.