We’re facing a problem in our politics. Extremists — both far right and far left — no longer wish to debate those with whom they disagree. They’d rather demonize and silence dissenters. In a prior era, thugs burned books to suppress ideas. Today’s thought police shout down speakers. Is there really a difference in this distinction?
This new censorship is now tragically common on our college campuses, where radicals rush to suppress conservative and pro-Israel speakers. And this intolerance is quickly spreading beyond campus to our communities, churches and synagogues.
Now the thought police are coming after me.
On Thursday, Sept. 7, I am scheduled to give a speech at Congregation Emanu-El in San Francisco about Christian support for Israel, as I am the founding executive director of Christians United for Israel.
But a group called IfNotNow doesn’t like my ideas, and they’ve launched an effort to pressure the synagogue to cancel my talk.
I know a few things about Christian support for Israel. Despite once holding some embarrassingly ignorant views about evangelicals, I’ve spent the last decade working alongside them as we built Christians United for Israel into America’s largest pro-Israel organization.
I can help my fellow Jews separate fact from fiction so that they may better understand this fascinating and diverse community. But instead of wanting to learn a thing or two — and asking me the tough questions I always welcome — the closed minds of IfNotNow would prefer to silence me. Why challenge your prejudices when they make you feel so superior to others?
The IfNotNow petition to cancel my talk is a textbook example of modern anti-Christian prejudice. They start off with a real whopper, calling Christians United for Israel an “anti-Semitic organization.” That’s right. They claim that millions of Christians have banded together to contribute their time and money to the Jewish state because — wait for it — they hate Jews.
They back up this bizarre assertion by trotting out long discredited anti-Christian tropes.
The great danger of hate speech is that it can lead to hate actions.
They claim that Christians support Israel to “precipitate” a “Christian apocalypse.” There’s just one problem with this little theory: It completely misunderstands Christian theology. Modern Christians don’t believe that they have the ability to change God’s timetable. They see themselves as powerless to speed the apocalypse or any other prophesied event. Those who insist that Christians take action in the world to speed the Messianic era are actually projecting a Jewish belief onto Christians who simply don’t share it.
The IfNotNow petition then proceeds to indulge a fascinating series of fantasies about Christians who support Israel. To cite just one more example, they claim that CUFI’s members “demonize Jews of color.” Well, what exactly do they mean by “Jews of color”? Are they referring to Jews of North African descent, such as my wife? Are they referring to Jews from Muslim lands in general, like the people whose stories we so compassionately share through our Mizrahi Project videos? Or are they referring to the Ethiopian Jews to whom John Hagee Ministries has donated millions of dollars over the years?
The great danger of hate speech is that it can lead to hate actions. And it already has.
On June 4, a cell of IfNotNow thugs burst into an African American church in Stockton and began shouting slogans from in front of the stage, disrupting the evening’s worship.
They did this because the church had chosen to dedicate that night’s service to celebrating Israel. After the intruders left, Pastor Dumisani Washington said, “I and my church members are having a hard time distinguishing between this harassment and the appalling racist harassment we have suffered previously in our lives.”
Can you imagine if a group of Jews had disrupted worship in a mosque instead of a church? IfNotNow would be in the forefront of those condemning them as Islamophobes. But these same people have no qualms about disrespecting Christians of color in their house of worship. This selective morality should concern all of us.
Making false claims about people’s theology. Accusing a community of pursuing evil conspiracies. Disrespecting their faith and disrupting their worship.
We Jews know these evils all too well.
We should be the last people on Earth to do this to other faith groups. Yet this is exactly what IfNotNow and their fellow travelers are doing to our Christian friends. After Charlottesville, all decent people must reject such hate more forcefully than ever.
i dont support ifnotnow, but you will have to excuse some of us for feeling some trepidation when those evangelicals who 20 years ago were screaming that all jews were going to burn in hell for not accepting jesus, now claim to love us and claim they support israel simply because they love us.
and cufi would do a greater service if it would walk across the street to st john presbyterian and discuss with them why they think it is good and christian to support bds
If only the ifnotnow self-loathing Jewish org gave two shakes about what you said one way or the other. The fact is they simply hate Jews and Israel and they will do all they can to prevent and send away those few allies we have in the world today. If this were the 40s they would be leading their brothers and sisters onto the trains! IfNotNow is a nut job org run by a bunch of leftist loonies who chose Obama as their god and gender confusion over Moses and the Torah long ago!
If not now doesnt care about your working with christians, they are in fact an anti israel group. Cufi is a great group that does great work but Hagee has said some extremely dumb things in the past, but he has come a long way since them imho.
You know channakuah is a holiday where Jews celebrate our victory over Greek attempts to exterminate our culture but more importantly over the assimilationist Jews who gave the Greeks the encouragement to give extermination of Jewish culture a try. I mean the assimilationist gave up their jewishness to make a buck and be popular with the goyim…how hard could it be to convince the rest.
Three things to learn from this…first every goyish culture that comes into the land gets around to trying to convert or destroy Jews sooner or later. So yeah most israelis keep Christian’s at arm’s length.
My wife was in ulpan and there was this weird guy that seemed to take ulpan a lot. After a couple of months the subject of religion came up. Olim talking about yesterday differences among local shuls and lo an behold as if working from a script here was the weird guy talking about his yeshuah and seeing if he could get anyone to come to his “shul” and check it out. Unfortunately he was speaking to educated Jews who understood what he was saying and he was asked to leave the conversation. The gig being up he never came back to this ulpan class again. Probably still trolling for victims at other ulpans. Christians prostelytize. Their man-god came to with a sword to set families against one another and his high priest said it was okay, even mandatory, to use deception and coercion to achieve their goals.
Second, the Greeks of any age can’t really think about destroying Jews without a little vitamin j. Yep you need assimilationist Jews to open the door for them and then accept the Greeks as their masters. Gives em a foothold to work from. The assimilationist will sell out anyone to make a buck and gain power and popularity among the goyim overlords. You have to be even more careful about trusting these “Jews” cause just like the assimilationists of the Hellenistic era helped the Greek root out observant Jews to be skinned alive for observing Shabbat and circumcising our children “Jews” like if not now are siding with Arab terrorists that murder Jews every day for sport in order to be more popular at cocktail parties with the lefty Jew hating mcgoyersons.
Lastly you can learn that noone knows what happened to the assimilationist Jews that sided against their people. They became nothing and are lost to history as if they never existed. When the tale of channakuah is told which is truly more about a struggle against them than the Greeks they aren’t even mentioned. Theye an embarassment. The gods of the Greeks and romans and Egyptians and Persians are all resigned to dust thought of as primitive foolishness. But israel is still here in all its flawed glory and so is torah. And our G*d. Unchanged.
Yep theres a lot to worry about with christians and Muslims in the near term but they’ll end up in the same place as everyone else who tries to screw around with Jews and our land and our G*d.
Weren’t these same people (IfNotNow) JUST complaining about censorship?
Mr. David Borg,
Words matter. The quotes on the banner are actual quotes from Hagee and Netanyanu. Can you explain Hagee’s intent? It’s easy to call the people who quote him “extremist,” but that won’t start the “debate,” that you claim to desire.
Does Hagee’s statement represent the objectives and policies of CUFI? Even if he thinks that, as nutty as we deem it, how is it anywhere near as harmful as INN’s *policy* of demonizing Israel with a wide variety of lies and supporting the ethnic cleansing of Jews from land that even the Pentagon has determined strategic to Israeli safety and survival? INN, JVP, etc are all about inciting hatred of Israel and inciting hatred of Jews that support the defense and safety of Israel. To me, words matter little, policy matters greatly.
Instead of focusing on a statement by Hagee, you should examine the work of Pastor Washington, Chloe Valdary and others that are among the most brilliant and perceptive pro-Israel minds on social media.
*makes profile picture the JDL logo
*wants to talk about extremism
What’s extreme about Jewish self defense? Oh, that’s right–you only like submissive, dhimmi Jews, not the uppity ones that actually assert our rights.
Don’t insult readers with your pretense that the JDL is just about “self-defense.” Most of us are neither that ignorant nor that stupid.
The debate can occur when you come to the event and ask the speaker your question.
That’s the point of the article – Ifnotnow doesn’t want anyone to answer your question.
Just the thought that these people feel free to show up where they are not wanted and disrupt a good gathering says to me that they are as bad as anti-semitic. Any Christians who work with Israel and believe in the right for them to exist have the right attitudes about how the church is a grafted part with Israel through Christ, the Messiah
Shhhhhh. Don’t mention that you believe Christ is the Messiah! You’ll embarrass David Brog!
Careful, Danny, your INN is showing. Shhhh
One definition of a neurotic is a person who cannot tell the difference between his friends and his enemies and in time comes to prefer his enemies to his friends. Evangelicals are, in the main, strong supporters of Israel; Muslims are in general enemies of Israel and the Jewish people, and anti-Semitic exterminationism has been the cultural norm in the Middle East for decades. Yet liberal Jews are forever “reaching out” to Muslims and at the same time rejecting the friendship of Christians. This is a sickness for which apparently there is no remedy.
That is just nuts. Fundamentalist Christians want to sacrifice Jews in order to get their end times to come. They want a world war that starts in the middle east because they think that will be how it all begins. You think those people are our friends? Most Muslims are victims of the same sort of racism as Jews, we share a history of abuse at the hands of Christians. We share religious sensibilities much more with Islam than with Christianity. Muslims objecting to Israel’s behavior has nothing to do with how Jews and Muslim relate as sister religions. You seem to be confusing Israel with Judaism. Muslims are allies of Judaism, where Christians are enemies. Christians are allies of Israel, where Muslims are critical. As a Jew I stand with the Muslims on monotheism, and as an ethical person I stand with them on Israel.
cuff.org is a terrific org of 3.5 Million Israel supporting Christians.
But, David: They’d rather demonize and silence dissenters.
I see this mostly coming from the left