복음주의자들에게 이스라엘 지원은 신의 뜻..

아파트 옆집 아저씨가 레바논에서 온 사람인데, 내가 "레바논의 가족들은 이스라엘 폭격에도 안녕들 하시냐?" 물어봐도 별 감흥이 없다는 듯이 "잘 지낸다. 우리 동네는 폭격과 관계없다. 난 미국이 좋다" 그러더만...
미국땅에서 중동사람 이미지 탓인지 말조심하는게 몸에 배어있는 건지, 별 생각이 없는 건지 모르겠네.

뉴욕까지 가는 고속도로에서 "이스라엘을 도웁시다. 기부하세요"라는 큰 빌보드를 몇번 봤는데 이 놈의 백인 기독교 근본주의자들은 세르비아 군이 코소보에서 한 이슬람 인종 말살같은 걸 원하고 있나보군....



"텍사스 샌 안토니오의 John Hagee  목사가 새로 조직한 '이스라엘을 위한 크리스찬 연합'을 끌고  워싱턴 DC를 갔을 때 공화당 의원들과 공화당 대표가 맞아주고, 부시 대통령과 이스라엘 수상의 환영메시지를 받을 정도로 환대를 받았다. 거기서 그는 청중들에게 "이스라엘이 -레바논 군을 괴멸시키는-소명을 다하게 하자"고 했다.
이 충돌을 "선과 악의 전투"로 부르면서 이스라엘에 대한 지원은 '신의 외교 정책'이라고 했다.
그는 그 말을 백악관에서도 했고 안보 보좌관의 동의를 이끌어 냈다. ~ 이스라엘의 중동 정책과 미정부 외교 정책을 연결하는 고리로 복음주의자들이 있다."


For Evangelicals, Supporting Israel Is ‘God’s Foreign Policy’

By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
Published: November 14, 2006

WASHINGTON, Nov. 13 — As Israeli bombs fell on Lebanon for a second week last July, the Rev. John Hagee of San Antonio arrived in Washington with 3,500 evangelicals for the first annual conference of his newly founded organization, Christians United For Israel.

At a dinner addressed by the Israeli ambassador, a handful of Republican senators and the chairman of the Republican Party, Mr. Hagee read greetings from President Bush and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel and dispatched the crowd with a message for their representatives in Congress. Tell them “to let Israel do their job” of destroying the Lebanese militia, Hezbollah, Mr. Hagee said.

He called the conflict “a battle between good and evil” and said support for Israel was “God’s foreign policy.”

The next day he took the same message to the White House.

Many conservative Christians say they believe that the president’s support for Israel fulfills a biblical injunction to protect the Jewish state, which some of them think will play a pivotal role in the second coming. Many on the left, in turn, fear that such theology may influence decisions the administration makes toward Israel and the Middle East.

Administration officials say that the meeting with Mr. Hagee was a courtesy for a political ally and that evangelical theology has no effect on policy making. But the alliance of Israel, its evangelical Christian supporters and President Bush has never been closer or more potent. In the wake of the summer war in southern Lebanon, reports that Hezbollah’s sponsor, Iran, may be pushing for nuclear weapons have galvanized conservative Christian support for Israel into a political force that will be hard to ignore.

For one thing, white evangelicals make up about a quarter of the electorate. Whatever strains may be creeping into the Israeli-American alliance over Iraq, the Palestinians and Iran, a large part of the Republican Party’s base remains committed to a fiercely pro-Israel agenda that seems likely to have an effect on policy choices.

Mr. Hagee says his message for the White House was, “Every time there has been a fight like this over the last 50 years, the State Department would send someone over in a jet to call for a cease-fire. The terrorists would rest, rearm and retaliate.” He added, “Appeasement has never helped the Jewish people.”

This time Elliott Abrams, the White House deputy national security adviser who met with him, essentially agreed, Mr. Hagee said.

Leaving the White House offices, “we felt we were on the right track,” he said.

Now, in tandem with the Israeli government, many evangelical Christians have focused on a new villain, Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Evangelical broadcasters and commentators have seized on Mr. Ahmadinejad’s comments questioning the Holocaust and calling for the abolition of the Israeli state. And many evangelicals now talk of the Iranian leader as a “mortal threat” to Israel.

Some evangelical leaders say they are wary of reports that a panel including former Secretary of State James A. Baker III might recommend negotiating with Iran about the future of Iraq. “It certainly bothers me,” said Dr. James C. Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family and one of the most influential conservative Christians. “That has the same kind of feel to it as the British negotiating with Germany, Italy and Japan in the run up to World War II.”

At rallies this fall for Christian conservative voters, Dr. Dobson sometimes singled out Mr. Ahmadinejad as a reason to go to the polls, arguing that Democrats could not be trusted to face down such dangers. “Hitler told everybody what he was going to do, and Ahmadinejad is saying exactly what he is going to do,” Dr. Dobson explained. “He is talking genocide.”

The same name, with many pronunciations, comes up repeatedly on Christian talk radio shows, said Gary Bauer, a Christian conservative political organizer. “I am not sure there is a foreign leader who has made a bigger splash in American culture since Khrushchev, certainly among committed Christians,” he said.

Mr. Hagee, for his part, said Mr. Ahmadinejad’s comments about Israel and the Holocaust were part of what motivated him to found Christians United For Israel late last year. Since the fight with Hezbollah, Mr. Hagee said, he is doing all he can to keep the pressure on United States officials to take a hard line with Iran.

When 5,000 evangelicals gathered last month for a “Night to Honor Israel” at his San Antonio megachurch, for example, Mr. Ahmadinejad was much discussed.

Mr. Hagee compared the Iranian leader with the biblical pharaoh of Egypt. “Pharaoh threatened Israel and he ended up fish food,” Mr. Hagee said, to great applause.

Evangelical Christians who know President Bush, including Marvin Olasky, editor of the magazine World and a former Bush adviser, said Mr. Bush, unlike President Reagan, has never shown any interest in prophecies of the second coming.

Such theological details, however, have not kept the Israeli government and Jewish pro-Israel lobbying groups from capitalizing on the powerful support of American evangelicals. Fearing a backlash over Lebanon last July, Israeli officials and their American allies sought public statements of support from American evangelicals. Some groups declined because of risks to missionaries in the Arab world.

Dr. Dobson read a statement on his popular radio program expressing “heartache” at the civilian casualties but comparing Israel’s fight to “the Biblical skirmish between little David and mighty Goliath.” He explained, “There sits little Israel with its five million beleaguered Jews, surrounded by five hundred million Muslims whose leaders are determined to drive it into the sea.”

Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, the founder of the International Fellowshipof Christians and Jews and the Israeli government’s official goodwillambassador to evangelicals, said the statements turned out to besuperfluous because there was a groundswell of grass roots evangelicalsupport.

Mr. Eckstein said he haddiscovered the depth of that support when he ran television commercialson the Fox News Channel seeking donations. The response, mainly fromevangelicals, “burned out the call centers,” Mr. Eckstein said. Duringthe five-week war, his group added 30,000 new donors. Thanks to theinflux of money, he said his organization has exceeded its income fromthe first 10 months of last year by 60 percent, putting it on track topull in $80 million this year. “The war really generated a momentum,”Mr. Eckstein said.

Evangelicals’ support for Israel, of course,is far from uniform. Mr. Hagee is an author of several books about theinterpretation of biblical prophecies. He says he believes the Bibleassigns Israel a pivotal role as a harbinger of the second coming.Citing passages from Revelation and Ezekiel, he argues that conflictbetween Israel and Iran may be a sign that that time is approaching.

Otherssay they believe more generally that God maintains his Old Testamentcovenant with the Jewish people and thus commands Christian believersto help protect their “older brothers.”

“My theology indicates that Israel is covenant land,” Dr. Dobson said in an interview.

Manyconservative Christians and their Jewish allies acknowledge a certaintension between the evangelical belief in a Biblical commission toconvert non-Christians and their simultaneous desire to help the Jewsof Israel.

“Despite all the spiritual shortcomings of theJewish people,” Dr. Dobson said, “according to scripture — and thosecriticisms come not from Christians but from the Old Testament. Justlook in Deuteronomy, where Jews are referred to as a stiff-necked andstubborn people — despite all of that, God has chosen to bless them ashis people. God chose to bless Abraham and his seed not because theywere a perfect people any more than the rest of the human family.”

Dr.Dobson, along with some other evangelicals, has expresseddisappointment with what he saw as the Bush administration’s pressureon Israel to sign the cease-fire that ended the fight.

“Theybegan by saying they had to take a hard line, by saying they wouldsupport Israel and they ended up urging them to compromise and gohome,” Dr. Dobson said. “All that is going to do is allow everybody toreload. That didn’t solve anything.” (Mr. Hagee said that he believedthe administration gave Israel “ample time” but that Israel erred bynot “unleashing the full might of its ground troops” until it was toolate.)

The Israeli government and its American allies have beenbuilding their alliance with evangelicals for decades. Israeliofficials began working closely with Mr. Hagee and his church, forexample, a quarter century ago, when he met several times withthen-Prime Minister Menachem Begin.

The Jerusalem Post, an English-language newspaper, recently started an edition for American Christians.

The Israeli government temporarily cut off ties with the Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson after he suggested that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’sstroke might have been God’s punishment for withdrawing from territorythat belonged to the Biblical Israel. But then Mr. Robertson flew toIsrael during the fight with Hezbollah. In a gesture of reconciliation,the Israeli government recently worked with him to film a televisioncommercial to attract Christian tourists.

“Israel — to walkwhere Jesus walked, to pray where Jesus prayed, to stand where he stood— there is no other place like it on earth,” Mr. Robertson says in thecommercial, according to the Jerusalem Post.