In early 1998, as the Clinton Administration was seeking to restart the Israeli/Palestinian peace process, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu traveled to the US to meet with Bill Clinton. But en route Netanyahu stopped to attend a Christian Zionist anti-peace rally and "met with evangelical leaders who promised to organize their churches against the peace efforts."
In hundreds if not thousands of media reports, on Israel's announcement of a new 1600-unit housing project in East Jerusalem that embarrassed and damaged Vice President Biden's efforts to jump start Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, one can read claims that the announcement of the housing project was a regrettable mistake.
But as my research colleague Rachel Tabachnick writes in a new article published by Zeek magazine (a co-production of the Jewish Forward) there's evidence indicating that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been intentionally trying to sabotage the peace process and, per a recent CENTCOM briefing to the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, his efforts may well be endangering the lives of American troops in the Middle East.
In her story A Serial Obstructionist [note: Max Blumenthal has also covered this story, and posted video of the Netanyahu/Hagee "lovefest"], Rachel Tabachnick writes,
Did Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu deliberately sabotage the Obama administration’s attempt to restart peace talks? Netanyahu now claims he was blindsided by the announcement of housing construction in East Jerusalem, but his activities the evening of March 8 suggests that the ambush may have been premeditated.
Shortly after Vice President Joe Biden’s arrival in Israel, Netanyahu and Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat were the headliners at Pastor John Hagee’s two-hour Christians United for Israel (CUFI) extravaganza at the Jerusalem Convention Center. Ambassador Michael Oren and Deputy Foreign Minister Daniel Ayalon were also in attendance. There was no ambiguity. It was a blatant and unabashed rejection of "dividing the land," filled with repeated references to Jerusalem as the undivided capital of the Jewish people.
I've been writing on John Hagee for several years now, and what continually surprises me is the fact that very few journalists or pundits across a wide band of the political spectrum seem to grasp how the Israeli right's, and especially Likud's, embrace of American Christian Zionists such as Hagee works to undermine peace in the Middle East. Netanyahu and other Likud politicians are fixtures at Hagee's Christians United For Israel events because Hagee can tap into a national evangelical Christian Zionist base tens of millions strong.
The event Tabachnick describes, above, was not advertised in advance but it was broadcast on GodTV, which claims its network can reach up to 1/2 a billion people globally. The function of the event, really, was to rally Christian Zionists, especially in the US, to express their political support for Netanyahu's unyielding position.
That's not merely speculation. Netanyahu pulled the same stunt during the Clinton Administration, and the late Jerry Falwell later said it was a deliberate affront to Bill Clinton who, like Barack Obama now, was trying to restart the Israeli/Palestinian peace process.
As Tabachnick describes,
In January 1998 Netanyahu traveled to Washington to meet with President Bill Clinton, but first detoured to the Mayflower Hotel where hundreds of Christian Zionists had been assembled by Jerry Falwell. In reference to the "land for peace" negotiations, John Hagee led the crowd in yelling, "Not one inch! Not one inch!" When Falwell was later interviewed he stated, "It was all planned by Netanyahu as an affront to Clinton." After the rally, Netanyahu met with evangelical leaders who promised to organize their churches against the peace efforts.
Netanyahu succeeded in 1998, especially because even as Clinton called him on his behavior the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal broke. Severely damaged by the scandal, Clinton was unable to keep pushing the peace process along.
But this time things could go a different route. Barack Obama is not beset by an equivalent scandal, and a January CENTCOM briefing to the Joint Chiefs of Staff (see this Foreign Policy story), indicating that Israeli unwillingness to reengage in a meaningful peace process threatened the lives of American troops in the Mideast region, puts additional, powerful pressure on Prime Minister Netanyahu.
As Rachel Tabachnick and I have written, in an ongoing series at Zeek magazine, Netanyahu's and Likud's alliance with Christian Zionists such as John Hagee does not truly serve Israel's interest.
In our stories (Bruce Wilson's Zeek articles, Rachel Tabachick's Zeek articles) we explain the myriad ways in which Christian Zionism is bad for Israel and for Jews worldwide. Christian Zionists globally distribute anti-Jewish propaganda, and rewrite the history of the Holocaust to cast liberals, gays, and Jews themselves as the villains. In Loving Israel, Demonizing Jews, Rachel Tabachnick explores Christian Zionism's theological attacks on Jews and Judaism.
But as Zeek editor Joel Schalit suggests in his introduction to Tabachnick's story Saving Jews From John Hagee, the winds maybe shifting:
Over the last four decades, Evangelicals infiltrated Zionist circles, convincing naïve Israelis and Jews that they were friends. Manipulating Jewish desire for respect and repentance, today, their support for Israel is considered indispensable. And, to a growing number of Jews, suspect.
In an October 12, 2007 interview with Glenn Beck that was aired on CNN, John Hagee predicted Israel would be destroyed within 20 years. Tabachnick concludes her article with a acidic quote from a Christian pastor who brilliantly observes,
Benjamin Netanyahu now has the dubious distinction of being the only Israeli leader to ever salute a man who makes money from biblical prophesies suggesting Israel's imminent destruction while simultaneously humiliating the leaders (Joe Biden and Barack Obama) of the very country he relies on for its protection.
But as Glenn Greenwald writes, at Salon.com, there's considerable evidence that a long-overdue shift in US foreign towards Israel may be underway, and media attention paid to Benjamin Netanyahu's apparently well-planned effort to sabotage the Obama's Administration's peace initiative can only speed the process along.
[If you want to help Mideast peace by promoting Rachel Tabachnick's story you can vote it up on Reddit here, and here]