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Notes -
https://youtube.com/watch?v=XS7itdfgNnU
Over the weekend, an interview between Tucker Carlson and US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee has been making the rounds. The general thrust of the Interview is: Mike Huckabee is something called a "Christian Zionist", that is:
Steelman: An evangelical protestant Christian who recognizes the unique place in history and theology that The Jewish people occupy, and recognizes that Israel has a Right to Exist.
Strawman: An evangelical protestant Christian who worships the Jews as the main character of history and society, and sees the rest of the world as second-tier citizens who exist to support the work of Jewish people.
The interview attempts to answer what Christian zionism is, what Mike Huckabee believes, etc.
After listening to this, it seems as though Mike is not doing a great job of hiding the fact that he is closer to the strawman than the steelman on this one. Some points:
Huckabee hosted a meeting with Johnathan Pollard, an Israeli who stole US state secrets and sold them to Israel, and subsequently Russia during the cold war. Pollard currently lives in Israel, and Huckabee has been criticized for hosting a meeting with him.
Israel is currently a safe haven for sex criminals (or accused sex criminals). There is a not-insignificant number of men who have been charged with sex crimes in the US, who flee to Israel, and are protected by the Israeli government from extradition to the US. Or more specifically: the US simply ignores these people once they are safely in Israel. Tucker confronts Huckabee about this.
There are a few other things like this, Tucker also asserts that the Iraq war was done on behalf of Israel. The entire interview is quite spicy, and I recommend listening to it.
The "money" quote, however, is one where Tucker is pressing Huckabee on what Israel is, what "a right to exist" is, and what the borders that Israel is entitled to are. Tucker quotes the bible passage that Huckabee is citing to justify Israel's ownership, and points out that the land indicated in the passage is substantially larger than the land Israel currently claims. Tucker's question is, essentially: "if Israel has a right to the land they currently occupy due to this Bible passage, then don't they actually have a right to a majority of the entire Middle East, due to the same Bible passage"
Huckabee's response is, essentially: yes they do. If they want to take it, then that would be fine.
Hard to overstate what a big deal this has been over the weekend. This undermines 30 years of US foreign policy with regards to the ME, and vindicates every fear that every ME nation has had with regards to their own defense, their desire for a nuclear weapon, etc. It's my opinion that this is bad enough that Huckabee needs to be very publicly fired immediately, and that a lot of reassurance needs to be made to these other countries that Huckabee is essentially in a cult, that his insane beliefs do not in ANY way represent the beliefs of the broader US government, and that we will never allow another member of his cult into any position of power within the US government.
The problem: none of that is true. Yes, from my perspective (a Catholic) Huckabee is in an insane, anti-christian cult with absolutely insane beliefs. My (somewhat unrelated) point is that this is why you need The Church. But there are plenty of people in The US Government who think this way. Ted Cruz is another one, who was also interviewed, also disastrously, by Tucker.
Where this, the Cruz interview, and the general discourse around Israel is heading is: what is Israel, exactly? Why does the US support them so much? What was the Iraq war, actually? If we are really using The Bible to dictate foreign policy, then what implications does that have? (I don't think the bible at all supports Huckabee's idea here, btw. I think this is Zionists essentially preying on a very specific type of protestant)
Huckabee actually lobbied for the release of Pollard from 2011-2013, despite Pollard costing an estimated 3-4 billion dollars in 1990 dollars, so almost 10 billions dollars. The pardon encourages spying among would-be spies, who now have the hope that they will be released as well. And they will see the hero’s welcome afforded to Pollard.
IMO Christian Zionism falls apart on every important level. It is absent from the writings of early Christians, who more often see the destruction of Israel as the wish of God (Justin Martyr); Constantine turned Jerusalem into a Christian city and forbid Jews from entry; and Paul writes in Hebrews 8:13 that the first covenant is “obsolete” and “near-vanishing”. More importantly, Zvi Eckstein’s economic analysis of the Jewish people argues that poor Jewish agriculturalists after the first century converted to Christianity, with most of them later converting to Islam. But Christian Zionism says that the Christian Palestinians — the very people who stayed in the land for generations, whose DNA are nearly as close to Iron Age Israelites as Samaritans, the literal descendants of the extended kin of Jesus — they do not deserve to return to their land. Would Jesus really support the descendants of the Pharisees living in the homes of the expelled descendants of the very first Christians?
Huckabee also does adverts for an organization called the Fellowship of Jews and Christians. It is very exploitative (great documentary), essentially just guilting and nudging poor Christians to send all their money to Israel. And they do!
Agreed. But this is common weakness of most of the protestants who tend to ignore church history for obvious reasons, when they want to minimize everything up until Martin Luther. The fact is, that current Rabbinic Judaism is relatively modern offshoot of traditional or biblical/sacrificial Judaism which ended 70 AD with destruction of the Second Temple and with rabbis doing the sleight of hand, where they supposedly wrote down oral Torah by year 200 AD. Funnily or interestingly enough, the current Rabbinic Judaism is direct evolution of Pharisees by adopting most of the Pharisaic doctrine, while many other pharisees including apostle Paul turned into Christianity as the fulfilment of Pharisaic hope in form of Jesus as messiah.
It really seems strange to have bunch of protestants who basically say that it is not Jews like Apostle Paul - or any other apostle or Jesus himself as they were all Jews - but it is blokes like Rabbi Judah ha-Nasi who called themselves as authority over Oral torah and thus biblical tradition and that they are the legitimate continuation of Jewish faith - including doctrines like belief in coming of messiah, which would according to Christian doctrine inevitably be a false one as Christians see Jesus as the true messiah and fulfillment of the old law. It is insane.
I feel the Christian Zionists are just an Israeli op. Contributions to churches are private and it’s in Israel’s interest to fund them. You would need only one goy middle man, and even the pastors would have no idea that they are funded by Israel. Megachurch leaders always seem sociopathic, so this would be an easy to op to accomplish. Remember Israel once donated a jet to Jerry Falwell Sr.
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