Hudhaifa
04-11-03, 10:07
For me, Jim Lobe's Inter Press Service article entitled, Conservative Christians Biggest Backers of Iraq War, reprises old memories past and new anxieties future, where the alliance of the Israeli lobby and the Dispensational Christian Right is concerned. Throw in a dose of oil and natural gas consortiums and central bankers into the mix for good measure along with ill-devised notions of Old Testament theocracy, and one has all of the combustible ingredients for the gestation of a global conflagration destined to kill not thousands, but millions of innocent people of every conceivable geographic, racial, and religious background.
In his article, Lobe mentions the shadowy Jewish rabbi, Yechiel Eckstein, co-chairman of Stand for Israel and the chairman of the Chicago based International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (IFCJ). Eckstein, once designated the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai Brith's (ADL) international liaison to Fundamentalist and Pentecostal Christians, has now entered into a new alliance with the peripatetic Christian Right mogul, Ralph Reed, to cement the alliances being consummated by the Zionist lobby, Christian Dispensationalists, the American/British oil and natural gas consortiums, central bankers, and the defense industry for a War for Empire destined potentially for tragedy on an apocalyptic scale. Reed now joins Eckstein in this effort as co-chairman of Stand for Israel.
I remember Rabbi Eckstein well. In 1988, while serving as 36th District Chairman of the Republican Party in King County/Seattle and occasional voice for a talk show on a 50,000 watt Christian station in that city, I received a phone call invitation from the then Regional Director of the Anti-Defamation League for the Pacific Northwest based in Seattle, to have lunch with Eckstein and his then cohort, Jan Van Der Hoeven, a Dutch Reformed clergyman representing the so-called International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem (ICEJ). I accepted the invitation, discovering upon arrival at ADL headquarters in Seattle that I was the only local Christian clergyman present at this private planning luncheon. Aside from Eckstein, Van Der Hoeven, a cadre of Jewish rabbis, and the ADL Regional Director, Marvin Stern, the only other individual I remember being present was a Christian clergyman traveling with Eckstein and Van Der Hoeven named Terry Moore. By strange coincidence, Moore and I were both graduates of Chicago's Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He, however, was also a member of Dr. Clarence Wagner's Bridges for Peace organization, another Christian group I was to subsequently learn had major ties to the Israeli government and its supporting cast of characters.
To his credit, Rabbi Eckstein did not engage in any obfuscation of his purpose, or that of his handlers, during the Seattle ADL luncheon. He made it clear that the Israeli government had correctly targeted Christian Right individuals, organizations, print and electronic media outlets, and churches as the Zionist State's leading base of political and economic support in the United States outside the Jewish community itself. He displayed an outstanding knowledge of the different schools of Christian eschatological thought (amillennial, postmillennial, historic and dispensational premillennial) in explaining to the rabbis present which Christian groups represented potential indifference or opposition to the Zionist agenda, and which ones would support the Begin/Netanyahu/Sharon line on Israel and the Middle East down to the last jot-and-tittle. His mission, both for Israel and the ADL, was to target the latter group and to employ its networking and financial resources down to the last dime available. His logic and simplicity made things ruthlessly and abundantly clear.
Now enter Ralph Reed. As my earlier article for Global News Net, Ralph Reed, the ADL, and the 'Family Values' President pointed out, Reed's flacking for establishment Republicans like Bob Dole and George W. Bush has been well rewarded, both with his own political consulting firm in Atlanta, the chairmanship of the Georgia Republican Party, and during the year 2000 Presidential election year by a $10,000 a month fee as a "consultant" for the Enron Corporation courtesy of Karl Rove and Bush himself. Some months ago, Reed pulled off a New York Times advertisement for Abraham Foxman and the Anti-Defamation League entitled, We People of Faith Stand Firmly With Israel. Reed neglected in the ad to mention that the Dispensationalist interpretation of prophecy upon which the Christian Right alliance with Israel rests traces its origins only to the year 1830.
He also failed to mention the problematic character of a Christian alliance with Foxman, who has made something of a career out of characterizing evangelical Christians as closet bigots, anti-Semites, racists, and purveyors of complete cultural and political intolerance. Foxman and Reed, and now Eckstein and Reed, have been notoriously silent about the paper trail in this nefarious history laden with bitter ironies, utilitarian political alliances, and paradoxes. It would seem that in the alliance of the Dispensational Christian Right and Israel, the leading moguls on both sides feel that the benefits provided by the arrangement are too precious to endanger with public dialogue--or exposure of the political and financial network consummated in the secret, Byzantine netherworld of political players like Eckstein, Reed, Clarence Wagner, John Hagee of Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Joseph Farah, and a whole host of once independent American Christian and politically conservative organs of opinion now increasingly attuned to receiving marching orders both from George W. Bush's Empire-driven "neo-conservative" advisers, and unseen hands with ties to the regime in Tel Aviv.
Theocrats also tend to ignore other evidence and data which undermine preconceived dogmas and allegedly divinely received revelations. Norman Livergood's article on American/British oil imperialism might go a long way toward revealing another side of the War for Empire that has nothing to do with the Biblical God or the Kingdom of God as understood by Jesus Christ in Matthew, chapter 4.
Read, ponder, pray, discern--while there is yet time.
Mark Dankof is a correspondent and staff writer with Global News Net and an occasional correspondent with the orthodox Lutheran weekly, Christian News. Formerly the 36th District Chairman of the Republican Party in King County/Seattle, and later an elected delegate to Texas State Republican Conventions in 1994 and 1996, he entered the United States Senate race in Delaware in 2000 as the nominated candidate of the Constitution Party against Democratic candidate Thomas Carper and incumbent William Roth.
In his article, Lobe mentions the shadowy Jewish rabbi, Yechiel Eckstein, co-chairman of Stand for Israel and the chairman of the Chicago based International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (IFCJ). Eckstein, once designated the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai Brith's (ADL) international liaison to Fundamentalist and Pentecostal Christians, has now entered into a new alliance with the peripatetic Christian Right mogul, Ralph Reed, to cement the alliances being consummated by the Zionist lobby, Christian Dispensationalists, the American/British oil and natural gas consortiums, central bankers, and the defense industry for a War for Empire destined potentially for tragedy on an apocalyptic scale. Reed now joins Eckstein in this effort as co-chairman of Stand for Israel.
I remember Rabbi Eckstein well. In 1988, while serving as 36th District Chairman of the Republican Party in King County/Seattle and occasional voice for a talk show on a 50,000 watt Christian station in that city, I received a phone call invitation from the then Regional Director of the Anti-Defamation League for the Pacific Northwest based in Seattle, to have lunch with Eckstein and his then cohort, Jan Van Der Hoeven, a Dutch Reformed clergyman representing the so-called International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem (ICEJ). I accepted the invitation, discovering upon arrival at ADL headquarters in Seattle that I was the only local Christian clergyman present at this private planning luncheon. Aside from Eckstein, Van Der Hoeven, a cadre of Jewish rabbis, and the ADL Regional Director, Marvin Stern, the only other individual I remember being present was a Christian clergyman traveling with Eckstein and Van Der Hoeven named Terry Moore. By strange coincidence, Moore and I were both graduates of Chicago's Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He, however, was also a member of Dr. Clarence Wagner's Bridges for Peace organization, another Christian group I was to subsequently learn had major ties to the Israeli government and its supporting cast of characters.
To his credit, Rabbi Eckstein did not engage in any obfuscation of his purpose, or that of his handlers, during the Seattle ADL luncheon. He made it clear that the Israeli government had correctly targeted Christian Right individuals, organizations, print and electronic media outlets, and churches as the Zionist State's leading base of political and economic support in the United States outside the Jewish community itself. He displayed an outstanding knowledge of the different schools of Christian eschatological thought (amillennial, postmillennial, historic and dispensational premillennial) in explaining to the rabbis present which Christian groups represented potential indifference or opposition to the Zionist agenda, and which ones would support the Begin/Netanyahu/Sharon line on Israel and the Middle East down to the last jot-and-tittle. His mission, both for Israel and the ADL, was to target the latter group and to employ its networking and financial resources down to the last dime available. His logic and simplicity made things ruthlessly and abundantly clear.
Now enter Ralph Reed. As my earlier article for Global News Net, Ralph Reed, the ADL, and the 'Family Values' President pointed out, Reed's flacking for establishment Republicans like Bob Dole and George W. Bush has been well rewarded, both with his own political consulting firm in Atlanta, the chairmanship of the Georgia Republican Party, and during the year 2000 Presidential election year by a $10,000 a month fee as a "consultant" for the Enron Corporation courtesy of Karl Rove and Bush himself. Some months ago, Reed pulled off a New York Times advertisement for Abraham Foxman and the Anti-Defamation League entitled, We People of Faith Stand Firmly With Israel. Reed neglected in the ad to mention that the Dispensationalist interpretation of prophecy upon which the Christian Right alliance with Israel rests traces its origins only to the year 1830.
He also failed to mention the problematic character of a Christian alliance with Foxman, who has made something of a career out of characterizing evangelical Christians as closet bigots, anti-Semites, racists, and purveyors of complete cultural and political intolerance. Foxman and Reed, and now Eckstein and Reed, have been notoriously silent about the paper trail in this nefarious history laden with bitter ironies, utilitarian political alliances, and paradoxes. It would seem that in the alliance of the Dispensational Christian Right and Israel, the leading moguls on both sides feel that the benefits provided by the arrangement are too precious to endanger with public dialogue--or exposure of the political and financial network consummated in the secret, Byzantine netherworld of political players like Eckstein, Reed, Clarence Wagner, John Hagee of Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Joseph Farah, and a whole host of once independent American Christian and politically conservative organs of opinion now increasingly attuned to receiving marching orders both from George W. Bush's Empire-driven "neo-conservative" advisers, and unseen hands with ties to the regime in Tel Aviv.
Theocrats also tend to ignore other evidence and data which undermine preconceived dogmas and allegedly divinely received revelations. Norman Livergood's article on American/British oil imperialism might go a long way toward revealing another side of the War for Empire that has nothing to do with the Biblical God or the Kingdom of God as understood by Jesus Christ in Matthew, chapter 4.
Read, ponder, pray, discern--while there is yet time.
Mark Dankof is a correspondent and staff writer with Global News Net and an occasional correspondent with the orthodox Lutheran weekly, Christian News. Formerly the 36th District Chairman of the Republican Party in King County/Seattle, and later an elected delegate to Texas State Republican Conventions in 1994 and 1996, he entered the United States Senate race in Delaware in 2000 as the nominated candidate of the Constitution Party against Democratic candidate Thomas Carper and incumbent William Roth.