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Bekijk Volledige Versie : Witte Huis had voerde gesprekken met Jesus freaks om Gaza beslissing



lennart
20-05-04, 14:50
The Jesus Landing Pad

It was an e-mail we weren't meant to see. Not for our eyes were the notes that showed White House staffers taking two-hour meetings with Christian fundamentalists, where they passed off bogus social science on gay marriage as if it were holy writ and issued fiery warnings that "the Presidents [sic] Administration and current Government is engaged in cultural, economical, and social struggle on every level"—this to a group whose representative in Israel believed herself to have been attacked by witchcraft unleashed by proximity to a volume of Harry Potter. Most of all, apparently, we're not supposed to know the National Security Council's top Middle East aide consults with apocalyptic Christians eager to ensure American policy on Israel conforms with their sectarian doomsday scenarios.

But now we know.

(...)

The e-mailed meeting summary reveals NSC Near East and North African Affairs director Elliott Abrams sitting down with the Apostolic Congress and massaging their theological concerns. Claiming to be "the Christian Voice in the Nation's Capital," the members vociferously oppose the idea of a Palestinian state. They fear an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza might enable just that, and they object on the grounds that all of Old Testament Israel belongs to the Jews. Until Israel is intact and David's temple rebuilt, they believe, Christ won't come back to earth

(...)

Affiliated with the United Pentecostal Church, the Apostolic Congress is part of an important and disciplined political constituency courted by recent Republican administrations. As a subset of the broader Christian Zionist movement, it has a lengthy history of opposition to any proposal that will not result in what it calls a "one-state solution" in Israel.

(...)

The staffer, Kim Hadassah Johnson, wrote in a report obtained by the Voice, "We are establishing the Meet the Need Fund in Israel—'MNFI.' . . . The fund will be an Interest Free Loan Fund that will enable us to loan funds to new believers (others upon application) who need assistance. They will have the opportunity to repay the loan (although it will not be mandatory)." When that language was read to Moshe Fox, minister for public and interreligious affairs at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, he responded, "It sounds against the law which prohibits any kind of money or material [inducement] to make people convert to another religion. That's what it sounds like." (Fox's judgment was e-mailed to Johnson, who did not return a request for comment.)

(...)

While the language of apocalyptic Christianity is absent from George W. Bush's speeches, he has proven eager to work with apocalyptics—a point of pride for Upton. "We're in constant contact with the White House," he boasts. "I'm briefed at least once a week via telephone briefings. . . . I was there about two weeks ago . . . At that time we met with the president."

(...)

In addition to its work in Israel, the Apostolic Congress is part of the increasingly Christian public face of pro-Israel activities in the United States. Don Wagner, author of the book Anxious for Armageddon, has been studying Christian Zionism for 15 years, and believes that the current hard-line pro-Israel movement in the U.S. is "predominantly gentile." Often, devotees work in concert with Jewish groups like Americans for a Safe Israel, or AFSI, which set up a mostly Christian Committee for a One-State Solution as the sponsor of last year's billboard campaign. The committee's board included, in addition to Upton, such evangelical luminaries as Gary Bauer and E.E. "Ed" McAteer of the Religious Roundtable.

AFSI's executive director, Helen Freedman, confirms the increasingly Christian cast of her coalition. "We have many good Jews, of course," she says, "but they're in the minority." She adds, "The liberal Jew is unable to believe the Arab when he says his goal is to Islamize the West. . . . But I believe it. And evangelical Christians believe it."

Of Jews who might otherwise support her group's view of Jews' divine right to Israel, she laments, "They're embarrassed about quoting the Bible, about referring to the Covenant, about talking about the Promised Land."

Pastor Upton is not embarrassed, and Helen Freedman is proud of her association with him. She is wistful when asked if she, like Upton, has been able to finagle a meeting with the president. "Pastor Upton is the head of a whole Apostolic Congress," she laments. "It's a nationwide group of evangelicals."

Upton has something Freedman covets: a voting bloc.

She laughs off concerns that, for Christian Zionists, actual Jews living in Israel serve as mere props for their end-time scenario: "We have a different conception of what [the end of the world] will be like . . . Whoever is right will rejoice, and whoever was wrong will say, 'Whoops!' "

She's not worried, either, about evangelical anti-Semitism: "I don't think it exists," she says. She does say, however, that it would concern her if she learned the Apostolic Congress had a representative in Israel trying to win converts: "If we discovered that people were trying to convert Jews to Christianity, we would be very upset."

Kim Johnson doesn't call it converting Jews to Christianity. She calls it "Circumcision of the Heart"—a spiritual circumcision Jews must undergo because, she writes in paraphrase of Jeremiah, chapter 9, "God will destroy all the uncircumcised nations along with the House of Israel, because the House of Israel is uncircumcised in the heart . . . [I]t is through the Gospel . . . that men's hearts are circumcised."

Apostolics believe that only 144,000 Jews who have not, prior to the Second Coming of Christ, acknowledged Jesus as the Messiah will be saved in the end times. Though even for those who do not believe in this literal interpretation of the Bible—or for anyone who lives in Israel, or who cares about Israel, or whose security might be affected by a widespread conflagration in the Middle East, which is everyone—the scriptural prophecies of the Christian Zionists should be the least of their worries.

Instead, we should be worried about self-fulfilling prophecies. "Biblically," stated one South Carolina minister in support of the anti-Road Map billboard campaign, "there's always going to be a war."

Don Wagner, an evangelical, worries that in the Republican Party, people who believe this "are dominating the discourse now, in an election year." He calls the attempt to yoke Scripture to current events "a modern heresy, with cultish proportions.

"I mean, it's appalling," he rails on. "And it also shows how marginalized mainstream Christian thinking, and the majority of evangelical thought, have become."

It demonstrates, he says, "the absolute convergence of the neoconservatives with the Christian Zionists and the pro-Israel lobby, driving U.S. Mideast policy."

[n]The problem is not that George W. Bush is discussing policy with people who press right-wing solutions to achieve peace in the Middle East, or with devout Christians. It is that he is discussing policy with Christians who might not care about peace at all—at least until the rapture. [b]

The Jewish pro-Israel lobby, in the interests of peace for those living in the present, might want to consider a disengagement.

http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0420/perlstein.php

Ik heb er wat ik de belangrijkste stukjes vond, uitgehaald. Duidelijk is dat de politieke agenda in de VS als het gaat om het midden-oosten inmiddels bepaald wordt door Christen Zionisten en Neoconservatieven. Beide groeperingen hebben geen belang bij vrede in het midden-oosten en iedereen die steun gaf aan de Irak oorlog, gaf daarmee ook steun aan hun messiaanse gedachten en steunde indirect "armageddon". Want vergis u niet, mensen zijn zeer wel instaat om hun eigen armageddon te creeeren, als ze denken daarvan beter te worden.

lennart
20-05-04, 14:52
Juan Cole over het Perlstein artikel:

Can Ethnic Cleansing Bring Back Jesus?
by Juan Cole

Rick Perlstein of the Village Voice acquired a damning memo ("you're not supposed to have that") demonstrating the hold the loony Christian far Right has on Bush Middle East policy. The gem in the article is the account of how Iran-Contra criminal mastermind and current National Security Adviser Elliot Abrams tried to reassure the Christian Zionists that an Israeli "withdrawal" from Gaza will not interfere with Jesus coming back because it wasn't part of ancient Israel. Actually, this is right. Gaza was in Philistia, not Judah, which was to its east. But for that matter, when the kingdoms split, the West Bank wasn't in "Israel" either, it was in Judah. So the loony tunes Christians who are trying to kill and dispossess the poor Palestinians to drag Jesus back may as well just give it up. He wasn't treated well enough by humankind the first time to want to come back, so we're on our own, and we may as well stop being barbaric to one another in his name.

http://www.antiwar.com/cole/palestine.jpg
http://www.antiwar.com/cole/palestine2.jpg

It has for some time been obvious to me that the Bush foreign policy in the Middle East is driven by irrational and often puzzling considerations. But I hadn't stopped to consider, until Perlstein's excellent piece, that the White House is trying to bring about an apocalypse that would hasten Christ's return. And a damn fine job they're doing of it, if that's what they are up to. Why, the place is more apocalyptic every day. The one downside for Bush is that he is beholden not just to the far right Christian loony fringe but also to Wall Street, and the latter can't actually be very happy with the roller coaster ride his policies are producing for their investments. Unlike poor people, moreover, the moneyed both vote and give to political campaigns.

http://www.antiwar.com/cole/?articleid=2610

Qwertyno
20-05-04, 16:32
De verovering van Palestina wordt dus door deze christen-fundie-zionisten bijna gezien als een religieuse verplichting.
Dit in tegenstelling tot de palestijnen die zich willen verdedigen en dit zien als een vrijheidstrijd.

Fnuist en Esdra zouden zeggen dat dit duidelijk een geloof is van haat.
Je moet immers volgens deze gelovigen eerst miljoenen mensen verdrijven wil de profeet komen. Dit is precies het tegenovergestelde van wat jezus zei over hoe om te gaan met mensen.

Het is daarom makkelijk te geloven dat wanneer jezus komt hij zeker deze soort mensen zal corrigeren.

Julien
20-05-04, 17:51
Het is daarom makkelijk te geloven dat wanneer jezus komt hij zeker deze soort mensen zal corrigeren.

precies!

Ron Haleber
20-05-04, 18:07
Het laatste nummer van Newsweek geeft een onderbouwing aan de these van Lennart...!

De cover van de Newsweek van deze week:


http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/msnbc/Sections/Newsweek/Components/Photos/mag/040524_Issue/nw_152_magcover_040515.jpg

Religion: The Pop Prophets

Faith and Fiction: Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins are an unlikely team with a shared evangelical fervor—and America's best-selling writers

Deze schrijvers die op het nachtkastje van Sjors Bush liggen en waar Sjors zijn populariteit aan dankt. profeteren nog veel beter dan onze pop-profeet Wizdom: Baas boven baas.

Zij kunnen zelfs op grond van getallen uit de Heilige schriften de koersen van Wallstreet en de AEX voorspellen volgens de kenners van de EO op Radio 1 van deze ochtend...!

Zij zijn de ware fundamentalisten van het MO!


Onze Pop-prophet Wizdom die op een ander topic actief is, zou in elk geval een enorm gat in de reli-markt kunnen vullen wanneer hij boeken gaat schrijven - de uitgevers staan al te dringen...

Maar Marokkanen hebben nu eenmaal geen of weinig ondernemingsgeest - tel het aantal Maroc-restaurants in A'dam maar...

Ik ken - Casbah bij het eindpunt van lijn 10 in West - maar één bezoekbaar restaurant van een familie uit Chaouen...! Goede bastilla!

Mod Qwertino zal morren maar kan mij er ook geen noemen...???

Jammer dat het geen Turken zijn, nietwaar Mark61...?



By David Gates
NewsweekMay 24 issue -

This photo shoot isn't going so well. Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, coauthors of the best-selling "Left Behind" series of apocalyptic Christian novels, get to see each other only a few times a year, and they'd rather schmooze than pose for the cover of NEWSWEEK.

The desert wind near LaHaye's home in Rancho Mirage, Calif., is kicking up, and the 78-year-old LaHaye's suspiciously brown hair won't stay down; Jenkins's wife, Dianna, solves that with a paper clip. OK, big smiles? "I gain 15 years on my face when I smile," LaHaye says, smiling. Now, what to do about the fact that Jenkins towers over his partner by about a foot? "Is there something LaHaye can stand on?" the photographer asks. "You can sit on my lap," Jenkins tells LaHaye. Finally LaHaye fetches a stack of phone books. "I understand this is how Tom Cruise poses," he says. OK, Tim? Put your arm on Jerry's shoulder. Jenkins grins and puts his hand lovingly on top of LaHaye's. Dianna Jenkins says, "Such a cute couple."


They're an odd couple, for sure: LaHaye, the golden-ager in polyester, veteran culture warrior and cofounder of the Moral Majority; Jenkins, the bearded baby boomer in jeans, best known (until now) for channeling the autobiographies of such Christian athletes as Orel Hershiser. They're also, arguably, the most successful literary partnership of all time. And if you define success in worldly terms, you can drop the "arguably."

Their Biblical techno-thrillers about the end of the world are currently outselling Stephen King, John Grisham and every other pop novelist in America. It's old-time religion with a sci-fi sensibility: the Tribulation timetable comes from LaHaye; the cell phones, Land Rovers—and characters struggling with belief and unbelief—come from Jenkins. And their contrasting sensibilities suggest the complexities of the entire evangelical movement, often seen as monolithic.

The first volume, "Left Behind" (1995), kicks off with the Rapture—the sudden snatching up of millions of the faithful into heaven—and subsequent volumes follow airline pilot Rayford Steele and journalist Buck Williams, left behind to tough it out down here on earth through the seven-year Tribulation and the rule of the Antichrist.

The 12th and final installment (not counting a planned sequel and prequel), called "Glorious Appearing," has the return of Jesus, the battle of Armageddon and the Judgment. It sold almost 2 million copies even before its March publication; it's still tied for No. 2 on The New York Times's list—which doesn't count sales at Christian bookstores. In all, the "Left Behind" books have sold more than 62 million copies.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4988269/site/newsweek/



http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/j/msnbc/Sections/Newsweek/Components/Photos/mag/040524_Issue/040515_LeftBehind_hu.hmedium.jpg

Apocalyptic action: The 'Left Behind' series gives old-time religion a sci-fi twist



Who's buying? Jenkins recalls a puzzled Chris Matthews asking a "Hardball" guest the same question. "I'm sure I don't have the quote exact, but it was something like 'Certainly not the people in the cities and the suburbs.' And I'm thinking, 'What does that leave? Barefoot people in the hollers handling snakes?'" Jenkins takes issue with a previous NEWSWEEK piece that called "Left Behind" a "Red State" phenomenon, but statistics from the publisher, Tyndale, bear this out:

71 percent of the readers are from the South and Midwest, and just 6 percent from the Northeast . (Hence Tyndale's sponsorship of a NASCAR racer, with the unlucky logo LEFT BEHIND.) The "core buyer" is a 44-year-old born-again Christian woman, married with kids, living in the South. This isn't the "Sex and the City" crowd—which helps explain why it took so long for the media to notice that one in eight Americans was reading all these strange books about the end of the world.

And why are so many people eager to do that? Well, check the news tonight. As the world gets increasingly scary, with much of the trouble centered in the Mideast—just where you'd expect from reading the Book of Revelation—even secular Americans sometimes wonder (or at least wonder if they ought to start wondering) whether there might not be something to this End Times stuff. After September 11, 2001, there was such a run on the latest "Left Behind" volume, "Desecration," that it became the best-selling novel of the year. And it's no coincidence that the books are a favorite with American soldiers in Iraq.

Julien
20-05-04, 18:11
Ik heb het eerste deel van die serie boeken van Jenkins gelezen. Het is verbluffend om te zien hoe de verhaallijn overeenkomt met de huidige actualiteit. Echt typisch Amerikaans weer. Zelfs van de Bijbel maken ze een Disneyverhaal.

trouwens Ron, dat Bush deze boeken gelezen heeft zegt natuurlijk niks. 60% van de Amerikanen heeft deze boeken gelezen, en echt niet iedereen gaat daardoor een christen-fundamentalist worden. Het is en blijft een boek.

Ron Haleber
20-05-04, 18:21
Geplaatst door Julien
Ik heb het eerste deel van die serie boeken van Jenkins gelezen. Het is verbluffend om te zien hoe de verhaallijn overeenkomt met de huidige actualiteit. Echt typisch Amerikaans weer. Zelfs van de Bijbel maken ze een Disneyverhaal.

trouwens Ron, dat Bush deze boeken gelezen heeft zegt natuurlijk niks. 60% van de Amerikanen heeft deze boeken gelezen, en echt niet iedereen gaat daardoor een christen-fundamentalist worden. Het is en blijft een boek.

Met dit verschil dat Bush een geraffineerde rat is - mijn excuses aan dit edele dier! - die heel precies weet waar hij niet enkel olie, maar met name zijn stemmen aan moet boren...

Herinner je de schandalige vertoning die hij aan een evangelische universiteit opvoerde... De NRC noemde ergens een 100 miljoen voters...

jans
20-05-04, 20:14
Het is eerder verbluffend, dat ze denken dat ze G-d een handje moeten helpen, omdat hij anders zijn werk niet zou kunnen voltooien.

lennart
20-05-04, 20:16
Geplaatst door jans
Het is eerder verbluffend, dat ze denken dat ze G-d een handje moeten helpen, omdat hij anders zijn werk niet zou kunnen voltooien.

Ik zou zeggen verbijsterend, of idioot.

Magoe, Armageddon wordt uitgevochten in Babylon.. daar zitten we gelukkig een eind vanaf. Israel daarentegen...

jans
20-05-04, 20:23
Magoe, Armageddon wordt uitgevochten in Babylon.. daar zitten we gelukkig een eind vanaf. Israel daarentegen...

Babylon wordt met de grond gelijk gemaakt door een engel, en Armageddon zelf vind plaats in Jeruzalem, of bij Petra, dacht ik :). Zal het nog eens nalezen.

Matesis
20-05-04, 20:29
http://www.lectrr.be/cartoon/zoonvan.jpg

lennart
24-05-04, 18:00
Iraq and the Christian Zionists
By C.B. Hanif, Palm Beach Post Editorial Writer
Sunday, May 23, 2004

To understand what is happening in the Middle East, wrote George Monbiot in The Guardian of London recently, you must first understand what is happening in the U.S., where evangelical Christians are driving President Bush's policies. The explanation slowly is becoming familiar to us, he says, but we still have some difficulty in taking it seriously.

Mr. Monbiot recounts that in the 19th century, "two immigrant preachers cobbled together a series of unrelated passages from the Bible to create what appears to be a consistent narrative: Jesus will return to Earth when certain preconditions have been met. The first of these was the establishment of a state of Israel. The next involves Israel's occupation of the rest of its 'biblical lands' (most of the Middle East), and the rebuilding of the Third Temple on the site now occupied by the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa mosques. The legions of the antichrist will then be deployed against Israel, and their war will lead to a final showdown in the valley of Armageddon. The Jews will either burn or convert to Christianity, and the Messiah will return to Earth."

I had heard of outrage from some Jews in this country that evangelical Christian supporters of the Jewish state have motivations other than security against its Arab neighbors. One Jewish friend likened the idea as, "To save you, we have to kill you." He, too, cited what Mr. Monbiot said makes the idea so appealing to evangelicals:

"Before the big battle begins, all 'true believers' (i.e., those who believe what they believe) will be lifted out of their clothes and wafted up to heaven during an event called the Rapture. Not only do the worthy get to sit at the right hand of God, but they will be able to watch, from the best seats, their political and religious opponents being devoured by boils, sores, locusts and frogs, during the seven years of Tribulation which follow. The true believers are now seeking to bring all this about," he said, by "seeking to provoke a final battle with the Muslim world/Axis of Evil/United Nations/European Union/France or whoever the legions of the antichrist turn out to be."

Thursday's rebroadcast of Frontline's "The Jesus Factor" on PBS recounted Mr. Bush's personal religious journey and the growing political influence of the nation's more than 70 million evangelical Christians. Mr. Monbiot describes the political calculus thusly: Fifteen percent to 18 percent of U.S. voters belong to churches or movements that subscribe to these teachings, including 33 percent of Republicans. Among them are some of the most powerful men in America: Attorney General John Ashcroft, several prominent senators and the House majority leader, Tom DeLay, who last year told the Israeli Knesset that "there is no middle ground, no moderate position worth taking" toward the Palestinians.

Said Mr. Monbiot: "So here we have a major political constituency -- representing much of the current president's core vote -- in the most powerful nation on Earth, which is actively seeking to provoke a new world war. Its members see the invasion of Iraq as a warm-up act, as Revelation (9:14-15) maintains that four angels 'which are bound in the great river Euphrates' will be released 'to slay the third part of men.' " And they effectively pressure the president, he said, against any pressure on Israeli Prime Minster Ariel Sharon.

Mr. Monbiot concludes: "The electoral calculation, crazy as it appears, works like this. Governments stand or fall on domestic issues. For 85 percent of the U.S. electorate, the Middle East is a foreign issue, and therefore of secondary interest when they enter the polling booth. For 15 percent, the Middle East is not just a domestic matter; it's a personal one:

"If the president fails to start a conflagration there, his core voters don't get to sit at the right hand of God. Bush, in other words, stands to lose fewer votes by encouraging Israeli aggression than he stands to lose by restraining it. He would be mad to listen to these people. He would also be mad not to."

What Rick Perlstein called "the absolute convergence of the neoconservatives with the Christian Zionists and the pro-Israel lobby" ("The Jesus Landing Pad," May 18 Village Voice) suggests that the bloody debacle in today's Iraq is what the current administration wanted all along. It also may explain some of Mr. Bush's recalcitrance -- which his supporters liken to steadfastness -- in the face of the realities in Iraq. Most of what has gone wrong there was predicted well before the invasion, by very qualified people in government, and was preceded by massive protest worldwide.

Raney Aronson is producer of the Frontline documentary, which can be viewed at www.pbs.org. In a Washington Post online interview, he was asked whether there is evidence that Mr. Bush "shares the 'Christian Zionist' belief that Israel must gain dominance over the Holy Land in order to bring the Second Coming of Christ, the Rapture, etc." President Bush "has not spoken about this issue," said Mr. Aronson. "But I do believe, as he talks so often of his faith, and his belief in the Bible, (that) this is a good question for him to address."
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/opinion/content/auto/epaper/editions/sunday/opinion_04ead84b048462c10012.html

De Amerikanen beginnen wakker te worden...

Het probleem is dat wanneer de VS nu getroffen zou worden door weer een terroristische aanslag van de eigen overheid, dat de Bush dan wel eens de noodtoestand kan uitroepen en zichzelf tot dictator van de VS verklaren.

Orakel
24-05-04, 21:32
Geplaatst door lennart
Het probleem is dat wanneer de VS nu getroffen zou worden door weer een terroristische aanslag van de eigen overheid, dat de Bush dan wel eens de noodtoestand kan uitroepen en zichzelf tot dictator van de VS verklaren. [/B]

Ut zou toch niet hé? Hij is er gek genoeg voor.