Beck's Caesaria rally impresses
Perhaps the biggest thing that can be said about Glenn Beck's Caesaria rally on Sunday night is that even Haaretz was impressed.
But Haaretz can wait. Let's go to the videotape. Then we can go to Haaretz.
[Embedded video -Glenn Beck's Caesarea Address]
It all seemed carefully scripted, even down to the screens with lyrics of the Hebrew songs transcribed in English. The determination to stand by Israel and the devotion to the Jewish State was palpable, and oft declared.Like Woodstock and Glastonbury, the headline name came last, and unlike Riskin et al, Pastor John Hagee got a standing ovation the moment he strode onto the stage. The most vehement of the speakers, he drew an analogy with JFK and his "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech, when he announced "Ani Yisraeli" (I am an Israeli ). He then coaxed the crowd into repeating his mantra: "I am an Israeli!" they chanted over and over.And the evening closed with words of wisdom from the host: "We bring truth, we bring peace, we bring support, we bring comfort," Beck said of his reason for bringing his roadshow to Israel as he closed off the evening. "Let the Jewish people know, no matter what our governments may say, we are not our governments, we stand with you."But ultimately, this was just a warm-up for Wednesday night, when around 2,000 people will join Glenn in a sold-out event at the Davidson Center in Jerusalem.Wednesday night's event will "issue a challenge to all citizens of the world to stand with and declare their support for Israel," the handout distributed at the beginning of the evening stated.
Yisrael Medad, who was there, adds:
I would approximate that there were about 300 kippah-wearing Jews there or more. I was with Sondra Baras of CFOICand her husband, Shosh Shiloh of Kedumim, David Bedin and his wife from Efrat, Stuart Palmer and his wife from Haifa's ICAN & CoHaV, David HaIvri and his wife of the Samaria Liason Office, Helen Frieedman of AFSI, Martin Sherman and many other including Zalmi from the UK and Toby Willig.There was controversy when some Rabbis had demanded that residents from the yishuivim abstain from the event. One of the Rabbis who blessed the event, Aryeh A. Leifert, it seems, was Facebook threatened. Beck has had trouble from American Rabbis before.But there was nothing to be uncomforatble about and afterwards, I made a point of walking around and asking.This has the potential of marking the real beginning of the turnabout of Israel's political and diplomatic isolation on matters of morality in world affairs.
The call for support of Israel comes at a critical moment. In addition to the terrorist attack on the Egypt-Israel border and a foiled kidnapping attempt in Bersheva, more than 100 rockets struck Israel over the weekend. Three longer-range Grad missiles were shot down by Israel’s Iron Dome system which passed its first series test in combat conditions.At an emergency meeting of the Israeli parliament’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, committee, Shaul Mofaz, a retired general and the number-two leader of the center-left Kadima Party, called for Israel to hit Hamas hard in order to “topple their infrastructures and create a system of ties with Egypt in order to prevent terrorism coming from its border.”The international crisis is overshadowing the social protest movement in Israel, another reminder that national defense spending inevitably trumps housing and other needs, a matter of guns over kosher butter. The build-up of forces and installations on Israel’s southern front is going to be costly.Under ordinary conditions, Israel would be gearing up for at least a heavy round of airstrikes against Hamas military installations, rocket factories, and the like. But there’s a new factor in the equation and Hamas knows it.Within Egypt the old anti-Israel hysteria is building again. An Egyptian who took down the flag from Israel’s embassy—located in an ordinary apartment building—has become a national hero. Speaking live on al-Jazira television, he said, “Millions of Arabs want to pull that flag….This is a message to Israel that we can send millions of martyrs for the good of our country,” he said. A mob burned the flag, chanting, “The path to Jerusalem leads through Cairo.”One “liberal” activist remarked, “After the revolution people don’t believe there should be concessions to an apartheid regime and what he did was take action in reshaping the official stance.”...The problem is that despite so many examples in the past—from the Iranian revolution’s hostage-taking to suicide bombers and September 11—many in the West still don’t believe that Middle East revolutionaries—Islamist, leftist, and radical nationalist—believe it when they say this kind of thing. They are not merely interested in material gain, higher living standards, and democracy. And the brave minority that doesn’t go along with this world view gets trampled.
Indeed.
By the way, note what name was not even mentioned by Beck.
... Rabbi Shlomo Riskin spoke at length about courage and love. “I am overwhelmed by the presence this evening of so many of our Christian brothers and sisters united with us by their great love for Israel,” Riskin said as he opened his speech.
Rabbi Riskin discussed many things, among them the difference between courage and strength. Riskin said that while “strength” revels in power, “courage” reaches out in love. “Indeed, Courage begets and demands love; the very Hebrew word for love Ahava, derives from the root verb HAV which means to give,” Riskin explained.
“To give to and to love someone who is like yourself is only an extension of loving yourself; that is merely the self aggrandizement of strength not the self sacrifice of courage. To love someone who is different from you, who disagrees with you, who may be weaker or stronger than you, smarter or stupider than you, of a different color or different ethnic background from you – that requires courage, the courage to applaud and love difference, otherness,” he continued.
Riskin was happy to see so many Christians standing with the Jewish people and with Israel at the Restoring Courage event.
“Despite the fact that we are different, that we are Jews and not Christians that we accept Jesus as a Jewish teacher but not as a messiah or a god. You have the courage to stand together with us we feel your heart, we respond to your love, especially in our time of need even today as rockets and missiles and grads are falling on the Southern part of Israel. The love relationship between us proves the amazing power of love of God – sent love to all of his children and it is one of the great miracles of our very fateful and glorious times,” Riskin told the audience...
Pastor John Hagee, Caesarea Glenn Beck Restoring Courage
(1 minute clip)
Why Glenn Beck is in Israel
I think Zev Chafets is correct about why Glenn Beck is in Israel, and if he is, no one here needs to worry about it.
Such fervent philo-Semitic rhetoric is rare, even among the United States’ Christian Zionists, a group whose operational alliance with Israel dates at least to the days of my former boss, Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin. Jimmy Carter was in the White House and he had a palpable distaste, even then, for Israel. At the same time, rising evangelical leaders such as Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson were making support for Israel and its policies a pillar of their Christian Republican philosophy. Begin asked his staff how many of these evangelicals there were in the Unites States. The answer was upward of 20 million. And that settled that.American Jewish leaders, virtually all of whom were (and are) liberal Democrats, were (and remain) scandalized. They argued that evangelical Christians believe that Jews don’t go to heaven and that they will die in some end-of the-world scenario. Begin — and every subsequent Israeli prime minister of both the left and the right — preferred to let God sort out eternity. Here on Earth, actions speak louder than words.The Christian right has no obvious political motivation for its Zionism. Republicans are not going to get American Jewish votes or much in the way of contributions. So what makes them love Israel?“Many Christians support Israel for the same reason other Americans do,” I was told by Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, the founder of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews. “They see Israel as a pro-American democracy in a region of anti-American dictatorships. Or they think that after the Holocaust, supporting Israel is the moral thing to do. But the main motivator for evangelicals is the Bible, Genesis 12:3. ‘I will bless those who bless Israel and curse those who curse Israel.’ ” If you believe that literally, standing up for Israel isn’t just a political preference but a divine commandment.The fervor gap is reflected in public opinion polls. Support for Israel is a rare matter of bipartisan agreement in the United States, a fact demonstrated recently when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, during a public spat with the Obama administration, got a wildly enthusiastic reception from both Democrats and Republicans in Congress. A Gallup poll released in late February showed that 63 percent of Americans sympathized more with the Israelis, compared with 17 percent with the Palestinians. But it is also true that Democrats are less enthusiastic than Republicans. That might seem counterintuitive; Jews, after all, are the very heart of the Democratic Party. And, indeed, 57 percent of Democrats prefer Israel to the Palestinians. But 80 percent of Republicans do.Evangelicals express their support not only at the polls, but with their pocketbooks. The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews raises $120 million a year for Jewish philanthropy from more than a million born-again donors. Eckstein estimates that other American evangelical organizations, including Christians United for Israel, send an additional $20 million, much of it to strengthen Jewish settlement of the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Chafets' argument is that Beck has no interest in playing to Israelis. He's not meeting any government officials here (and in fact, when he was last here, he did not meet with the Prime Minister or with any of the other senior ministers). He's interested in becoming the leader of the Christian Evangelical movement. With Pastor Hagee in his 70's and Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson gone or elderly, the position seems to be open. In fact, the biggest question here might be whether the Evangelicals will accept the leadership of a Mormon.
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