07/30/07 – Max Blumenthal – The Scott Horton Show

All right, my friends, welcome back to Anti-War Radio.
I'm your host, Scott Horton, and introducing our guest today, Max Blumenthal from The Nation and maxbloomenthal.com, he also writes at the Huffington Post.
Welcome to the show, Max.
Yeah, good to be here.
So, I was literally astounded and flabbergasted last week when I looked at the Anti-War blog and ran the video of your trip to the Christians United for Israel tour, the unauthorized tour, I guess it was, that you took there.
Pretty disturbing and yet hilarious at the same time, I must say.
Oh, thanks, I'm glad you found some humor in it.
Yeah, well, it's some pretty crazy stuff.
In fact, if it's all right with you, I'd like to play a couple of clips here for the good people who haven't yet had a chance to see it.
It's of course at the Huffington Post, and you can also find it on the blog at antiwar.com.
This little clip is your meeting with Tom DeLay.
So we're here with Representative Tom DeLay, the one and only former representative, the hammer.
Can I call you the hammer?
Sure.
So what brings you to Christians United for Israel?
Well, I was in on the ground floor.
I have worked with John and Diana Hagee for many, many years on many different projects.
And how much of an inspiration is the second coming in your support for Israel?
Obviously, it's what I live for.
Really?
I hope it comes tomorrow.
Really?
Absolutely.
Wow.
And obviously, we have to be connected to Israel in order to enjoy the second coming of Christ.
The deny?
And now that's basically the bottom line here, right, is this certain brand of evangelical Christian who thinks that America's alliance with Israel must be sustained no matter what, in order to get Jesus to come back and take them all up to heaven in their bodies or something like that.
Is that about it?
Well, yeah.
I mean, that's the overall scheme of things.
But I mean, you have a PR strategy concocted by Christians United for Israel and its founder, Pastor John Hagee, this corrupt megachurch leader in San Antonio, Texas, which is completely disingenuous and designed to distract from the real agenda.
So they say that they simply support Israel because of what it says in Genesis, that, you know, he who blesses Israel will be blessed, he who curses Israel will be cursed.
And it's really about Ezekiel, chapters 38 and 39, the Battle of Gog and Magog, the Battle of Armageddon, which is the battle between the believers, in their mind, anyone who's a born-again Christian, and then the non-believers, or what one guy referred to me as the anti-Christians, which is everybody else, including and especially the Jews.
So in the end, the Jews are going to have to either convert to Christ, which people were very openly told me at this conference, or they're going to die and suffer the eternal torture of damnation, along with every other religion, along with atheists, and along with even mainline Christians who aren't born-again evangelicals.
Meanwhile, Pastor Hagy is running around the conference telling reporters, our agenda has nothing to do with end-times theology.
It has nothing to do with eschatology, and I've got two little PR operatives hounding me the whole time, one of whom is the former assistant communications director for AIPAC, the major Israel lobby group, trying to prevent me from asking members of Christians United about the end-times, and actually interrupting interviews, so I can't ask about end-times because it's so embarrassing for them to have thousands of members of this supposedly pro-Israel organization who openly advocate a second Holocaust of the Jews.
So that's what this is about.
I consider Christians United for Israel to be an anti-Semitic hate group, which is also Islamophobic, and is anti-democratic and dangerous for the situation in the Middle East.
And what I was also able to show on my video is how influential this group is.
I mean, Joseph Lieberman came and gave them a talk, and compared Pastor Hagy to Moses on a clip maybe you could play.
John McCain spoke at an off-the-record briefing.
Roy Blunt, the minority leader of the House, came and endorsed Christians United for Israel's agenda.
Rick Santorum was in attendance, the former ambassador of Israel to the U.S., Dorie Gold was in attendance.
Last year, Ken Melman spoke there, and Daniel Aiolone, the current ambassador, spoke there.
So they're very connected, and they even have connections in the White House.
Ken Melman, that's the head of the Republican Party, right?
Well, that was the former head of the Republican National Committee, and now he's sort of working behind the scenes from his closet.
Now, when you say that it's dishonest, that they quote one part of Genesis that says God wants everybody to be nice to Israel, but what they're really talking about is this other part where Jesus comes back and kills everybody but the true believers and such.
There's kind of another layer to that which you expose in your video, which to me really brings up the question of whether Minister John Hagee, I don't mean his followers here, but brings up the question of whether John Hagee believes any of this at all.
You talk about his giant Greek mansion and his ranch and his nice cars, and it makes me wonder whether, from his point of view, this whole thing is just completely cynical.
It's a good job for him, like Robert Tilton or somebody like that.
Yeah, that's a good question.
I don't know what he believes, but he's definitely struck a nerve with the Evangelical community.
He's condemned by a lot of other Evangelical theologians and pastors and laypeople for his congregation's fetishization of Judaism, which is considered sort of un-Christian by a lot of people.
I saw dozens of guys walking around at this summit that Hagee convened with yarmulkes on, women wearing tallis.
Women don't wear tallis in Judaism, that's the sort of prayer cloth.
They were blowing shofars, like people blow horns at baseball games, dancing to klezmer music.
It was a disgusting display to me as a Jew.
That's interesting, the fetishization of it, that's a good term for it.
You even show a clip in your video of an American soldier coming up and saluting a guy in full religious rabbi garb and that kind of thing, right?
That's a little bit different.
That plays into Israel's post-9-11 PR strategy, which is cynically claimed that Israel's battle against the Palestinians is the same as the U.S.'s war on terror, so they had an actor in a U.S. Army uniform appear on stage with an Israeli soldier who's on his knees praying with tallis and a yarmulke on, and they both get up and salute each other and then turn to the crowd and everyone goes wild.
But that at least was an actor, though, not a real American soldier.
I don't know if they're soldiers or not, if they were soldiers, this raises questions because the military has historically embraced the separation of church and state.
This kind of display is just openly religious, hence the increasing evangelical undertone in the military.
I actually have received calls from members of the military and former military lawyers asking me, were these actors or were these real soldiers, because this is really disturbing from a legal perspective.
But about Hagee, he has these constant nights to honor Israel and they're enormous breadwinners for him.
It's a golden cow for him to have all these people come in who love the fetishization of jewelry, and then he tells them, as I show in my video, to open up their pocketbooks even after they've paid like $250, $300 just to get in the door.
And the Israeli right loves it too, he spends a lot of money over there, and that allows him to cultivate influence internationally.
If Hagee really cared about these people, he could at least recommend to them that they just donate directly to the IDF, they can at least write that off on their taxes.
Exactly.
Exactly.
Hey, let's stop here for a second and play a clip of some of the interviews that you got with people walking around this Christians United for Israel conference, and this was on July 16th, is that right?
It's from July 16th to July 18th.
Okay.
Let's play a couple of clips here.
The denials by Pastor Hagee and his minions of an ulterior end times agenda were directly contradicted by members of their own organization.
Basically I believe that you have to embrace Israel as part of the second coming.
But when the battle of Armageddon is over, and they come out of hiding, and they see him, and he tells them who he is, and they say, who is this?
The Jews will accept Christ.
The Jews accept Christ as a nation then, and they are restored.
The Jews are God's chosen people, but they will, they have to be witnessed too just like anybody else.
Yeah.
There's only one way to heaven, and that's in John 14.6.
What's going to happen to the non-believer?
Well, I think it's pretty clear.
They're not going to be in heaven.
So the other place is not too pleasant.
And you're Jewish as well?
That's right.
And do you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ?
Well, I'm Jewish.
So are you going to pray for me afterwards?
Certainly will.
Actually, we've been praying for the whole Jewish race for a while.
Really, you've been praying for the whole Jewish race?
We're praying that you all will see the Messiah, because we believe that Jesus is the Messiah, and you guys haven't really come to that recognition yet, but we believe that you will.
That's the battle of Armageddon.
It's the believers against the non-believers.
It's the Christians against the anti-Christians.
Are you looking forward to Armageddon?
I definitely am.
So you're looking forward to Armageddon.
Looking forward to Armageddon and looking forward to the cleansing of the earth.
Are you guys looking forward to the rapture?
Amen.
Amen.
I got a bag packed.
Can I get your car when it happens?
You can have everything I own when it happens.
When we disappear, you better start to worry, because if you have seen the Left Behind series, it's scary.
Really?
Yes.
The one with Kirk Cameron, right?
From Growing Pains?
I don't even remember.
But another reason why we support Israel, we have a common enemy.
Who's that?
The Muslim.
The Quran is a false, it's absolutely not the word of God.
I was a member of the mainline church, and I'm no different than a Muslim.
They're fighting what is behind the Muslim people, which is Satan, because Satan is the one who's actually trying to destroy the Jewish race, because that way he would destroy God's plan.
What will happen is, Israel and the Western world, in order to save our type of civilization, have got to fight the Muslim, and if we don't take out Iran one way or another, if we move out of Iraq, the Muslims are going to take over and they're going to follow us here.
All right, well, there's a few things to talk about now.
Max, I've got to tell you, I'm not much of a religious guy at all, but I know enough to know that the basic starting premise of all of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam is that there is one God, and God is good, and the devil is nothing compared to God.
He could never disrupt God's plan.
How could it possibly be that these people entertain the blasphemy that the United States Congress must protect God from the devil?
This is insanity, even according to their own religion.
Yes, it is insanity, and actually, I wasn't able to show it because it wasn't directly relevant, but Tom DeLay had told me that the charges against him for money laundering were cooked up by Satan, and that Satan is behind the left.
Well, if he's talking about my district attorney, Ronnie Earle, he may be right about that, but that's a different story.
Well, uh...
That was a joke, sorry.
I don't know your local politics, but it is blasphemous, it's a political religion, it's very similar to, it's a millenarian cult, which is not any different from the cult that planned a subway attack in Tokyo, or Scientology, or any of these other cults that manipulate people through end times theology to get them to do the bidding of their leaders, and these leaders are seeking to cultivate political influence, so they have altered the text, the traditional Christian text.
Not only that, they've extrapolated things that aren't there.
The battle of Armageddon, their extrapolation, their interpretation of it, it just doesn't hold up to the light, it's ridiculous, the idea that Russia is going to lead Arab nations against Israel, along with Ethiopia, and 200 million Chinese troops, and then they're all going to be eviscerated in a ball of flames in the air, and where does this come from?
Where is this in the Bible?
It's absolute ridiculous interpretation by corrupt preachers like Pastor Hagee and Pat Robertson who interprets these texts on the Christian Broadcasting Network, and there's just no theological basis for it, so it's really, what it is, is a cult, a political cult.
Yeah, a political cult, that's a very good term for it, and the corruption of language revealed in some of the clips that you have there, and again, anybody can go to TheHuffingtonPost.com and watch this video.
But I don't know if it's one guy or two or three different guys who say, the Muslim, you know, this massive...
Yeah, the Muslim, everything is the Jew or the Jewish race.
Right, yeah, everything is singularized, you know, there is no billion people on earth who are all individuals with natural rights and their own consciences and their own beliefs, but no, there's the Muslim, and he is backed by Satan, and so we have to stop him.
And yeah, again, back to, as you say, this is not just, you know, the Branch Davidians in their own little chapel telling each other this stuff.
This is a massive political movement here that has an enormous amount of sway inside the Republican Party particularly.
Well, yeah, that's pretty insightful.
These people I interviewed have a Manichaean worldview, which is not unlike the worldview of our president.
And they see things sort of monolithically, so there's the Muslim, Muslims all must think alike according to these people.
And they, the Jewish race is a race, I mean, I don't think they intentionally meant to invoke Nazi language, but it's a way of looking at Jews that sort of outmoded and it's rooted in antisemitism.
I mean, the idea that Jews aren't this richly variegated international community that has different beliefs, you know, lays the foundation for antisemitic conspiracy thinking.
And the way they think about themselves, they all think uniformly.
They attended this meeting in Washington, this summit, 4,000 people coming together for a common goal.
It's sort of anti-democratic, the idea that, and it was difficult for me to find anyone who disagreed with, you know, the idea that you have to support Israel as a basis for the second coming.
So some people have tried to criticize me, you know, right-wing evangelicals have tried to criticize me and say, you know, well, you only interviewed 20 people out of 4,000 people.
Well, I just, there wasn't anyone there who didn't agree with this.
And, you know, if there isn't any better evidence than Tom DeLay, I don't know, you know, what else I could have done, I mean, he's one of the astounding members of this group.
Yeah, well, and then they threw you out too.
So that's only their own fault if you didn't get a representative sample.
It's shown at the end of the movie.
And I know you have to go.
So I want to ask you really quick, I think what's a pretty fair question.
And I guess I already know the answer is it goes both ways here, but who is zooming who?
I mean, it would be very easy to see, you know, the Likud party in Israel as, you know, joining forces with this guy, Hagee, and all these people are their willing dupes.
And so on one hand, it's very cynical that these people ultimately want Jesus to come back and kill all the Jews.
They don't really care about the Jews at all, even as they say they support Israel so much.
But on the other hand, I'm reminded of the Jim Loeb, actually, who's followed the neoconservatives for, you know, 30-something years, I guess, talked about how Irving Kristol was asked in the early 1980s after he bought Jerry Falwell a giant airplane to go flying around the country and arranged for it to be bought for him or something.
And someone asked him, is it really a good idea to be joining forces with Jerry Falwell like this?
And Irving Kristol answered, well, it's their theology, it's our Israel.
And so this really is a kind of cynical exploitation both ways, isn't it?
Right.
That's the big question or the big issue, and this is the relationship of mutual exploitation.
But in the end, while I do see neoconservative, you know, American elements, the Israel lobby, and an element of the Israeli government getting the best out of this relationship because they found a huge base of support in the heartland that they didn't previously have, in the end it's going to hurt them and possibly create or compound the existential crisis they face.
Because if Israel can't forge a permanent peace with the Palestinians, Israel will either cease to exist or have to become officially an apartheid state because of demographic problems that they face.
And so basically what they're doing is self-destructive.
And you know, whatever you think about Israel, if you care about Israel, and I personally am no Zionist, but if you care about Israel, you should be concerned about this relationship because it's just inherently self-destructive and deeply cynical.
Agreed.
And I know that you have to go, so let me just thank you very much for your time today.
Max Blumenthal, everybody, you can read what he writes at The Nation and at huffingtonpost.com.
His blog is maxbloomenthal.com.
Thanks again.
Thanks for having me.