John Hagee’s turn as a key speaker caused much liberal consternation – he is, after all, a notorious anti‑Semite. Daniel Lazare comments on the aftermath of the huge pro-Israel demonstration in Washington DC

By Daniel Lazare, Weekly Worker

Zionism says it is laying waste to Gaza and killing thousands of Palestinians in order to save Jews from the scourge of anti-Semitism in the form of Hamas. But at the same time it is delivering Jews over to another scourge of anti-Semitism in the shape of Christian fundamentalism.

Zionist hypocrisy has never been in sharper display than in Washington DC on November 14, when as many as 200,000 people took part in a ‘Rally for Israel’ on the National Mall.¹ Organised by a coalition of synagogues and community groups known as the Jewish Federations of North America, the demonstration billed itself as a march on behalf of the Jewish state, a manifestation of support for the 240 hostages taken by Hamas, and a protest against a rising tide of anti-Semitism. Yet one of the featured speakers was a Texas televangelist named John Hagee, whose own anti-Semitism is so pronounced that he was once regarded as beyond the pale of respectable American politics.

Like most evangelicals, Hagee preaches a ‘rapture’ theology in which an ingathering of the Jews is supposedly the necessary precondition for the second coming of Christ. God needs Jews to return to the promised land so that the end-times can go into motion, and that is therefore what they must do. Although most evangelists contend that Jews will have to convert in order not to be cast into hell on judgment day, Hagee argues that conversion is unnecessary, because “Jews already have a covenant with god … that has never been replaced by Christianity”.

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