Christians United For Israel: The Texas Connection

Hagee went to the world’s only Jewish state in 1978 “as a tourist and came home a Zionist.” Since then he has been preaching the absolute importance of Israel, and the absolute duty of all Christians to help preserve the Israeli peoples’ right to that land. Just like the tens of millions of fundamentalist Christians across America, Hagee and his followers believe that Jewish people will go to Heaven automatically because of the covenant between Abraham and God expressed in the Old Testament, whereas Gentiles of all ethnicities (everyone else) must convert to Christianity or be in big trouble when the Apocalypse comes. Hagee has asserted publicly on countless occasions that Israel should not give up a single acre of its land to the Palestinians, or to anyone else, for the sake of peace in the region.

Religious beliefs aside, one thing is certain: Hagee has been very busy lately. In February, Hagee – pastor of the 20,000-member Cornerstone Church in San Antonio and the head of the multimillion dollar evangelical enterprise Global Evangelical Television which is broadcast to over 92 million homes worldwide – brought together 400 Christian evangelical leaders, representing as many as 40 million Christians, for an invitation-only “Summit on Israel” in Washington, D.C. The result was the launching of the new pro-Israeli lobbying group, CUFI. The organization’s self-proclaimed purpose is “to provide a national association through which every pro-Israel church, Para-church organization, ministry or individual in America can speak and act with one voice in support of Israel in matters related to Biblical issues.” CUFI appears to be the first seamless, umbrella-like pro-Israel organization of its size. Its national board consists of Hagee as national chairman, fundamentalist minister Jerry Falwell and Gary Bauer, president of “American Values.”

CUFI is truly a massive, well-oiled machine, and it’s only just been set into motion. CUFI is endowed with an endless stream of cash by donors, and lays claim to a pre-established network with ties to power brokers and church followers in every state of the union. CUFI is the culmination of decades upon decades of work by modern evangelical Christians whose pro-Israel supporters have increased exponentially in number since Israel was officially created in 1948. This is one of the largest networks that the “Christian Right” has created to date in America, and its members are highly motivated and capable.

Drawing on Hagee’s existing evangelical empire – which has been 40 years in the making – as well as on his strong ties to the currently dominant Republican Party and Israeli power brokers like former Israeli prime minister Benjamin Natanyahu, Hagee appears to have finally realized his vision for moving toward “final resolution” of the Israeli conflict. “We need to be able to respond quickly to Washington with our concerns about Israel,” Hagee told Israeli officials in February. “We must join forces to speak as one group and move as one body [in response] to the crisis Israel will be facing in the near future.” At the top of CUFI’s to-do list is the concern over the “mistaken policy of trading parts of the biblical Land of Israel for peace.” In other words, Hagee and his organization see no reason for Israel to negotiate with anyone. If all-out war is necessary, then so be it. Central to this attitude is the idea of Judeo-Christian eschatology, a popular theory within the ranks of fundamentalist American Christians, which holds that a prerequisite for the second coming of Christ is the “defeat of all of Israel’s enemies” and the return of all Jewish people to Israel.

Whether or not the religious beliefs involved in CUFI’s support of Israel are in fact true seems like an irrelevant question. Regardless of their truth, the approach taken here is a self-fulfilling prophecy in which conflict in the Middle East is being systematically funded and encouraged on an increasingly unprecedented scale. It’s important to ask the big questions here about American involvement in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: How much sway do organizations like CUFI have in the Middle East? Are they behind the policy wheel, or playing the role of backseat driver? How much credit do they have with the White House?

Who’s flying this plane?