Hagee

I often get a weird feeling when people talk about John Hagee. The exception is Rebecca Lesses over at Mystical Politics. Or rapper, Y-Love. But when someone like Sunny Hundal does it, it can bug me.

I don't mean to pick on Hundal, but I'm partly more aware of what he says because I listen more to and appreciate his work more than a lot of other people. His article is far less troubling than it could have been, and is based particularly on a talk2action post that I appreciate wholeheartedly. But I do think what I say is relevant to his article. He doesn't have the same record talk2action has.

Hagee is illiberal in a million ways, all deserving of criticism. He's Islamophobic and homophobic. He's perversely anti-Catholic. He expresses a Christian worldview that's fundamentally intolerant. He blamed Hurricane Katrina on the immorality of the people of New Orleans. It's no surprise now that he blames the Holocaust, in part, on the Jews. So do the fundamentalist Jewish (and anti-Zionist) group Natura Kartei (known for participating in Iran's Holocaust Denial festival). It's a consequence of a fundamentalism that deals simplistically with the matter of a benevolent G-d allowing bad things to happen to good people. Right-wing fundamentalists like Hagee and NK, simply refuse to accept that these were good people in an essential way.

Hagee is more powerful and important in this world than NK, so it makes sense to pick on him. And when Barack Obama's pastor, Jeremiah Wright, was attacked, it makes sense to point to Hagee, whose endorsement John McCain had sought out. Hagee should be attacked. And McCain should suffer politically for his association.

But why do gentiles pick, of all Hagee's sins, his antisemitism to highlight? Sometimes it goes further than merely highlighting his antisemitism, so that Hagee is used as a weapon against Jews. I think there's a hidden assumption about the role of Jews in politics -that antisemitic theme of Jewish power- that needs to be unpacked. In any case, it places Jews at the center of politics, promoting such a view of Jewish power.

Though I think relatively few Jews actually like Hagee, some do because of his hawkish views on Israel. His beliefs about Israel stem some both from honest repentance for Christian antisemitism and from a view of Jews as pawns in a Christian apocalyptic story. Usually, only the apocalyptic side is mentioned. In a hostile world, Jews often feel the need to seek protection from a less immediate threat, and some find Hagee to be less immediately threatening than some of the folks who hate Hagee. Hagee offers at least the promise of protection tinged with a patronizing, antisemitic fantasy that's difficult to take seriously. Many of those who attack him have a fantasy of dismantling Israel that's difficult not to take seriously.

It doesn't suggest to me that I've an ally in the fight against antisemitism when gentiles attack Hagee's antisemitism. It makes me feel used, for someone else's political agenda. Like antisemitism is worth fighting just because it's a weapon against the right (a right identified with Jews). At a time when Jews are feeling particularly abandoned by the Left, it's especially hurtful. It's an asterisk at the end of "We care about antisemitism, too" that belies the statement.