[NYTr] Fundie US Christian Zionists Gain Israel's Inner Sanctum

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

IPS - Jan 3, 2008
http://www.ipsnews.net/print.asp?idnews=40670

Christian Zionists Gain Israel's Inner Sanctum

by Bill Berkowitz

OAKLAND, California, Jan 3 (IPS) - After raising more than two hundred
million dollars for various projects in Israel, Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein
and the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (IFCJ), the
organisation he founded and is president of, has hit pay-dirt. In late
December, the Jewish Agency for Israel, which helped found the State of
Israel, announced that the IFCJ "will be declared a funding partner of
the Jewish Agency... [and] Eckstein will ... receive new voting powers
that will include spots on the committees that oversee the agency's
budget and that meet with the prime minister and his Cabinet," the
Jewish Daily Forward reported.

The announcement indicates a major shift in agency policy. Nearly 10
years ago, the head of the Jewish Agency "refused to be photographed
taking a check" from Eckstein. "Now, it has publicly, and apparently
proudly, acknowledged that the IFCJ would be donating 45 million
dollars to the agency over the next three years, almost all of it
raised from evangelical Christians in North America," according to The
Forward.

Eckstein told the news service JTA that "This elevates" the fellowship
and "thereby Christians around the world to strategic partner with the
worldwide agency..."

"Appointing Eckstein on the basis of how much money he can bring raises
wider questions about who should be making policy for the agency --
which is supposed to be the bridge between Diaspora Jewry and Israel,
not simply a philanthropy -- and how the Jewish community is
represented," Gershom Gorenberg told IPS.

Gorenberg, the author of "The End of Days: Fundamentalism and the
Struggle for the Temple Mount" and "The Accidental Empire", pointed out
that "If money is the sole criterion, if this is simply a philanthropy,
then there is no reason for the institutionalised relationship with the
government."

"The Jewish Agency is essentially saying that pro-Israel Christians are
joining with the Jewish community worldwide in helping aliyah [Jewish
immigration to Israel] and in strengthening the security and welfare of
the State of Israel. That has never happened before," Eckstein added.

The Forward reported that the agreement, which is pending approval by
the agency's board, states that the IFCJ will donate 15 million dollars
a year to its "core budget for immigration and resettlement,
historically IFCJ priorities".

The donation is nearly double last year's 8 million dollars. The IFCJ
will also be designated a "funding partner" of the Jewish Agency, a
status previously shared only by United Jewish Communities, the
umbrella organisation for U.S. federations, and Keren Hayesod, which
represents international federations.

"I think we accept, with reservations, the political involvement of the
evangelical community on behalf of Israel," said Jewish Agency board
member Richard Wexler, chairman of the United Israel Appeal. "It would
be rather cynical, having accepted the political help, to reject the
financial assistance which has become more and more vital given the
reduction in allocations and financial distributions from the
federation system in America."

Over the years, Eckstein has raised more than 250 million dollars, much
of it from conservative Christian evangelicals, for his organisation's
various projects in Israel. He is often credited as being one of the
first Jewish religious leaders to advocate building relationships with
conservative Christian evangelicals.

In late February of 2002, Eckstein and Ralph Reed, the former executive
director of Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition and the head of Century
Strategies, a Republican Party-oriented political consultancy, founded
Stand for Israel. According to its website, Stand for Israel, which
Eckstein chairs, "aims to engage people both spiritually and
politically on behalf of Israel and the Jewish people, by encouraging
them to 'pray for the peace of Jerusalem' and providing them with the
facts they need to advocate for the Jewish state and fight anti-Israel
bias in media."

Earlier this year, at a conference at the Centre for Jewish Studies at
Queens College in New York City on the state of world Jewry titled "Is
it 1938 again?" Eckstein, in answering the question in the affirmative,
called for a strategic alliance with evangelical Christians, because
they are "our best friends and closest allies".

"He brushed off concerns about their supposed ulterior motives --
converting Jews and advancing Armageddon -- as a 'figment of, if I can
say it, this liberal, Jewish and journalistic imagination,'" the
Florida Jewish News reported.

Eckstein's organisation "represents a community whose interest in
Israel is based on their own theology," said Gorenberg, who is also a
senior correspondent for The American Prospect. "However much they
proclaim love of Israel and Jews, their priorities are not based on
Israeli or Jewish evaluations of what's in Israel's interests. They may
oppose a two-state solution, for instance, because it doesn't fit their
theology -- which is different from right-wing Jews who believe that
such a solution is dangerous to Israel's future. I disagree with the
right-wing Jews as well, but it is a different type of disagreement."

In addition to raising great sums of money for Israel and devoting
two-plus decades to building alliances with Christian Zionists,
Eckstein has become an outspoken critic of Iran and its president,
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

In a late-November piece for The Jewish Week -- written prior to the
CIA's National Intelligence Estimate that maintained that Iran had
halted its nuclear weapons programme in 2003, and is unlikely to
produce enough weapons-grade uranium for a bomb until at least 2010 --
Eckstein argued that dealing with the "threat of Iran" is one of
Israel's greatest "challenges".

"There are signs that the world is beginning to understand the
necessity of doing something about Iran's reckless pursuit of nuclear
technology," Eckstein wrote. "In the U.S., Americans appear to be
leaning toward decisive action that goes beyond toothless United
Nations resolutions and sanctions."

Eckstein compared the plight of the 25,000 member Jewish community in
Iran to "the state of Jews in Nazi Germany." "While the historical
circumstances may be different, the parallels are obvious: ... Adolph
Hitler publicly identified Jews as uniquely evil and placed upon them
primary responsibility for the ills affecting German society at the
time."

On Dec. 25, 40 Jewish immigrants landed in Israel, making it the
largest-ever single group of Iranian immigrants brought by the Jewish
Agency. The agency has declared its intention to do whatever it can to
bring as many Iranian Jews to Israel as possible.

"It feels like we're losing control," said Rabbi Haim Dov Beliak, a
co-founder of the Website "Jews on First," which monitors the religious
right and Christian Zionist groups in the United States. "Those who
will be in charge of the Zionist enterprise will not be Jews, but the
senior partners with the most money."

While Eckstein's role in the Jewish Agency raises serious questions,
Gershom Gorenberg pointed out that the "ad hoc relation that sometimes
exists between Israel and conservative Evangelicals … is parallel to
the ad hoc coalitions sometimes created by circumstance between
feminists and fundamentalists on issues such as prostitution or
pornography. They may jointly support a particular measure, but there
is no real community of interests, no coalition."

[Bill Berkowitz is a longtime observer of the conservative movement.
His column "Conservative Watch" documents the strategies, players,
institutions, victories and defeats of the U.S. Right.]

(END/2008)