I spent last week in Amsterdam, where I participated in the “Return of Ghosts” symposium of the Nexus Institute, a discussion/debate about the resurgence of neo-fascism in Europe and anti-democratic trends in the West. Besides providing a forum for debating European politics, the symposium was [...]]]> The following is cross-posted from Max Blumenthal’s blog.

I spent last week in Amsterdam, where I participated in the “Return of Ghosts” symposium of the Nexus Institute, a discussion/debate about the resurgence of neo-fascism in Europe and anti-democratic trends in the West. Besides providing a forum for debating European politics, the symposium was the occasion for the first public appearance in Europe by Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa since he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature last month. The arrival of Vargas Llosa, one of the world’s foremost intellectuals, resulted in an overflow crowd filled with members of the Dutch media, the country’s political class, and the royal family.

Even with Vargas Llosa in the spotlight, the participants’ attention was focused on Geert Wilders, the leader of the far-right Dutch People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy, which is now the third leading party in the Netherlands. With his gathering influence, Wilders has essentially placed the Dutch coalition government in a stranglehold; the government meets with him every Wednesday to gauge his opinions and ask for his instructions. While Wilders dictates at will to the government, he remains independent of it, comfortably avoiding the consequences of policies he has helped to shape. It is the perfect position for a politician whose agenda is comprised exclusively of xenophobic populism, and typical strategy of the far-right in countries across the continent.

Wilders’ base lies in the mostly Catholic south, where ironically few people have ever encountered a Muslim. He has also generated support in the city of Groeningen, once a citadel of the communists. Seeking to expand his base, Wilders promised to hire scores of “animal cops” to investigate and prosecute the abuse of animals, a clever wedge strategy in the only country I know of that has a party dedicated exclusively to animal rights. Of course, Wilders could care less about our furry friends. His stated goal is to end immigration not just to Holland but to all of Europe; ban the Quran (free speech is only for the “Judeo-Christian” community), and severely limit the rights of Muslim citizens of Europe by, for instance, instituting what he called a “head rag tax” on Muslim women. Wilders’ international allies include the goosestepping neo-Nazis of the English Defense League, the far-right pogromist Pam Geller, the Belgian neo-fascist party Vlaams Belang, and a substantial portion of the US neocon elite. Over the course of just a few years, he has become perhaps the most influential Islamophobe in the world.

But does this make Wilders a fascist? Rob Riemen, the director of the Nexus Institute, thinks so. Riemen has just published a book entitled “De Eeuwige Terugkeer Van Het Fascisme,” or “The Eternal Return of Fascism” (I eagerly await its English translation), dedicated to highlighting the danger of Wilders’ eerily familiar brand of right-wing populism. In the book, Riemen urges readers to compare Wilders’ politics to the early incarnations of European fascism, not to the genocidal terminal stage fascism of late World War II. He calls the parallels between Wilders and the early fascists “one-and-one.” In an economic and civilizational crisis like the kind the Netherlands is facing, Riemen warns that reactionary figures like Wilders can easily seize power while centrist elements stand by politely and passively, refusing to call a spade a spade. Where Wilders’ ascendancy will lead is unknown, but if he is not stopped in his tracks, Riemen is certain the story will not end well. In the week after its publication, Riemen’s book flew off the shelves, selling 5000 copies while generating heated reactions from across the spectrum of debate.

Riemen told me that despite the public enthusiasm for his book, his characterization of Wilders has been attacked as “un-Dutch.” In Dutch culture, as in so many others, open confrontation is avoided at all cost. Political disagreement is welcomed only if it is expressed in a collegial manner, as though nothing more than reputations were at stake. So the Dutch cultural elite generally goes along to get along. The resistance Riemen has met since he called Wilders out seemed to have alarmed and frustrated him. Why was it so difficult for liberal elements in the Netherlands to recognize the clear resonances of fascism in Wilders’ political style? he wondered. And why did they seem more concerned with regulating the terms of debate than with forming a united front against the far-right? Once the symposium opened and I was able to see the Dutch elite in action, I began to understand Riemen’s indignation.

The symposium began with a speech by Vargas Llosa, a complex personality who has allied himself with center-right parties in Spain and elsewhere but whose politics remain fundamentally rooted in cultural liberalism. Vargas Llosa’s differences with leaders of the left, which he used to belong to, exploded over the issue of free trade. He is an ardent neo-liberal and reviles Latin populists like Hugo Chavez and Ollanta Humala who advocate protectionism and industrial nationalization.

Vargas Llosa decorated his speech with literary metaphors and natural imagery to describe the challenges of democracy, particularly in Europe. But the body of the address was devoted to the supposed threat Islamic extremism posed to Western civilization. Vargas Llosa singled out suicide bombing as the most dangerous phenomenon, pointing to the Madrid and London bombings by al-Qaida inspired operatives, while curiously not mentioning suicide attacks by secular groups like the Tamil Tigers and the Kurdish PKK, or the nationalistic suicide terror by Palestinian militants (Vargas Llosa declared in his speech that “Israel deserves to be treated like any other nation,” and has been harshly critical of the state in the past).

During the first panel, which I participated in, Fania Oz-Salzberger, an Israeli professor of history and the daughter of famed author Amos Oz, boasted to crowd of Israel’s “vibrant democracy.” She was enthusiastically seconded by Mitchell Cohen, a former editor of Dissent who has devoted considerable energy to assailing anti-Zionist Jews, writing that “the dominant species of anti-Semitism encourages anti-Zionism.” I found it odd that neither expressed any concern over the almost endless stream of anti-democratic laws passing through the Knesset, or by the general authoritarian, anti-liberal trend in Israeli society. Oz-Salzberger went on to announce to a smattering of applause that “Geert Wilders and politicians like him are not welcomed by Israelis.”

Yet Wilders is one of Israel’s most frequent guests, having visited the country over 40 times in 20 years. In fact, he claims that his views on Islam and Arabs were forged while living on an Israeli moshav. “Nowhere did I have the special feeling of solidarity that I get when I land at Ben Gurion airport,” he once said. Wilders reportedly receives heavy support from Dutch financial backers of Israel, and has met with a range of Israeli officials. His closest allies lie within the extremist settler movement, prompting him to call for the forced transfer of Palestinians to Jordan. Members of the liberal Zionist intelligensia like Oz-Salzberger may not not want Wilders around, but who in Israel is listening to them? Israel’s mainstream leadership echoes Wilders’ crudest talking points on a regular basis, while the Zionist left clings to a dwindling handful of Knesset seats and watches passively — even resentfully — as a rag-tag band of leftist radicals fights for equality for all. Consider a recent statement by former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who is seen as a centrist within the Israeli political spectrum: “The origin of terrorism is within Islam,” Olmert declared this month.

The pro-Israel position of the new breed of European far-rightists has to be recognized as much more than a convenient political tactic. Of course, saying you “stand with Israel,” as Wilders so often does, is an easy way to insulate yourself from charges of anti-Semitism. But the extreme right is also attracted to Israel because the country represents its highest ideals. While some critics see Israel as a racist apartheid state, people like Wilders see Israel as a racist apartheid state — and they like it. They richly enjoy when Israel mows down Arab Muslims by the dozens and tells the world to go to hell; they admire Israel’s settler culture; and most of all, they yearn to live in a land like Israel that privileges its ethnic majority above all others to the point that it systematically humiliates and dispossesses the swarthy racial outclass. The endgame of the far-right is to make Europe less tolerant and more Israeli.

After the Italian philosopher Paolo Flores D’Arcais proclaimed that Italy was no longer a democratic country, citing PM Silvio Berlusconi’s control over 90 percent of the country’s media, the government’s deep seated corruption and the Prime Minister’s repeated attempts to impose onerous restrictions on journalistic freedom, Riemen asked me if the United States was a democracy given the the rapidly rising influence of corporations over the media and elections. After two panelists had described Israel as a vibrant democracy while another labeled Italy a non-democratic quasi-dictatorship, I decided that our definition of democracy was subjective at best. So I sidestepped the question and outlined a few of the greatest blows to American democracy, from the elimination of theFairness Doctrine to the Telecommunications Deregulation Act to the Citizens United SCOTUS decision. Later in the evening, D’Arcais would remark to me with amazement that he never knew American media was ever regulated in the first place.

During the 20 minutes or so when students of Tilburg University were able to question the panel, one student asked whether suicide terror was a uniquely Islamic phenomenon, apparently referring to Vargas Llosa’s address. I responded that it of course was not, citing the example of secular groups like the Tamil Tigers which brought the tactic into practice. I recommended the audience review the research of Robert Pape, the University of Chicago political scientist who demonstrated a clear connection between the American and Israeli occupation of Middle Eastern countries and the motivations of suicide bombers. Oz-Salzberger jumped in, proclaiming that occupation has little or nothing to do with the motives of suicide bombers. She did not marshal any evidence to support her point, possibly because our time was so limited. It would have been hard to do so, however, without supporting the fundamental argument of Wilders about Islam’s inherent violence — or the even sillier theory by the Israeli filmmaker/professional hasbarist Pierre Rehov that suicide bombers are motivated by sexual repression.

Next, the Dutch panel took the stage. The main attraction was Frits Bolkstein, the longtime leader of the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy who employed Wilders as his parliamentary aide, providing him a stepping stone to his political career. He was a silver haired curmudgeon from aristocratic stock who reminded me instantly of the “paleocon” characters I’ve met while covering white nationalist conventions like American Renaissance.

“Everything went wrong when the government became impressed in the 90’s with the idea of the ‘good stranger,’” Bolkstein declared. “If the previous governments had tightened their immigration laws, there would not have been a Mr. Wilders.”

The only member of the panel to mount a significant challenge to Bolkstein was the Tilburg University professor Paul Frissen, who argued that the rule of law and basic standards of democracy protects “the right to be fundamentalist.” The other panelists either gave Bolkstein’s xenophobia a pass or attempted to surpass his resentment of Muslims. After Bolkstein lightly criticized Wilders’ call for banning the Quran, remarking that “what he says about Islam is nonsense” because it contradicts the freedom of religion, AB Klink, a former Dutch senator and ex-Minister of Health, chimed in.”It’s not nonsense because Islam is so different in its cultural values than ours,” Klink claimed.

Then, when Bolkstein called for shutting down Islamic schools, Frissen reminded him that state-supported Christian schools in the Dutch Bible belt teach theocratic concepts as well. Meindert Fennema, the political biographer of Wilders, entered the debate to demand that all religious schools be closed. “I’m against all forms of religious teaching!” he proudly exclaimed, sending gales of applause through the audience. “How can you call yourself a liberal?” Frissen asked with a tone of exasperation. Fennema ignored him.

During question time, a young freelance writer from India named Natasha Ginwala asked Bolkstein to answer for the “ghost of neo-colonialism,” which “the African people never voted for.” She mentioned the exploitative deals forced on developing countries by transnational oil companies, possibly alluding to Bolkstein’s role as a manager at Royal Dutch Shell in authoritarian countries like El Salvador, Indonesia, and Honduras during the 1970’s (I’m sure nothing unseemly happened during Bolstein’s tenure in these places). Bolkstein’s responded bluntly, “If these countries try to be self-sufficient it just doesn’t work!”

After the symposium, I talked to Ginwala and a group of her friends, who were mostly immigrant students. They were appalled by the ignorance of the Dutch panelists. “None of them knew the first thing about Islam,” an Arab student remarked. “They couldn’t even pretend to understand what Muslims actually believe.” Ginwala added, “How can Bolkstein tell me my country can’t be self-sufficient? I come from India. It’s one of the most diversified economies on the planet.”

I was not in Amsterdam long enough to do any formal reporting. However, I did notice that all of the immigrants I spoke to were closely and nervously following the rise of the right. At the airport, while waiting to board my flight, I talked to a 20-something security guard named Muhammad who seemed almost as bored as I was. Muhammad had spent his whole life in Amsterdam, but his parents were from Cairo, Egypt. He told me he wanted to take his girlfriend on a trip to New York City and Miami someday. When I brought up the topic of Wilders, he scoffed at his perception of Muslims. “Most of us aren’t even religious,” Muhammad said. “When I hear him talking about Muslims wanting to take over, I just laugh. I’m like, is this guy serious?”

But he did not underestimate Wilders’ appeal. “Everything he does and everything he says, it seems like it’s carefully planned. He obviously knows what he’s doing. And they let him get away with it,” Muhammad remarked. “Look, I’m just a citizen, I’m nobody, but if I say something about Christians or Jews that the government doesn’t like, I’ll be punished. But when Wilders, who is a public official, says all the things he says about Muslims, nothing happens to him. Instead, more and more people are voting for him.”

Max Blumenthal is an independent journalist and a New York Times bestselling author. You can follow his work on his blog or on Twitter @MaxBlumenthal.

As the anti-Goldstone, human rights-bashing Lawfare Project’s opening event on March 11 wrapped up, I asked its chairman, Columbia University Law School Dean David Schizer, for an interview. Schizer, who had just attacked the Goldstone Report from the podium, pointedly refused to speak to [...]]]> (LobeLog contributors have written about the Lawfare Project here.)

As the anti-Goldstone, human rights-bashing Lawfare Project’s opening event on March 11 wrapped up, I asked its chairman, Columbia University Law School Dean David Schizer, for an interview. Schizer, who had just attacked the Goldstone Report from the podium, pointedly refused to speak to me and looked for the exit. As Schizer was leaving, he was politely confronted by Columbia Law School Professor Katherine Franke, who heads the school’s Program in Gender and Sexuality Law.

“Why didn’t you invite any speakers with an alternative perspective?” Franke asked Schizer.

His reply was curt. “We invited one or two but they couldn’t make it,” Schizer claimed before hurrying away.

Schizer was understandably nervous about his exposure. After all, he had just presided over a day-long conference during which Israeli human rights workers were labeled as traitors while Judge Richard Goldstone and human rights groups were compared to “anti-Semitic street gangs.” After several speakers had harshly condemned legal efforts against the construction of Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, Schizer appeared beside them to lend his credibility to their views.

Held in the ornate NY County Lawyers Association meeting room in downtown Manhattan, where the walls were adorned with portraits of the pioneers of international jurisprudence, the Lawfare Project’s conference had the look of a non-partisan academic conference. However, the event was organized by a network of American Zionist groups and conservative operatives with apparent encouragement from the Israeli government.

As Scott Horton noticed at Harper’s, the Lawfare Project’s rollout event followed a remarkably similar conference in Jerusalem two weeks earlier. Both conferences followed legislation in the Knesset designed to force NGO’s to disclose their foreign donors so they can be more easily branded as a fifth column and to strangle human rights groups in Israel and occupied Palestine.

The presence of high-level Israeli officials like UN Ambassador Gabriela Shalev at the Lawfare Project conference suggested that the Netanyahu administration was the hidden hand behind the event. If so, the Israeli government has deployed its American Jewish allies to take the fight across the Atlantic to groups like Human Rights Watch and the Center for Constitutional Rights. Both groups were attacked at the event as anti-Israeli and anti-American.

I arrived late in the day but just in time for a panel moderated by Pat Robertson’s longtime legal counsel, Jay Sekulow. Sekulow, a convert from Judaism to evangelical Christianity who has spent his career representing anti-gay and anti-abortion clients, appears to be playing a key role in the Lawfare Project.

Through his American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), Sekulow reaps millions of dollars each year from Christian conservative donors. He uses that money to pay himself upwards of $600,000, provide a lavish lifestyle for his family, and procure the services of the PR firm, 5WPR, which represents other upstanding clients like Girls Gone Wild and the pro-settler Hebron Fund.

5WPR was handling the press list for the Lawfare Project and shuttling its speakers to and from media appearances. 5W Senior Account Executive Maggie Davis told me that through the firm’s relationship with Sekulow, she was arranging media appearances for Brooke Goldstein, founder of the Children’s Rights Institute, which happens to share a domain address with the Lawfare Project. Both websites were registered by the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, which played a direct role in planning the conference. Goldstein is now the lead spokesperson for the Lawfare Project, according to 5W’s Davis.

NGO Monitor legal advisor Anne Herzberg was featured prominently at the conference. During a panel discussion, she accused the European Union of “pouring hundreds of millions into these NGO’s…that are actually in favor of a one-state solution.” Without naming those NGO’s or explaining why accepting foreign money was such a crime, Herzberg boasted of suing human rights groups to force them disclose their donors. She accused Israeli NGO’s like B’tselem of causing “a breach of sovereignty” against Israel by contributing data to the Goldstone Report — an insinuation that Israeli human rights workers were traitors.

An NGO Monitor report was distributed to conference attendees identifying groups supposedly promoting “post-colonial ideology” as “anti-state,” “anti-democracy” and “anti-American.” The report identified NGO Monitor’s top targets: the Palestinian Center for Human Rights and Al-Haq. Al-Haq was singled out because, along with a staffer from the Israeli group B’Tselem, it filed an expert opinion in the case to move a section of the separation wall annexing thousands of acres of farmland from the Palestinian town of Bil’in to a nearby Jewish settlement.

The attack on Al Haq highlights part of NGO’s Monitor’s not-so-hidden agenda: to allow the settler movement to usurp land in the West Bank without limitations. As Didi Remez reported, NGO Monitor has partnered with the Institute for Zionist Strategies, led by Yisrael Harel, who helped to found the Gush Emunim settler movement and lives in the religious nationalist settlement of Ofra. Remez also pointed out that NGO Monitor has made no demand for financial transparency from pro-settler organizations which are also engaged in what it would call “lawfare.”

NGO Monitor has also targeted US-based human rights group. It has gone after Human Rights Watch on the basis of the group’s contribution of reporting to the Goldstone Report and because Goldstone was at one point a HRW board member. The Center for Constitutional Rights was singled out because its founder, Michael Ratner, went on the recent Viva Palestina mission with Code Pink. None of the factual documentation these groups released was challenged by the NGO Monitor report or in Herzberg’s presentation. Instead, the groups and their leadership are being targeted with a scattershot of accusations that recall McCarthyism in its crudest form.

As a consequence of his zeal, NGO Monitor director Gerald Steinberg was hauled into an Israeli court this month and forced to apologize for claiming a Palestinian human rights group “justified violence.” Yossi Alpher, a former advisor to Ehud Barak, has condemned Steinberg’s activities, writing that NGO Monitor “seems dead set on eliminating human rights monitoring of Israel entirely and smearing anyone who supports this vital activity.”

The NGO Monitor report and the speakers at the Lawfare Project event expressed alarm about the effectiveness of the global BDS movement and its success in exposing apartheid practices in Israel and the Occupied Territories. Speaker Richard Heidemann, the Honorary Chairman of B’nai Brith, said that the fight against BDS was essential to the Lawfare Project. “We have to stand up against slander, we have to stand up against boycott,” he proclaimed. “If you were accused of apartheid, wouldn’t you consider taking action?” However, he proposed no specific measures or tactics other than making vehement statements.

Francois-Henri Briard, a conservative French attorney, voiced his outrage that the BDS movement had successfully pressured the French company Veolia to pull out of an Israeli light rail project that would have connected illegal Jewish settlements in the West Bank to Jerusalem. He called the initiative against the rail line “an attack on Israeli sovereignty” even though it specifically targeted the settlement enterprise across the Green Line.

Jeremy Rabkin, an outspoken neoconservative law professor, echoed Herzberg’s smearing of human rights groups as treasonous. “These human rights groups we keep hearing about are not loyal to their country or to democracy, but to some strange world order,” he declared.

Not to be outdone, David Matas, the senior legal counsel to B’nai Brith Canada, maintained that because the International Criminal Court represented the legacy of the Holocaust, it should always side with Israel. He went on to compare the Goldstone Report and efforts to invoke international law to prosecute Israeli officials to “anti-Semitism by gangs in the street.”

Matas’s invective against international law was ironic in light of the fact that his most notable court case called upon international legal bodies to prosecute China for supposedly harvesting the organs of Falun Gong practitioners. In September 2009, Matas hailed a Spanish court (the concept of “forum shopping” in Spanish courts was attacked repeatedly during the conference) for indicting former Chinese President Jiang Zemin and Chinese officials for what he called “genocide and torture.”

Matas has defined genocide as merely stating “the intent to kill” a group of people. What’s more, he has justified prosecuting Jiang by invoking International Criminal Court statutes governing the prosecution of high government officials who did not directly commit crimes against humanity but may have allowed them to occur through specific administrative measures. Couldn’t these statutes also be applied against the Israeli government officials who oversaw the assault on Gaza?

Matas’s invocation of international law to prosecute Chinese officials while attacking it to protect Israeli officials highlighted the underlying cynicism of the Lawfare Project. Indeed, the project has nothing to do with combatting the abuse of international law per se; it is an ideologically-driven effort to intimidate anyone who stands in the way of Israel’s human rights abuses.

According to 5W’s Davis, the Lawfare Project’s opening event was a strategy session designed to “raise awareness.” Though it is still unclear what actions the project will take, the demonization that human rights groups and other democratic elements in Israel have weathered foreshadows the attacks their American allies may soon face.

Independent journalist and filmmaker Max Blumenthal is the New York Times best-selling author of Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement that Shattered the Party and a Nation Institute Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Nation, Salon.com, and Mondoweiss, among other outlets. You can read his blog at maxblumenthal.com, where this post originally appeared.

(Videos recorded by Rachel Tabachnick; more videos coming shortly.)

On the evening after two days of talks between US Special Envoy for the Middle East George Mitchell and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, [...]]]> (LobeLog contributors have written about the anti-New Israel Fund (NIF) campaign here, here and here.)

(Videos recorded by Rachel Tabachnick; more videos coming shortly.)

On the evening after two days of talks between US Special Envoy for the Middle East George Mitchell and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Netanyahu appeared onstage with the far-right Texas-based Pastor John Hagee in Jerusalem.

The occasion was Hagee’s Night To Honor Israel, an event the preacher typically organizes as a forum to tout his ministry’s millions in donations to Israeli organizations and to level bellicose rhetoric against Israel’s perceived enemies.

On this evening, Hagee called Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad “the Hitler of the Middle East” and denounced the Goldstone Report as “character assassination by an unbiased and uninformed committee.”

Netanyahu welcomed the crowd of 1000 American evangelicals to Jerusalem, a city he described as “the undivided, eternal capitol of the Jewish people. Then, he told them, “I salute you! The Jewish people salute you!” He used the rest of his speech to call for “tough, biting sanctions” against Iran that “bite deep into its energy sector.”

Hagee and Netanyahu appear together on stage:

In the audience were top-level members of the Israeli government, from Ambassador Michael Oren to Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat to Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon. Also present was Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, the chief rabbi of the illegal West Bank settlement of Efrat who gained notoriety for lobbying President Bill Clinton to pardon his friend, fugitive billionaire Marc Rich. Ayalon had stirred controversy days before when he refused to meet with a US congressional delegation brought to Israel by the progressive Jewish group J Street.

Part One of Hagee’s speech:

Pastor Hagee in Jerusalem 3/8/10 (Part II)

Pastor Hagee in Jerusalem 3/8/10 (Part II) from Max J Blumenthal on Vimeo

Hagee’s ceremony featured a 15-minute film highlighting the recipients of donations from John Hagee Ministries that totaled $58 million since 2001. The recipients included Jewish settlements from the West Bank like Gush Etzion and Shomron, which was involved in promoting an “Obama Hilltop project” that promoted more settlement building and compared Obama to Pharoah. Hagee also announced funding for a pressure group run by the settlers evacuated from Gush Katif in Gaza in 2005. During Israel’s assault on Gaza in 2009, a group of Gush Katif residents lobbied the Israel government to allow them to resettle the Palestinian coastal region.

Who is Hagee funding in Israel?

Who Is Hagee Funding In Israel? from Max Blumenthal on Vimeo.

The most notable of Hagee’s funding recipients was an organization called Im Tirtzu. A student representative of this group appeared in the film to thank Hagee for “help[ing] us to ensure that students in Israel are on the right path, the path of Zionism, the love of Israel, the path of solidarity.” Another student called for “the second revolution in Israel.”

In February, Im Tirtzu funding a smear campaign against former Knesset member and New Israel Fund Director Naomi Chazan that included posters caricaturing her with a horn on her head. The group misleadingly accused the New Israel Fund of bankrolling 16 human rights organizations that contributed documentation to the Goldstone Report.

The smear campaign led to unsuccessful legislation in the Knesset designed to further cripple already marginalized Israeli human rights groups. Meanwhile, the Jerusalem Post fired Chazan as a columnist without explanation. Gideon Levy, a columnist for Ha’aretz, called Im Tirtzu “a McCarthyite movement” for its attacks on Chazan.

Although CUFI attempted to distance itself from Im Tirtzu’s campaign, the organization’s appearance during CUFI’s Jerusalem ceremony suggested that Hagee would continue to provide it with funding well into the future.

Republican Senator John McCain repudiated the endorsement of Hagee during his 2008 presidential campaign after Hagee’s statements describing the Holocaust as a fulfillment of divine prophecy came to light. Hagee has also said that he believed the anti-Christ was “partially Jewish, as was Adolph Hitler.” However, none of Hagee’s comments have deterred Israeli government officials from embracing him or accepting his millions in annual charity.

During Hagee’s speech, he made no secret of his support for the illegal settlement enterprise that has been the source of difficulties between the US and Israel. “The settlements are not the problem,” he boomed from the podium. “The problem is the refusal of Arab leaders to respect the right of Jewish people to live anywhere in the Middle East.”

Hagee received a rousing ovation from the crowd and the Israeli government officials seated beside the podium when he proclaimed, “World leaders do not have the authority to tell Israel and the Jewish people what they can and cannot do in the city of Jerusalem. They don’t have the authority to tell them what they can and cannot build, who can and and cannot live there.”

The following day, on March 9, Vice President Joseph Biden arrived in Israel to meet with Netanyahu and officials from the Palestinian Authority. He told reporters after touching down that he saw “a moment of real opportunity.”

A complete list of Israeli organizations funded by John Hagee Ministries is below:

Alut Autism

American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
Christian Friends of Israeli Communities — Gush Katif (settlement related)
Ariel Israel Sports Building (settlement related)
Council of Young Israel Rabbis (settlement related)
Barzilai Medical Center, Ashkelon
Ben Gurion University, Negev
Boys Town Jerusalem
Ehrenberg Endowment Holocaust education
Elon Moreh Shechem, “renewal of the settlement in shomron”
Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity
Eretz Neheredet
Yeshivat Reishit
Friends of Gush Katif (settlement related)
Hadadi Breast Cancer Survivors
Haamayan Banegev
Yeshiva Har Bracha
Herzog hospital
Im Tirtzu, student rep: “We thank you, John Hagee, for your support, which has helped us to ensure that students in israel and in jerusalem are on the right path, the path of zionism, the love of israel, the path of solidarity.” Other student: “We couldn’t have done it without the help of John Hagee Ministries this evening — the second revolution in Israel.”
Na’aleh — Jewish Agency
Jewish Federation, Greater Houston
Jewish Federation, San Antonio
Just Life
American Friends of Laniado Hospital
Leo Baeck Education Center
American Friends of Magen David
Meir Panim
Menachem Begin Heritage Center
Nefesh b’Nefesh (settles diaspora Jews in Israel, including in settlements)
Netanya Academic College (Hagee build the “Jewish Heritage Center, recruited the college rabbi, is paying for construction of dormitories, received an honoris causa degree)
John and Diana Hagee Lovingkindness Convention Center, Ohr Torah Stone (Efrat settlement, West Bank) founded by Rabbi Shlomo Riskin
One Family Fund
Save a Child’s Heart
Table to Table
Tikva Children’s Home
Western Galilee Hospital
Shurat Hadin Israel Law Center
Friends of Israeli Disabled Veterans
Ziporah Education center
OR movement’s information and relocation center (settling negev and galilee)
Gush Etzion settlement, West Bank: “We are thankful to Pastor Hagee for all of his efforts.”

Independent journalist and filmmaker Max Blumenthal is the New York Times best-selling author of Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement that Shattered the Party and a Nation Institute Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Nation, Salon.com, and Mondoweiss, among other outlets. You can read his blog at maxblumenthal.com, where this post originally appeared.