It says a lot about the state of our country’s discourse that I found myself waiting for a religious Right leader to go off about how Ebola is some kind of divine punishment. Well, that came earlier this week via one of the usual suspects — John Hagee.
As any religious Right watcher will know, Hagee is one of the worst in a very bad lot. In recent years, he’s scaled back his duties as he gets older. While he still preaches at Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, he’s turned over the hosting of his weekly video commentary, The Hagee Hotline, to his youngest son and (by all appearances) heir apparent, Matthew, who serves as Cornerstone’s executive pastor. On Tuesday, the elder Hagee dropped in to give his take on the two Dallas nurses who caught Ebola while caring for Thomas Duncan, the first person to die of Ebola in the United States. Matthew listened as his father thundered that Ebola is divine punishment for Obama’s supposed plans to split Jerusalem as part of a two-state solution in Palestine. Unfortunately, the whole thing is behind a paywall, but People for the American Way got a clip.
Citing Joel 3, Hagee said that any nation who “divides up the land of Israel” better be prepared to face the wrath of God. He claimed that Obama is “dead set” on splitting Jerusalem between Israel and the prospective Palestinian state. To his mind, the “crisis of Ebola” is one of many events that suggest the judgment has already begun.
There’s just one problem with this argument from Hagee — it isn’t true. It turns out that the United States was one of six nations that voted against the latest UN resolution on a possible two-state solution. That resolution called for Israel to be reduced to its pre-1967 borders — which would have the effect of leaving East Jerusalem in the Palestinian state. While Obama has indeed spoken in favor of a two-state solution, that vote in 2013 proves beyond all doubt that he considers the status of Jerusalem to be a bright line that cannot be crossed. But then again, most of Hagee’s audience lives in a bubble where commentaries from him and his son are considered reliable news sources. The San Antonio Ayatollah is only giving them what they want to hear — or rather, what he wants them to hear.
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Darrell Lucus, also known as Christian Dem in NC at Daily Kos, is a radical-lefty Jesus-lover who has been blogging for change for a decade. Follow him on Twitter @DarrellLucus or connect with him on Facebook.
