On May 15, a group of San Antonio-based community organizers disrupted a service at Pastor John Hagee’s Cornerstone Church dedicated to celebrating Israel. The Christian Zionist Pastor Hagee has sent tens of millions to Israeli organizations, including illegal settlements and the far-right McCarthyite student group Im Tirtzu. After the action, which was dispersed aggressively by members of Hagee’s congregation, Glenn Beck posted an open letterfrom Hagee on his website. Incidentally, Beck will be delivering the keynote speech at Hagee’s upcoming Christians United for Israel Washington-Israel Summit, an event I covered back in 2007. Following publication of the letter, an organizer of the action against Hagee, Genevieve Rodriguez, began received death threats by phone and email. I interviewed Rodriguez about the protest and its aftermath.
MB: Why did you decide it was necessary to protest Hagee from inside his church, and in such a confrontational way?
GR: First of all, we are a group of 24 who are community organizers working on a range of issues. We were not from any single organization, we are just people coming together. We were keeping up with what was going on in Palestine and the call from action from Palestinians on May 15. And for organizers here in San Antonio we feel the effects of the racism and Zionism and homophobia that comes out Hagee’s church every day. The corporate executives that go to his church go downtown every day and carry out the message they get from his church. They treat people that work with them the way he teaches them to treat people — so they are treating gays a certain way or taking away the message that brown people should be persecuted. That gets carried out in the way working people are treated in this city. And all the while he’s getting rich off a message of hate. So we decided that we couldn’t sit here in our city and not hold this man accountable when what’s happening here and what’s happening in Palestine is atrocious. How can we sit here in the same city as him and not take action in a non-violent way? So in a matter of four days we came up with this action.
MB: Did any other actions by others inspire you, at least from a tactical point of view?
GR: One of the really recent actions that inspired us was by young Jewish people in New Orleans who interrupted Netanyahu in New Orleans and told him that he delegitimizes Israel. It was really moving. We realized Hagee’s sermon was being broadcast live to 35 countries on the web uninterrupted. So we realized we had to do it.
MB: How were you treated once the protest began? It seemed like things got pretty rough after it became clear you weren’t going to stop.
GR: The EMS was called after I was dragged off the pew. An usher in front of me grabbed me and dragged me over a pew and I hit my head on the pew. Then 5 or 6 men were grabbing at all parts of my body and they lifted me up like a roasted pig and hoisted me in the air. It was all congregation members including a guest pastor — no security. A young white man involved in the action stood up and some woman said, ‘Oh my God, he’s a Palestinian!’ Apparently these people didn’t even know what palestinians look like. And they curse them every day. As a young woman was carried out shouting, ‘Free Palestine!’ she was slammed to the ground. Then she was getting dragged out. Several congregation members stood up and began accusing a group of brown women of being with the demonstrators. They were just singling out all kinds of brown people because of the way they looked.
MB: Was there any fallout after the action?
GR: John Hagee sent an open letter to Glenn Beck trying to give his version of the story, saying this is all the more reason to show support for Israel and that our congregation acted like it was the Super Bowl after this demonstration, they were so unified. beck is speaking at CUFI, coming up this year. There are infomercials inside Cornerstone for the CUFI conference that includes glenn beck highlights, really using the event to promote him. Our goal was to stand in solidarity with Palestine and tell San Antonio that we are not going to let this happen without Hagee being held accountable. He’s doing this for profit, and we caught him completely off guard just entering there with just our thoughts and our courage. And they didn’t know what to do, they were completely shaken.
MB: So how did the group feel afterwards? Did you feel like you had succeeded?
GR: It was really hard afterwards for us to hear that Israeli forces were opening fire on protesters after we got home. It was such a moment of righteous anger and feeling like we were right in our actions and that they [the congregation members] should be embarrassed for the comments they made about us. During the service people were literally being killed. And Hagee said, ‘Isn’t this exciting?’ Well, we weren’t there to have fun.
MB: Why do you think Hagee commands so much influence in San Antonio? And why besides the obvious theological reasons does his message resonate with people who apparently know very little about Israel and Palestine?
GR: There is so much fear of the other in this city and the fact that they live a different way. It sounds childish, I know. But all those people who go to that church have a much better economic reality than a lot of the other people on the other side of town. These people in this church are going to hold on to anything and stick to anything that’s going to protect that because they don’t want to face the reality on the other side. The israel issue has been cloaked in religion but with the settlements and Hagee, well, we’re talking about money. This is about money and resources. And i feel bad for some of the congregation members who are kept in the dark and are so ignorant. They shouted at us stuff about us being Muslims. We didn’t make a single reference to islam. We were Latino, white, queer, including brown queer women, people with Middle Eastern heritage, and almost all of us are young. Religiously, there were Christians among us and every other kind of religion including atheists.
MB: I heard you received death threats as a result of the protest. Is that true?
GR: I put my phone number out in the video because I believed there were people who were ready to do something about this racism that is taking over San Antonio. And we want people without access to internet can call in to join us. As a result we’ve connected with organizers who don’t even live here. Then we also got death threats. one guy called me this morning and said he was going to rape me. I’ve received messages since my address is public that people from Dallas are going to come to my house and picket me. I got a phone call today from a man who said, ‘I want to destroy arabs and i’m going to destroy you too.’ A reporter from the San Antonio Express News was there and she recorded the whole call.
MB: Do you plan to do any similar actions in the future?
GR: We want to do more actions in solidarity with the Palestinians and we want to continue to expose Hagee financially. We have contacts inside his church and we want to set a serious campaign up that makes a dent into his support for the settlements and to Israel since they depend on people like Hagee. People inside Hagee’s organization are starting to realize the hypocrisy that he represents and are starting to build relationships with us. As far as the way he handles business [our inside contacts have] hinted that he’s corrupt, that he mistreats women and workers, and that there’s a whole lot of evidence of it.
This post originally appeared on Max Blumenthal's website.
Genevieve Rodriguez and her group are now part of the intifada. Brave, brave people, may there be more like them.
Its great that this was done. Very inspiring stuff.
I can’t understand why Hagee has such a big following. People are strange.
Hagee on the big screen inside that hall reminds me of movies about Orwellian dictators and tyrants.
Adam Sutler – V for Vendetta
1984′s Big Brother
Uninformed and stupid, too. Here’s Hagee in the 1990s on how the jewish aspect of the holocaust was part of god’s plan for Israel:
Hagee – ‘Hitler Was Fulfilling God’s Will For Israel’
Just divine!
What’s gonna happen to all the attendants when ww3 breaks out in the middle east and jesus does NOT magically ‘re-appear’?
And if he does oh so mystically resurrect, (i’m really stretching my imagination here), do Hagee and his paranoid, racist flock think that jesus (the prophet of peace and love) will turn to them and ACTUALLY THANK them for having MASSACRED THOUSANDS of Palestinian children, christian children included?!!!
Clearly, every single member of Hagee’s congregation is a certifiable genocidal enabler and the sooner they’re locked up, the better for America and for jesus’s haloed reputation.
Taxi, they say there are between 25 and 40 million of them guys following Hagee and others like him. Makes you wonder if the kissing up to Israel by American presidents and would be presidents isn’t to get these millions on their side much ore than ot of sympathy for Israel.
Yup. It was Bush Jr. who tapped into that electorate while Obama — who wasn’t getting their vote — needed to balance those millions out with votes from so-called minorities, including African-Americans and Hispanics. The last figure I heard was as high as 20% which amounts to about 80 million at the moment.
“they say there are between 25 and 40 million of them guys following Hagee and others like him.” Is this just in the U.S., Walid? Source?
Makes you wonder if the kissing up to Israel by American presidents and would be presidents isn’t to get these millions on their side much more than of sympathy for Israel.”
It sure does, I bet US reps and senators are also deep into this trough.
patm, this is only for the US, we only hear of them there. Article from 2003 that describes one of the branches, Falwell’s, and it has about 25 million followers. To that you can add Hagee’s group and some others; interesting what is written about what happened during the Jenin offensive:
“… For the president, pushing for the implementation of the road map will require a careful balancing act. Since the September 11 terrorist attacks, he has solidified political support from three important constituencies: neoconservative intellectuals, American Jews (including members of the influential pro-Israel lobby) and fundamentalist Christians, constituencies that find common ground in their vigorous support for Israel.
A decisive moment in the forging of this alliance occurred in April 2002, while the Israeli army was demolishing several cities and refugee camps in the West Bank following the dreadful Passover terrorist bombings. Under increasing international pressure, Bush repeatedly appealed to Sharon to withdraw from the West Bank city of Jenin. The pro-Israel lobby, in coordination with the Christian right, mobilized over 100,000 e-mail messages, calls and visits urging the president to avoid restraining Israel. The tactic worked. The president uttered not another word of criticism or caution, and Sharon continued the offensive. As Christian televangelist Jerry Falwell commented during an October interview on 60 Minutes: “I think now we can count on President Bush to do the right thing for Israel every time.
Falwell spoke for a large number of Christian Zionists in the U.S., Christians who believe that the modern state of Israel is the fulfillment of biblical prophecy and so deserves unconditional political, financial and religious support. Christian Zionists work closely with religious and secular Jewish Zionist organizations and the Israeli government, particularly during periods when the more conservative Likud Party is in control of the Israeli Knesset (parliament). Though Falwell claims to be speaking for over 100 million Americans, the number is actually closer to 25 million.
Mainstream evangelicals number between 75 and 100 million; fundamentalist and dispensationalist evangelicals, whom Falwell represents, between 20 and 25 million.”
link to christianzionism.org
Anyway, according to some of them, tomorrow May 21st is the end of the world, so you have a few hours left to repent. From ABC News:
link to abcnews.go.com
There’s going to be a lot of disappointed people tomorrow if the end of the world doesn’t come about. On a more theatrical side, in 2006 when the war on Lebanon was raging, because of the intensity of the bombing being shown on TV, some American Christian Zionists actually thought that the end was happening and they packed their bags and tried booking flights to Israel to be there for the rapture and the arrival of Jesus.
A bit more about Hagee from Wiki:
Hagee is the President and CEO of John Hagee Ministries, which telecasts his national radio and television ministry carried in the United States on 160 TV stations, 50 radio stations, and eight networks, including The Inspiration Network (INSP), Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN), and Inspiration Now TV.[2] The ministries can be seen and heard weekly in 99 million homes. John Hagee Ministries is in Canada on the Miracle Channel and CTS and can be seen in Africa, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and in most Third World nations.[3]
Hagee is the founder and National Chairman of the Christian-Zionist organization Christians United for Israel, incorporated on February 7, 2006.[4] He has incurred controversy for his religious beliefs and comments regarding Nazism, Catholicism, Islam, homosexuality, Jews, and Hurricane Ka
Thanks Walid. It seems to me Christian Zionists are big players in propping up the apartheid state of Israel.
Taxi, May 21st came and went and JC never showed up.
Yeah I don’t know whether to laugh or cry for the poor sods.
The born-againers, of all varieties of religious sects, who are also ‘awaiting’ the advent of some savior – them all of them- they have yet to learn this lesson in realism: NO HUMAN KNOWS THE MYSTERIES OF EXISTENCE!
Are these mysteries knowable?
Well who knows THAT Walid eh?!!!
We realized Hagee’s sermon was being broadcast live to 35 countries on the web uninterrupted. So we realized we had to do it.
wow, incredibly brave and courageous of you. massive kudos. gumption!
kudos to the folks that did this…
hagee is all about money and their is nothing religious about it… selling product is all it is…
as much as i dislike and disagree with Hagee i don’t know that interrupting his church service will do anything but fire up his church. the distance between what Hagee an his his followers believe is too wide to engage in this manner, imo. Hagee”s church WILL find this exciting b/c they’ll count it as part of the cost of supporting/ “persecution” for Israel. this is their mindset. we need to appeal to Hagee people on terms they understand, like the “With God On Our Side” film, Stephen Sizer or Gary Burge’s work. trust me people.
having said the above, i do think the protesters were incredibly brave. i trembled for them just watching the video.
good point
I think it’s gonna take some of both.
Hagee’s people don’t get challenged like that —they need to be challenged that way.
Some years ago there was a series in the WP by a writer who embedded himself with the evangelicals to do a story about them.
One thing that he wrote about was striking.
It concerned one of their conferences in DC where one of the leader/
speakers was a Kaye woman, (last name Kaye I think).
He described her talking about Israel and telling the attendees that
they have to put the welfare of Israel above US for the sake of their souls…or something to that effect.
He wrote that when she said that there was a sudden silence and a buzz of whispering went thur the audience….no one applauded.
I think that this is Matt Taibbi’s ‘Great Derangement’, serialised in the WP after being published as a book. Both funny and sad. My copy is currently lent to an American friend, so I can’t check it. As I remember the woman was called Cathy and she ran one of the housegroups attached to Hagee’s organisation. The members of the group were people who wanted some sense of community and some rest from the jealousies and infightings of secular life and Taibbi describes rather touchingly the moment when some of them found just the same things within the church as they had hoped to leave outside. Cathy, he thought, was ‘doing her corporate duty’ in praying for Israel – the group as a whole did not really understand why Israel fitted into their much more near-home concerns. But we have to remember that when people turn to an organisation and a leader who gives their lives meaning and awakes their faith it takes a great deal to produce scepticism or doubt in their all too human hearts.
Yes I think it was Tabbi–I tried to find the articles but no luck, ran out of time.
But I think the incident I was referring to was was actually said by Kay Authur ,not something Kaye, after doing some limited checking.
If you find any more on this how about posting it for us. thanks
Interrupting their service was a great thing.
Do you know how many people went home from that church and thought about what they are a part of, or how many people looked up Palestine through the internet that afternoon?
I found it interesting that the church people attending were applauding, not booing. If I was watching this on TV in one of the 35 countries it was aired in, and had no idea what was going on, I’d think the church supported the ideas.
Pixel, they were applauding the ushers escorting the demonstrators out of the hall.
It’s not an authentic Christian church service if what they are preaching is hatred. I think what the world needed to see was a bunch of enraged, scared white people throwing around the name “Palestinian” as if they were accusing people of witchcraft, and then even turning on their own in that fear.
You leave these people alone and they’re just going to come after you when they’re good and ready, and not when they’re still disorganized and easier to deal with.
Checked to see if the San Antonio Express News has run an article based on their interview with Genevieve Rodriguez, and came up with nothing.
I hope the Rapture is tomorrow so Hagee and his followers will ascend to their boring little heaven and leave the rest of us in peace.
I think when the protestor made the statement about rebuking hatred, that would have rung a bell with some of these folks.
Also some people were only there b/c they are in a family that insists on it, and might have been educated.
I think the intervention was super. And the fact that community organizers are talking up this cause, especially in Hispanic communities is stupendous. The links are being made on college campuses about being displaced populations and living your life walled in (or out).
Good point, Linda.
Ultimately, the Palestinian case, or story if you prefer, is one to which every human (Well, almost every human, Zionists not included) can relate.
It’s a story about dispossession, oppression, the struggle to preserve one’s history, existence, family, culture and humanity. Whether it’s Native Americans, African-Americans, Hispanic immigrants, Mexican-Americans, Irish, Tibetans, Algerians or Bosnians. Every group has its own story to tell, its own trauma, its own tragedy.
Alas, some groups learn from their victimhood, others don’t.
“It’s a story about dispossession, oppression, the struggle to preserve one’s history, existence, family, culture and humanity. Whether it’s Native Americans, African-Americans, Hispanic immigrants, Mexican-Americans, Irish, Tibetans, Algerians or Bosnians. Every group has its own story to tell, its own trauma, its own tragedy. ” AVI
“And the fact that community organizers are talking up this cause [of the Palestinians], I think the intervention was super. And the fact that community organizers are talking up this cause, especially in Hispanic communities is stupendous. The links are being made on college campuses about being displaced populations and living your life walled in (or out).” LINDA J
What excellent comments! I know why I’m here on mondo!
**** Hi Linda J,
Do you know if many ‘displaced’ hispanic Christian communities have been swept up into the US Christian Zionist ranks? And into the arms of TV fraudministers?
The Christian evangelical movements, I read a while back, were doing very well in Latin America. It is hard to say how many evangelicals are Christian Zionists, and how many of these believe in Darby’s 1830 version of the vile and pernicious rapture endtimes nonsense.
the power structure of the oppressors/ oppressed can be based on numerous cultural identities: gender, sexuality, ethnicity, diaspora, immigration, forced migration, colonialism, globalization, and of course religion and tribe.
these converging identities certainly identify with Palestinians struggle for EQUALITY as they share a common denominator, an oppressive power structure.
it is also true that the Hispanic Christian communities have been swept up in Christian Zionist theology – which is very escapist and sees the things of this world clashing with the spiritual, rather than seeing the spiritual tensions of this life.
it is easier to see/ live
in black/ white
delineated bright lines
of this/ that,
us/ them categories.
nuance is for engaged people
who care and have/ make time.
identities are converging
and transcending
the boundaries
of nation-state/ area/ religion/ tribe.
Absolutely brilliant, very inspiring. That’s how to do it….
I hate to be crude (really, I do), but it appears that San Antonio, Texas is Mother Earth’s anus (where, according to Oral Roberts, “the poisions of the body are excreted”). Continuing the analogy*, I guess that makes Coral Gables the terminus of “Mother” Earth’s urethra (where, apparently unbeknown to “Oral” Roberts, “poisions of the body” are also “excreted”.
FROM The American Heritage® Science Dictionary:
excretion
The elimination by an organism of waste products that result from metabolic processes. In plants, waste is minimal and is eliminated primarily by diffusion to the outside environment. Animals have specific organs of excretion. In vertebrates, the kidney filters blood, conserving water and producing urea and other waste products in the form of urine. The urine is then passed through the ureters to the bladder and discharged through the urethra. The skin and lungs, which eliminate carbon dioxide, are also excretory organs.
Listen To Oral Roberts Talk About Sex [and the anus] (VIDEO, 06:20) – link to youtube.com
The INFAMOUS Oral Roberts SEX TAPE! 2.0 (VIDEO, 07:05) – link to youtube.com
* P.S. The renowned journalist/author Jacobo Timerman once opined that he feared WWIII might be caused by the use of an “inappropriate analogy”. Soon afterwards, Timerman was declared by the “Jewish State of Israel” to be a “self-hating Jew” and told to find another home (i.e., to skedaddle). Consequently, he fled from Israel to Europe and eventually returned to Argentina.
Go figure!
Jacobo Timerman – link to en.wikipedia.org
A Great Hero is Gone, by Molly Ivins, Nov 15, 1999 – link to albionmonitor.com
your mind certainly works in strange ways dickerson. ha!