Pastor John Hagee, the founder and national chairman of Christians United for Israel, said during a panel at the 2018 Israeli-American Council conference that being anti-Semitic is incompatible with Christianity.
The panel, which featured Maccabee Task Force Executive Director David Brog, Christians United for Israel Action Fund Founding Chairwoman Sandra Hagee Parker and Fuel Freedom Foundation co-founder Yossie Hollander as panelists and moderated by Israeli-American Council Board chairman Adam Milstein, discussed how to combat anti-Semitic hate movements in the United States.
Towards the end of the discussion, Milstein asked Hagee to speak, prompting the pastor to get up from seat, turn to the crowd, and state: “There is no such thing as Christian anti-Semitism.”
“A Christian is someone who’s driven by the love of God, and anti-Semitism is driven by hate,” said Hagee. “Love and hate do not come from the same blood.”
He added that an anti-Semitic Christian is a “hypocrite” who doesn’t understand that Christianity is derived from Judaism.
“Judaism does not need Christianity to explain its existence,” said Hagee. “But Christianity cannot explain its existence without Judaism.”
The pastor said that for nearly 2,000 years, Christians ignored how the Bible explicitly gives the Jewish people credit for the key figures of Christianity. But today, he noted, more than 4.5 million Christians in America “are ready to stand up and speak up for the Jewish people at a moment’s notice.”
Originally published in the Jewish Journal.
