CUFI's founder, Texas megachurch pastor John Hagee, spoke before a substantial portion of the US House and Senate, as a keynote speaker at the Israel America Public Affairs Committee convention in Washington DC in February 2007, and Hagee routinely enjoys private meeting with top members of the GOP such as Senator John McCain and House GOP Minority Speaker Roy Blunt. John Hagee has also repeatedly discussed, publicly and in his writing, his belief that, because history is unfolding exactly as described in Biblical prophecy, the destruction of the Dome of The Rock and the subsequent rebuilding of a Jewish temple on the site is inevitable.

[image, right: 1996 book with the same title as John Hagee's 2006 book "Jerusalem: The Final Countdown" depicts an anticipated future for Jerusalem and the Temple Mount commonly held among Christian Zionists ]

Whether intentional or not, CUFI's website logo depicts such a future, in which the Dome of The Rock has apparently been destroyed and this raises questions about the growing tactical alliance between Jewish lobbying groups such as AIPAC and John Hagee's burgeoning national CUFI lobbying group ; ostensibly, Jewish Americans are allying themselves with CUFI for the benefit of Israel, but CUFI leaders have come out in categorical opposition to Israeli land-for-peace deals with the Palestinians and have even publicly claimed to have played a part in disrupting peace negotiations. CUFI's Christian Zionist leaders, rather than seeing peace, seem to endorse an Israeli posture of maximal military confrontation and during the Israeli army incursion into Lebannon, in the summer of 2006, Pastor Hagee described the incursion and Israeli bombing as a "miracle from God".

But, Pastor Hagee's, and CUFI's, political positions have no counterpart within Israeli mainstream society. Rather, such views are held, in Israel, by groups considered to be on the extreme political fringe. A veteran Israeli journalist consulted for this story stated that, in mainstream Israeli political sentiment, actions, conspiracies, or even thoughts concerning the destruction of the Dome Of The Rock are considered "abhorrent" and repeatedly stressed the extremely marginal nature of such beliefs within Israeli society.

In Israel, the destruction of the Dome Of The Rock is a centerpiece goal of indigenous terrorist groups, but within American politics the idea has become sufficiently mainstream that leading American politicians have eagerly sought to curry the political favor of religious leaders, such as John Hagee, who say they look forward to the destruction of the Dome Of The Rock. Such an event would enrage much of the Islamic world and could provoke the sort of disastrous military confrontation centering around Israeli that apocalyptic Christian Zionists such as John Hagee say they long for. So, American Jews who have made the decision to tactically ally themselves with John Hagee, in the belief that Hagee is the best friend Jews can expect to find in support of Israel, must confront the reality that John Hagee's, and to a somewhat lesser extent AIPAC's, political positions may not represent Israeli mainstream political views but may lie, rather, somewhere between the hard right to the fringe right along the Israeli political spectrum.

Regardless of John Hagee's noisy declarations of love for Israel, CUFI's leaders appear to support Israel mainly on the basis of the role they believe Israel will feature in their apocalyptic, Christian Zionist end-time beliefs, and CUFI's leaders such as George Morrison and even John Hagee himself have stated that the military confrontation they expect and believe is inevitable, centering around Israel, will kill the majority of Israeli Jews. American Christian Zionist leaders frequently refer to the death toll from the battle of Armaggedon, anticipated in Christian dispensationalist apocalyptic belief, as a "another holocaust", a "second holocaust" or "worse than the holocaust" and also make comparisons to Auschwitz.

In the end, Christian Zionism has, as a political force, sought to preclude and prevent peace in the Middle East, and lately Pastor John Hagee's new CUFI lobby has had great success in entraining American Jews in a coalition that seems bent on war. It is not clear that American Jews desire the sort of maximal war policy CUFI and American Christian Zionists envision for Israel, and it is very clear that most Israelis do not desire war. Will the incendiary nature of CUFI's website logo force a reappraisal of the American Jewish tactical alliance with Christian Zionism ? CUFI's leaders envision a near-term future course of events at the end of which most Israelis will end up dead, with a surviving "remnant" converted to Christianity.

The project of forcing God's hand, of hastening the end-times, is generally held, within the Christian theological tradition, to be anathema. Indeed, pastor John Hagee, addressing a group of Jewish bloggers in a recent phone conference, described the project of hastening the end-times as "theologically off the map". But, intentional or not, it is hard to see how CUFI's website logo would have any effect other than to increase religious tensions in the Middle East and John Hagee, along with many of CUFI's leaders, knows full well from numerous visits to Israel what the Wailing Wall and its surrounding environs, which include (prominently) the Dome Of The Rock, look like. The claim that no one in CUFI's organization noticed the absence of the Dome Of The Rock from CUFI's website logo beggars belief. So, American Jews may now have to consider the tactical alliance with CUFI and American Christian Zionism in the following light : cui bono ?.

Probably not Israel.

UPDATE Could the CUFI logo image lack of the Harem es-Sharif ( Dome Of The Rock ) be explained by the perspective of the image ? Probably not. Examine the following comparison images, with perspective lines drawn through building reference points:

Now, consider the same treatment applied to the CUFI logo image:

So, what are the structures likely visible within the perspective lines I've drawn within the CUFI logo image ?

The archway structure visible in the CUFI logo image would likely be one of the archways surrounding the Haram es-Sharif, and the black mass to the left of the archway structure visible in the CUFI logo is likely the base of the Haram es-Sharif. Note that the CUFI logo image is taken from a narrower perspective than the comparison photos I've provided. The CUFI logo image perspective is a highly unusual one and I cannot find a comparable perspective image. The narrower perspective of the CUFI logo image would skew the reference perspective lines, relative to the overview of the Haram es-Sharif I've provided, to the right. That would suggest the archway structure visible in the CUFI logo image is one of the two to the right of the Haram es-Sharif dome structure. That would seem to fit given the blackish mass immediately to the left of the archway structure visible in the CUFI logo image, which would appear to be the base of the Haram es-Sharif dome from which the dome seems to have been photoshopped.

********* RESOURCES

So, what's CUFI ? Here's an intro, from one of my pieces on John Hagee and Christians United For Israel. After that I've posted links to a number of related articles.

In previous installments of an ongoing series, I've examined the beliefs of Pastor John Hagee, founder of "Christians United For Israel", an ostensibly pro-Israel lobby whose members seek to trigger a Mideast conflict they hope will spiral into a devastating world war that will cause Global mass death and the death of 2/3 of Jews in Israel. Hagee, who calls for a preemptive nuclear strike on Iran and also states that will trigger the apocalyptic war he craves, has warned in his sermons about a conspiracy of "Illuminati" and international bankers seeking to create a "New World Order". John Hagee spoke, before many US Senators and Congress members, to a cheering crowd, at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee's annual convention last Sunday evening :

That leading US politicians now happily appear at public events with, cheer on, and consent to share the stage with a man who advocates a fringe conspiracy theory some would call anti-Semitic and urges a "preemptive" use of nuclear weapons in order to cause widespread nuclear war indicates the extent to which US political and religious culture has lurched far right, towards what some call an "apocalyptic death cult", over the past four decades since the era in which Lyndon Johnson's 1964 presidential campaign devastated Barry Goldwater's presidential hopes by airing just one time a 30 second TV commercial, the "Daisy" ad, that effectively tarred Goldwater as eager for nuclear war. Now, for Republican politicians wooing a key bloc of evangelical GOP voters, public expressions of nuclear blood lust are no longer stigmatized or politically toxic ; they are an asset.

Friends Of Israel and AIPAC Envision "Israel's Final Holocaust" and "Jew Toast"

TTA contributor Chip Berlet, Senior Analyst for Political Research Associates, provides some background on the recent history of "New World Order" conspiracism among John Hagee's fellow Christian Zionists such as Tim LaHaye and Pat Robertson in The Age Old Conspiracy

Previous installments in an ongoing series, by several authors, on John Hagee and Christian Zionism:

"Pro Israel" Christian Leader Blames Jews For The Holocaust

Donohue Softpeddles Hagee's Catholic Bashing

"Be Jewish In Five Easy Days", The Twelve Tribes Of Hagee

AIPAC Event Helps Mainstream Allegations Of "Satanic Liberal Jewish Conspiracy"

Holocaust For Zion : CUFI's Christian Zionism Made Simple

GOP House Minority Whip Roy Blunt To Help Nuclear War Advocate

What Secret "Other Matters" Did McCain Discuss With "Apocalypse Now" Hagee ?

recent stories from other authors:

Max Blumenthal : AIPAC Cheers an Anti-Semitic Holocaust Revisionist (and Abe Foxman Approves)

Sarah Posner: The Goy Who Cried Wolf: The Israel lobby gives America's leading Christian right warmonger a warm welcome