As a possibly intentional provocation, the elimination of the Dome Of The Rock from CUFI's website logo is consonant with John Hagee's repeated vilification of Islam. But is it consonant with US foreign policy or the foreign policy positions American Jews would choose to support ? The troubling nature of CUFI's logo raises the issue of the extent to which Hagee has been granted a place, recently, on the American national political stage and of his access to prominent US politicians. 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.... 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 ...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.

Today's JTA news service release states that CUFI has "replaced a photo on its Web site after learning the image was doctored" and that "[T]he photographer and the Israeli agency that sold the photo said the photo had been manipulated for artistic reasons." I have not yet been able to reach Mr. Turman or the JTA news service to clarify the apparent discrepancy between the two JTA stories. Please stay tuned.