It's the Real News.
I'm Aaron Mate. 
President Trump's decision to move the U.S.
embassy to Jerusalem was a major victory for
two of his key bastions of support: far-right
pro-Israeli government neocons, and far-right
evangelical Christians.
And both groups were represented at Monday's
ceremony.
Billionaire Sheldon Adelson was among those
in attendance.
The Reverend John Hagee, founder of Christians
United for Israel, gave the closing benediction,
and delivering the opening prayer was Robert
Jeffress, pastor of First Baptist Church in
Dallas. 
And now, Father, as we come to dedicate this
embassy in the city of Jerusalem, the city
that you named is the capital of Israel 3000
years ago, we want to thank you for the tremendous
leadership of our great President Donald J.
Trump.
Without President Trump's determination, resolve,
courage, we would not be here today.
And I believe, Father, I speak for every one
of us when we say we thank you every day that
you have given us a president who boldly stands
on the right side of history, but more importantly
stands on the right side of you, oh God, when
it comes to Israel. 
Joining me to discuss the evangelicals and
pro-Israel neocons who have cheered on Trump's
decision to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem
are Max Blumenthal and Dan Cohen, independent
journalists who have just come out with a
new film called Killing Gaza.
Welcome to you both.
Max, set the stage for us.
Why is this Jerusalem decision so important
to evangelicals? 
Well, I wrote my first book on the Christian
right, and now it's all kind of coming together
here under Trump, who's just this paragon
of morality.
He has such a strong moral compass.
But you know, the importance of Jerusalem,
Jerusalem is central to Christian Zionists.
And two of the most prolific Christian Zionists,
John Hagee and Robert Jeffress, were in Jerusalem
as key supporters of the, you know, paragon
of morality Donald Trump, who grabs people
by their rosaries. 
I mean, this guy really exposes how the Christian
right has no principles whatsoever beyond
pure power, and this desire to fulfill biblical
prophecy in Jerusalem.
Jeffress and Hagee are what we would call
pre-millennialists, and pre-millennialists
believe that the return of Christ will only
come through a series of dispensations.
Dispensations can be disasters, natural disasters,
or wars that are foretold in the Book of Revelations,
which was not an original part of the Bible.
And pre-millennial dispensationalism is dominant
among American evangelicals who, who are white,
and tend to be extremely politically conservative,
and form a large part of Donald Trump's base. 
Apocalypticism and biblical prophecy is a
great way to raise money among those people.
You're basically telling them the world is
going to end at this point, and you're helping
them interpret history in a really crude way.
And they're waiting for Christ to returns.
Pastor Hagee, actually, has led tours to the
Hill of Megiddo, where he believes, this is
a hill in Jerusalem, where he believes that
Jesus will descend on a, on a throne, and
usher in the second coming.
In that case, all Muslims and Jews and Mormons,
and everyone who isn't already saved and born
again in the blood of Christ, will be doomed
to an everlasting lake of fire as foretold
in the book of Revelations.
Everlasting lake of fire.
It's not just like the lake of fire that's
temporary, you don't just burn up.
You're just burning forever. 
So that's what they believe.
Robert Jeffress is a particularly interesting
character who comes out of the Southern Baptist
Convention.
The Southern Baptist Convention was originally
fairly moderate.
Jimmy Carter was a member in the 1980s.
There was a stealth takeover by extreme right
wing elements, I think Jerry Falwell helped
lead this.
And Jeffress, figures like Jeffress came in.
And they began, or they first formed the Moral
Majority.
Then they helped form the Christian Coalition.
And Jeffress in the late '90s emerged at a
smaller church on the border of Oklahoma through
an antigay campaign he waged, where he took
two books out from the local library that
were about, normalized the homosexual lifestyle.
I think, you know, one of the books was called,
like, My Dad Has Two Roommates, or My Dad
Has a Roommate, or something.
And he had parishioners pay $54, the price
of the books, to the library so that he would
never return them.
And then he gave a big sermon declaring that
gay is not OK. 
To demonstrate how hardcore he was as a member
of the Southern Baptist Convention, Jeffress
gave a speech, maybe around 2004 or '05, declaring
that Jews cannot be saved; Mormon, Mormonism
is an abomination of God, against God. 
Max, we have that clip.
Let's go to the video. 
If we tell people what the Bible says, that
every other religion in the world is wrong.
Islam is wrong.
It is a heresy from the pit of hell.
Mormonism is wrong.
It is a heresy from the pit of hell.
Judaism, as you know, you can't be saved being
a Jew.
You know who said that, by the way?
The three greatest Jews in the New Testament,
Peter, Paul, and Jesus Christ.
They all said Judaism won't do it.
It's faith in Jesus Christ. 
That is Robert Jeffress, who again opened
up the U.S. embassy ceremony on Monday.
Max, you were saying. 
You can pretty much see where Jeffress is
coming from, and it's, he's not a very pluralistic
character.
His views are not really in keeping with the
First Amendment, or separation of church and
state.
His views are, do not align with Donald Trump's
views.
But again, the Christian right has shown,
I mean, the mask on the Christian right is
lifted in the Trump era, and it shows they
they don't have any principles.
They just believe in power.
And Donald Trump is doing something that they
have wanted for a very long time, which is
to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem. 
And in 1984 a Christian right group actually
bought a house that used to belong to Palestinians
who were ethnically cleansed, so it's what
is considered in Jerusalem an Arab home, and
they turned it into kind of an ersatz, a substitute
U.S. embassy.
And they call it, I think they call it, like,
the Christian Embassy.
And they stage a march every year, and have
a big Christian international evangelical
convention to call for the U.S. to move its
embassy to Jerusalem.
They really see this in terms of biblical
prophecy and the second coming. 
So Pastor Hagee, Pastor John Hagee comes along
for the closing benediction.
Pastor Hagee is the most powerful Christian
Zionist figure in the country.
He is the founder of Christians United for
Israel, which is actually set up, as I reported
back in 2006, it was set up by AIPAC, the
mainstream arm of the Israel lobby, which
is considered a Jewish organization.
So Hagee was sort of created as this political
figure, a political operative, by the American
Jewish establishment.
And this is someone who has stood before his
congregation in San Antonio, Texas the Cornerstone
Church, and declared that Hitler was a halfbreed
Jew, and that when the Antichrist returns
he will be a homosexual with fierce features.
Those were Hagee's exact words.
Hagy has also said that-.
And this is what Christian Zionists believe,
it isn't just Hagee being this madman, that
Theodor Herzl, the sort of intellectual godfather
of Zionism, was a fisher, and he was out there
capturing, bringing Jews into the Zionist
ideology.
And then Hitler was a hunter, and he took
those Jews who were brought in and hunted
them, and chased them to Israel.
And so Hitler, in his own way, along with
Herzl in symbiosis were fulfilling biblical
prophecy and helping to bring about the second
coming of Christ. 
This is why Pastor Hagee, when me and a few
other researchers, mainly Bruce Wilson, brought
this audio to light, John McCain, who had
accepted Hagee's endorsement, rescinded it.
McCain's not really an evangelical guy.
But Hagee has been connected to the Trump
camp through Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who is
the press secretary.
And her father, Mike Huckabee, former governor
of Arkansas, is very close to John Hagee.
He's done paid speeches at Hagee's church.
They're as close as you can get.
And so Hagee is brought to do the closing
benediction. 
And you might find it strange, you know, Hagee
standing next to Jared Kushner, the Orthodox
Jewish son-in-law of Trump.
You know, Trump boasted that he was having
a Jewish grandchild in front of AIPAC in 2016.
And so you have supposedly proud Jews in Jerusalem
next to evangelicals who believe that the
Antichrist is a halfbreed Jew.
And so is Hitler. 
And so how does that, how does that work out?
It works out perfectly.
Both of them, Zionists and anti-Semitic Christians,
have had this historical relationship where
they believe that Jews have no place in the
diaspora, and that anti-Semitism can actually
propel Zionism by driving Jews into the so-called
promised land.
And so here we see just another fulfillment
of that really toxic symbiotic relationship. 
Max, you mentioned earlier how this move to
Jerusalem is seen by this crowd as the fulfillment
of a biblical prophecy.
And this is a theme that was also expressed
on Fox News by Fox News host Jeanine Pirro,
who likened President Trump to King Cyrus. 
Donald Trump recognized history.
He, like King Cyrus before him, fulfilled
the biblical prophecy of the gods worshipped
by Jews, Christians, and yes, Muslims, that
Jerusalem is the eternal capital of the Jewish
state, and that the Jewish people finally
deserve a righteous, free, and sovereign Israel.
That's Jeanine Pirro on Fox News.
Dan Cohen, talk about this, this comparison
of Trump to King Cyrus. 
Well, this meme, this idea which I've been
seeing more and more among the right wing,
the Christian right in the U.S., actually
originated around the election of Trump from
the most extreme right-wing religious Zionist
Israeli figures, who basically saw Trump as
a king who had decided that all of, you know,
that Israel, the biblical land of Israel,
was for the Jews.
And, and basically saw it as a green light
to move forward with their plan of total ethnic
cleansing. 
The meme, this meme of Trump as King Cyrus
originated from what's called the Temple movement,
which is the movement that seeks to create
a massive holy war, as they would describe
it, by destroying the Al Aqsa compound, and
then they would build a temple in its place.
But the whole point of of destroying the Al
Aqsa compound, why they are so obsessed with
it, is because it would create a great enough
war, it would give a big enough war to cover
the total ethnic cleansing, to basically finish
the job that the original original Zionists
started. 
Now, why, why are they so obsessed with this?
It's, you know, where did this ideology come
from, this extreme ideology in Israel, when
it was, you know, founded by Labor Zionists
which were actually, you know, secular, and
many of them were atheists.
It's because religious Zionism goes back to
the 19th century, the late, the late 19th
century.
And basically they saw Zionism-.
While most Orthodox Jews saw Zionism as heresy,
and they condemned it very severely as, as
basically, you know, a false prophet, and
totally, totally outlawed.
A few very fringe and extreme rabbis embraced
it, and synthesized this new idea of religious
Zionism, which replaced the idea in Judaism
of, with redemption, which has been interpreted
to mean many different things.
But took it, and said we are going to attach
this, have this literalist interpretation,
to settling Israel, the biblical land of Israel,
or Palestine.
And beyond, actually.
And today with Jordan, Syria, Lebanon. 
And so while this movement was, this ideology
was very fringe, you know, prior to the establishment
of the state of Israel, and even until 19-.
All the way up until 1967 it was, it was very
marginal.
The war of conquest, of the six-day war, basically
gave a shot of life into this ideology.
And so these religious Zionists, who were
mostly mostly Ashkenazi and middle to upper
class, and were very quiet at that point,
suddenly understood that biblical prophecy
is happening around them, and it is the time
to settle the West Bank.
And they could use the, you know, ostensibly
secular state of Israel as what they termed,
what the chief rabbi of this entire movement,
Yitzhak Hacohen Kook, who was appointed by
the British, I should say he was not, you
know, considered a popular rabbi.
He was simply appointed by the British.
His idea was that the state of Israel is the
donkey, and in the concept of the donkeys,
Messiah.
So the state of Israel is the donkey, and
the Messiah rides in on the donkey. 
So the secular Jews toiled to create the Jewish
state.
And they don't actually know what they're
doing.
And then the religious Zionists come in and
create it as this theocratic kingdom, this
monarchy, and then rule.
And so back in October, I believe, of 2015,
I actually, you know, simply because my name
is Cohen, you know, the priestly class in
Judaism, I was able to go inside a meeting
of basically the ruling rabbis, what's called
the [san heger].
It's a biblical term.
And record what-.
And these are state-funded rabbis, these are
very important figures.
I was able to record the chief rabbi of this
movement explaining how you carry out an ISIS-style
genocide.
You basically go to another country.
You go to a neighboring country.
You say we, we are offering you peace, and
all you have to do is renounce Christianity,
renounce Islam, destroy your churches, destroy
your mosques, and live under our laws.
And if you say yes, if you agree, we let you
live.
And if you don't, then we cut your head off,
and then do what we will with your women. 
And so this is the, what is becoming mainstream,
more mainstream, acceptable among religious
Zionists, which dominates the settler movement.
And the settler movement is totally in control
of the Israeli government.
You know, so it's a totally fanatical movement
that very few know much about outside of Israeli
academic circles, and the Shabak who, you
know, the Israeli security services that follow
these guys very closely.
But they have massive power.
They have massive funding.
They have, in particular from the Christian
right in the U.S.
And so it's this, you know, kind of bizarre
relationship of fanatical religious Zionists
and fanatical Christian Zionists who both
see each other as useful in advancing their
own prophecy, in which, you know, they both
have interpretations that the other ones will
all be wiped out. 
So as we wrap, I want to talk about American
Jews for a second.
Max, you were talking before about that spectacle
of, you know, Jared Kushner, who considers
himself to be Orthodox, appearing with evangelical
anti-Semites.
And they were, you know, Jared Kushner and
Ivanka Trump, his wife, are also blessed by
a rabbi, Yitzhak Yosef, who has compared black
people to monkeys.
And I'm just wondering, thinking about American
Jews here, which all three of us are, whether
this Trump-.
Whether the Trump administration's open embrace,
coupled with Israel's continued open embrace
of far-right evangelicals, will spark even
more of a shift than we've seen already when
it comes to Israel and Palestine. 
When we were all young, even among liberal
Jews it was very common to openly support
Israel.
Now, that has changed now.
You have radical groups, progressive groups
like If Not Now and Jewish Voice for Peace
openly challenging Israel and the occupation.
But you still have many liberal Jews now who,
although they don't openly support Israel
anymore, are still silent.
And I'm wondering if, Max, you have any thoughts
on whether this convergence of Trump with
far right evangelicals and the far right Israeli
government might spur something different
might be a catalyst for even more of a shift
in the American Jewish community. 
Yeah.
I mean, I think there's no telling how far
the shift will go and how deep it will penetrate
mainstream politics.
But I really see the, you know, the younger
Jews who are involved in organizations like
Jewish Voice for Peace and If Not Now as the
future of progressive, as part of the future
of progressive politics in the U.S.
And we've seen Bernie Sanders, who's trying
to cater to that constituency, really turn,
just completely do a 180-degree turn on his
previous position on Israel-Palestine after
he had to kind of ask a weatherman which way
the wind blew.
And he is now at least taking a mildly critical
position. 
I think this is going to be an issue in the
Democratic primary, and it's going to be difficult
for Democrats to win a primary race, especially
in solid blue states, without catering to
the emerging progressive base.
You look at what the Onion is becoming.
I think the Onion is a really significant
sign of where the kind of progressive Zeitgeist
is.
They're just doing headline, joke after joke
just mocking the sadism of the Israeli army.
I think today they have a piece going around
on social media, you know, IDF soldier recounts
harrowing tale of gunning down 8-month-old
Palestinian child.
Like, those are the jokes we used to make
a mocking the Israeli army and its cruelty,
you know, while we were in the West Bank watching
them tear gas children, and you know, spray
skunk into people's houses.
And now it's, you know, in one of the more
kind of mainstream comedy outlets.
And basically they've realized there's this
entire constituency out there that's to the
left of the Democratic Party, that rejects
its foreign policy.
They're mocking the resistance.
They set up this cutout site Resistancehole
to mock the kind of Russiagate, Maddow-style
resistance. 
And the Onion has, its audience is growing
because of that.
It means there's this whole constituency and
group of people out there who not only don't
feel represented by Democratic Party politics
on Israel-Palestine and across the board,
but that they're not organized, and that their
only response is through humor and satire.
And the question is will they be just driven
into cynicism?
Or will they be organized, and who's going
to organize them?
And right now, you know, one of the places
where they can organize is the BTS movement. 
So there is a lot of hope on the outside,
even though inside the militarized frontiers
of Israel, what we would call it, Dan and
I would call the Jewish state in Israel and
the Levant, or JSIL, the situation looks incredibly
hopeless.
The American Jews who are liberal-minded have
to look at this spectacle in Jerusalem, where
as you mention, Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump,
this completely clueless, out of touch, hovercraft
elite couple are being blessed by a fanatical
and fascistic rabbi who called black people
monkeys in a sermon, they're going to have
to look at that and say, do I want that to
be part of my identity?
And I think increasingly they're just going
to turn away in disgust.
And I really, I'm grateful for any part I
could have played in weakening any any American
Jewish support for Israel, and I think it's
the job of any journalist who's there to not
just cover events day after day, but to paint
a picture of the atmosphere that Palestinians
and Jewish Israelis live in, because it's
an atmosphere that's been, that the U.S. is
responsible for, that Israeli security services
and military are cultivating, and it is fascistic.
It is absolutely fascistic. 
Israel also, finally, we need to not see it
as something that is uniquely evil.
We need to see it as a representation of imperialism
under a false Jewish cover, and as the most
extreme, as the West's most extreme vision
of itself, and the realization of its harshest
contradictions coming to the surface.
We need to reflect on the U.S. when we think
about Israel, and the U.S.'s role in the Middle
East. 
We'll leave it there.
Max Blumenthal and Dan Cohen are independent
journalists.
They have just come out with a new film called
Killing Gaza.
It's available at KillingGaza.com.
Max and Dan, thanks to you both. 
And thank you for joining us on the Real News.
