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5 Questions About Glenn Beck’s Restoring Courage Rally

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By Andrew Belonsky | Source

1. Why Aren’t More Politicians Participating?

It was initially reported that at least four potential GOP presidential candidates — Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich and Mike Huckabee — planned to attend Restoring Courage in Israel this week. Senator Joe Lieberman had also promised to participate in the event, which Beck describes as “an opportunity to demonstrate to the world that Israel does not stand alone.”

Well, the Senator pulled out last week, and none of the declared or potential candidates plan to fly over for Beck’s event. Well, almost none: Herman Cain, a long-shot candidate with little sustainable political power, is attending.

Does this mark the end of Beck’s pull among conservative leaders and their followers? Right wing leaders like Sarah Palin made a show of supporting Beck during his rally last August. But that was when Beck still had a widely viewed Fox New show.

Now that Beck’s departed the cable channel, it seems he’s lost some of his luster — among the mainstream, at least: Christian nationalist David Barton and controversial Pastor John Hagee, a pastor who has suggested that Jews brought on the Holocaust themselves, have endorsed Restoring Courage. Maybe that’s why people are staying away? The dearth of political leaders is especially odd because 80 Congressmen and women visited Israel this month. None were willing to show up to Restoring Courage?

Although, to be fair: Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck are planning a “Defending the Republic” event come October, so perhaps the old boy’s still got it…

2. Is This the End of Glenn Beck?

On a related note, last year’s religion-tinged event Restoring Honor brought in about 100,000 attendees, depending on the various numbers. Only about 3,000 people, 2,000 of them Christians, showed up to the Caesarea Amphitheater for the opening night of Beck’s Israeli adventure, according to Hot Air.

He’s either not as popular in Israel as he would like to believe, or else “Restoring Courage” is on its way to being a huge flop, another indicator that Beck’s 15-minutes are almost up. We’ll know more after the rally’s main event, which happens tomorrow.

3. Will Beck’s Event Stoke Anti-Arab Sentiment Here At Home?

Though Beck and his partners want to strengthen ties between America’s conservative Christians and Israel’s right-leaning Jewish and Christian activists, that inter-religious cooperation also comes with plenty of anti-Islam sentiment.

“Old hatreds have begun to rear their ugly head once more, yet those who swore to never let it happen again are inexcusably sitting silently by and allowing the hate to fester,” Beck wrote on his website earlier this month. “The Muslim Brotherhood, long banned in Egypt, was immediately allowed re-entry and enjoys popular support. Turkey has moved aggressively towards Sharia Law and has befriended Iran – a nation who has renewed its long standing call to wipe Israel off the map. That is just the tip of the iceberg.”

The Brotherhood is but one of the many groups whose names are casually invoked to mean “Shariah law,” something Beck and his ilk see as a threat to the United States and to Israel. While some Islamic groups do indeed want to take down Israel, the Brotherhood does not.

As journalist James Traub explained in ‘Foreign Policy’ magazine the Muslim Brotherhood doesn’t pose much of a political or terrorist threat:

…Not only because the Muslim Brotherhood is not Hamas, but because, in the wake of the thoroughly secular mass protest movement, the Brotherhood is no longer likely to attract a majority of Egyptian voters.

Still, that’s not a risk Clinton or the Muslim Brotherhood’s more vocal American detractors are in the mood for. The “specific agenda” they fear is not that the Brotherhood will impose sharia, but that it could destroy Israel. The Brothers with whom I spoke were not only anti-Israel, but pro-Hamas. Israel has every reason to fear the prospect of a Muslim Brotherhood government. But would a secular democracy in Egypt be more sympathetic to Israel than an Islamist one? In Egypt, as elsewhere in the Arab world, elites have learned that accepting Israel’s existence is the price of admission to international good opinion.

Despite common opinion that the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas and other Islamic parties will have to take a more moderate stance to curry international favor, and because they know Israel will always exist, it’s almost guaranteed that Beck and his fellow speakers, especially infamous Islamophobe Herman Cain, will use the next few days to stoke historic hatreds that are easily exploited for political ends.

 

4. Will Beck’s Event Stoke Anti-Mormon Sentiment?

Meanwhile, as Beck takes aim at Islamic organizations, Christian conservatives in the States are calling for a boycott of Christian TV Network for its support of Mormon Beck’s event.

“It is absolutely ridiculous for a supposed Christian TV Network, that purports to be propagating the gospel, like TBN, with major Christian figures like John Hagee and David Barton, to be supporting and advocating for a member of a satanic cult,” said Bill Keller of the 2.4 million-strong website LivePrayer.com

As Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman’s presidential campaigns continue, we’re hearing sporadic discussion of long-simmering tensions between Evangelical and Mormons: a majority of Americans have previously said they wouldn’t vote for a Mormon president. Romney’s popularity shows that historic divides are being bridged; if Keller and other anti-Mormon Evangelicals actually gain traction, they could remind Christian voters about worries of which they had forgotten.

Plus, many LGBT activists and their allies are no fans of the Mormon Church for its role in pushing through Proposition 8, California legislation that bans marriage equality there. They’re sure to be displeased with the equally-hateful Beck’s display, and may misguide their disgust with him toward the church as a whole.

 

5. Do Beck and His Friends Really Support Israel?

Despite touting their love for Israel, do Beck and his fundamentalist Christian pals support it as a Jewish state or simply as the backdrop for their Christian rapture. Media Matters has a roundup of some of Restoring Courage’s comments on Judaism, and they’re not very flattering.

One endorser, Billy Graham’s son, Franklin, runs a group called Samaritan’s Purse. That group, like so many Evangelical groups, tries to convert Jews to Christianity. Their efforts include working with the Omega Project, which distributes Bibles to Russian Jews so that they will accept Jesus as their savior, an idea that flies in the face of traditional Jewish teaching.

Meanwhile, another backer, Tim LaShaye, author of the rapturous ‘Left Behind’ series, once said, “Some of the greatest evil in the history of the world was concocted in the Jewish mind,” and David Barton has been tied to neo-Nazi groups and wrote in his book that only Christians should hold public office.

While this crew may support Israel, their support for Jewish Israelis, rather than just Christian Israelis, is certainly suspect.


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