Rapturous night for US evangelicals in West Bank

The speakers throbbed as teenage girls in buckskin fringe and cowboy hats danced a hoedown in an occupied West Bank gym packed with American evangelicals keen to show support for Israel. The more than 100 Christians Charlatans who travelled to the Ariel settlement in the heart of the occupied territory last week were led there by biblical prophecy and by megachurch pastor John Hagee, the evening's guest of honour. Evangelical Christians may feel they have been left out in the cold by US election fever, with none of the three remaining candidates generating the excitement of President George W. Bush's successful 2004 run. But in Ariel they received an enthusiastic welcome, not only because of the millions of dollars they have given the settlement, but because of pastor Hagee's firm opposition to giving anything to the Palestinians. "They believe in God's word in the Bible, and in God's promise to the Jewish people that the land of Israel belongs to the people of Israel," master of ceremony and head of the Ariel Development Fund Dina Shalit told the crowd. Ariel's mayor Ron Nachman added, "And only to the people of Israel!" to a thunderous roll of applause. Then the stage was cleared for the "For Zion's Sake" dance troupe, which had prepared a special number for the Texans in the crowd, including Hagee, who leads the 19,000-member Cornerstone Church in San Antonio. The crowd clapped along as the dancing cowgirls stamped to a Hebrew rock song across an indoor basketball court decked with American and Israeli flags, the first of several local acts to entertain the Americans. In the audience were members of Christians United For Israel (CUFI), a nationwide American evangelical movement launched by Hagee to support the Jewish state, one that boasts over 400 Christian leaders. They had come to see a vast new sports and recreation centre under construction in the heart of the settlement and largely funded by Hagee, whose name is emblazoned on the side of its main building, and his followers. Since founding CUFI in February 2006 the millionaire pastor has become a key ally of Israel in the United States. He has opposed conceding any occupied land to the Palestinians, citing a biblical injunction against dividing the "land of Israel," and has branded Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a "new Hitler" who must be stopped. "Believe me, my dear friends, he is amazing," mayor Nachman said as he called Hagee to the stage. "I'm delighted to be in Ariel tonight, the heartland of America in Judea and Samaria," Hagee drawled in the sandpaper baritone of a country preacher, referring to the West Bank by its biblical name. On the hot-button issues of the decades-old Middle East conflict Hagee tells the people of Ariel -- a town built on land seized by Israel in the 1967 war and considered illegal under international law -- what they want to hear. "May Jerusalem forever be undivided, always under Jewish control, and may it never be traded off for any reason, to anyone, not ever," he says to rising applause. He then slammed Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in 2005, saying all it brought was a "monsoon season of raining rockets" from Palestinian militants. Hagee has in the past drawn fire in the United States for linking the Catholic Church to the Holocaust and for saying that the Koran gives Muslims a "scriptural mandate" to kill Christians and Jews. Republican presidential candidate John McCain, after welcoming Hagee's endorsement, last month released a statement saying he did not wish to "suggest that I in turn agree with all of pastor Hagee's views, which I obviously do not." A day before Hagee's visit to Ariel, Rabbi Eric Yoffie, the president of the Union for Reform Judaism, the largest Jewish religious organisation in the United States with over 1.5 million members, denounced him and his followers. "On Israeli-Palestinian politics, John Hagee and the CUFI are extremists," he told a conference of American rabbis in Cincinnati, Ohio. "Israel's greatest friends and most important defenders are not the fundamentalists and extremists and those who take their orders directly from God, but those who work for an end to this terrible conflict," he added. In Israel Hagee was nevertheless granted face-to-face meetings with Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni. And days after visiting Ariel he announced that his church would be donating six million dollars to Israeli organisations at an event in Jerusalem in which he appeared alongside right-wing Likud party leader Benjamin Netanyahu. Hagee's support for Israel is rooted in a specific reading of the Bible that predicts a "rapture" in which all true Christians will be whisked away from the world before a cosmic end of days showdown between Israel and its enemies. Audience member Kelly Stewart, a human resources director in Atlanta, Georgia, said she supported Israel because "that's where our blessings come from, as an American nation. It's biblical." Others were surprised by the size of Ariel, a sprawling, fully-developed town of red-roofed homes, and wide, suburban streets, all constructed on a hilltop deep inside the West Bank, several miles (kilometres) from Israel. "This really makes me rethink some of the things people say. This is not a settlement to me," Scott Brennan, a sixth-grade teacher in Riverside, California said. "The way the media portrays it is as a bunch of tents." While most Israelis have accepted, at least in principle, the idea of land for peace, Hagee is firmly allied with the settler movement and its goal of permanently colonising the West Bank. "The government of Israel wants to divide Jerusalem, the government of Israel wants to give land for nothing, no peace, no nothing," Nachman said. "When we see our friends the Christians, who are so much committed to the promised land, to the prophecy, to the Jewish people... I wish that our Jewish people, especially in this country, will be so committed to Israel." AFP Jewish 'Peoplehood' An Epic Fabrication The Jewification Of America US evangelist gives $6 million to Israel