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ADL Welcomes Pastor Hagee's Clarification of Remarks on Jews and the Holocaust
Mr. Foxman issued the following statement On June 13, 2008
We welcome Pastor Hagee's letter clarifying his views on Jews, the Holocaust and Israel.  We appreciate his regret over the pain his statements may have caused to any in the Jewish community.  We value his acknowledgement that the Holocaust was a tragedy unique in its evil and horror and the limits of our understanding in seeking to comprehend the mind of God.

Pastor Hagee has devoted his life to combating anti-Semitism and supporting the State of Israel.  We are grateful for his efforts to eradicate anti-Semitism and to rally so many in the Christian community to stand with Israel.

We look forward to continuing to work with Pastor Hagee to promote dialogue between Christians and Jews based on mutual respect, reconciliation and the recognition of God's eternal covenant with the Jewish people. 

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Going to War Against Your Friends - Rabbi Aaron D. Rubinger- June 10, 2008
Deuteronomy 21: 10 (“Ke Teze”)  begins “When you go out to war against your enemies …..” Rabbinic commentators have asked:  “Why must the Torah state ‘against your enemies’? Who else would you go to war against?!”.  Apparently, the Torah felt it was necessary to add those words “against your enemies” lest, in foolishness, we go to war against those who are our friends. The great wisdom of this Torah verse, sadly, has been demonstrated by those in our Jewish community who have wrongfully gone on the attack against Pastor John Hagee, one of Israel’s greatest friends in the Christian world.

 What exactly is a “friend?” My favorite definition of a friend is the one “who walks in when the rest of the world walks out.”  The rest of the world walked out on Israel when the Israeli government took the wise and necessary step of bombing Iraq’s nuclear reactor in 1981. That worldwide hysteria against Israel for undertaking a military action necessary for its national security must have come as a shock to the Jewish State. Where were Israel’s friends and supporters to defend Israel’s action? Sadly, they were nowhere to be found.  Yet a brave and solitary voice came forth from San Antonio, TX., that of Pastor John Hagee who stood up for Israel, defended Israel, in fact, applauded Israel. 
  Since then Pastor Hagee has repeatedly proven himself not only to be a great friend to Israel but to the Jewish people. As important as Pastor Hagee’s enormous amount of fundraising has been for Israel’s social needs, far more significant has been his long time political support, especially his creation of Christians United For Israel,  the most important and influential Evangelical voice in Washington DC.  Pastor Hagee created CUFI  precisely in order to prevent a second Holocaust perpetrated against the Jewish people by the virulent anti-Semitic regime in Iran. What dearer a friend could we Jews have in this world?

 Those who would so eagerly seize upon a single statement - one that is theologically troubling for those of us who have departed from ancient Biblical belief - and to exploit that statement in order  to expunge an entire lifetime of devotion and dedication to Israel’s survival, are either fools, or else have a particular political agenda that blinds them to just how critical John Hagee’s friendship has been and still is for the State of Israel.

I have and will continue to have profound gratitude to Pastor Hagge for his genuine friendship and sincere love of Israel and the Jewish people. We Jews have so few true friends in this world that to go on the attack against one of our dearest friends strikes me as being so bizarre that it borders on the suicidal. I hope that Pastor Hagee is aware of how deeply appreciated and loved he is by the people of Israel. May God bless him and strengthen him for all that he is doing to safeguard Jewish lives.

Rabbi Aaron D. Rubinger
Senior Rabbi Congregation Ohev Shalom                                                                                    
Orlando Florida

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Stand with Pastor Hagee By Charles Jacobs, President
The David Project Center for Jewish Leadership
Published in the Boston Jewish Advocate - June 11, 2008
Did my teacher, someone I so deeply respected, actually imply that G-d was in some way responsible for the Holocaust? I was upset and confused.

Isador Twersky, beloved professor at Harvard, the Talner Rebbi, whose writing on Maimonides I had pondered with a seriousness I had not expended on other texts, was teaching us about theodicy, the theological effort to reconcile the existence of evil with the existence of a beneficent G-d. Here’s the problem: The suffering of the innocent - earthquakes, polio, famines, pogroms, and the Holocaust - occurs in a world in which either there is or is not G-d. If you believe there is an all-powerful G-d, you cannot deny that He authors or at least allows evil. Why? As I recall it, Rabbi Twersky’s preferred answer was that God’s gift to us of free will meant that man could chose to do evil, even genocide. That didn’t end my unease.

Besides, religious Jews believe that Jewish suffering is a punishment from G-d. It is a concept daily rehearsed in the central Shema prayer. But the unprecedented blow of the Shoah left many (often angrily) refusing to apply it to this worst case.   

But not all: Many Rabbis have said G-d allowed the Shoah because so many European Jews assimilated. Still, most religious Jews prefer to hear the view that we just don’t know the reason. That, after all, was G-d’s answer to Job.

In the sermon that is getting him pummeled, John Hagee, the Christian Zionist leader who is rallying millions of Evangelicals for Israel, was much less judgmental than those rabbis. The Holocaust happened, he surmised, not because the Jews misbehaved, but because G-d wanted to transform the status of world Jewry, to be stateless no more. Sound theology? I think not. But surely it’s not hateful or anti-Jewish.

Yet many people, among them Jews who dislike religious Christians and are embarrassed by passionate Christian support for Israel, and others who saw an opportunity to help their favored candidate, all have erupted in a collective gloat: “McCain too has a hateful preacher.”

But Hagee is not that. He is a good man and a good friend. Even if he differs from most Jews on social issues and even if we disagree about theology.

Abandoning one’s friends for political expediency is wrong. John Hagee suffers for defending the Jewish people: he’s gotten credible Nazi death threats in Texas; he continues to receive harsh barbs by other Christians for his insistence on NOT “witnessing” to Jews, and he has suffered attacks from Jews who wrongly insist (they just “know”) that he’s in this to convert us or to hasten the Endtime…  But they don’t know, yet they say it anyway.
 
I’ll stand by John Hagee, not because of his views on social issues or theology, but because he stands with us - Israel and the world’s Jews in this difficult time. Pastor Hagee is being defamed. Who would we be if we do not stand by him?

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Rabbi David Zaslow- Havurah Shir Hadash- June 10. 2008
As you know the festival of Shavuot has just ended for the Jewish people. It is a time when Jews celebratd the receiving of Torah on Mt. Sinai more than 3,300 years ago. And, of course, it is related to Pentecost. So we both count to fifty: 50 days after leaving Egypt for Jews, 50 days after the resurrection for Christians. Our rabbis teach that by counting the days we are, in effect, saying to G-d that we want everyday to count.

I think the same principle holds true about those people we respect we need to let them know they count. Well, Pastor Hagee you count! From the day I read your book in the late 1980’s called “Should Christians Support Israel” I knew that I had discovered a true and courageous friend of the Jewish people. I also knew what great risks you have taken within the Church community in your unwavering support for Jews and Israel.

It was so, so sad for me to see the way Moveon.org and some in the media have taken your words out of context, and how they distorted them on some news reports. I was appalled and saddened that the words of a true friend of the Jewish people could be so distorted. Your words expressed a view that was no different than our great Talmudic sages expressed when trying to understand human tragedy.

I just wanted to send you this brief note of support, and to let you know that you are in my prayers, and in the prayers of tens of  thousands of Jews around the world. You are my hero, and I believe that G-d will transform what has to be a painful moment in your ministry into healing. May G-d bless you and keep you always!

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FROM THE MOUTHS OF MINISTERS -Rabbi Avi Shafran- The Texas Jerusalem Post- June 6, 2008
“Tonight I humbly ask forgiveness of the Jewish people for every act of anti-Semitism and the deafening silence of Christianity in your greatest hour of need during the Holocaust.”

Those words were spoken before a crowd of several thousand Jews attending an AIPAC Policy Conference in March, 2007.  The speaker was Pastor John Hagee, the evangelist who heads the group Christians United for Israel the very same Pastor Hagee whom Reform Rabbi Eric Yoffie now accuses of “insult[ing] the survivors” of the Holocaust.

Rabbi Yoffie, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, was referring to a speech Pastor Hagee made about a decade ago, about Jeremiah’s prophecy that G-d would one day “bring the Jewish people again unto their land that I gave unto their fathers” (16:15).  In the next verse G-d proclaims that He will send “many fishers” and then “hunters.”  The latter word was interpreted by Mr. Hagee as referring to Hitler, leading the pastor to regard the Holocaust as part of a Divine strategy to move Jews to the Holy Land.

One needn’t agree with the pastor’s take on history; or accept his assumption that simple people can identify events with prophecies; or even consider him to be in command of the facts (in his speech, he has Theodore Herzl, a resolutely secular Jew, invoking Divine command as the reason Jews should move to Palestine).  But nothing in fact could be more Jewish than to accept that, no matter how inscrutable, G-d is just; and that as we look into the maw of tragedy we are to look inward as well.
 
And so, while the Reform rabbi may have seen the Christian minister’s words as “an affront” to those who perished in the Holocaust, I saw only an attempt, imperfect but without malice, to discern the fulfillment of a Jewish prophet’s words in recent history. 

It is possible that Rabbi Yoffie’s harsh judgment of Pastor Hagee’s sermon reflects a broader disconnect between the two gentlemen.  The Reform leader has long disdained the pastor’s politics.  Hagee, after all, is a social conservative, believes that Iran should be militarily disabled and strongly opposes a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict.   As such, his position profile is something of a reverse image to that of the Reform movement. 

The Jewish clergyman might also have resented the Christian one’s reference, earlier this year at a Reform temple in Los Angeles, to the object of Christian veneration as “a Reform rabbi” (intended as a compliment, no doubt).
 
But one suspects that what most profoundly divide the two clergymen are issues of theology.  It is the pastor’s belief, but apparently not entirely the rabbi’s, that: The Torah is the word of G-d (“Truth is not what you think it is.  Truth is what the Torah says it is”); G-d chose and charged the Jewish People with heeding His laws (“[The Jews are] the chosen people, a cherished people… with an eternal covenant that will stand forever”); and the Torah explicitly warns us of the repercussions of forsaking our mission.

That latter thought is in fact recalled at each Jewish festival, when Jews include in their prayers the words “Because of our sins were we exiled from our land…”  It is, moreover, the dominant motif of the liturgy of the annual Jewish mourning-day, Tisha B’Av.

As it happened, the very Sabbath following Rabbi Yoffie’s rebuke of Pastor Hagee, Jews the world over read one of the two portions of the Torah that relate how the Jewish People’s  refusal to honor their holy mission will result in the loosening of the reins holding evil at bay.  The paragraphs speak of punishments so terrible they are read in an undertone.  But they nonetheless must be read, audibly and carefully, because they speak to most important Jewish fundamentals: that the Torah’s laws are real, and that it is built into the very fabric of the world that the Jews must heed them.  Those who do evil, Pharaoh, Hitler, et al, are fully culpable for their acts “Merits are brought through the meritorious,” says the Talmud, “and iniquity through the iniquitous” but calamity is not causeless.

It would appear that Rabbi Yoffie does not accept these truths. He believes, as he has written, that Jews “must examine each mitzvah [Torah commandment] and ask the question: 'do I feel commanded in this instance…?’” 

Thus, at a recent Reform convention, he could disparage what he called “the Shabbat of eighteenth-century Europe… an endless list of Shabbat prohibitions,” and proudly recall how “we fled that kind of Shabbat, and for good reason.”

Many of us Orthodox Jews tend to not be comfortable with Christian evangelists.  Most, after all, want Jews to accept Christianity, which a Jew is enjoined against doing, even on penalty of death.  Although Reverend Hagee has clearly stated that he has no such designs, he nonetheless remains a Christian evangelist.  And for Biblical interpretations, we Jews look elsewhere.

At the same time, though, an inescapable irony emerges here:
 
Interpretations of Biblical prophecies aside, the pastor’s approach to Torah (that it is true), Jews (that they are chosen to serve G-d) and history (that it is Divinely guided) is the Jewish one; and the rabbi’s, tragically, is not.
2:02 PM 6/6/2008

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McCain is wrong to reject Pastor John Hagee by Ed Koch- June 2, 2008
 Senator John McCain was wrong to reject the endorsement of Texas evangelist Rev. John Hagee.

Several years ago Rev. Hagee delivered a sermon that was caught on tape in which he preached, "Then God sent a hunter. A hunter is someone with a gun, and he forces you. Hitler was a hunter. How did it happen? Because God allowed it to happen. Why did it happen? Because God said, 'My top priority for the Jewish people is to get them to come back to the land of Israel."

Anyone hearing the tape would conclude that Hagee is hostile to the Jews, but nothing could be further from the truth. He and his congregants are among Israel's strongest supporters. For religious reasons, they want Israel to rule supreme over all of the lands that made up the ancient Jewish kingdoms of Israel and Judea. Evangelicals believe that the Messiah - Jesus Christ - cannot return to the earth until the Jews return to the land of Israel (Eretz Yisrael), they having been expelled by the Romans in 70 AD after the Second Temple -- the one built by Herod -- was destroyed.

Christian fundamentalists believe that every word of the Old and New Testaments represents the will of God. Other Christians believe that the words were inspired by God, but written by humans, and therefore are fallible. Still others believe that the Bible, while sacred, is comprised of ancient myths and allegories and is intended to teach.

Rev. Hagee, being a fundamentalist, believes that each word is the word of God, and that everything that occurs on Earth happens as a result of God's direction. Events caused by people like Hitler, for some fundamentalists, are explained as a punishment visited by God on Jews who had fallen away from the faith and did not follow all of God's mandates.

Other fundamentalists would not accept that view, believing instead that while God makes it possible for one to do evil, He is angry when such evil is committed. The evildoer cannot be excused by saying, "God made me do it," because human beings have free will. Finally, as a friend and scholar said, "We don't know why God does what He does. Look at a rug on the reverse side and you see inexplicable knots of wool, while on the front, there is a beautiful pattern."

Rev. Hagee apparently believes that Hitler was used by God to bring the Jews back to the Promised Land.

After enormous pressure from those comparing Rev. Hagee to Senator Obama's pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, John McCain rejected Hagee's endorsement, stating that Hagee's views as expressed in the years-old sermon being distributed on the web are "crazy." McCain also said, "Obviously, I find these remarks and others deeply offensive and indefensible, and I repudiate them."

Hagee was not praising Hitler the monster, he was simply offering the fundamentalist opinion that Hitler was used by God to cause the creation of a Jewish state to which the Jews of the world would return.

Hagee's followers have supported the State of Israel in many tangible ways. Evangelicals continue to visit Israel as tourists even during the most dangerous times, which is more than can be said for some Diaspora Jews.

It has become fashionable among liberals, including Jews, to ridicule and denounce Hagee and other fundamentalists. I do not. I appreciate their support of the State of Israel and thank them for their enormous contributions to the Jewish state.

This is not to say that I agree with Rev. Hagee's view of Hitler or his other views. For example, I strongly disagree with Rev. Hagee's statement that Hurricane Katrina was God's punishment for homosexual sin in New Orleans. I also deplore his reference to the Roman Catholic Church as "the great whore," for which he has since apologized.

In this dangerous world, Christians and Jews must come together to fight our common enemies. I've been working for years to strengthen the Christian-Jewish alliance, and I intend to continue to do so.

Ed Koch is a former Mayor of New York City and writes for Family Security Matters.

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I Stand with Pastor John Hagee By Shlomo Riskin- June 2, 2008
Pastor John Hagee is a towering leader in the Evangelical Church who has dedicated a great part of his enormously successful ministry to reaching out in love and loving-kindness to the Jewish people and the State of Israel. He has admirably defended our right to our historic homeland even when our enemies have attempted to disgorge us from our homes and drive us into the sea; he has praised the Lord for having imbued us, the "post-Holocaust dry bones of Ezekiel," with renewed life and vigor even when our arch-enemy and the arch-enemy of the free world has called us a "stinking corpse." He has organized Christian lobby groups for the only true democracy in the Middle East across the length and breadth of the United States even when a former American President and professors from Harvard and Chicago Universities have denounced our own lobbying efforts as un-American and anti-Democratic.

Pastor Hagee has expressed his profound affection for us even when it has been most unpopular to do so. Can we, the recipients of his heart and goodwill, dare be silent now, when the political frenzy of primary elections hysterically seeks to defame and discredit one of the greatest voices on behalf of Christian-Jewish healing and cooperation? No, for the sake of Jerusalem and for the sake of the God of love and peace we must raise our voices in support of and friendship for the very individual who has never faltered in his support and friendship for us!

Does this mean that I must necessarily agree with all of the theological positions taken by Pastor Hagee? Not at all! True friendship means that I continue to love and even partner with my friend, despite disagreeing with him on even fundamental positions of theology and ideology as long as his views do not threaten the life or limb of innocent human beings. And in fact in subsequent articles I hope to express my own theological position about God and the existence of evil, Jewish history and the place of Hitler (may his very name be blotted out). But if I can only love those with whom I agree completely, then I cannot even love myself because I may very well come to disagree tomorrow with whatever I may have thought and said today! As Pastor Hagee himself has remarked, if I am completely in accord with whatever you think and say, then one of us becomes superfluous.

We are living in a world divided between those who believe in a God of love and peace, and those who believe in a Satan of Jihad and suicide bombers. Any attempt to marginalize and slander leaders of the camp of the former will only serve to strengthen the camp of the latter, with the future existence of the free world perilously hanging in the balance. And so I continue to proudly shout from the rooftops that this rabbi in Israel stands firmly alongside -his beloved friend, a true friend of Israel and the free world, Pastor John Hagee.

Shlomo Riskin
Chief Rabbi of Efrat, Israel
Founder: Ohr Torah Stone Center for Jewish-Christian Understanding & Cooperation

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Our World: Jews united for Israel's friends by Caroline Glick
Excerpts of the article that appeared in The The Jerusalem Post-on June 2, 2008
As for Israel, just as Yoffie made his initial attack on Hagee, Hagee was setting out to Israel with a thousand CUFI members on a solidarity mission. He held a rally of his supporters at the Jerusalem Conference Center. There he distributed six million dollars in contributions from CUFI members to Israeli charities and educational institutions. No doubt in response to Yoffie's pressure, the only prominent Israeli politicians who attended the event were Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu and former Likud minister and MK Uzi Landau. No government minister attended and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert sufficed with a private meeting with Hagee.

HAPPILY, NOT all American Jewish leaders have agreed to toe the line. Senator Joseph Lieberman has rejected demands by Yoffie and J Street to boycott CUFI's conference in Washington. The American Jewish Committee and the Zionist Organization of America have refused to distance themselves from Hagee. Israel and American Jewry should follow their example.

These are terrible times for world Jewry. Islamic Jew-hatred is genocidal. The international Left has betrayed us. Our leaders are weak. Our friends are few and far between.

If we wish to persevere in this environment we must embrace those who support us while eschewing those - even in our own ranks - who tell us that support for Israel is conditional. Now is not the time to quibble over Christian theology. Now is the time to stand united with our friends against our common enemies.

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Hagee was, and wasn't, wrong on Holocaust By Jeff Jacoby
Excerpts of the article that appeared in The Boston Globe on June 1, 2008
And yet the belief that the Holocaust, like all calamities, is part of God's plan is hardly alien to Jewish or Christian thought. The Jews of Theresienstadt, risking their lives to gather in prayer, surely believed the horror surrounding them must be willed by God. That is why they begged Him: "Turn back from Your anger and have mercy."

As anyone even fleetingly familiar with the Hebrew Bible knows, it is not "crazy," let alone anti-Semitic, to believe that Jewish suffering can be a punishment from God. What is, if not crazy, then at least reckless, is to claim to know God's reasons for permitting the Holocaust. How a good and loving God can allow such evil is an old, old question, for which we have, in the words of Isaiah, only one ultimate answer: "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, says the Lord."

John Hagee is no anti-Semite. Far from it: He is a passionate enemy of anti-Semitism, who has built a great ministry upon the conviction that Jew-hatred is a sin. The Jewish people and the Jewish state have few friends in the Christian world so devoted and indefatigable - even if it is politically unfashionable to say so.

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Hagee, Hitler, and the Holocaust by Joel Mowbray
Excerpts of the article that appeared in on Townhall.com  on May 30, 2008
Hagee, like millions of other evangelical Christians, believes in an active, all-powerful God.  When you preach often about the Holocaust, you had better give your followers an explanation of the Holocaust that jells with a theology revolving around an all-powerful Almighty—not a natural marriage.

The answer Hagee offered his followers in the now-controversial sermon was that it was fulfillment of Biblical prophecy, specifically the Hebrew prophet Jeremiah’s about hunters and fishers.  This is hardly a commonplace interpretation, but that’s all it was.  Hagee, like countless rabbis and survivors over the years, was simply trying to offer a reason for how the Holocaust could happen in a world with an omnipotent God.

As talk host and Townhall columnist Dennis Prager noted this week, Hagee’s “notion that God willed the Holocaust is neither anti-Jewish nor even un-Jewish.”  In a powerful examination of relevant Jewish theology, Prager wrote, “Regarding the Holocaust specifically, Ignaz Maybaum was a major 20th century Jewish theologian who identified ‘the Holocaust victims as vicarious sacrificial offerings for the redemption of humanity…’”

One rabbi—specifically the one who knows him best, longtime friend Aryeh Scheinberg—goes even further to point out that Hagee’s theology has strong Jewish precedent.  “Pastor [Hagee] interpreted a Biblical verse in a way not very different from several legitimate Jewish authorities,” Rabbi Scheinberg said Friday at a joint press conference with Hagee in San Antonio on Friday.  “Viewing Hitler as acting completely outside of God’s plan is to suggest that God was powerless to stop the Holocaust, a position quite unacceptable to any religious Jew or Christian.”

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John Hagee, the Holocaust, and Me: Thinking about Allies by Daniel Pipes- May 29, 2008
Leonard Fein has noted in the Forward that I am one of those scheduled to speak at John Hagee's Christians United for Israel conference in July. In the light of new information about Pastor Hagee's views on the Holocaust and the news that John McCain repudiated Hagee's endorsement of him for president, Fein wonders, what are the others and I doing about the CUFI conference? Will they cancel their appearances, he asks. "Or will they twist and turn to rationalize their continuing support for this false witness?"

No twisting and no turning here, Mr. Fein. I plan to speak, as scheduled, at the conference.

It is inconceivable that I should repudiate Pastor Hagee, or his organization, because of his theological interpretations. He is not my spiritual guide but an ally in the political effort to help Israel survive and prosper. I do not expect to share a total outlook with my allies, nor do I need to examine their belief systems. It suffices that we work together for a common cause.

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Hagee supports the Jewish people by Rabbi Leonard Oberstein
Excerpts of the letter  that appeared in The Baltimore Sun on May 29, 2008
Thank God for Christians like the Rev. John Hagee who teach love of the Jewish people and love for the state of Israel ("McCain rejects backing of controversial pastor," May 23).

I do not share Pastor Hagee's theology, but I am happy that he loves Israel and supports it and teaches his many followers to love the Jews.

Rabbi Leonard Oberstein

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Melvin Dow Statement Concerning Pastor John Hagee- May 28, 2008
It is difficult to summarize all the things Pastor John Hagee has done to strengthen and benefit Israel and even more difficult to estimate their value and their importance. 

Through his powerful sermons, his work in creating Christians United For Israel as a national organization, his sponsorship of "Nights to Honor Israel," Pastor Hagee has drawn hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of Christians to stand-up and speak-out for Israel.  His financial generosity has benefited under-privileged Israeli children, disabled veterans, Israeli educational institutions, immigrant absorption centers, and a long list of other Israeli charities and institutions.  The "Nights to Honor Israel" programs of sermons and music are not only annual events at Pastor Hagee's Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, they are telecast to millions and are now replicated in numerous cities across the country.  CUFI has grown into a national organization with thousands of members who urge Congress to support legislation which benefits Israel.  Pastor Hagee has done all these things out of respect for the Jewish people and love for the State of Israel, with no ulterior motives, no hidden agenda, and no proselytizing program.  The Jewish people and the State of Israel are fortunate to have Pastor John Hagee as a friend.

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Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors Los Angeles Stands with Pastor John Hagee
In light of the recent media and political frenzy over quotes from John Hagee's sermons in the 1990s, CJHSLA wishes to express its support for Pastor Hagee. Whether one agrees with his remarks or not, they are hardly controversial to those familiar with the conversation Jews have been having with and about G-d for thousands of years.

Pastor Hagee is hardly the first person to posit an interactive relationship between the hand of the Creator and the fate of the Jewish people. His opinion in this matter may be uncommon in the mainstream, but it is hardly singular, remarkable or exceptional among Holocaust survivors.

Founder and president of CJHSLA, Doris Wise Montrose, said "My entire life I never heard a discussion about the Holocaust that did not bring up G-d. Many survivors, including my father, believed that G-d had a hand in the Holocaust, either by causing it or by allowing it to happen."

CJHSLA urges the public, especially the Jewish community, to recognize and appreciate Pastor Hagee's stalwart leadership in American Zionism, as well as his overt, compassionate and substantial support for Israel . Hagee's organization, Christians United for Israel , has raised over $30 million for charities in Israel , and for this he deserves our gratitude.

"What I know for certain," said Montrose, "is that 6 million Jews were brutally and systematically murdered over a period of twelve years - from 1933 to 1945 - because human beings here on earth did nothing to stop it. Pastor Hagee understands that better than most, and has made it his business not only to seek atonement for the sins of those who stood idly by, but also to ensure that history is not allowed to repeat itself."

"At CJHSLA, we stand with John Hagee," Montrose concluded. "He should be honored, not scorned."

Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors Los Angeles is a not-for-profit organization committed to preventing another Holocaust by combating antisemitism and anti-Zionism. CJHSLA is dedicated to the protection of freedom and actively promotes the right of the State of Israel to not only exist, but to flourish, as a Jewish state. CJHSLA is a diverse group which includes children of Holocaust survivors, other Jews, Israelis, Christians, and people from various fields including the film industry and the legal profession.

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 Letter of Support from Leading figures in Netanya Academic College - May 27, 2008

Dear Pastor Hagee,

We saw the different publications vilifying your character, and we all felt the need to object and protest thus expressing personally our recognition and esteem to your enterprise, your doing and to your unconditional love to the People of Israel and to the State of Israel.

We all feel that these publications remind us the darkest times of our nation, when rivals from inside and out tried to besmirch the Holy Scriptures, our public systems and the leadership of the Jewish nation. These publications were in the focus of terrible slanders that ended in many disasters for our People.

We see in you a man of truth and a true friend, whos