THE CHRISTIAN ZIONIST FANTASYLAND

They say a picture paints a thousand words. If so what picture is being painted by John Hagee and his Christian Zionist lobby, CUFI (Christian United for Israel ) with a new logo they've developed for their webpage? You can check it out here: http://www.cufi.org/. Its at the top of the page to the left of the gold seal.

What you'll see is a photograph of the Wailing Wall topped by what appears to be a garden. No Dome of the Rock. No al Aqsa. They're gone. Vanished. No more.

The thousand words painted by this picture is an essay on fundamentalist Christian Zionist fantasies, which is the world many of them inhabit (Christian Zionists of the dispensationalist variety) –a fantasy land in which there are no Palestinians, either Muslim or Christian. In this fantasy world, Palestine doesn't exist as anything more than an historical oddity found on ancient Roman maps. There is no annoying demand for justice, no sense that anyone other than the world's Jewish community has a right to stake a claim to the land currently under dispute.

Those who may have lived in the land before the state of Israel was created (whose existence is also questionable, as this was a "land without a people for a people without a land" ) have gone to live elsewhere – in one of any number of surrounding states where their kind of people live. This is a purely Jewish state bathed in the light of God's benevolent gaze awaiting the day when the Warrior Prince Jesus returns to kill off any and all who may oppose her policies and don't become born again Christians (including Jews who refuse to convert). At this point the streets of the fantasy land will flow with rivers of blood.

The last part of this fantasy is, of course, a well hidden element of Hagee's ideology. He knows it. The Israelis who court his patronage know it. Everyone knows it, but no one talks about it. It can be easily dismissed, as the truth cannot be known until the End, and who knows when that will come.

But the other part of the fantasy cannot be so easily dismissed. To treat Palestinians as though they didn't exist; to ignore the reality of two peoples laying claim to the same piece of real estate is a dangerous fantasy which adds fuel to the flames of conflict and encourages the violence which the real people who inhabit the real land of Israel and Palestine must deal with for there ever to be any hope of peace.

Even more frightening is the possibility that those who live with this illusion will take steps to make the fantasy come true – to destroy the two mosques which are absent in the CUFI photo. Then the End will surely come, but not by any means the kind of End Hagee and his ideological bedfellows envision. The rivers of blood will flow, but the Prince of Peace will be noticeably absent, as He is absent now in Hagee's fantasyland.

John Hubers

Institute for the Study of Christian Zionism