Former Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney lashed out at the decision to have a controversial evangelical leader give a blessing at the opening of the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem Monday, calling him a “religious bigot.”
The Senate candidate from Utah criticized the inclusion of the Rev. Robert Jeffress — the pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas who is also an an adviser to President Donald Trump. The president recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital last year.
Mitt Does Not Change His Underwear So He Caught Blue-Balls From Dirty Draws. So He Only Has 1 Ball So We Call Him, 1-Nut Mitt.
“Robert Jeffress says, ‘You can’t be saved by being a Jew,’ and ‘Mormonism is a heresy from the pit of hell,’” Romney wrote in a tweet Sunday night. “He’s said the same about Islam. Such a religious bigot should not be giving the prayer that opens the United States Embassy in Jerusalem.”
Jeffress denied he was a bigot, but added that he believed Mormonism was “wrong,” and said the Southern Baptist Convention had designated it a “cult.”
“Mormonism has never been considered a part of historic Christianity. People may disagree with that view, but it’s not a view unique to me,” he said in an interview with NBC News.
Jeffress bases his beliefs and his general opposition to a two-state solution to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians on his strict interpretation of the Bible.
“The Bible says this land belongs to the Jewish people — period,” he told NBC News in a separate interview in February. “God has pronounced judgment after judgment in the Old Testament to those who would ‘divide the land,’ end quote, and hand it over to non-Jews.”
“If you sincerely follow the tenets of Islam, then you will end up in hell when you die.”
“If you sincerely follow the tenets of Islam, then you will end up in hell when you die.”
While a staunch ally of the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Jeffress has been criticized for preaching that all non-Christians, including people who are Jewish, will not go to heaven.
“The truth everyone headed to hell has rejected is that Jesus Christ is the only means by which a person may be saved,” Jeffress said in a Feb. 6, 2017, video posted on his church’s website. “Jesus could not have been more clear [when] he said, ‘I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father but through me.’”
Jeffress has also been open about his beliefs on Islam.
“Is Islam just another way to worship God? Let me say this without any hesitation: Islam is a false religion that is based on a false book that was written by a false prophet,” he said on Oct. 9, according to his church’s website. “If you sincerely follow the tenets of Islam, then you will end up in hell when you die.”
He has also espoused a conservative line on homosexuality, saying the “New Testament also prohibits homosexual marriage.”
Jeffress added, “By upholding God’s pattern for sexuality — a man and a woman in a marriage relationship — Jesus automatically condemned any deviation from that pattern.”
Jeffress isn’t the only conservative evangelical leader to be on hand for Monday’s embassy ceremony, which included around 800 guests. The Rev. John Hagee, the founder of influential evangelical Christians United for Israel and a pastor from San Antonio, delivered a closing blessing at the ceremony.
American evangelicals surged onto the political scene in 1980 by helping to elect President Ronald Reagan. In 2016, around 80 percent of white evangelicals voted for Trump. As evangelicals grew more prominent domestically, their ties to the Israeli political establishment strengthened.
Hagee has explicitly linked the establishment of the state of Israel to biblical prophecy and the second coming of Jesus.
“The rebirth of Israel as a nation was an unmistakable milestone on the prophetic timeline leading to the return of Christ,” he wrote in his book, “In Defense of Israel.”
Trump and Vice President Mike Pence have been embraced by Christian Zionists who believe the establishment of the state of Israel is proof of God keeping his promises and a step toward the second coming of Christ.
Many European nations who oppose Trump’s decision to move the embassy are expected to skip related events on Monday.
Netanyahu tells Saban Forum in D.C. that half of Middle East believes that their respective countries could benefit from Israel ties
WASHINGTON – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu raised concerns over the threat posed against Israel by Iran while addressing the Saban Forum taking place in Washington, D.C. via satellite from his office in Jerusalem.
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Iran has “ruthless commitment to terror” and “ruthless commitment to kill Jews,” much like Nazi Germany during World War II, the premier stressed while addressing the forum.
As the prime minister of Israel, Netanyahu said he did not “have the luxury of discounting” threats to destroy the Jewish people, and for this reason he continues to speak about Iran.
skip – Netanyahu at Saban Forum
Netanyahu further echoed his statements from over the weekend, vowing to stop Iran from entrenching itself in Syria. On Friday, Israel allegedly struck an Iranian military base in Syria.
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He called for the policy community in Washington D.C. to take the opportunity set up by U.S. President Donald Trump to “erase the great flaws” of the Iran nuclear deal, as its current status allows Tehran to build up a nuclear arsenal.
Netanyahu added that Israel will be the first to restore relations with Iran once its current regime falls, and that in the future, Israel will be “embraced openly by its Arab neighbors, rather than in secret as it’s done today.”
He further added that “half of the public in the Middle Eastern countries that were surveyed appreciate Israel’s strengths and assets” and that “they believe that their country could benefit from having ties with Israel.”
Excerpts of his speech were published on Saturday night, in which he vowed to stop Iran from entrenching itself in Syria.
The Saban Forum is an annual conference on U.S. policy in the Middle East organized by the Brookings Institution.
>>Israeli attempts to kick Iran out of Syria could escalate into war | Analysis
Other Israeli speakers at the event this year included former Prime Minister Ehud Barak, Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked and the new leader of the Labor Party, Avi Gabbay. Topics discussed included the Iran deal and Saudi Arabia’s role in the Middle East.
Later on Sunday, Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, will speak publicly for the first time about the Trump administration’s attempts to facilitate an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement. Kushner will talk about the administration’s peace efforts together with Haim Saban, the Israeli-born business mogul who funds the annual event.
A regional court in Germany has decided that a brutal attempt to set fire to a local synagogue in 2014 was an act meant to express criticism against Israel’s conduct in its ongoing conflict with Gaza.
A German regional court in the city of Wuppertal affirmed a lower court decision last Friday stating that a violent attempt to burn the city’s synagogue by three men in 2014 was a justified expression of criticism of Israel’s policies.
Johannes Pinnel, a spokesman for the regional court in Wuppertal, outlined the court’s decision in a statement.
Three German Palestinians sought to torch the Wuppertal synagogue with Molotov cocktails in July, 2014. The local Wuppertal court panel said in its 2015 decision that the three men wanted to draw “attention to the Gaza conflict” with Israel. The court deemed the attack not to be motivated by antisemitism.
Israel launched Operation Protective Edge in the summer of 2014 to stop Hamas rocket attacks into Israeli territory.
The court sentenced the three men – the 31-year-old Mohamad E., the 26 year-old Ismail A. and the 20-year-old Mohammad A.—to suspended sentences. The men tossed self-made Molotov cocktails at the synagogue. German courts frequently decline to release the last names of criminals to protect privacy.
The attack caused €800 damage to the synagogue. The original synagogue in Wuppertal was burned by Germans during the Kristallnacht pogroms in 1938. Wuppertal has a population of nearly 344,000 and is located in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia.
The court said the men had consumed alcohol and there were no injuries to members of the synagogue.
A 13-year-old who lived near the synagogue and noticed the flames informed the police. Several days before the fire, a person sprayed “Free Palestine” on a wall of the synagogue.
After the local Wuppertal court decision in 2015, Volker Beck, a leading Green Party MP, said the “attack on the synagogue was motivated by antisemitism” and blasted the court for issuing a decision stating that the goal of the attack was to highlight the war in Gaza.
“This is a mistaken decision as far as the motives of the perpetrators are concerned,” he said, adding that the burning of a synagogue in Germany because of the Middle East conflict can be attributed only to antisemitism.
“What do Jews in Germany have to do with the Middle East conflict? Every bit as much as Christians, non-religious people or Muslims in Germany, namely, absolutely nothing. The ignorance of the judiciary toward anti-Semitism is for many Jews in Germany especially alarming, ” said Beck.
The switching Sissy doing what he does best: making a total fool of himself.
President Obama’s clashes with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may cost him a membership at an exclusive golf club, sources said.
Obama is looking to join the elite Woodmont Country Club in Maryland once he becomes a private citizen.
But members of the mostly Jewish club are at each other’s throats over whether to accept the golf-loving president, with many saying he deserves to be snubbed for not blocking an anti-Israel vote at the United Nations, according to the sources.
Obama’s UN decision was Followed by a speech by Secretary of State John Kerry that was seen by many in the Jewish community as hostile to Israel.
“In light of the votes at the UN and the Kerry speech and everything else, there’s this major uproar with having him part of the club, and a significant portion of the club has opposed offering him membership,” a source told The Post.
Obama’s complimentary membership in the club — which charges regular members an $80,000 initiation fee — would have begun after he leaves the White House on Jan. 20, Inauguration Day.
The Obamas will continue to live in Washington, DC — and the Rockville club would offer a relaxing respite just miles from his new home. It would also offer a chance for Obama to hit the links on “two premiere golf courses . . . known across the country for their spectacular championship play and . . . rave reviews by golfers throughout the years,” according to the club’s Web site.
“It’s a very exclusive, high-end club,” a source said.
In addition to the steep initiation fee, members must cough up $9,673 in annual dues.
“Originally, this was supposed to be a back-door thing to get this done and give him the membership — free of charge — and circumvent the rules,” said a source.
“But now, with the UN thing, they are not in position or likely to do it,” he added, saying the club is currently facing threats of potential lawsuits and litigation for breaching the bylaws to let Obama join.
Democrats and Republicans in the club both oppose waiving normal procedures for the soon-to-be ex-president, a source said.
While the club “probably skews more Republican than the Jewish community as a whole,” there are many prominent Democratic members, a number of whom supported Obama’s campaigns. But they might not support him now.
“Can you imagine how angry I would be if I had paid $80K to have to look at this guy who has done more to damage Israel than any president in American history?” an official in a Washington Jewish organization fumed to The Post.
“After the UN vote and attack on Israel, I think it probably hurts the club. If there is a club that excludes Jews, he would probably be more comfortable around those folks.”
Obama first played there in September 2015 with aide Joe Paulson, former Deputy Secretary of State Tom Nides and John Shulman, head of the private equity firm Juggernaut Capital Partners.
Shulman and his wife, Alison, have donated thousands to the Obama Foundation, according to published reports. His daughter also reportedly attends the Sidwell Friends School, as do the Obamas’ daughters. He did not return calls seeking comment.
When rumors first began to spread in Washington that Obama might consider joining the club, the CEO and general manager, Brian Pizzimenti, welcomed him.
“We’d be honored to have the president at the club as a member,” Pizzimenti told the Jewish publication The Forward. “We’re glad to have offered [Obama] fun and relaxation.”
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
The Iranian government, through a website proxy, has laid out the legal and religious justification for the destruction of Israel and the slaughter of its people.
The doctrine includes wiping out Israeli assets and Jewish people worldwide.
Calling Israel a danger to Islam, the conservative website Alef, with ties to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said the opportunity must not be lost to remove “this corrupting material. It is a “‘jurisprudential justification” to kill all the Jews and annihilate Israel, and in that, the Islamic government of Iran must take the helm.”
The article, written by Alireza Forghani, an analyst and a strategy specialist in Khamenei’s camp, now is being run on most state-owned sites, including the Revolutionary Guards’ Fars News Agency, showing that the regime endorses this doctrine.
Because Israel is going to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities, Iran is justified in launching a pre-emptive, cataclysmic attack against the Jewish state, the doctrine argues.
On Friday, in a major speech at prayers, Khamenei announced that Iran will support any nation or group that attacks the “cancerous tumor” of Israel. Though his statement was seen by some in the West as fluff, there is substance behind it.
Iran’s Defense Ministry announced this weekend that it test-fired an advanced two-stage, solid-fuel ballistic missile and boasted about successfully putting a new satellite into orbit, reminding the West that its engineers have mastered the technology for intercontinental ballistic missiles even as the Islamic state pushes its nuclear weapons program.
The commander of the Revolutionary Guards, Brig. Gen. Seyyed Mehdi Farahi, stated in August that the Safir missile, which is capable of transporting a satellite into space, can easily be launched parallel to the earth’s orbit, which will transform it into an intercontinental ballistic missile. Western analysts didn’t believe this would happen until 2015. Historically, orbiting a satellite is the criterion for crediting a nation with ICBM capability.
Forghani details the Islamic duty of jihad as laid out in the Quran for the sake of Allah and states that “primary jihad,” according to some Shiite jurists, can only occur when the Hidden Imam, the Shiites’ 12th Imam Mahdi, returns. Shiites believe Mahdi’’s return will usher in Armageddon.
In the absence of the hidden Imam, Forghani says, “defensive jihad” could certainly take place when Islam is threatened, and Muslims must defend Islam and kill their enemies. To justify such action, Alef quotes the Shiites’ first imam, Ali, who stated “Waging war against the enemies with whom war is inevitable and there is a strong possibility that in near future they will attack Muslims is a must and the duty of Muslims.” In this regard, Ayatollah Khamenei has issued a fatwa in which he has even authorized carrying out primary jihad in the age of the absence of the Hidden imam under the authorization of Vali Faghih.
The article then quotes the Quran (Albaghara 2:191-193): “And slay them wherever ye find them, and drive them out of the places whence they drove you out, for persecution [of Muslims] is worse than slaughter [of non-believers] … and fight them until persecution is no more, and religion is for Allah.”
It is the duty for all Muslims to participate in this defensive jihad, Forghani says. A fatwa by the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini made it clear that any political domination by infidels over Muslims authorizes Muslims to defend Islam by all means. Iran now has the ICBM means to deliver destruction on Israel and soon will have nuclear warheads for those missiles.
In order to attack Iran, the article says, Israel needs the approval and assistance of America, and under the current passive climate in the United States, the opportunity must not be lost to wipe out Israel before it attacks Iran.
Under this pre-emptive defensive doctrine, several Ground Zero points of Israel must be destroyed and its people annihilated. Forghani cites the last census by the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics that shows Israel has a population of 7.5 million citizens of which a majority of 5.7 million are Jewish. Then it breaks down the districts with the highest concentration of Jewish people, indicating that three cities, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Haifa, contain over 60 percent of the Jewish population that Iran could target with its Shahab 3 ballistic missiles, killing all its inhabitants.
Forghani suggests that Iran’s Sejil missile, which is a two-stage rocket with a trajectory and speed that make it impossible to intercept, should target such Israeli facilities as: the Rafael nuclear plant, which is the main nuclear engineering center of Israel; the Eilun nuclear plant; another Israeli reactor in Nebrin; and the Dimona reactor in the nuclear research center in Neqeb, the most critical nuclear reactor in Israel because it produces 90 percent enriched uranium for Israel’s nuclear weapons.
Other targets, according to the article, include airports and air force bases such as the Sedot Mikha Air Base, which contains Jericho ballistic missiles and is located southwest of the Tel Nof Air Base, where aircraft equipped with nuclear weapons are based. Secondary targets include power plants, sewage treatment facilities, energy resources, and transportation and communication infrastructures.
Finally, Forghani says, Shahab 3 and Ghadr missiles can target urban settlements until the Israelis are wiped out.
Forghani claims that Israel could be destroyed in less than nine minutes and that Khamenei, as utmost authority, the Velayete Faghih (Islamic Jurist), also believes that Israel and America not only must be defeated but annihilated.
The radicals ruling Iran today not only posses over 1,000 ballistic missiles but are on the verge of ICBM delivery and have sufficient enriched uranium for six nuclear bombs even as they continue to highly enrich uranium despite four sets of U.N. sanctions.
WND previously reported when Iran was warning of a coming great event.
The Iranian secret documentary “The Coming Is Upon Us” clearly indicates that these radicals believe the destruction of Israel will trigger the coming of the last Islamic Messiah and that even Jesus Christ, who will convert to Islam, will act as Mahdi’s deputy, praying to Allah as he stands behind the 12th Imam.
http://www.wnd.com/2012/02/ayatollah-kill-all-jews-annihilate-israel/
Hamas will focus on a strategy of holding mass protests against Israel in the style of the Arab Spring, although it is not renouncing the use of violence against the Jewish state, the Islamic group’s leader, Khaled Mashaal, told The Associated Press late Thursday.
Mashaal was in Cairo for reconciliation talks with Hamas’ rival, President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah. The sides agreed that Hamas would join the Palestine Liberation Organization, led by Abbas, and allow elections to go ahead in Gaza and the West Bank in 2012.
Popular protests have “the power of a tsunami,” Mashaal said, pointing to the recent waves of demonstrations across the Arab world.
“Now we have a common ground that we can work on – the popular resistance, which presents the power of people,” he said. The idea for the protests originated with the Palestinians themselves and the uprising they launched against Israel in 1987, he said, typified by crowds of rock-throwing Palestinian youths confronting heavily armed Israeli soldiers.
Mashaal also gave rare Hamas public support to the idea of a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem. Hamas ideology does not accept the presence of a Jewish state in an Islamic Middle East.
Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev dismissed Mashaal’s statements, noting Friday that Hamas has repeatedly said it seeks Israel’s destruction.
“Hamas is very open and public about its position – it believes the Jewish state should be obliterated, it fundamentally opposes peace and reconciliation, and it sees every Israeli civilian as a legitimate target,” he said. “One cannot build policy upon wishful thinking.”
During the AP interview in Cairo after his meeting with Abbas, Mashaal said Hamas would not renounce its own armed fight against Israel. The group has killed hundreds of Israelis, most of them civilians, in suicide bombings, shootings and rocket attacks since the Islamist group was formed in 1987.
“As long as there is an occupation on our land, we have the right to defend our land by all means, including military resistance,” he said.
Israel holds Hamas responsible for Gaza militants firing hundreds of rockets at Israel in recent months, as Hamas rules Gaza. Hamas blames splinter groups for the rocket attacks and has mostly kept a cease-fire that followed a three-week war three years ago, an Israeli attempt to stop the rocket barrages.
Hamas considers all of Israel to be occupied land. Abbas and his Palestinian Authority, in contrast, say they would accept a Palestinian state alongside Israel in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, inside what are known as the “1967 borders.”
Mashaal told the AP his group, too, would be prepared to accept those borders.
“We have political differences, but the common ground is the state on the ’67 borders. Why don’t we work in this common area,” he said.
Hamas has said in the past that it would accept such a state as a temporary measure as a stage toward destroying Israel, which remains the group’s stated goal. Mashaal did not repeat that in the interview.
The split between Hamas and Fatah, he said, “is not a normal thing, and it should be ended and will be ended.”
“The nation is bigger than the party,” he said.
The two Palestinian factions have been at odds since Hamas won Palestinian elections in 2006, defeating Fatah. The differences spiraled into violence that claimed hundreds of lives and resulted in Hamas’ violent takeover of Gaza in 2007.
That left Abbas in charge only in the West Bank, where he governs Palestinian cities under Israel’s overall security control.
Hamas is considered by the U.S.and EU to be a terror organization. Abbas’ Palestinian Authority is funded largely by Western countries, including the U.S., and has close security ties with Israel.
