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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsTed Cruz Booed Off Stage At Middle East Christian Conference
Sen. Ted Cruz was booed offstage at a conference for Middle Eastern Christians Wednesday night after saying that Christians have no greater ally than Israel.
Cruz, the keynote speaker at the sold-out D.C. dinner gala for the recently-founded non-profit In Defense of Christians, began by saying that tonight, we are all united in defense of Christians. Tonight, we are all united in defense of Jews. Tonight, we are all united in defense of people of good faith, who are standing together against those who would persecute and murder those who dare disagree with their religious teachings.
Cruz was not reading from a teleprompter, nor did he appear to be reading from notes.
Religious bigotry is a cancer with many manifestations, he continued. ISIS, al-Qaida, Hezbollah, Hamas, state sponsors like Syria and Iran, are all engaged in a vicious genocidal campaign to destroy religious minorities in the Middle East. Sometimes we are told not to loop these groups together, that we have to understand their so called nuances and differences. But we shouldnt try to parse different manifestations of evil that are on a murderous rampage through the region. Hate is hate, and murder is murder. Our purpose here tonight is to highlight a terrible injustice, a humanitarian crisis.
Christians have no greater ally than Israel, he said, at which point members of the crowd began to yell stop it and booed him.
EWTN News Nightlys Jason Calvi caught the moment on video
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2014/09/10/ted-cruz-booed-off-stage-at-middle-east-christian-conference-video/#ixzz3D0QQY0PC
DetlefK
(16,423 posts)NuclearDem
(16,184 posts)pinboy3niner
(53,339 posts)"After just a few minutes, I had no choice," Cruz's statement later added. "I told them that if you will not stand with Israel, if you will not stand with the Jews, then I will not stand with you. And then I walked off the stage."
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/217380-cruz-walks-off-stage-to-boos-at-middle-east-christian-event
blkmusclmachine
(16,149 posts)hatrack
(59,439 posts)All about "what God said to me", and "you're not a Christian!".
Vogon_Glory
(9,085 posts)Estimable Hatrack, don't you know that Amurrican Fundies and Evangelicals have a surprising theological revelation for eastern Christians? American Fundies and Evangelicals would say that these eastern Christians aren't really Christians. I'm serious. American Fundies and Evangelicals rather more often than not don't believe that Maronite Catholics, Copts, members of the various Orthodox churches, and members of the Assyrian Christian church aren't really Christians, and that the only real use the Fundies have for them is as cannon-fodder to set off the Apocalypse.
It looks like Ted Cruz got his very first lesson that eastern Christians' political and cultural interests DON'T coincide with those of the Israeli Netanyahu government.
Despite this first lesson, it looks like the junior senator from Texas will still flunk the course.
Bernardo de La Paz
(48,788 posts)It's all the same divisive shameful destructive bigotry and prejudice and ignorance.
derby378
(30,252 posts)Jews wildered, Magians far on error's way.
We mortals are composed of two great schools,
Enlightened knaves or else religious fools.
TlalocW
(15,358 posts)His fans know what he's saying, and while we on DU are savvy enough to know that the reason evangelists support Israel so much is because their religion tells them that Israel has to be there when Jesus comes back so he can wipe them off the map and start the endtimes, less politically-minded independents and others won't be thinking that.
TlalocW
underpants
(182,274 posts)Of myself
hatrack
(59,439 posts)Sen. Lights On Nobody Home discovers that he really and truly doesn't know jack-shit about the world and the people who live there.
COLGATE4
(14,732 posts)Xian fundies need the Jews (at least 144,000 of them, temporarily) for the Rapture, they don't have to like them. And they don't.
Archae
(46,261 posts)Israel?
Jews?
Muslims?
The articles don't make it too clear what the booing was about.
TreasonousBastard
(43,049 posts)To many of them, Israel is part of the problem.
This asshole doesn't know the difference between eastern Christians and Texas fundies.
hatrack
(59,439 posts)TreasonousBastard
(43,049 posts)JHB
(37,131 posts)The booing will probably prevent his using clips in video presentations, but you can probably expect quotes from his intended speech in future fundraising letters.
cpwm17
(3,829 posts)I presume many in the crowd could be from Palestine.
Feral Child
(2,086 posts)The Magistrate
(95,237 posts)Arab Christians were a healthy slice, all out of proportion to their numbers, in the earliest Arab Nationalist bodies which formed near the start of the twentieth century in reaction to the early stages of the Zionist project in Palestine.
Even the Maronites in Lebanon, who during the civil war there in the seventies and eighties were largely dependent on Israel for military effectiveness, generally hold Jews and Israel in low esteem.
Rex
(65,616 posts)FUCK TED CRUZ.
Vogon_Glory
(9,085 posts)It looks like the Calgary Kid has just gotten schooled about how the majority of Christians remaining in the Levant and Egypt REALLY feel about Israel. It must have been quite the surprise for Ted Cruz that Maronite Christians, Copts, and other members of Christian sects with long histories dating back nearly 2000 years don't agree with American Fundamentalist Evangelicals who want to use the Israeli-Arab and intra-Arab conflicts to set off the Rapture and Armageddon.
Of course the wing-nutz and the Fundies will spin this embarrassing incident away by claiming that Maronites, Greek Orthodox, Copts, Assyrian Christians, and other members of these ancient sects "aren't really Christians," the usual Fundie/Evangelical dodge for dealing with Christians with interests and theologies they disagree with.
underpants
(182,274 posts)I googled it and it turns that is the stage name for a professional wrestler's masked alter-ego. He was also once on MTv's "The Real World". Yes THAT fake just like Cruz.
Perfect nickname.
Bohemianwriter
(978 posts)..be "allies" with a religion whose agenda has been to exterminate them since the creation of the Orthodox Christian doctrine in 180 AD, ratified in 325, and carried out from 380 AD?
And why should Palestinians have to pay the prize for something that happened in Europe until 1945?
Response to Bohemianwriter (Reply #14)
MisterP This message was self-deleted by its author.
UTUSN
(70,496 posts)Ichingcarpenter
(36,988 posts)lol
jwirr
(39,215 posts)would have started booing during the first sentence if I were them.
Fred Sanders
(23,946 posts)gather to convince themselves they may be stupid, but they are right, God personally told them all so.
The only real difference between Christian extremist propaganda like DC and Breitbart and Blaze etc. and ISIS propaganda is the beheading propaganda,which anyone know is a foreign form of execution for Christians who prefer their deaths by quiet lethal injections out of sight and mind.
Sick religion, slick propaganda, it has always been a symbiotic relationship.
Extremist religious beliefs is the engine that drives them all.
JHB
(37,131 posts)Funny, in my experience they tend to think they have all the answers, and we're a bunch of knaves and fools who are so blinkered by ideology and emotionalism that we are blind to obvious truths and sensible solutions.
Self-awareness sense to be in short supply in those precincts.
valerief
(53,235 posts)Sophiegirl
(2,338 posts)Yep.
RoverSuswade
(641 posts)lamp_shade
(14,796 posts)rtracey
(2,062 posts)Couldn't happen to a nicer asswipe, ahhh i mean person, ahhh .....clown, yes thats it CLOWN..
Tom Ripley
(4,945 posts)Texano78704
(309 posts)conflating Jews with the Israeli government (Israel)? Not very well in this case. What's remarkable is that Rafa Cruz carefully avoided using the words "Islam" and "Muslim."
happyslug
(14,779 posts)I knew a Palestinian in Collage in the late 1970s, as far as she was concerned she was kicked out by Israel due to how she was her family was treated in the West Bank after the 1967 War. She wore her orthodox cross with pride but she supported the PLO and hated Israel.
Bethelhem and many other West Bank Cities were majority Christian when Israel took over the West Bank (Some Scholars believe the Christian may have been the majority overall but do to Jordanian Politics the Majority was determined to be Moslem, just a comment on how large the Christian Community was in 1967 in the West Bank).
Since 1967 every West Bank City has turned Moslem, as the Christian, who tended to have SOME money decided to save what money they had and move, many to the US. Thus Bethlehem is majority Moslem today, for the first time since Roman times (It is believed to have turn Christian while before Constantine, many believe it was Christian by 100 AD, through no way to prove that).
My point is most "Middle Eastern" Christians who live in the US tend to HATE Israel for most of them are from the West Bank. A smaller number is from Egypt, but as Egyptians they tend to support they fellow Arabs in the West Bank not Israel. This appears to be true of the Christians if Iraq, another ARAB Christian Community.
Now Lebanon is a different story. The split tends to be along Religious lines, but also trade lines (Syria is Ruled by Alawite, which considers itself a branch of Islam but that celebrate many Christian Holidays, they are called "Christians" by ISIS and the Moslem Radicals in Syria). Assad is a Alawite as is his family and the reason Syria intervened in Lebanon was to bail out their Christian Trading Partners who was facing defeat by the Sunni Islam group (and the Alawite gets support from Iran for Iran views the Alawite as a branch of Shiite Islam AND they are also trading partners going back centuries).
Thus while some Christians in Lebanon "Support" Israel it is more of looking for allies against their enemies then anything else. On the other hand many Christians support Assad, for his Father gave them support when they needed it in the 1980s. In a fight between Israel and Assad they will support Assad.
Thus you have a solid base of opposition to Israel among Middle Eastern Christians. They are NOT anti-semitic, they just support they fellow arabs even if those arabs are Moslem AND if they ever came under Israeli rule, they hate Israel for taking THEY LANDS and giving it to Israelis of Jewish descent. Yes, Israel has been as harsh on Christians in the West Bank as they have been in Moslems. THe Moslems stay for they are to poor to move. The Christians moved because they had the money to move, but they did NOT like moving thus hate Israel.
Iliyah
(25,111 posts)His father is a complete sociopath.
cheyanne
(733 posts)Daily Caller: several comments assure the right wing that those who booed were fake Christians.
Red State: first commenters praise Cruz for being a stand-up guy, telling truth to power, but wish he had gone further.
Initech
(99,914 posts)Really? Did he really have to go there? It doesn't just apply to militant Islam, but Christianity is definitely as guilty of this as the next religion. Don't believe me? Ask any gay couple at random, or any trans person.