Open Mouth, Insert Foot

I don't know how many times John Hagee has to say something ridiculously inflammatory before John McCain is forced by the whole of civilized society to renounce him. This one sounds like writers in a sitcom room trying to come up with the most offensive anti-Semitic statement:

Going in and out of biblical verse, Hagee preached: "'And they the hunters should hunt them,' that will be the Jews. 'From every mountain and from every hill and from out of the holes of the rocks.' If that doesn't describe what Hitler did in the holocaust you can't see that."

He goes on: "Theodore Hertzel is the father of Zionism. He was a Jew who at the turn of the 19th century said, this land is our land, God wants us to live there. So he went to the Jews of Europe and said 'I want you to come and join me in the land of Israel.' So few went that Hertzel went into depression. Those who came founded Israel; those who did not went through the hell of the holocaust.

"Then god sent a hunter. A hunter is someone with a gun and he forces you. Hitler was a hunter. And the Bible says -- Jeremiah writing -- 'They shall hunt them from every mountain and from every hill and from the holes of the rocks,' meaning there's no place to hide. And that might be offensive to some people but don't let your heart be offended. I didn't write it, Jeremiah wrote it. It was the truth and it is the truth. 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." (Listen to the audio below.)

Bruce Wilson has been doing amazing work on this story, by the way.

Hagee is claiming that his statement was mischaracterized, but as usual I don't think conservatives or religious nuts know the meaning of that word. They think "mischaracterized" means "don't print what I actually said, give me the benefit of spinning it," and thus the mischaracterization is theirs.

Can we just tell it like it is here? McCain needed the fundie vote, so he went out and found some people to endorse him, and they are predictably crazy because this kind of hate is routinely practiced from the pulpits of the religious right. Rod Parsley, another McCain endorser, has called Islam a conspiracy of spiritual evil. They are not interested in how this language endangers the world, they are fighting their own holy wars, and John McCain got sucked into it.

J Street has a petition calling on McCain to renounce Hagee. You should sign it.