Senator Ted Cruz was one of many far right wing Republicans who gleefully attended Monday’s opening celebration ceremony of the U.S. embassy move to Jerusalem. It is a controversial decision by President Trump, denounced by many who hoped for peace between Israel and Palestinians. The move is now seen by some as destroying any hope for peace. More than 40 Palestinians were killed in a protest in the hours before Monday’s ceremony.
Among the many speakers chosen by the Trump administration to preach at Monday’s celebration were Pastor Robert Jeffress, a Fox News contributor, megachurch Baptist preacher, and close Trump ally and surrogate. Jeffress has said that Jews, Catholics, Mormons, Muslims, and gay people are going to hell.
Also among the speakers was Pastor Robert Hagee, another far right wing Christian extremist.
Hagee is perhaps most famous for a sermon he gave in the 1990’s, in which he declared that Adolf Hitler was doing God’s work by slaughtering millions of Jews.
Political reporter Sam Stein in a 2008 HuffPost report detailed Hagee’s comments.
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.”
Hagee concluded his remarks by saying, “God said my top priority for the Jewish people is to get them to come back to the land of Israel,” and apparently, according to Hagee, Jewish people should have gone to Israel instead of living out their lives in their homes, from which Hitler took them, and ultimately murdered them.
Stein also tweeted out Cruz’s photo and a screenshot of his article, titled, “McCain Backer Hagee Said Hitler Was Fulfilling God’s Will.”
Here’s Ted Cruz proudly posing with Pastor Hagee: