Israel Matzav: Obama reps met four times with extreme anti-Israel preacher

Friday, June 08, 2012

Obama reps met four times with extreme anti-Israel preacher

No, this post is not about Jeremiah Wright. Serge Duss, an extreme preacher who believes that Israelis are not descended from Jews, has visited the White House at least four times since President Obama took office according to the Washington Free Beacon's Adam Kredo.

Fellow Christian leaders have condemned Duss for openly touting an erroneous, anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that suggests modern Israelis are not descended from Biblical Jews.

Duss’ controversial comments and his associations with the radical left did not prevent the White House from arranging a series of high-level sit-downs with the Obama administration’s liaison to Arab Americans, as well as with two of the president’s most trusted foreign policy advisers, according to White House visitor logs.

Fellow religious leaders expressed shock to learn the White House is soliciting advice from Duss on highly sensitive foreign policy matters.

“If the Obama Administration is serious about supporting Israel in its quest for peace, why are they taking advice from someone who parrots the worst rhetoric of those who oppose accommodation with Israel?” asked David Brog, executive director of Christians United for Israel, one of the nation’s largest and most influential pro-Israel groups.

“Serge Duss is associated with the most extreme aspects of Arab rejectionism,” he added. “Duss has denied the connection between the modern Jewish people and those of the Bible.”

Much of Duss’ anti-Israel advocacy has taken place under the umbrella of the New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good, a far-left Christian group that is partially funded by the Tides Foundation and the Open Society Institute.

Both of those organizations are financed by the controversial billionaire George Soros.

The New Evangelical Partnership has also received money from the Ploughshares Fund, a dovish non-profit that has doled out millions to influence the debate over Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons.

As a member of the New Evangelical Partnership’s Board of Advisors, Duss has been tasked with touting the group’s far left agenda.

During one such speech before a mostly Jewish crowd at the fringe group J Street’s 2011 conference, Duss asked attendees to help him dispel the idea that Israelis are related to ancient Jews.

JPost's Benny Weinthal discussed Duss with David Brog of Christians United for Israel.

In a telephone interview with The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday, David Brog, executive director of Christians United for Israel, commented on Duss’s form of theology. “It is troubling, in that he seems to embrace an odd race-based replacement theology; he seems to be saying that Jews are not connected to Bible.”

Brog, whose organization numbers more than one million members and is now the largest pro-Israel group in the US, said Duss’s views are “very offensive to Jews and Bible-believing Christians.”

He added that Duss slandered the “Christian faith of millions around the world.

[He is] not committed to peace and reconciliation.”

Asked about Duss’s connection with Washington, Brog said it “makes one worry” because it leads to “concerns that policy is being driven by those who have rejectionist views of Israel and are outside of the peace consensus.”

“We support the policy of the democratically elected government of Israel and are committed to a two-state solution,” he stressed. “We fear that Serge Duss does not share the goal of a safe Israel.”

As in 2008, President Obama's friends and associates have to give pause to anyone who cares about Israel. Will American Jews ignore them again? My sense is that the more liberal 'streams' of Judaism are likely more worried about CUFI - whom they accuse of trying to proselytize than they are about Duss. What could go wrong?

Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Christians United for Israel, New Evangelical Partnership