Abhorrent

John McCain has accepted the support of John Hagee, a Christian Zionist. (By the way, I’m very curious how the Catholic Church will handle telling us to vote Republican again this time, as they’ve done the last several times, in violation of the separation of church and state…but I digress.) Hagee had a busy weekend sucking up to Benjamin Netanyahu and other Zionist Israelis to the tune of $6M.

Hagee, a Christian Zionist who has been in the spotlight lately for endorsing presidential candidate John McCain and criticizing the Catholic Church, brought hundreds of backers on a solidarity trip to Israel.

Hagee and his group, Christians United for Israel, joined keynote speaker Benjamin Netanyahu, the leader of Israel’s hard-line opposition Likud Party, at a rally in support of Jerusalem remaining united and under Jewish control.

“Turning part or all of Jerusalem over to the Palestinians would be tantamount to turning it over to the Taliban,” Hagee told an audience filled with Americans who waved Israeli flags and cheered.

…McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, distanced himself last month from Hagee following an uproar over the San Antonio megachurch leader’s comments on Catholicism.

Hagee has called the Roman Catholic Church “the great whore” and a “false cult system.” He has also suggested that the Catholic church helped shape Adolf Hitler’s anti-Semitism.

Hagee has vehemently denied he is anti-Catholic and said his remarks have been mischaracterized.

You don’t get to distance yourself from people like this, Mr. McCain. John Hagee and his cheering crowd of followers are exactly the kind of people who support the behavior described here. They take trips to Israel to support extremist Jewish settlers, beat up on a few little Palestinian kids trying to walk home from school, smash and spit on human rights workers, give each other high fives and hop back on the plane without incident. And by the way, the settlers they support shout things like, “We killed Jesus and we’ll kill you too.” So let’s get real. This is the kind of utter depravity we're talking about: that people who despise Christians will gladly take their support, and the 'Christians' will give it, even though they think all the Jews will go to hell, all because they think they share common political goals such as getting rid of the Palestinians. Sick.