Elie Wiesel's Shocking Stage Appearance With Mad Preacher and Anti-Semite John Hagee

On Oct. 25, while an overflow crowd of 1,500 poured into the first convention of the progressive-leaning Israel-oriented lobbying organization J Street, Elie Wiesel addressed a crowd of 6,000 Christian Zionists at Pastor John Hagee's "Night To Honor Israel."

According to the San Antonio Express News, while Wiesel sat by his side, Hagee trashed President Barack Obama, baselessly accusing him of "being tougher on Israel than on Russia, Iran, China and North Korea."

Meanwhile, Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren, who appeared at Hagee's Christians United for Israel summit earlier this year, rejected J Street's request to speak at their convention, instead dispatching a low-level embassy official to "observe" the event. Oren then accused J Street of "impair[ing] Israel's interests."

In blessing Hagee while damning J Street, Wiesel and Oren chose an anti-Semitic group led by a far-right end-times theology preacher over a fledgling progressive organization that bills itself as "pro-Israel, pro-peace." And both Wiesel and Oren seem to be embroiled in yet another controversy over involvement with the extremist preacher.

In the video below, Hagee warns that the anti-Christ will be homosexual, German and Jewish:

During the 2008 presidential campaign, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., avidly sought Hagee's endorsement, appearing by the pastor's side during a widely publicized press conference to announce it. McCain was intent on winning a seal of approval from a figure of the Christian right, especially since he had lambasted Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson in the 2000 Republican presidential primaries.

McCain may have been completely unaware of Hagee's sermon declaring the Holocaust to be a divinely ordained incident orchestrated by God to fulfill biblical prophecy; Hagee's accusation that the Jews' rejection of Jesus was the root of anti-Semitism; or his prediction that when the Antichrist returned, he would be homosexual and "partially Jewish, as was Adolph Hitler, as was Karl Marx."

When Hagee's anti-Semitic ravings surfaced on blogs like Talk2Action.org and eventually gained national notoriety, McCain renounced the preacher's endorsement.

Video below shows footage of Hagee's notorious Hitler sermon.

Unlike McCain, Oren and Wiesel cannot claim ignorance of Hagee's anti-Semitic remarks precisely because of the clamor over McCain's disassociation.

"My dear pastor, when I hear that Christians are getting together in order to defend the people of Israel, of course it brings joy to my heart," Wiesel told Hagee in a Sept. 3 interview. "And it simply says, look, people have learned from history." (Hagee is hawking DVD's of his Wiesel interview for $15 each on his personal Web site, turning footage of the encounter into a windfall profit.)

On Oct. 26, during an unofficial panel of bloggers and activists at J Street's conference, I criticized Wiesel and Oren for associating with Hagee just as I had written about McCain's involvement with the preacher.

By embracing an anti-Semite, Wiesel appears not to have learned the lesson he has taught. I said that the last person Wiesel trusted as much as Hagee was Bernard Madoff. That was a joke, of course, something of a Jewish joke, and in the humorous comparison I was granting Wiesel foolish credulity in his involvement with Hagee.

A Nobel Prize-winning writer, Wiesel has based his work and lectures for decades on the premise that we must learn from the tragedy of the past, the lesson of the Holocaust, in order not to repeat it. Perhaps Wiesel is unaware of Hagee's appalling theology in which the violent destruction of the Jews is essential to bring about the Second Coming; or perhaps he doesn't take it seriously and feels such nonsense should not get in the way of Hagee's financial and propaganda support for the settlement movement on the West Bank that is now at the heart of difficulty in the U.S.-Israel relationship.