Bartholomew's Notes

From Right Wing Watch:

Family Research Council president Tony Perkins today had Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) on his radio show Washington Watch Weekly to discuss their recent trip to Israel with a delegation that also included congressmen Louie Gohmert (R-TX), John Fleming (R-LA), Doug Lamborn (R-CO) and Randy Forbes (R-VA). Perkins and Jordan recounted their meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which included Gohmert knocking over Netanyahu’s coffee cup when he “presented the Prime Minister with the latest novel from Joel Rosenberg”.

…Joel Rosenberg is a Christian author who primarily writes about the End Times and frequently shares his thoughts with Glenn Beck. His latest novel describes a future time when Iran has a nuclear weapon and “[m]illions of Muslims around the world are convinced their messiah—known as ‘the Twelfth Imam’—has just arrived on earth.” Christianbook.com says that Rosenberg’s novel “combines the action and exquisite detail of Tom Clancy with the tense religious drama of Left Behind.”

Rosenberg is a familiar figure on the apocalyptic Christian Right: he is the author of numerous thrillers based on his understandings of Bible prophecy and middle east politics, and in 2008 he organised a conference in Jerusalem involving the likes of Gen. William “Jerry” Boykin and ex-CIA director Porter Goss (Goss provided a recorded message). The book which Gohmert (who himself came to wider attention last year when he raised the spectre of a Muslim “terror baby” conspiracy)  gave to Netanyahu was entitled The Tehran Initiative, and it purports to answer the question: “What if the world waits too long and Iran’s apocalyptic leaders finally build nuclear weapons?”

While the idea of a US politician handing over an apocalyptic paperback to the prime minister of Israel may appear bizarre and risible, it should be noted that Netanyahu knows the book’s author already: Rosenberg was formerly his adviser (a distinction Netanyahu shares with Rush  Limbaugh and Steve Forbes).

Also, there’s a long tradition of Israeli officials indulging the pretensions of Christian Right prophecy potboiler hacks: back in 2006, John Hagee’s Jerusalem Countdown was advertised as containing “detailed information that Hagee has received from top Israeli government officials concerning a nuclear showdown between Iran and Israel”, and Mike Evans has met with several Israeli prime ministers.

In 1989, Hal Lindsey boasted in The Road to Holocaust about his 1970 bestseller The Late Great Planet Earth:

The first Prime Minister of Israel, David Ben Gurion, was reading it shortly before he died. Since everything in his room has been kept the way it was before he died, a copy of The Late Great Planet Earth remains on his desk. A friend of mine who is one of Israel’s top military commanders passed out hundreds of copies of the Hebrew translation to the Israeli Defence forces, even though he personally hasn’t as yet believed in Jesus as the Messiah.

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