The New York Jewish Week has a report on the financial scandals currently enveloping Ehud Olmert, and noting the significant discrepancy in the amount of money which US evangelist Mike Evans is now claiming that he raised for for Olmert’s New Jerusalem Foundation in 2002, when the two of them travelled around evangelical churches in the American South:
In Irving, a suburb of Dallas, The Jerusalem Post reported, Rev. Evans exulted that the evening raised some $400,000. The Dallas Jewish Week, citing Rev. Evans and Raviv, reported a take of at least $326,000. Anyone donating $350 or more received a copy of Rev. Evans’ book, “Jerusalem Betrayed,” the Dallas weekly noted. In it, Rev. Evans predicts an imminent End Time that will see a war in Israel so terrible that blood “will flow down the Jordan River Valley, down the length of the Dead Sea, and thence . . . the entire length of the Negev to Eilat.”
Today, Rev. Evans claims to have raised only $65,000 for the foundation in 2002, notwithstanding his statements to the press at the time. In a brief e-mail exchange via his secretary, Rev. Evans ignored a question asking if he received a share of the money raised for his work on the tour and, if so, how much. He adamantly denied that contributions were collected in cash.
But the senior staff member of Mount Paran Church North wrote in an e-mail to The Jewish Week: “Mike Evans cannot support his claims as regarding checks only at this venue, nor his total [$65,000] estimate for the tour — unless he received nothing at the other locations, which is very, very doubtful!”
I noticed this discrepancy here.
The money was raised on behalf of Israeli survivors of terror attacks, but apparently far less has been spent than was raised. According to the current director of the Foundation, this is because all needs have been met already. The Jewish Week acidly comments on this:
That might be news to Israeli victims in need of long-term counseling for post-traumatic stress, amputees with ongoing medical needs or even recent victims of rocket attacks in Sderot, near the Gaza border.
Evans has of recent months become a bitter critic of Olmert, and he has pledged to “do everything in my power” to wreck the Annapolis peace-process. Perhaps his prayers in this regard will be answered, but not in quite the way he had hoped.
Evans was profiled by Bill Berkowitz for Talk to Action a year ago; like John Hagee, he is a prominent advocate of attacking Iran. In the early days of this blog I noted his suggestion that Franklin D. Roosevelt had been struck dead by God for failing to support Zionism. The Jewish Week adds the incidental detail that
Rev. Evans…had been strongly criticized for setting up a “Holocaust museum” that purported to give visitors the experience of being “herded into a boxcar [and] shocked beyond your wildest imagination as you find yourself right in the middle of a German concentration camp.” The enterprise included appeals for financial support to proselytize Israeli Jews or, as Evans’ fundraising literature puts it, “to share the message of God’s love with every Jewish home in the entire nation of Israel.”
Filed under: Uncategorized | 6 Comments »
