When a Televangelist Cares More about Weapons Deals than Human Lives for the Sake of Neoconservatism
By Julio
Severo
Christian Broadcasting Network founder Pat
Robertson said the U.S. should not risk “$100 billion worth of arms sales” with
Saudi Arabia after the apparent
killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in a Saudi consulate in Turkey,
saying that America has more important things — like jobs and coffers benefited
by arms deals — to focus on.
 |
| Pat Robertson |
“For those who are screaming blood for the
Saudis — look, these people are key allies,” Robertson said. While he called
the faith of the Wahabists — the hardline Islamist sect to which the Saudi
Royal Family belongs — “obnoxious,” he urged viewers to remember that “we’ve
got an arms deal that everybody wanted a piece of…it’ll be a lot of jobs, a lot
of money come to our coffers. It’s not something you want to blow up
willy-nilly.”
“You’ve got one journalist — who knows?
Was it an interrogation? Was he assassinated? Were there rogue elements? Who
did it?...You’ve got $100 billion worth of arms sales...we cannot alienate our
biggest player in the Middle East.”
I
first knew The 700 Club in the late 1970s in Brazil and when Robertson’s name
came, the first idea was evangelism and conservatism. I could never believe
that someday his name would be connected to defense of arms deals and the
Islamic dictatorship of Saudi Arabia.
Khashoggi, a Saudi citizen and longtime
critic of the Saudi Royal Family, was a permanent resident of the United
States, where he moved after determining that it was unsafe to remain in Saudi
Arabia. Khashoggi spent the past year as a columnist for the Washington Post,
where he regularly published incendiary articles critical of Saudi Arabia and
its leadership.
Yet, if the killing of a dissident
journalist is not so important as the U.S. arms deal with Saudi Arabia, what
about 9/11? Of the 19 Islamic terrorists
in this attack, 15 were from Saudi Arabia, according to
the CIA. In 2015, one of the 9/11 terrorists, Zacarias Moussaoui, claimed
several members of the Saudi royal family had been listed as al-Qaeda donors in
the database he worked on under orders of Osama bin Laden, CNN reports.
Even CBN of Robertson, in a 2015 report
titled “Saudi
Arabia’s Role in Spreading Islamic Terrorism,” recognized, albeit timidly,
that Saudi Arabia spreads terrorism. The kind of Islam that the Saudis spread
is Sunni Islam, which is the most violent form of Islam against Christians.
In a 2014 article titled “Saudi
royal family will not allow Obama to save Christians in Iraq,” Religious
Freedom Coalition director William J. Murray said,
“The
United States has been the ‘puppet’ military of the Saudi royal family,
attacking and isolating Shia nations such as Syria. The Shia majority state of
Syria, which protects religious minorities, is a target of the United States
only because the Saudi royals are giving the orders, not the American people.”
According to Murray, under Obama, the U.S.
and Saudi Arabia trained ISIS terrorists to attack Syria.
In a 2018 WND report titled “Russia
and the Sunni Muslim threat,” Murray said,
“Currently
the Sunni Muslim propaganda machine is everywhere inside the Washington, D.C.
beltway. Money from the rich Gulf states, including the UAE and Saudi Arabia,
floods the media and spreads political influence. Public remembrance of the
Sunni Muslim attacks that have killed scores of Americans over the last decade
or so has vanished, and even the 9/11 attack is hardly mentioned. The almost
daily beheadings in Saudi Arabia are forgiven. Our leaders looked away as
torture chambers were set up in the Ritz Carlton Hotel in the Saudi capital
this year. The slaughter going on in Yemen by Saudi Arabian-backed forces is
hardly mentioned. In the Washington area the Saudi Academy, which is a Sunni
Muslim school for the children of diplomats from Muslim nations, teaches
democracy is an apostate religion that must be destroyed. It also teaches Jews
are descendants of apes and pigs and that women are the property of men. One
former valedictorian was convicted after leaving the school of joining Al Qaida
and plotting to assassinate President George W. Bush. Another graduate was
arrested while attempting to board an airliner with a large concealed butcher
knife. The school is 100 percent funded by the Saudi Arabian government. No
American officials complain about the hatred being taught at the Saudi
Academy.”
According to John Perkins, in his 2004
book “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man,” Saudi Arabia has a very special
relationship with the U.S. since mid-1970s. He
said,
“The
evidence was indisputable: Saudi Arabia, America’s longtime ally and the
world’s largest oil producer, had somehow become, as a senior Treasury
Department official put it, ‘the epicenter’ of terrorist financing… Saudi
largess encouraged U.S. officials to look the other way, some veteran
intelligence officers say. Billions of dollars in contracts, grants, and
salaries have gone to a broad range of former U.S. officials who had dealt with
the Saudis: ambassadors, CIA station chiefs, even cabinet secretaries…”
So even Americans know about the
indisputable Saudi role in the international Islamic terrorism. In fact,
Perkins travelled to Saudi Arabia in the early 1970s as a U.S. operative and he
knows the facts behind the scenes.
Now, for the sake of the U.S. arms deal
with a nation that spreads terrorism, a televangelist is looking the other way
because if the United States’ relationship with Saudi Arabia deteriorates, as
Robertson recognized, thousands of Americans will lose their jobs in the
military industrial complex, and billions of Saudi dollars will not come to the
U.S. coffers.
Thousands of U.S. Christians have jobs in
the military industrial complex. If the U.S. relationship with Saudi Arabia
deteriorates, they lose their jobs. If it does not deteriorate, Christians in
the Middle East and other parts of the world lose their lives as a consequence
of the Sunni terrorism of Saudi Arabia heavily armed by the U.S.
It is very obvious that non-Christian
Americans have sold their souls to the devil, in Saudi form, for the sake of
bloody money. Have now even loved televangelists followed suit?
Islam from
Saudi Arabia, not Iran, has killed more Christians in the Middle East than
any other ideology. Even so, the U.S. has protected Saudi Arabia, not its
Christian victims. Trump has badly failed in his promise to help Christians persecuted
by Muslims. Instead of receiving in the United States thousands and thousands
of persecuted Christians (often victims of Saudi and U.S. interventionism), the
Trump administration has received in the first 6 months of 2018 just 21
persecuted Christians, vastly less than Obama. Yet, he has not failed in his
broad support and protection of the Saudi dictators.
For Saudi oil’s sake, the U.S. is willing
to sacrifice thousands of lives of Christian victims of Sunni Islam. And a
loved televangelist approves it.
For
Saudi oil’s sake, the U.S. is not willing to punish Saudi Arabia for the
thousands of lives of Americans destroyed on 9/11.
What is the explanation for Pat Robertson
to use his The 700 Club to encourage his evangelical audience to tolerate Saudi
crimes?
Robertson is trying to please U.S.
President Donald
Trump, who last year sold the massive
amount of US$ 110 billion in military equipment to Saudi Arabia.
Robertson praised the approach of Trump,
who has publicly cast doubt on the Saudi crimes, comparing
them to left-wing accusations against conservatives.
To justify Saudi crimes, both Trump and
Robertson are looking the other way and comparing the Saudis to conservatives!
According to Vox,
“Robertson’s
stance is in keeping with his wider, full-throated support for President
Trump’s policies over the past few years. Since Trump’s inauguration, the
Christian Broadcasting Network has become a de
facto propaganda channel for the administration, running programs that, for
example, suggest that Donald Trump was chosen
by God to become president. In return, Robertson has frequently been
granted rare access for sit-down
interviews with Trump, during which he typically throws Trump softball
questions.”
For the sake of bloody money, Trump is not
imposing necessary sanctions on Saudi Arabia. Fearful of losing “friendship,”
Robertson is not being a prophetic voice against the U.S.-Saudi bloody deal.
To support Trump in everything is a
dangerous undertaking. Christians support King David in everything he gave a
good example. But even he, who was a man after the heart of God, was not
perfect. He adulterated with Bathsheba and had her husband killed.
If Christians would support David in
everything, they would eventually support also adultery and murder, just
because David did it.
If Christians cannot support David’s sins,
why is televangelist Pat Robertson justifying Saudi crimes for the sake of
Trump?
Even liberal
Canada has condemned Saudi Arabia over human rights abuses. If liberal
Canada can do it, why cannot the U.S. do it? Why cannot Robertson and other U.S.
evangelicals do it?
Robertson has with Trump the same
relationship that Nathan the Prophet had with King David. Robertson always have
positive messages to Trump. Nathan had always positive messages to David.
Yet, when David sinned, Nathan was sent by
God to give him a non-positive message. Has not Robertson been attentive to
God’s voice to do for Trump the same thing Nathan did for David?
A relationship is only friendship when
both parts are free and sincere to approve and disapprove the good and bad acts
of one another. When the message is always positive, there is not real
friendship, but only opportunism.
The flatterer flatters everything the
flattered individual does right and wrong. A true Christian approves and
praises everything that needs to be approved and reproves everything that needs
to be disapproved.
If places were changed and Nathan were
today before Trump, he would bring to Trump from God a disapproving message
about Saudi Arabia, Trump’s
appointment of homosexual activists and much more.
What would Robertson do about David’s
adultery and his order to murder Bathsheba’s husband?
The U.S. has given no protection to Middle
East Christians, but the military protection the U.S. has given to Saudi
Arabia, whose Sunni Islam is a great killer of Christians, is a big offense
against Christians in Middle East.
Kings and presidents need from Christians
not only a sweet and positive voice. They need also a prophetic voice, which is
not always positive.
May God raise U.S. evangelicals to be the
necessary prophetic Nathan that Trump needs.
Portuguese version of this article: Quando
um televangelista se importa mais com acordos de armas do que com vidas humanas
por amor ao neoconservadorismo
Source:
Last
Days Watchman
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Reading on Neoconservatism:
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Transcendent Power of Neoconservatism in the U.S. Media and among Left-Wingers
and Right-Wingers
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Reading on Saudi Arabia:
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