Monday, October 22, 2018

When a Televangelist Cares More about Weapons Deals than Human Lives for the Sake of Neoconservatism


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
He appeared on its flagship television show The 700 Club on October 15, 2018, to caution American evangelicals against allowing the United States’ relationship with Saudi Arabia to deteriorate over Khashoggi’s killing.
“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 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.
With information from NewsMax and Vox.
Recommended Reading on Neoconservatism:
Recommended Reading on Saudi Arabia:

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