By Janis Siegel, JTNews Correspondent
The last time Christians United for Israel, one of the largest grassroots pro-Israel political membership organizations in the country, came to Washington State in 2007, its signature event in Everett raised $20,000 from a crowd of more than 800 attendees.
Last month, CUFI held a meeting at a South Seattle neighborhood congregation known as Seattle Church, attracting 40 of the faithful as CUFI attempts to redouble its efforts in the region.
CUFI, founded in 2006 by the Texas-based, fifth-generation San Antonio preacher Pastor John Hagee, is now back on track in Washington State, gathering members, signatures, financial donations, political support, and ultimately lobbying members of Congress in Washington, D.C. to continue protecting Israel.
“We’re getting some momentum again in the State of Washington,” said Randy Neal, CUFI’s western regional director. “There are people here who’ve come from 160 miles tonight, from Quincy, Stanwood, Poulsbo, and Bellingham.”
Neal didn’t plan his visit to the Seattle Church on this year’s 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz Concentration Camp, Jan. 27, but the evening program followed a theme of part historical seminar, part Christian sermon. The central message was simple: No more silence.
A PowerPoint presentation included news reels of Hitler’s speeches as he rose to power in the 1930s, archival film of starved and emaciated prisoners discovered wasting away in concentration camps, and video of Iranian Pres. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s promise of September 2005 to annihilate the State of Israel and wipe it off the map — images all too familiar to the Jewish people.
The Christian audience was brought to tears more than once.
“We need to change these trends so that these things don’t happen again,” Neal told the crowd.
His own voice cracked, tearing up several times while recounting the often-horrific fate of Jewish communities throughout the centuries around the world.
“We drew our curtains, closed and turned out the porch lights, turned up the radio, and pretended we weren’t home,” said Neal, “and that’s a harsh reality.”
Before he proceeded, Neal cautioned the group against any notion that CUFI’s agenda was to convert Jews.
“Our commitment to stand with the Jewish community and the State of Israel is not contingent upon us agreeing theologically,” he said. This is one of the central tenets of CUFI that is reiterated unanimously by its leadership.
CUFI’s former state director, Pastor Jason Williams, stepped down from the post for personal reasons, according to Neal. His replacement, Pastor Jim Wagner of Mt. Vernon is the new state director.
Currently, CUFI employs 26 state directors and 90 city directors throughout the U.S. It is also organizing student groups on college campuses across the country to challenge what it sees as a rising anti-Semitic tone marketed by political groups on campus under the guise of “anti-Zionism.”
“Under the auspices of academic freedom and political dialogue,” said Neal, “the walls on hate speech laws have been drop-kicked. A student’s grades can even be affected if they demonstrate a pro-Israel sentiment.”
CUFI has 175 student members to date and it is working to increase its college chapters. CUFI’s main goal is to support Jewish students on campuses across the country as they attend schools that increasingly give voice to arguably hateful rhetoric. One of its core activities is a Holocaust and Holy Land campaign held annually at the University of California at Irvine in May.
When Hagee began this ministry, focusing on supporting Israel in San Antonio in 2006, he hadn’t intended to start a movement. But the first night he held a meeting at his now mega-church in Texas, bomb threats and death threats poured in from angry locals. For Hagee, that only added to his passion.
“If these rednecks think they can shut us down just because they can phone us and threaten us,” Hagee told the crowd at the 2007 event in Everett, “we’re going to do it and keep doing it until they get used to it.”
And he does.
Each year, CUFI holds a summit in Washington, D.C. where thousands of Christian and Jewish supporters descend on Capitol Hill to lobby Congress on pro-Israel legislation.
At the 2009 summit, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu joined the group via satellite.
Other guest speakers at the 2009 Washington, D.C. summit included Sen. Joe Lieberman (I–Conn.), House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va. ), Cong. Shelly Berkeley (D-Nev.), Israeli Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren, Israel’s Consul General in New York, Assaf Shariv, and nationally syndicated radio hosts Dennis Prager and Michael Medved.
“We united Democrats and Republicans, Americans and Israelis, Jews and gentiles in support of Israel,” wrote Hagee on the CUFI Web site. “It was powerful and it was hopeful.”
Politically, CUFI’s lobbying efforts in Congress to co-sponsor two bills that would increase pressure on Iran to abandon its nuclear weapons programs has met with success.
Neal is hopeful and looking forward to another local Night to Honor Israel fundraiser some time in the near future.
“We are alive, and we are growing,” said Neal, “and with God’s help, we always will.”