HAGEE: HITLER WAS THE JEWS "TRAVEL AGENT" TO ISRAEL

Jewish allies of the Rev. John Hagee rushed to his defense yesterday to say the Texas evangelist is not anti-Semitic despite Sen. John McCain campaign's repudiation Thursday of the evangelist's endorsement. "John Hagee is one of the Jewish people's best friends," Los Angeles talk show host Dennis Prager said on the air yesterday morning. "Identifying John Hagee with anti-Semitism would be like identifying Raoul Wallenberg, the great Swede who saved thousands of Jews in the Holocaust, with anti-Semitism."

At issue was Mr. Hagee's reference — in a late 1990s sermon and in his 2006 book "Jerusalem Countdown" to Adolf Hitler being a "hunter" used by God to force Jews to emigrate to Israel.
In a reference to the Book of Jeremiah, whose author predicts a scattering of the Jewish people but saying God would bring them back to the promised land, Mr. Hagee says in the sermon: "How did [the Holocaust] happen? Because God allowed it to happen. Why did it happen? Because God said my top priority for the Jewish people is to get them to come back to the land of Israel."

"Leading rabbis have said the same thing." "This is a legitimate effort to grapple with the age-old question of why God allows evil in the world. Pastor Hagee was not, as some are claiming, saying the Holocaust was good. He has said repeatedly, throughout his life, that the Holocaust was the greatest of tragedies. "But there is a long-standing Jewish tradition of searching for divine explanations for tragedy. For people who are biblical literalists, God is omnipotent; therefore, they maintain, God must have allowed the Holocaust to happen. What you hear here is an effort to search for an explanation."