Televangelist Donates $1 Million To Help Russian Jews Reach Israel Texas Preacher Hagee Says God’s Foreign Policy Is Clear

A Christian televangelist Tuesday gave more than $1 million to help Russian Jews immigrate to Israel to flee poverty and religious persecution in the former Soviet Union.

Pastor John Hagee of the 16,000-member Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas, presented a check to the activist group United Jewish Appeal which is directing the “Operation Exodus” project. The money has already helped more than 3,300 Jews relocate.

“Israel has a Bible mandate to occupy that land to build, to develop and to grow without questions from ther nations,” Hagee said. “We agree that Israel is to be a united city forever under Jewish authority.”

“God’s foreign policy statement towards Israel is made clear in Genesis 12:3, ‘I will bless those that bless you and I will curse those who curse you,”’ said Hagee, flanked by Israeli Ambassador to the United States Eliahu Ben-Elissar, Irving Pozmantier, chairman of the Jewish Federation of Houston’s United Jewish Campaign and Texas State Comptroller John Sharp.

For his outspoken support, however, Hagee says he has received criticism that has also resulted in death threats.

In 1997, Hagee published “Final Dawn Over Jerusalem,” where he exposes “myths many Christians hold toward Jews” and explains the vital role Jews have played in Christianity.

Sharp and his wife, Charlotte, who originally brought the idea to Hagee last May, said they were vacationing in Colorado in December 1996 when they heard a rabbi on a Chicago radio station ask for help for Jews suffering in Russia.

The couple was touched by the broadcast, and decided to help by raising $50,000 for the effort. Sharp, who is Catholic, then went to Hagee with the project.

Hagee, president of Global Evangelism Television, put the weight of his ministry behind it - including broadcasting a internationally televised fund-raising campaign on his daily and weekly shows.

“The phones literally melted out of the walls,” Hagee said.

Sharp added that he remembers being on television and seeing how quickly “$50,000 became $500,000 and all of the sudden it became a million dollars.”

“I’ve been to Israel, and I’ve seen those children crying, and I’ve seen them kiss the ground,” Sharp said, adding that he has “seen their mothers and their grandmothers crying” with joy to be in their homeland.

“As Christians, we say ‘What sense does it make to praise the dead Jews of the past … and criticize the Jews across the street?”’ he said. “The Bible says ‘Love is not what you say, but love is what you do.”’ After the news conference, Hagee was asked about the displacement of Palestinians in Jerusalem. He responded that he doesn’t think the city should be controlled by anyone but the Jewish people.

Hagee made a reference earlier that Palestinians pressuring Jews to give back land would be like Mexico pressuring the United states to give back Texas, or Spain asking to have California back.

He said Christians and Jews have to stay together to defend Israel.

“If a line must be drawn concerning Christians and Jews, the line should be drawn around both of us because we are united,” Hagee said. “We are one, and we are Zionists committed to the well-being of the state of Israel.”