Ted Cruz Said What Needed To Be Said

God Bless Ted Cruz for stating a fact, standing on principle, and not backing down.  It ticked off the political left, and the politically confused, and shined a light on the influence of anti-Israel groups in America.

That light was too much for conservative-basher Rod Dreher.

Dreher wrote a blog post called, “US Conservative Contempt For Arab Christians,” and over-compensated for his distaste for actual American Conservatism.

Dreher to Cruz’ appearance and departure from the IDC Conference:

 The Washington Free Beacon shamefully characterized the event as, citing the anti-Israel politics of some conference participants as if that were the most important thing about this religious and human rights event. As if Israelis were the only people in the Middle East whose suffering matters.

Shamefully? A Pro-Hezbollah hootenanny? Well, let’s just see what kind of tomfoolery and poppycock this Washington Free Beacon pretends to throw around all higgledy-piggledy.

The roster of speakers includes some of the Assad regime’s most vocal Christian supporters, as well as religious leaders allied with the Iranian-backed terrorist group Hezbollah.

Lest we forget who Hezbollah is, here is Wikipedia’s first line:

Hezbollah…is a group and based in but primarily funded by .

OK, now reading further down on the WFB piece:

Funding for the conference was provided by Clinton donor and Lebanese-Nigerian billionaire Gilbert Chagoury, according to organizers. The wealthy businessman pledged $1 billion to the Clinton Global Initiative in 2009.

Chagoury is also reportedly backer of Lebanese politician Michel Aoun, Hezbollah’s top Christian ally in the country, according to U.S. diplomatic published by WikiLeaks.

Maronite Patriarch Cardinal Bechara Raï, who was scheduled to speak during the same keynote slot as Cruz on Wednesday evening, has Israel an “enemy state that is occupying Lebanese territory” and defended Hezbollah’s right to attack the Jewish state.

Sounds like a Hezbollah hootenany to me, as well as a good time to figure out if you stand on principle or if you stand in quicksand.

It should be noted that Chagoury isn’t just some past contributor to the Clintons, he’s a pay for play   But the most important distinction is that Chagoury is backing a Maronite in Lebanon who is allied with Hezbollah.  The point being is that you can’t ally with Hezbollah and Israel at the same time.  You need to pick one, and Ted Cruz did, and so did those that booed him.

Dreher called the Hezbollah-backed conference a, “diplomatic feat,” and then snarked, “As if Israelis were the only people in the Middle East whose suffering matters.”

I found that snark to be extremely shallow-minded.  Ted Cruz didn’t once say that Christian persecution should be ignored, and Dreher knows that.  That’s why this blog post of his is so irritating. It is a political hit that ignores the situation at hand.  It’s just conservative-bashing by a poser.

To remind us of what happened, of the conference when Ted Cruz spoke.

Now, it is clear from Cruz’ speech that he knew that some of the people there had it in their heads that this conference should be geared toward tearing down the Jews, he even named Hezbollah and Hamas in league with ISIS and other groups who choose genocide over peace.  Not one time does Dreher admit that Hezbollah’s leader, Nasrallah has repeatedly that, “Israel is a cancer,” and the, “ultimate goal should be to remove it.”

Anti-Semitism among Christians, Arab and otherwise, is appalling, but it doesn’t sound like that’s what was at issue here.

 

Rod Dreher; Super Genius.

What Dreher is trying to do is attack a prominent conservative because that’s all he knows how to do.  Damn the illogic, damn the fallacies, he doesn’t care, because a person like Cruz trying to talk sense to a bunch of haters will automatically put Dreher on the side of the haters.  He can’t help it, he’s Rod Dreher.  Just observe how dishonest this next bit is:

To add to the insult, now Breitbart, a leading website of movement conservatism, questions the Christianity of these Arab men and women in that Washington room.

This is beyond infuriating. Arab Christians in the Middle East face persecution and death every day, simply because they are Christian. And this distorts the truth — saying that Cruz was booed because he supported Israel, when in fact he was booed because he turned his speech into a pro-Israel lecture to a hostile audience — and then writes as if the only thing worth knowing about the Christians in that audience is that some of them had met with Hezbollah.

Now, I suppose you can be an Anti-Semitic Christian, but that doesn’t mean your version of truth should be heard.  And Ted Cruz, did in fact, repeatedly say that the persecution of Christians is wrong, but so is the persecution of the Jews, for which he got booed.  Sorry, that’s a principle, and Cruz was unequivocal.

Only part of the conference attendees were pro-Hezbollah, including the guy who financed the whole thing, so to gloss over that and say that just some of them had met with Hezbollah is disingenuous.  How can some ignore the goals of a terrorist organization (as a nation, we call Hezbollah a terrorist organization) and somehow disconnect that with the people who make up part of this conference?  Not all thoughts are worth hearing and considering, and I applaud Cruz for going there and shining a light on the problems in the Middle East that many do not know about.

The policies we have toward the Middle East should be to preserve and protect Israel, as the only Middle East democracy and the only one that protects Christianity.   The people who meet to direct foreign policy should be those who understand this.  If the people who meet here are Hezbollah, then naturally, their interest in lessening our connection with Israel, shutting it off from American backing so as to make it more vulnerable, will rise.

I know Christians who are Anti-Semitic and they aren’t Middle Eastern, and we don’t align with them either, because typically, they are progressive atheist Democrats.  Dreher is just for exactly what he wants out of conservatism, and that is mostly to change it to his brand of psuedo-religious ex-communication of anything Reaganesque for a brave-new-world view that everyone can be right outside of what is right.

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