The people who booed Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, at an event Wednesday evening are “useful idiots,” according to the executive director of Christians United for Israel, the nation’s largest pro-Israel organization.
At an event hosted by In Defense of Christians, a group dedicated to the protection of Christian communities in the Middle East, the Texas senator abruptly ended his speech when a small but vocal group of attendees booed him after he praised Israel.
On Thursday, Christians United for Israel’s David Brog told the Washington Examiner that the hecklers distract from the real crisis of religious persecution in the Middle East.
“America’s Christians are overwhelmingly pro-Israel,” Brog said. “And many Arab Christians with the guts to tell the truth are also pro-Israel. You have to be blinded by bias not to see that those who hate Israel and the Jews also hate Christians and vice versa. Jews, Christians and all who love freedom are in this struggle together.”
Brog added: “Senator Cruz is a man who understands the true nature of militant Islam, and he’s actually more interested in protecting innocent lives in the Middle East than in appeasing the haters….The stakes are too high for us to tolerate the kind of hate and ignorance that drove these useful idiots to boo him that night.”
In Defense of Christians President Toufic Baaklini also released a statement on the incident: “[A] few politically motivated opportunists chose to divide a room that for more than 48 hours sought unity in opposing the shared threat of genocide, faced not only by our Christian brothers and sisters, but our Jewish brothers and sisters and people of all other faiths and all people of good will.”
On the other hand, Cruz’s congressional Republican colleague, Rep. Charlie Dent, R-Pa., accused him today in an interview with the Washington Post of going into the event with the intention of inflaming passions and raising his own profile for an expected 2016 presidential run.
Cruz spokeswoman Catherine Frazier said the senator wanted “to take every opportunity to highlight this crisis, the unspeakable persecution of Christians. America has been silent for far too long, and we need to speak with a united voice against this horror. Sen. Cruz is speaking to make the unequivocal point that religious bigotry in all its forms — be it targeting Christians, Jews or minority Muslim sects — is an evil that must be exposed and combated.”
Cruz’s point was apparently lost somewhere in his address.
“Our purpose here tonight is to highlight a terrible injustice. A humanitarian crisis. Christians, are being systematically exterminated,” the senator said. “In 1948, Jews throughout the Middle East faced murder and extermination and fled to the nation of Israel. And today, Christians have no greater ally than the Jewish state.”
This is where members of Cruz’s audience began to turn, responding to the Senator with a mix of boos and various, assorted heckles.
“Let me say this, those who hate Israel, hate America,” Cruz said, responding to unsettled crowd. “And those who hate Jews, hate Christians. And if this room will not recognize that, then my heart weeps, that the men and women here will not stand in solidarity with Jews and Christians alike who are persecuted by radicals … If you hate the Jewish people you are not reflecting the teachings of Christ.”
He added: “And the very same people who persecute and murder Christians right now, who crucify Christians and behead children are the very same people who target and murder Jews for their faith for the very same reason. … I will say this, if you will not stand with Israel and the Jews, then I will not stand with you.”
