'Christian' Zionists Unleash Murder Epic Report; Posted on: 2006-10-21 17:37:50 Omar Sharif stars in Jewish hate fable
P. Murphy for V-News
The Christian Zionist Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN), a televanglelist powerhouse peddling faith cures, racial mixing and Christian support for Israel, has released One Night With The King, a film adaptation of the Book of Esther. The downmarket would-be Cecil B. DeMille-style epic stars Omar Sharif -- a Christian Copt who reportedly renounced Christ and converted to Islam -- in a reworking of one of the most unpleasant folktales ever recorded. The Book of Esther recounts a Jewish revenge fantasy placed atop a non-Jewish fable (the name of the heroine, Esther, is a form of the name Ishtar, a Mesopotamian Goddess.) The tale involves the wily intrigues of the "beautiful Esther" on a Persian monarch, who slaughters innocent Iranians at her instigation. The story is so unpleasant and, as the only book of the Bible that does not mention God so transparently hateful, that the Reformer Martin Luther fought unsuccessfully to have it excised from the canon. Jews annually celebrate the festival as Purim, a sort of Halloween, crowing about the punishment they hope for their enemies, who are cursed. Jewish children consume sweets called "Haman's ears" after the chief "villain" of the piece, a Persian patriot who is murdered after Jewish demands are made on the Shah.
TBN is almost a caricature of Christian faith, with lewd bouts of yelling and screaming, glossolalia and "faith healing" aimed at the elderly, the intellectually backward and the lonely. Televangelism has long been excoriated for the exploitation of credulous people. Such criticisms were especially intense at the height of the Bakker/Swaggart scandals of the 1980s, which exposed vast corruption and nearly unbelievably immoral behavior.
Those who will watch One Night With The King in hopes of salacious harem scenes will be disappointed; the Christian filmmakers have neutered the epic into a eunuch. After all, standards must be maintained, at least in public, though this reticence will puzzle some observers. After all, TBN founder Paul Crouch reportedly paid $425,000 in 1998 to a male employee to silence claims that Pastor Crouch and the employee had had homosexual encounters. V-News correspondent Rocco Strada reported when the allegations were made that "[male accuser] Ford reportedly handed Crouch a manuscript of a planned book detailing the alleged 1996 "gay" encounter as Crouch prepared for one of his innumerable on-air "Praise-a-thon" spectacles. Crouch was apparently offered the rights for $10 million."
People involved in the Christian Zionist phenomenon are undoubtedly onto a great thing -- for themselves. Tax-exempt and with immense social power, such people are ripe for co-option. Given the apparent (and confirmed) financial, moral and other malfeasance of so many of them, is it any wonder that they would be willing to float a heresy like Christian Zionism, which is in direct contradiction of all of Christian theological teaching?
Certainly many Zionists know how key the Christian Zionists are to them. Michael Medved, the Jewish neocon "culture critic" who presumes to speak for and dictate the parameters of "traditional family values," was effusive in his ethnocentric praise of One Night With the King, gaggingly calling it a "love letter to the Jewish community ... this is frankly the most pro Jewish movie I've seen in years."
Indeed, there is a hot debate going on in Medved's "Jewish community" between those like him who wish to cosset and humor malleable Christian Zionists, and those like Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League hate group who, hungry for donations from frightened Jews, seek to whip up a phony spectre of evangelical "anti-Semitism."
One Night With The King is based on a novelization of the Esther fable, part of a large genre of apopcalyptic novels from the Christian Zionist milieu.
The Christian Zionists who make up so much of the "Christian Right" are often even more Zionist than the Zionists themselves, and are rightfully held in barely-concealed contempt by the right-wing forces who use them. Evangelical Christians, along with Roman Catholics, faithful Mormons and others, make up the vast bulk of White people in America, who are renowned as people of faith. All of these people deserve much better and have earned it.