Page 2 of 2 Holy warriors set sights on
Iran By Bill Berkowitz
Iran, Russia, and a group of Middle
Eastern countries to attack Israel at some point?'
And the answer is yes."
Some critics
charge that Rosenberg is a self-promoter with
little real understanding of Judaism.
"Rosenberg chooses to trade in his private
salvation narrative as a way of winning readers,
exploiting contacts, and - most dangerously -
political ventriloquism," said Rabbi Haim Dov
Beliak, the co-founder of
JewsOnFirst.org, a website devoted to protecting
free speech, and the rabbi of Beth Shalom Temple
in Whittier, California.
"In this case,
political ventriloquism is using the 'voice' of
Jews to their eventual detriment - while claiming
it is for their benefit - and seeking what I as a
believing Jew must describe as apostasy against
Judaism and God," he said. "Rooting for war with
Iran and lobbying for world destruction using
Israel as catalytic agent is no longer
'entertainment' - it is obscene."
Rosenberg was an important but mostly
behind-the-scenes figure in the conservative
movement until his first novel The Last
Jihad became a best-seller. A Jew who
converted to Christianity more than 30 years ago,
he had worked for former Israeli prime minister
Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli politician and author
Natan Sharansky, US business-magazine magnate
Steve Forbes, and right-wing radio talk-show host
Rush Limbaugh. He is also a former Heritage
Foundation staffer.
The Last Jihad,
completed before the September 11, 2001, World
Trade Center and Pentagon attacks, propelled
Rosenberg into the spotlight. The novel featured a
hijacked jet making a kamikaze-like attack against
the president of the United States, simultaneous
terrorist strikes on the US, London, Paris and
Saudi Arabia, an oil deal between Israel and the
Palestinians that threatened to unleash a war with
Iraq, and a possible preemptive nuclear strike.
In a late-October interview with the
Washington Times, Rosenberg told reporter Chrissie
Thompson that he didn't think his novels "were
going to predict the future ... I was basing them
on a series of Bible prophecies, but when [they]
started to come true ... that has been striking
for all of us, myself included."
Another
of his novels, The Ezekiel Option, is
described by Rosenberg as "a political thriller
about the threat of a Russian-Iranian alliance to
destroy Israel based on the biblical prophecies
found in the Book of Ezekiel, chapters 38 and 39".
These prophecies, according to Rosenberg,
"describe what Bible scholars call the war of Gog
and Magog. Russia and Iran form a military
alliance with Lebanon, Syria and a group of other
Middle East countries to destroy Israel in what
Ezekiel described as the last days."
In
recent months, Rosenberg has suggested that Russia
be added to the Bush administration's "axis of
evil" that originally included Iraq, Iran and
North Korea.
Recently, Rosenberg and his
wife Lynn co-founded the Joshua Fund, which
"partner[s] with evangelical ministries in the
Middle East to provide desperately needed
resources to Christians in the region to bless
their neighbors in need in the name of Jesus".
According to Internet religion commentator
Richard Bartholomew, the fund's two "humanitarian
aid" efforts are called the "Project to Bless
Israel" and the "Project to Bless Lebanon".
"Lebanese refugees will get 'Bags of
Blessing', to be distributed by Campus Crusade for
Christ and local evangelicals," Bartholomew
reported on his website.
The bags will
include food and other basic items such as soap
and headache pills, he said, as well as a digital
video disc on Jesus in Arabic.
However,
Bartholomew clarified that while the Lebanese
refugees will receive the Jesus DVD, the Israelis
"will be spared a similar Jesus DVD in Hebrew, for
obvious political reasons".
Bill
Berkowitz is a longtime observer of the
conservative movement. His WorkingForChange column
"Conservative Watch" documents the strategies,
players, institutions, victories and defeats of
the US right.
