Author:
Barbara Diez Brooke
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Date Posted: 18:15:07 10/19/02 Sat
In reply to:
David Firestone
's message, "Re: The Thievery of Evangelist Billy Graham" on 13:59:30 05/28/02 Tue
> March 17, 2002 New York Times
>BILLY GRAHAM RESPONDS TO LINGERING ANGER OVER 1972
>REMARKS ON JEWS
>By DAVID FIRESTONE
>
>It seemed impossible, when H. R. Haldeman's White
>House diaries came out in 1994, that the Rev. Billy
>Graham could once have joined with President Richard
>M. Nixon in discussing the "total Jewish domination of
>the media." Could Mr. Graham, the great American
>evangelist, really have said the nation's problem lies
>with "satanic Jews," as Mr. Nixon's aide recorded?Mr.
>Graham's sterling reputation as a healer and
>bridge-builder was so at odds with Mr. Haldeman's
>account that Jewish groups paid little attention,
>especially because he denied the remarks so
>strongly."Those are not my words," Mr. Graham said in
>a public statement in May 1994. "I have never talked
>publicly or privately about the Jewish people,
>including conversations with President Nixon, except
>in the most positive terms."That was the end of the
>story, it seemed, until two weeks ago, when the tape
>of that 1972 conversation in the Oval Office was made
>public by the National Archives. Three decades after
>it was recorded, the North Carolina preacher's famous
>drawl is tinny but unmistakable on the tape,
>denigrating Jews in terms far stronger than the diary
>accounts."They're the ones putting out the
>pornographic stuff," Mr. Graham said on the tape,
>after agreeing with Mr. Nixon that left-wing Jews
>dominate the news media. The Jewish "stranglehold has
>got to be broken or the country's going down the
>drain," he continued, suggesting that if Mr. Nixon
>were re-elected, "then we might be able to do
>something."Finally, Mr. Graham said that Jews did not
>know his true feelings about them."I go and I keep
>friends with Mr. Rosenthal at The New York Times and
>people of that sort, you know," he told Mr. Nixon,
>referring to A. M. Rosenthal, then the newspaper's
>executive editor. "And all — I mean, not all the Jews,
>but a lot of the Jews are great friends of mine, they
>swarm around me and are friendly to me because they
>know that I'm friendly with Israel. But they don't
>know how I really feel about what they are doing to
>this country. And I have no power, no way to handle
>them, but I would stand up if under proper
>circumstances."Mr. Graham, who is now 83 and in poor
>health, quickly issued a four- sentence apology, but
>he did not acknowledge making the statements and said
>he had no memory of the conversation, which took place
>after a prayer breakfast on Feb. 1, 1972.The brevity
>of the apology and Mr. Graham's refusal to discuss the
>matter further have angered many of the same Jewish
>organizations that for so long counted Mr. Graham as
>their best friend among evangelical Christians. The
>taped remarks have become the subject of synagogue
>sermons and columns in Jewish newspapers, with some
>Jewish leaders suggesting that Mr. Graham had hidden
>anti-Semitic views for decades."Here we have an
>American icon, the closest we have to a spiritual
>leader of America, who has been playing a charade for
>all these years," Abraham H. Foxman, the national
>director of the Anti-Defamation League, said in an
>interview last week. "What's frightening is that he
>has been so close to so many presidents, and who knows
>what else he has been saying privately."Mr. Foxman
>urged Mr. Graham to return the award he won in 1971
>from the National Conference of Christians and Jews —
>one of many such awards presented to him.Yesterday,
>Mr. Graham's organization issued a longer apology, in
>which Mr. Graham acknowledged making the statements,
>but repudiated them."I don't ever recall having those
>feelings about any group, especially the Jews, and I
>certainly do not have them now," he said. "My remarks
>did not reflect my love for the Jewish people. I
>humbly ask the Jewish community to reflect on my
>actions on behalf of Jews over the years that
>contradict my words in the Oval Office that day."Mr.
>Foxman subsequently issued a statement accepting the
>new apology, but for many Jews the damage had already
>been done. In a recent column in several Jewish
>newspapers, the Washington journalist James D. Besser
>said the remarks should awaken Jews to the intense
>dislike for them among many evangelical Christians,
>except insofar as Jews are useful to the fulfillment
>of Christian apocalyptic prophecies. The tapes have
>been particularly disturbing to people and groups who
>have worked to find common ground between Jews and
>evangelical Christians, many of whom say that their
>progress has now been significantly set back. For
>years, Mr. Graham stood apart from other evangelicals
>in his refusal to proselytize Jews directly, sharply
>disagreeing on the issue with his own denomination,
>the Southern Baptist Convention. Because of that
>stance, the American Jewish Committee presented Mr.
>Graham with its National Interreligious Award in 1977,
>calling him one of the century's greatest Christian
>friends of Jews.The taped remarks, however, will only
>help perpetuate the stereotypes that Jews and
>evangelicals hold about each other, said Rabbi Yechiel
>Z. Eckstein, president of the International Fellowship
>of Christians and Jews, based in Chicago."Jewish
>friends are coming up to me now and saying, `See, we
>told you so — they're all frauds,' " said Rabbi
>Eckstein, an Orthodox Jew who has become a liaison
>between Israel and evangelical Christians. Mr.
>Graham's friends and biographers have tried to come up
>with some explanation for an act that so sharply
>diverges from five decades of almost universally
>admired public behavior. Lewis Drummond, the Billy
>Graham Professor of Evangelism and Church Growth at
>Samford University, a Southern Baptist institution in
>Birmingham, Ala., said he believed that Mr. Graham was
>referring throughout his conversation only to those
>few Jews he considered unethical for distributing
>pornography."There's not an anti-Semitic bone in his
>body," said Dr. Drummond, a longtime friend of Mr.
>Graham's who has written a book about him. Dr.
>Drummond recalled that Mr. Graham had always preached
>against intolerance, refusing — in the South of the
>1950's and 60's — to hold his crusades in segregated
>auditoriums and inviting the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther
>King Jr. to join him in the pulpit.Another biographer,
>William Martin of Rice University, suggested that Mr.
>Graham was thinking only of liberal Jews with whom he
>disagreed politically. Mr. Martin said that just as
>Mr. Graham grew up in a culture of segregation and
>moved beyond it, he had also evolved beyond what his
>thoughts were in 1972.Mr. Graham's statement yesterday
>expressed hope that he had grown past his words that
>day in the Oval Office. Describing himself as "an old
>man of 83 suffering from several ailments," he said
>his life had been a pilgrimage of growth and
>change."Every year during their High Holy Days, the
>Jewish community reminds us all of our need for
>repentance and forgiveness," he wrote. "God's mercy
>and grace give me hope — for myself, and for our
>world."
Billy Graham's anti Semitic feelings made public through a tape only makes me praise and thank the God of Israel for not letting him leave this world letting us believe he was a holy man.
According to the Bible, it is impossible to love God and not love the Jews.
All I see in this is a just and good God who exposed him according to his word. Jesus said whatever we speak in secret will be shouted from the rooftops and Billy Graham could claim christianity all he wants, but what he said was and is not God and God let him be seen for what he is, a hypocrite and rascist.
Do I forgive him? I must for Jesus, but the damage is done and he will reap what he sowed because he will go down in history for what he is, an evangelist who hated Jews.
Sad, but true.
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