White House talks with ‘anti-Israel' preacher panned

Christians United for Israel executive-director David Brog tells 'Post' that preacher Serge Duss holds views “very offensive to Jews and Bible-believing Christians.”

By BENJAMIN WEINTHAL
The White House 311 (photo credit: Thinkstock/Imagebank)
The White House 311
(photo credit: Thinkstock/Imagebank)
The head of one of the most prominent pro-Israel Christian organizations in the United States slammed the White House on Wednesday for agreeing to several meetings with an “anti-Israel” preacher who denies that Jews have a historical link to Israel.
According to the online news outlet Washington Free Beacon, preacher Serge Duss “propagates borderline anti- Semitic conspiracy theories and advises several groups that have stigmatized the Israeli government – [and] has made at least four trips to the Obama White House for several high-level powwows with top administration officials, records show.”
In a telephone interview with The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday, David Brog, executive director of Christians United for Israel (CUFI), commented on Duss’s form of theology. “It is troubling, in that he seems to embrace an odd race-based replacement theology; he seems to be saying that Jews are not connected to Bible.”
Brog, whose organization numbers more than one million members and is now the largest pro-Israel group in the US, said Duss’s views are “very offensive to Jews and Bible-believing Christians.”
He added that Duss slandered the “Christian faith of millions around the world.
[He is] not committed to peace and reconciliation.”
Asked about Duss’s connection with Washington, Brog said it “makes one worry” because it leads to “concerns that policy is being driven by those who have rejectionist views of Israel and are outside of the peace consensus.”
“We support the democratically elected government of Israel. The current government  has  expressed a commitment to a two-state solution,” he stressed. “We fear that Serge Duss does not share the goal of a safe Israel.”
Ari Morgenstern, a spokesman for Christians United for Israel , told the Post that "CUFI supports Israel's right to decide how to achieve peace and security for its citizens, free from all outside pressure."
Brog emphasized this to the Free Beacon’s Adam Kredo, who first exposed the meetings between Duss and White House officials: “Serge Duss is associated with the most extreme aspects of Arab rejectionism. [He] has denied the connection between the modern Jewish people and those of the Bible.”
If the Obama administration is truly committed “to supporting Israel in its quest for peace,” Brog asked, “why are they taking advice from someone who parrots the worst rhetoric of those who oppose accommodation with Israel?” Kredo’s investigative reports showed that Duss had “a series of high-level sit-downs with the Obama administration’s liaison to Arab-Americans, as well as with two of the president’s most trusted foreign policy advisers, according to White House visitor logs.”
In an email to the Post on Friday, Matt Lehrich, a White House spokesman, wrote the"White House staff meets with thousands of people each month. We don't apologize to anybody for the President's unshakeable commitment to Israel's security - a commitment he reiterated twice in the past two weeks at meetings with Conservative and Orthodox Jewish leaders."