meanwhile, the "hitler" comment was something i would imagine a lot of religious people technically believe, even if they're not willing to say it out loud. the comments in question are as follows:
"And they the hunters should hunt them," that will be the Jews. "From every mountain and from every hill and from out of the holes of the rocks." If that doesn't describe what Hitler did in the holocaust you can't see that.if you believe in an all-powerful all-knowing god, then the holocaust was, to some extent, his fault. god both had the knowledge and the means to stop it, but didn't. and the problem gets worse if you believe that everything that happens in the world is god's will. god is no longer the bystander who failed to act, but rather the actor himself.
Theodore Hertzel is the father of Zionism. He was a Jew who at the turn of the 19th century said, this land is our land, God wants us to live there. So he went to the Jews of Europe and said "I want you to come and join me in the land of Israel." So few went that Hertzel went into depression. Those who came founded Israel; those who did not went through the hell of the holocaust.
Then god sent a hunter. A hunter is someone with a gun and he forces you. Hitler was a hunter. And the Bible says -- Jeremiah writing -- "They shall hunt them from every mountain and from every hill and from the holes of the rocks," meaning there's no place to hide. And that might be offensive to some people but don't let your heart be offended. I didn't write it, Jeremiah wrote it. It was the truth and it is the truth. How did it happen? Because God allowed it to happen. Why did it happen? Because God said my top priority for the Jewish people is to get them to come back to the land of Israel.
furthermore, a lot of evangelical christians do believe that the jews need to control jerusalem before the second coming. i don't think it's that radical to say if not for the holocaust, there would be no state of israel. and so if you think that god is working to bring about the second coming, you could conclude that god used hitler as a way of getting there.
hagee's comments are nothing more than a logical extension of religious views that are hardly out of the mainstream. it's just an extension of the the problem of evil (which is only a "problem" if you believe in god). the problem exists in one form or another all three major monotheistic religions. though each religion finds a way of dealing with it, the logic of the problem leads to a lot of conclusions that make people uncomfortable to articulate out loud.
don't get me wrong, i don't blame the mccain campaign for seeing hagee's comments as toxic. i just find it interesting that this comment, after all the others, that pushed mccain to finally dump hagee. i suspect what makes this comment different from the others is not that it is any worse, but rather that it includes the word "hitler."
