Cornerstone Church’s Night to Honor Israel Serves as War Rally, Texas Monthly Reports

Cornerstone Church, an evangelical megachurch in San Antonio, seats about 5,000 people and has a large stage-length video screen. On a recent Sunday night its auditorium hosted a Night to Honor Israel, an annual event now held across the country that was started by the church’s founder, Pastor John Hagee. Texas Monthly reported that the event typically restates evangelical Christians’ support for Israel and its claims to the West Bank and East Jerusalem. This year’s gathering, the magazine said, carried the weight of the October 7 attack, in which Hamas killed more than 1,400 Israelis and took about 240 hostages into Gaza.

The speakers included Hagee and two Israeli diplomats: Livia Link-Raviv, consul general for the American Southwest, and Gilad Erdan, Israel’s representative to the United Nations. Link-Raviv told the audience that Israel is “the holy land” and “the homeland of the Jewish people,” and said that Israel faced “a different battle” over public opinion. She urged listeners not to be confused by “inevitable difficult images” that would continue to appear, which the magazine described as an apparent reference to photos of women and children killed and wounded in Gaza by Israeli air strikes intended to target Hamas fighters.

Hagee began the Night in 1981 with the help and blessing of Rabbi Aryeh Scheinberg, then leader of the San Antonio Orthodox temple Rodfei Sholom. The event’s growth led Hagee to found Christians United for Israel (CUFI), a lobbying group that advocates for material and political support for the Jewish state. According to the report, CUFI cites a figure of 10 million American members and is described as the largest lobbying group of any kind in the United States. Texas Monthly wrote that the group’s political influence has made Cornerstone a frequent stop for Republican candidates, and listed recent keynote speakers including former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Nikki Haley and Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick. The magazine described Christian Zionism as a religious ideology that holds Jews are God’s chosen people and that Christians have a duty to support Israel, and it said Hagee’s interpretation is less extreme than some others in that movement.

In his address, Hagee said, “Now is the time to exterminate Hamas. End it and end it now.” The magazine also reported that Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Senator Ted Cruz of Texas appeared in videotaped remarks. Cotton called October 7 “one of the worst terror attacks against America since 9/11,” and Cruz said Hamas employs “Nazi tactics in pursuit of Nazi goals.”

Erdan told the audience that Hamas’s infrastructure was “built deep within and under Gaza City,” and he described what he said were command centers under hospitals and missile launchers in schools. Texas Monthly reported that Erdan also urged listeners to discount “every number and every claim that you hear from Gaza,” a position the magazine said disregarded reporting from nonprofits and journalists, including accounts of thousands of civilian casualties. The magazine’s view was that the speeches did not give real consideration to the lives of Palestinian civilians, a point that calls for truth and fairness in weighing testimony (Proverbs 18:17).

The crowd concluded the evening with prayer and song, and cheered for the battles to come, according to the report.

Source: Read the original report