If the world goes down the road of dehumanizing Jews again, “then count me a Jew and come for me first,” Glenn Beck declared in his keynote address at the closing banquet of the Christians United for Israel (CUFI) summit in Washington, D.C. Tuesday night.
Standing up for Israel “may be the cause of our lifetime,” he said to a crowd of thousands of Christians at the Washington Convention Center. “Each of us will be judged as a people and a nation by how we treat Israel.”
Beck, who was sporting a goatee, opened his speech by donating $10,000 dollars to CUFI’s student group and announcing he had just returned from the Auschwitz–Birkenau concentration camps. There, he said, he realized that the rights articulated in the Declaration of Independence were crucial to preventing such evil from occurring.
“The founders had the answer 150 years before Hitler showed up,” he said.
But, he noted, the Jewish people were not able to guard those rights for two millennia.
“They have had no home base,” he said. That is, he said, until the creation of Israel.
“They [Jews] have been smeared. They have been maligned. But to our shame as human beings most of all they have been forgotten in times of need. This is why the nation of Israel is vital,” he said. (Christians United for Israel head: ‘President Obama is not pro-Israel’)
“No one can protect your rights better than you … To rely on others is to ensure economic slavery at best, and death camps at worst.”
Beck closed his speech by warning the enemies of Israel and the Jewish people that times have changed and the Jews would not be alone in any confrontation.
“This still is America 2011. We are not the Christians of the Crusades. We are the Christians United for Israel,” he said.
Before the gala dinner started, attendees waved American and Israeli flags. As a band played and images of Israel were displayed on large screens throughout the convention hall, some in the crowd found room in the pathways between the dinner tables to dance the Jewish Hora. Before Beck came to the podium, CUFI founder Pastor John Hagee and Israeli Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren delivered speeches.
On Wednesday, members of CUFI will storm Capitol Hill, lobbying legislators and their staffs to stand firm with Israel.