Senator Cruz undermined the cause of persecuted Christians

By Phil Lawler ( bio - articles - email ) | Sep 12, 2014

For the record, Senator Ted Cruz was not “booed off the stage” when he addressed a Washington conference on persecution of Christians in the Middle East. He left the stage voluntarily.

Yes, the Texas senator was booed. And yes, the reaction to his comments was impolite. (Conference participants from the countries of the Middle East are accustomed to more rambunctious political debates, but that is a separate issue.) The heckling was making it difficult for Cruz to speak. But he could have continued. Any seasoned campaigner has faced hecklers, and knows how to calm a crowd. Senator Cruz chose not to do that. On the contrary, he upped the ante, accusing his hecklers of hatred. Then he walked out.

The audience became restive when Cruz condemned Hezbollah. The senator must have known—at least certainly should have known—that his audience included representatives of the government of Lebanon, which has a tense, delicate relationship with Hezbollah. (The Lebanese ambassador walked out.) But the catcalls began in earnest when Cruz said: “Christians have no greater ally than Israel.” Again, he must have (should have) known that he was speaking to Palestinian Christians, who still resent the state that drove them from their native villages.

Now you might argue, if you wish, that Lebanon should not tolerate Hezbollah. You might argue that Palestinians should stop fighting the battles of 1948. But you cannot argue that the hostile reception that Cruz received, when he touched on these sore points, was unpredictable.

Was the heckling tainted by prejudice against Jews? Perhaps so. (Incidentally, in this context it is silly to charge that anti-Semitism was at work, since the hecklers themselves were Semites.) But opposition to Israeli government policies is not prima facie evidence of bigotry, and anyone addressing the snarled politics of the Middle East should be prepared for strong objections to any government’s policies.

If Senator Cruz did not anticipate the reaction that he provoked, then he was remarkably blind to the political realities of the Middle East. Moreover, he was spectacularly blind to the purposes of the conference he addressed, which was designed to make the American public aware of the suffering of persecuted Christians. American policy toward Israel is a topic constantly debated on Capitol Hill. But the plight of Arabic Christians has been sadly ignored. Now at last there was an event calling attention to their concerns, and Cruz was diverting attention back toward Israel.

In fact, thanks to Cruz, much of the media coverage of the conference has focused on the Texas senator’s speech, and the (real or imagined) prejudices of his audience, rather than on the persecution of Christians. The keynote speaker undermined the entire event.

Was that his goal? Was Cruz deliberately goading his audience? Did he anticipate the flare-up, and plan to exploit it in order to bolster his own reputation for unswerving support of Israel? Cruz was not speaking from a prepared text. That could be a sign that he was massively unprepared for this appearance. Or it could indicate that he was prepared to walk out, as he did, after just a few minutes.

American conservatives, and especially Evangelicals, have applauded Cruz for his loyalty to Israel. But I am not the only observer to question whether the senator from Texas betrayed the interests of persecuted Christians to serve his own political ambitions.