Christians United For Israel, a
pro-Israel evangelical group, features on its website a photo of Jerusalem with
the city’s holiest mosques wiped out.
The photo-shopped view of the
Western Wall and the Temple Mount is featured in a huge banner across every
page of www.cufi.org.
Radical Islamists rally anti-Israel
sentiment by claiming that Israel hopes to remove the mount’s two mosques,
including al-Aqsa, where the prophet Mohammed is believed to have ascended to
heaven; Israel strongly rejects the charges, noting its efforts over the years
to protect the area.
CUFI, headed by Texas preacher,
Pastor John Hagee, has made inroads into Jewish reluctance to deal with
evangelicals. Hagee spoke last month at the American Israel Public Affairs
Committee’s policy conference. AIPAC spokesmen did not return requests for comment. Joe Thurman, a spokesman for CUFI, said that “The photo is in fact not photo-shopped. The camera angle used to focus on the beauty of the wall was too narrow to include the mosques.”
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