"Why was the most popular joke here at the Air Force Academy in 2004 "Why do Jews make the best magicians ?" Anyone know ? Show of hands ?"
You could have heard a pin drop.
Mikey Weinstein called it out:
In 2004, one of the most popular jokes at the US Air Force Academy concerned the incineration of Jews.
One three star general, at the time, ordered his staff to create a powerpoint showing parallels between the prophesy in the Biblical Book of Revelations and ongoing conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The revelation that at least one popular Holocaust joke was circulating at the United States Air Force Academy in the year 2004 actually came out, as far as I can trace, in a superb article on Mikey Weinstein, written by Cara DeGette, that was published in the March 2-8 2006 edition of the Colorado Springs Independent. The existence of the Holocaust joke has received almost no recognition except on a handful of blogs such as the Colorado specific Non-Prophet. Otherwise, media has missed the existence of the grotesque joke.
Wednesday night, Mikey Weinstein, founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, debated Jay Sekulow, of the American Center For Law and Justice at the United States Air Force Academy. Sekulow's ACFLJ billed Sekulow's position in the debate as being in favor of "religious freedom". Oddly, that's Weinstein's position too, more or less. [ listen to the debate ].
Here's the beginning of a transcript of the debate. More on the way soon...
If you're moved by this story, please consider joining and financially supporting the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. Because: in our democracy, American Democracy - our freedoms, our liberties, and our political power come from the Constitution and not from the barrel of a gun in the hands of sectarian, politicized religion... let's keep things that way
For a personal account of someone who was forced out of the USAF for her religious beliefs, Lorie Johnson's account of her harrowing time in the Air Force provides firsthand testimony that well accompanies Weinstein's account of Christian Evangelical coercion in the Air Force, and Johnson offers this disturbing recollection:
"Their participation and promotion of this group is in direct violation of their oaths to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. One officer said that God, his family, and then the US were his priorities.
I ran into this "God First, orders second" attitude when I served in the USAF. There were people in charge of the communications facilities who felt that they should do what God and the Bible told them, not what their commanders said. And if God told them to do something to launch a nuclear holocaust, they would do it. Yes, they actually told me that. - Talk To Action contributor Lorrie Johnson, from a six part series, entitled Onward Christian Soldiers: How minority faiths are treated in the US Military, Lorrie Johnson recounts her experience of religious coercion within the USAF, and her exemplary courage in fighting for religious freedom. ( 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 ).
The Colorado Springs Independent, on Mikey Weinstein:
A June 2004 report conducted by a team from Yale Divinity School observed, among other things, that during basic training, Maj. Warren Watties called on about 600 cadets to proselytize their bunkmates and warn them they would burn in the fires of hell if they weren't born again.
A 2004 survey indicated that half the cadets at the academy reported hearing religious slurs on campus.
One documented "joke" went like this: "Why do Jews make the best magicians? Because they can go into a building and vanish in a puff of smoke." Jewish cadets complained about being called "Christ-killers" and being told that the Holocaust was revenge for the death of Jesus.
Cadets who declined to attend a Christian worship service reported being marched back to their dorms by upperclassmen in an exercise they called "Heathen Flight." Official academy fliers, distributed on military grounds, promoted Mel Gibson's movie The Passion of the Christ. Seventh-day Adventist and Jewish cadets were denied the ability to worship on Saturdays.
There was the incident when a bus driver shuttling cadets to a training exercise refused to shut off an offensive Christian radio show. A Christian chaplain resigned her commission, convinced that the hierarchy simply was not interested in addressing the pervasive religious intolerance at the academy.
In 1998, the Independent detailed the saga of an honors graduate who wanted to get married in the academy chapel but was denied because he planned a traditional Hawaiian Huna ceremony. He was told it would desecrate the chapel. (At the time, the chaplain at Peterson Air Force Base welcomed the couple to marry in the Christian chapel there.)
On Dec. 12, 2003, Campus Crusade for Christ sponsored a full-page advertisement in the Air Force Academy's newspaper, proclaiming "Jesus is the Reason for Our Season." The ad listed dozens of names of supporters, including ranking Air Force officers, under the statement, "We believe that Jesus Christ is the only real hope for the world. If you would like to discuss Jesus, feel free to contact one of us!"
There was the November 2004 dust-up over football coach Fisher DeBerry's decision to hang a banner in the locker room that said, "I am a Christian first and last ... I am a member of Team Jesus Christ."
Last July 12, Weinstein picked up his New York Times and read a story about the increasingly religious climate in the Air Force. He choked on this quote, from Brig. Gen. Cecil R. Richardson: "We won't proselytize, but we reserve the right to evangelize the unchurched."
"The fact he would make that statement on the front page of the most visible newspaper in the world, when we're fighting a war against an enemy that already sees us, sees America, as invading Christian imperialist crusaders!" Weinstein marvels. "How do you think that plays with [Iraqis and other Muslims] when they can say, "Hey, this is the Air Force policy'?
"What if [Richardson] had said, "We reserve the right to Islamatize the unmosqued, Judaimize the unsynagogued, atheize'... you get the picture."
As a lifetime member of Team Air Force Academy, Weinstein knows full well that when a ranking officer gives an order or opinion, you cooperate. You do not make waves, lest you threaten your career.
Mikey Weinstein gets death threats almost daily and people put dead animals on his lawn, he says.
Many of his former friends consider him an enemy.
Why ?
Because I love America: Reagan's Assistant General Counsel Speaks Out
Mikey Weinstein served as Assistant General Counsel for Ronald Reagan. He founded the Military Religious Freedom Foundation to ensure the continued separation of Church and State, as essential principle of America's Constitution.
When I began asking questions about what I saw going on at Colorado Springs in 2004 I never expected that the inquiry would lead me to the horrifying conclusion that our country had been taken over by people who have used our own freedoms to enslave us. But that is what happened. When I began I, like most people, was focused on the personal. I believed that what was happening at the United States Air Force Academy, the harassment of cadets and staff with unwanted evangelism, was limited in scope. As the months passed, however, I found myself forced to constantly reassess my basic assumptions
The logic of events was stark and undeniable. Promises of an open inquiry were ignored; decent and courageous people like former Air Force Chaplin MeLinda Morton were intentionally muzzled to ensure the truth would not be heard and the wrongs righted.
As a Republican and an Academy graduate I find myself in head on conflict with my own oath to protect the Constitution. As a Jew I confronted a situation through ears that still hear the cries of my people walking silently into the brick buildings that would reduce them to ash. I cannot stand still and let that happen to my country.
At approximately 28:15 into the debate, Mikey Weinstein, before a highly publicized debate at the United States Air Force Academy, training center for the most powerful air force in the World, asked the audience, on recent events at the Air Force Aacdemy:
"What you do when you have a 3 star general that’s ordering his staff to put together a Powerpoint presentation showing the direct parallel between the Book Of Revelation and all of our movements in the AOR ? ( for you civilians - area of responsibility, Iraq and Afghanistan )
What do you do when have a four star general who favors the distribution of a pamphlet in his commander’s bulding, his palace, advertising in all faiths and why "Jesus vs. Mohammed, An Examination of The Life of Both Prophets and Why Jesus is Superior To All" ?
Why was the most popular joke here at the Air Force Academy in 2004 "Why do Jews make the best magicians ?" Anyone know ? Show of hands ? We make the best magicians, apparently because we have the magical ability to walk into a red brick building and come out the smokestacks in a puff of smoke."
Mikey Weinstein's fight is not a casual one. He writes:
We can expect violence. The head cleric of St. David's Episcopal Church of Topeka, Kansas came out to support me; five hours later his church was burned to the ground. A synagogue where I spoke was desecrated. My home has been targeted by feces and beer bottles; our tires slashed; dead animals have twice been placed on our front porch. The death threats come in ceaselessly. It is not convenient and safe to confront and defy those in power; I know that but I refuse to back down. They may try to harm me but I will not go quietly; I will be a Jew from the Warsaw Ghetto, not Berlin. I will be an American from Lexington and Concord, not an American from Halliburton and Blackwater.
You could have heard a pin drop:
The most popular joke at the United States Air Force Academy, in 2004, was about the incineration of Jews.
When did Holocaust jokes become popular at the US Air Force Academy, and why did they become popular ?
When did the culture of the US Air Force Academy and the US Armed Forces become permeated by a culture of aggressively Evangelical Christianity ?
These are not casual questions.
His opponents cannot tar him with accusations of liberalism or a lack of patriotism:
"I cannot emphasize strongly enough that this is not a partisan battle. ", writes Mikey Weinstein, founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation:
"I am a Republican who had the honor of serving as Assistant General Counsel in the Reagan White House and as General Counsel to two time presidential candidate H. Ross Perot. I am a Jew proud to stand with Christians, Muslims, agnostics and atheists, and others who, like those I just mentioned, are committed to the vision of an America for which generations have laid down their lives.... At the end of the day, it's simply all about just one thing; our beautiful United States Constitution....
That is America and it is worth dying for. As a graduate of the United
States Air Force Academy, the father of two graduates as well as one current Academy cadet, the brother-in-law of yet another graduate, and the son of a graduate of the U. S Naval Academy I believe in the vision that is America with every fiber of my being....
I can tell you what I am not about is trying to eliminate anyone's religious faith or taking religion out of the military. We have thousands of chapels and thousands of chaplains in the US military. My wife and I were married at the one right down there, the largest University cathedral in the world - the first, I think only, Jewish wedding ceremony in the history of the protestant chapel. We are not about that. What we are about is making sure during the duty day and duty night nobody is involuntarily forced to accept another religious faith.
Now I know I'm at war, and my legions are at war. We are not at war with Christianity and we are not at war with evangelical Christianity. Ah, but we are at war with a subset of evangelical Christianity with a long technical name that I hope won't take the rest of my time. I'll say it just one time today: it's premillennial, dispensational, reconstructionist, dominionist, evangelical, fundamentalist Christianity. I know it's a long name. We'll just call them Bob. Dominionist Christianity - the leaders you know very well: Robertson, Dobson, used to be Haggard - he's had a career change - D. James Kennedy, John Hagee, alot of people that I won't be going out to dinner with, and for a long time.
Ultimately what we have now in America - when this thing started at the AFA I thought that this was something that would be, you know, a Tiger Woods 2-inch putt to fix. Little did I know that it was something that is actually plaguing, in a massive way, our entire Pentagon. We now have 737 US military installations that the Pentagon acknowledges - it's actually closer to 1,000 - in 132 countries around the world and in everyone of them there is a presence of the Officers Christian Fellowship for the officers and Christian Military Fellowship for the enlisted. I'm sure some of you are here today. Now, the goals of these organizations are fascinating, and they're unabashed about it, and they view it as a higher goal than the oath they took, many of them here, to support and defend, protect and preserve the Constitution of the United States, which is our social contract, and was the very first time in human history that a governing document for a nation-state did not invoke the name of a specific deity."
Lately, over the past several months, I've written extensively about what I assert is coded, structural anti-Semitism embedded within much of apocalyptic, dispensationalist Christian Zionism, a tradition that is represented, to an unknown extent but is certainly there, within the US armed forces including within the US Air Force Academy it seems.
But, this is different, more raw, more visceral. It's what one of Mikey Weinstein's sons would have heard while attending the Air Force academy in 2004, and it's almost certainly one of the reasons Weinstein, a former Assistant General Counsel in the Reagan White House, General Counsel to two time presidential candidate H. Ross Perot, and Air Force Academy graduate, became an outspoken fighter for religious liberty :
Mikey Weinstein is Jewish, and he's the true-bluest of patriots, from a long time military family, and he has every right to be appalled and outraged.
Since the issue broke out in 2004 and 2005, as a consequence of the lawsuit Mikey Weinstein filed to protest the atmosphere of religious coercion at the USAF Academy, religious coercion at the United States Air Force Academy has ostensibly been addressed, but has it really been ?
On June 3, 2005, The Washington Post acknowledged the problem but asserted the situation "has improved":
"A military study of the religious climate at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs found several examples of religious intolerance, insensitivity and inappropriate proselytizing on the part of Air Force officers and cadets, but a report issued yesterday at the Pentagon concluded that the school is not overtly discriminatory and has made improvements in recent months."
Laurie Goodstein, for the New York Times, chimed in:
"An Air Force panel sent to investigate the religious climate at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs found evidence that officers and faculty members periodically used their positions to promote their Christian beliefs and failed to accommodate the religious needs of non-Christian cadets, its leader said Wednesday.
But the panel said it had found no "overt religious discrimination" - only "insensitivity" - and praised the academy leadership for working aggressively to confront religious problems in the last two years."
But, the acting Secretary Of The Air Force was Pete Gehren, who in 2001 unabashedly appeared, in uniform, in the infamous "Christian Embassy" video, in uniform, within the Pentagon, to appear within a religiously partisan video.
Here's how Jeff Sharlet, Rolling Stone contributor and Revealer founder, characterized theChristian Embassy" video:
"It almost seems to endorse deliberate negligence of duty, Dan Cooper, an undersecretary of veterans' affairs, announces that his weekly prayer sessions are "more important than doing the job." Major General Jack Catton says that he sees his position as an adviser to the Joint Chiefs of Staff as a "wonderful opportunity" to evangelize men and women setting defense policy. "My first priority is my faith," he says. "I think it's a huge impact.... You have many men and women who are seeking God's counsel and wisdom as they advise the Chairman [of the Joint Chiefs] and the Secretary of Defense." Brigadier General Bob Caslen puts it in sensual terms: "We're the aroma of Jesus Christ." There's a joyous disregard for democracy in these sentiments"
If you're moved by this story, please consider joining and financially supporting the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. Because: in our democracy, American Democracy - our freedoms, our liberties, and our political power come from the Constitution and not from the barrel of a gun in the hands of sectarian, politicized religion... let's keep things that way