Zev Chafets and the 'Israel-Evangelical Alliance'

DATE January 18, 2007 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A
TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM AUDIENCE N/A
NETWORK NPR
PROGRAM Fresh Air

Interview: Zev Chafets discuss his book "A Match Made in Heaven"
about the alliance between Israel and Christian Zionists
TERRY GROSS, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

My guest Zev Chafets has written a new book about Christian Zionists, that is,
Christians who support Israel because of its role in the Second Coming. They
believe that the rebirth of Israel, when it became a state, was a prelude to
Armageddon and the return of Jesus. Although many Israelis welcome Christian
Zionist support, it's still controversial in the Jewish community among people
who think that the Christian right's politics and the end-of-days scenario
don't reflect the best interests of Israel. Most Christian Zionists believe
that at the time of the Apocalypse, Jews will have to convert or be left
behind to face years of plagues, wars and other tribulations. Zev Chafets'
new book is called "A Match Made in Heaven: American Jews, Christian Zionists
and One Man's Exploration of the Weird and Wonderful Judeo-Evangelical
Alliance." Chafets grew up in Pontiac, Michigan, and moved to Israel when he
was in college. He directed the government press office under Prime Minister
Menachem Begin and was a founding editor of the Jerusalem Report. He says
that in his book, he tried to see Israel through the eyes of evangelicals. I
asked how this helped him understand Christian Zionism.

Mr. ZEV CHAFETS: As I started out, and I went to a lot of churches and
talked to a lot of evangelicals around the country, and then I took a trip to
Israel with a group of evangelical pilgrims because I wanted to see the
country through their eyes, and I found that there are really three basic
reasons why evangelicals are so supportive of Israel. There is a prophecy
reason. That is to say, there are evangelicals who see the Armageddon
scenario, see Jews caught up in that Holy Land. It's something that arrests
their attention and makes them focus on Israel. There are a lot of American
evangelicals and other Americans, by the way, who love Israel or support
Israel simply because Israel is on America's side. Gary Bauer said to me at
one time, `Israel and the Jews cried with us on 9/11 when the Arabs and
Palestinians celebrated.' But I think that the third reason and probably the
dominant reason is a very simple one. It says in the Bible in Genesis 12:3,
God says, `I will bless those who bless Israel and curse those who curse
Israel,' and if you happen to be a literalist, if you're a Bible literalist,
if you believe in the inerrancy of the Bible as evangelical Christians do, and
I must say, as I personally do not, but for them, it's a very clear
commandment to support Israel. And I think that that's probably the greatest
single motivation.

GROSS: So in your book, you tried to see Israel through the eyes of
evangelicals who are interested in Israel for Biblical reasons, and one of the
things you do is you take a tour of Mageddo with two Pentecostal ministers
from America who now live in Israel.

Mr. CHAFETS: Right.

GROSS: What's the connection between Mageddo and Armageddon?

Mr. CHAFETS: Well, Armageddon is Mageddo. Mageddo is--Armageddon is--the
way it's been translated into English. Harmageddo is the place in--it's a
place in Galilee about an hour and 20 minutes from my house in Tel Aviv. It's
in the Jezreel Valley, and it's a place that the Book of Revelations talks
about and also that, you know, sort of end-time believers visualize as the
spot of the final battle before, you know, after the Second Coming.

GROSS: What was the tour like?

Mr. CHAFETS: Well, it was fun. You know, we went up there together and
looked around, and the guy, as well as being a minister, was also a brigadier
general in the Georgia National Guard so he showed me the military, how he
imagined the battle would unfold. They picture, you know, two billion people
involved in that battle, which you know, is quite a lot. But--and they read a
little bit from the scriptures, and this stuff is all very obscure unless you
happen to believe it, which again, I don't.

And then we went to get a drink--to get a Coke at a little village right next
to it which is called in Hebrew Omen, which I always find funny because Omen
in Hebrew doesn't mean an omen, but you know, it shocked them a little bit.
And when we were there, we met a couple of immigrants who had just arrived
from Burma, the Burmese-Indian border, who are a people who believe that they
belong to the ancient Biblical lost tribe of Manasses and have recently
started to be flown into Israel and settled there, so there was a whole sort
of Biblical motif to that morning. She--the lady evangelist, when she saw
these people who had flown in from India, said, `Here's your prophecy from the
Book of Ezekiel about dry bones coming together in the land of Israel.'

GROSS: Are there a lot of evangelical tours like this? Is this--are there a
lot of like Biblical tours of Israel?

Mr. CHAFETS: Oh, yeah. Biblical tourism, evangelical tourism is a huge
business now. A tour guide told me, `This is our bread and butter now.' The
Jews that come in the summer are the cream and the cake, but the real future
of tourism in Israel is evangelical tourism. First of all, there are a lot
more evangelicals. And they're not afraid. They're--during the intifada,
Jews stopped coming to Israel--Jewish tourists. Evangelicals did not stop
coming. That made a big impression on Israeli tourism industry, so there's a
large segment of it now, which is really geared to dealing with visiting
American and European, and actually now from other countries as well,
evangelical Christians.

GROSS: Now you mentioned that Mageddo is expected to be the place for the big
final battle, you know, Armageddon, that that's what evangelicals believe,
those who take the Bible literally. One of the concerns that a lot of, I
think, Israelis and Jews from other parts of the world have about this
alliance between evangelicals from the far right and Israel is the sense that,
you know, in this apocalyptic vision, there's going to be a huge battle and so
peace, peace in the Middle East, isn't necessarily the goal. Because the real
goal is the final battle. The real goal is going to be a lot of bloodshed.
Of course, the ultimate goal is the Second Coming, which comes after that.
But you know, I've spoken to people who are concerned about this alliance who
think that the alliance doesn't necessarily work in favor of peace, and in
that sense isn't in Israel's best interest.

Mr. CHAFETS: Yeah, I know that school of thought. The truth is that
evangelicals who believe in this kind of scenario are pre-millenialist
Christians, which means that they believe that what's going to happen happens
in God's time. God decides when Armageddon takes place. God decides when the
Second Coming happens. It doesn't--it's not decided by human works. It's not
decided by anybody's foreign policy or anybody's domestic policy or by
anybody's good deeds or by any such human thing as that. It's decided when it
happens. And as a Jew, I'm perfectly content with that formulation. I
personally don't believe that there's going to be a Second Coming. I don't
believe there's going to be a battle at Armageddon. But if--you know, and if
I'm right about that, then swell. And if I'm wrong about that, then I've got
a lot of explaining to do when Jesus arrives. But, in the meantime, to me
it's an irrelevant argument. It's sort of a red herring. Because why would
anyone be concerned about other people's beliefs? The Jews who claim to be
concerned about Armageddon are people who don't believe in Armageddon. So you
know, whatever ultimate purposes in Christian evangelical theocracy or
eschatology that battle serves, it's really a matter of just of sort of poetry
or science fiction, as far as I'm concerned.

GROSS: I think there are two issues here. One is the one that I think you're
addressing here which is in the Armageddon scenario Jews and other
nonbelievers of Christianity have to convert or basically live through the
tribulations on earth after Armageddon and the Second Coming.

Mr. CHAFETS: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: But the question I was asking about is if people who believe,
literally, that the Second Coming is imminent and so is Armageddon, then their
interest might not be in peace in the Middle East but rather in the battles
that lead to the final days, and in that sense, is it in Israel's best
interest to have an alliance with people who don't necessarily want peace,
that you might argue that they're looking for those final battles.

Mr. CHAFETS: Well, look, I don't know what people are looking for, and I
don't necessarily think that people who supposedly want peace are people who
are acting in Israel's best interests all the time. Israel is engaged in a
very long war, and it has been ever since it was founded, and you know, all of
us want peace. I think the last time I was on your show was the day that the
Oslo Accord was signed in Washington, and I was ecstatic at that time, like
most Israelis were, and we found out that the Palestinians didn't mean it and
it's been a rough 10 years since then. So the fact that somebody says that
they're in favor of peace doesn't impress me very much at this point, and the
fact that somebody is more interested in a Biblical scenario doesn't alarm me
very much at this point either.

GROSS: My guest is Zev Chafets. His new book, "A Match Made in Heaven," is
about the alliance between Israel and Christian Zionists.

We'll talk more after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Announcements)

GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is Zev Chafets, and we're talking
about his new book, "A Match Made in Heaven: American Jews, Christian
Zionists and One Man's Exploration of the Weird and Wonderful
Judeo-Evangelical Alliance."

I want to ask you about Pastor John Hagee...

Mr. CHAFETS: Sure.

GROSS: ...who is the head of Christians United for Israel, and this is, like,
the main Christian Zionist group, and you write in your book, `No Christian
Zionist in the US is more red-hot than Hagee.' Taking Christian Zionism out of
the equation for a second, he had some views that I think most people would
find extreme. For example, in one of his sermons, he preached that Hurricane
Katrina was an act of God for a society that's becoming like Sodom and
Gomorrah. So when I spoke with him last September, I asked him if he believes
that Katrina was God's punishment for Sodom and Gomorrah-like behavior in New
Orleans, and--let me play you what he said.

(Soundbite from John Hagee interview)

Pastor JOHN HAGEE: All hurricanes are acts of God because God controls the
heavens. I believe that New Orleans had a level of sin that was offensive to
God, and they are--were recipients of the judgment of God for that. The
newspaper carried the story in our local area that was not carried nationally
that there was to be a homosexual parade there on the Monday that the Katrina
came, and the promise of that parade was that it was going to reach a level of
sexuality never demonstrated before in any of the other Gay Pride parades. So
I believe that the judgment of God is a very real thing. I know that there
are people who demure from that, but I believe that the Bible teaches that
when you violate the law of God, that God brings punishment sometimes before
the day of judgment, and I believe that the Hurricane Katrina was, in fact,
the judgment of God against the city of New Orleans.

GROSS: So I know you're very opposed to homosexuality, but you think that the
whole city was punished because of things like the forthcoming Gay Pride
parade.

Pastor HAGEE: This is true. All of the city was punished because of the sin
that happened there in that city.

(End of soundbite)

GROSS: That's Pastor John Hagee recorded last September.

And, Zev Chafets, are you comfortable having him as a partner in an alliance
when he thinks that the New Orleans flood was God's punishment for
homosexuality and a Gay Pride parade.

Mr. CHAFETS: Well, look, one thing has nothing to do with the other as far
as I'm concerned. You know, in a war, you take the allies that you have.
Would I prefer to have other people as allies? Sure? Do I agree with Pastor
Hagee on what happened in New Orleans? Absolutely not. Do I care what Pastor
Hagee thinks about that subject? No, I don't. My concern is a central
concern. There's a world war in which Jews happen to be topic number one or
enemy number one for the Islamic world, and I am in favor of anybody whose
ideology enables them to understand that the jihad against Christians and Jews
waged by al-Qaeda or the doctrines of wiping Israel off the map, which are
prevalent in Tehran, or the notion than the world is controlled by a Jewish
conspiracy, which is in the Palestinian Hamas charter, that those things are a
form of aggressive fascism, and people who understand that are on my side in
this particular fight. Now I might and you might find out that John Hagee has
opinions on various subjects that agree with yours and mine. Not on this
subject but on other subjects. That doesn't mean that we have to accept
everything he says. In my view, Israel has always been a progressive
coun--it's the only democracy, the only open society. It's the only society
with equality for women. It's the only society in the Middle East where there
is a homosexual parade every year, and it's sort of beyond my understanding
why some progressives prefer the truly right wing, the truly fascistic side of
this battle, but I leave it to them.

GROSS: But getting back to Pastor Hagee, you know, in the United States, the
Christian right has had a lot of power in trying to limit the rights of
homosexuals and so, like here in the United States where they do have a lot of
power and influence, it's for a lot of people a pretty major thing what he
thinks about homosexuality. It's not just, you know, a minor thing, easily
overlooked.

Mr. CHAFETS: I'm sure that's true, and for those people for whom it's a
major thing, it shouldn't be overlooked. During the 1930s, there were--and
excuse me for going back to this but it's the relevant example. In the late
1930s, there were people who were opposed to Hitler but who didn't really see
that that was the main problem. They were concerned with other issues. I
know prominent Jews, for example, who during World War II were pacifists and
went to jail because they thought that they were so opposed to war that even
stopping the Nazis was not a good enough reason for them to override their
other principles. I think that some of them were sorry afterward. But I
don't want to be an apologist for, you know, Hagee's views about one thing or
another, just as I don't want to be an apologist for somebody's views on
global warming. These aren't relevant issues. In a war, you take the friends
that you have, the allies that you have. And it's not a question of agreeing
with every single thing that they say or even agreeing with most of what they
say. If he's right on this issue, and he is right on this issue, then that's
the, you know for me, as an endangered species in this particular conflict,
that's who, you know, I'm happy to have his support on this issue, especially
if he doesn't ask for my support on his issues, which I won't be able to
support him on.

GROSS: You moved to Israel when you were in college...

Mr. CHAFETS: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: ...and then, by the age of 29, you became the director of the
government press office...

Mr. CHAFETS: Right.

GROSS: ...which you describe as a position similar to the White House
director of communications...

Mr. CHAFETS: Right.

GROSS: And this was on Menachem Begin's staff when he was prime minister.
You say you were the only American on his staff and....

Mr. CHAFETS: The lonely American, yeah.

GROSS: ...and in that position, you were asked about Christian Zionists who
wanted to establish an alliance with Israel. What were the questions then and
tell us what year this was.

Mr. CHAFETS: Well, this would have been in the late '70s and early '80s,
just at the time that Christian right-wing Republican Christians were becoming
significant in American politics, the time of the moral majority and so forth,
and these were people who started approaching Israel. They didn't have really
any connection with the Jewish community in America but they were interested
in Israel, and they approached us through embassies and, you know, people here
and so forth, and the question was, well, who are they? Israelis don't--by
and large, didn't and don't, at that time especially, have much connection
with Protestants. You know, the Jews who came to Israel either came from--the
bulk of Jews either came from Muslim countries or they came from countries
where the majority of Christians were orthodox Christians or Roman Catholics,
not Protestant. So nobody really knew the difference between Billy Graham
and, you know, and Reinhold Niebuhr. Nobody knew the difference between
William Sloan Coffin and Pat Robertson. As far as they were concerned, they
were all just a bunch of Christians.

The Jews in America, who were usually the ones who--Jewish Zionists who
usually interpreted for us on these subjects were horrified by the idea of
teaming up with Falwell or Robertson or accepting their support or doing
anything but denouncing them, but Begin didn't feel that way. Begin didn't
really see a great difference, and he was prepared, and in this I'm a
Beginist, to take support where he found it. Begin had a, let me say, a
cynical view of the goodwill of the world towards Jews and Israel in general,
and he was prepared to take alliances, even if they were temporary, even if
they were for the wrong reason. But they were better than being castigated by
a bunch of other people for, you know, real and imagined sins. So that's how
the relationship began and that was my role in it.

GROSS: Zev Chafets is the author of the new book, "A Match Made in Heaven."
He'll be back in the second half of the show.

I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

(Announcements)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR.

I'm Terry Gross back with Zev Chafets, the author of the new book, "A Match
Made in Heaven," about the alliance between Israel and Christian Zionists.
Christian Zionists support Israel because of its place in the prophecy of
Armageddon and the Second Coming of Jesus. Chafets divides his time between
America and Israel. He directed the government press office under Prime
Minister Menachem Begin. When we left off, we were talking about that period
of his life which is also when the Christian Zionists first approached the
Israeli government.

So what were the early days of the alliance like?

Mr. CHAFETS: Well, they were tentative in the sense that Begin was happy to
have the support. Begin himself was a Bible-believing fellow, and, you know,
he didn't believe in the New Testament obviously, but as long as they stayed
on Old Testament grounds, he was fine. And he wanted to settle the West Bank
in Gaza, and Falwell and Robertson and others saw that as a Biblical
imperative so--and this...

GROSS: A Biblical imperative to keep that as Israeli land?

Mr. CHAFETS: Yes. Jewish land or Israeli land. And, you know, the Carter
administration, for example, was extremely opposed to that, to Begin's
settlement policy. So--and the American Jewish community, which is a
Democratic community by and large, and it was then as well, was caught in the
middle and didn't offer Begin a lot of support, so he took the
Zionist-Christian support to balance off Carter. That was the primary role.
At the time, it wasn't--as I say, this was a relationship which did not go
over well with the American Jewish establishment.

GROSS: Well, and I think it's fair to say that there's a lot of Israelis that
the relationship didn't go over well with, too, in part, because, as you said,
the Christian Zionists want, you know, see, you know, Gaza and the West Bank
as being part of the Biblical imperative to keep that land Israeli, and you
know, there are a lot of Israeli Jews who believe, or believed then, in
trading land for peace and that that was not something that the evangelical
people who'd made an alliance with Israel would approve of.

Mr. CHAFETS: No, that's not actually correct. First--it's not correct in
two points. First of all, there are not many Israelis at all who are opposed
to the connection with evangelical Jews. It's sometimes said here that
evangelical Christians and Christian Zionists are aligned with the Israeli
right, but the fact is that the evangelical support is a very broadly welcomed
support by all parts of the Israeli body politic, except for the extreme
Israeli left. And just to give you one example, Prime Minister Ehud Barak,
who was the Labor Party prime minister and a kibbutznik and secularist, was
actually listed on the faculty at Regent University, which is Pat Robertson's
university. Every Israeli prime minister welcomes and takes support from the
evangelical Christians and almost every Israeli's in favor of it. That's the
first thing.

The second thing is the actual connection between Falwell and Begin,
especially, and since then, the people that Falwell has trained and as these
connections have gotten broader and thicker, there is a large sense of
pragmatism now on the Christian side, and Falwell has said this to me directly
and others have as well that they are perfectly content--they have their views
about what the land of Israel should comprise and so on, and these were
the--they believe what the Bible says. But they are perfectly content, in the
meantime, to accept the verdict of the Israeli government, based on the
verdict of Israeli voters and the policies that that government implements.
And, therefore, there hasn't ever been any strenuous objection in the United
States by Christian Zionists to, let's say, giving up Gaza or to giving up
parts of the West Bank, and that's based on the idea that, in the end of time,
in the end of days, God will dispense with this issue as he sees fit, and, in
the meantime, it's the Israelis' issue to deal with and they will support any
Israeli prime minister or Israeli government. Are there exceptions to this?
There are a few exceptions on the very fringe of the Christian Zionist
movement, but they are fringe exceptions, they are not major players.

GROSS: President Bush is seen by many American Jews as a great supporter of
Israel, although there are other American Jews who think that the war in Iraq
under the Bush administration has been a disaster for Israel and that the Bush
administration has missed a lot of opportunities to effectively negotiate a
Middle East peace. Let's start with Iraq. What do you think the impact of
Iraq has been on Israel?

Mr. CHAFETS: Well, first of all, when you say that there are a lot of
American Jews who think one thing and a lot who think another thing, of
course, you're right because one of the things that characterizes American
Jews is that there are a lot of opinions. Strategically, there's no doubt
that it was very, very good for Israel that America took Saddam Hussein out of
power. I was personally "Scudded" by Saddam Hussein in 1991. I mean, I had
the experience of having to put a gas mask on my eight-year-old son's face
more than 40 times during that war. And I can assure you that whatever Bush
knew and when he knew it later on, we were very certain that the Iraqis had at
least the possibility of hitting us with, you know, with weapons of chemical
or biological destruction. And again in 1998 we had to go and get new gas
masks because Saddam Hussein said he was going to burn half of Israel, so I
wasn't sorry to see him go. I'm very glad that he is gone. What do I think
of Iraq right now? You know, obviously, it hasn't gone very well, that part
of it. But I think that Iraq is a battle in a much larger war. I don't think
it's the war, and in war, you know, you win some battles and you do less well
in others.

GROSS: Well, you know, some people say, `Who's won the war in Iraq? The
winner is Iran,' because Iran seems to have been strengthened as the result of
the war in Iraq. The war in Iraq eliminated one of Iran's great opposing
forces, Saddam Hussein. And a strong, you know, Iraqi government. And
because the new Iraqi government is a Shiite government and Iran is Shiite,
there are possibilities for alliances and there seem to be already alliances
between Iraqis in leadership positions and Iran, and of course, Iran seems to
be very close to developing a nuclear weapon and the country most threatened
by that is Israel. So in terms of Iran, do you think that the war in Iraq has
created problems?

Mr. CHAFETS: Not necessarily. You know, wars are not like basketball games.
They don't end at a certain time. It's possible that at one period it's a
better thing for Iran, and then it could be a worse thing for Iran. For
example, there are a lot of people in Iran who are Arabs and who are
non-Persians, and it's very possible there could be trouble in Iran over an
Iran-Iraq connection. It's possible that you can see already a Sunni alliance
forming in the Middle East with Egypt and Jordan and Saudi Arabia and the Gulf
states, which is very opposed to Iran. So, you know, to say that this has
been--that this battle has had this result, I think is a bit short-sighted.
These battles have results which are ongoing. The Middle East is an old area,
and it will continue to develop and 10 years from now Iraq will still be there
and Iran will still be there and we'll all still be there. So I don't want to
pass judgment about the final results of things which are ongoing.

As far as Iran is concerned in the nuclear threat, Iran is a nuclear threat
with or without Iraqi connection or connection to the Iraq war. Anytime since
the rise of Ayatollah Khomeini had the Iranians had a nuclear weapon and
talked about dropping it on Israel and been involved in denying the Holocaust,
which is not a new wrinkle in Iran. It's a fairly old thing. It was just
brought to the floor more publicly recently. It's been a concern. An
existential concern.

GROSS: Israeli intelligence experts are saying that if Iran does develop a
nuclear weapon, it would pose an existential threat to Israel. And they're
also saying--some of them are saying that to stop Iran from developing a
nuclear weapon, action would have be taken this year, action such as bombing
their nuclear facility. What do you think is likely to happen?

Mr. CHAFETS: Well, I don't know. I mean, I was involved in an
administration that did bomb the nuclear facility of the Iraqis in 1981 and
I--my hunch is, or my gut feeling is that attacking Iran is a bad idea but it
might be better than any other idea. If it becomes clear that the Irani--if
the choice is that the Iranians--an aggressive, actively anti-Israeli,
anti-Jewish regime--was going to get a nuclear weapon or Israel is stuck with
having to take it out, then I'm in favor of Israel taking it out, and I
suppose that Israel will try to take it out.

GROSS: How does Israel do that without the attack developing into a wider war
or without facing the kind of retaliation that would, you know, that would be
horrible?

Mr. CHAFETS: Well, I don't know the answer to that. You know, Israel does
it as carefully as it can. But I think that it's just not realistic to
expect, and I don't like invoking the Holocaust but it's an ever-present
thought in the Israeli psyche, and it's unrealistic to expect six million Jews
who are now living in the land of Israel to sit around waiting for the next
Hitler to exterminate them. I don't think that's going to happen, and I think
that if, you know, that if the results of that are sloppy, and they'll be
sloppy for the entire world, not just for the Middle East, well, that's going
to be a sloppy result.

GROSS: My guest is Zev Chafets. His new book about Christian Zionists and
their alliance with Israel is called "A Match Made in Heaven."

We'll talk more after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Announcements)

GROSS: My guest is Zev Chafets, author of the new book, "A Match Made in
Heaven." He divides his time between Israel and the US. He directed the
government press office under Menachem Begin and was a founding editor of the
Jerusalem Report.

When President Carter wrote his current best seller, "Palestine: Peace Not
Apartheid," we had him on the show to talk about it. The book has been very
controversial, and you know, one of the recent developments in the ongoing
controversy is that 14 members of the Carter Center's advisory board resigned
this month over the book.

Mr. CHAFETS: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: I'm wondering if you've read the book and what your impressions are of
it, and you were as a, you know, a government press person under Menachem
Begin during the peace process and the Camp David accords.

Mr. CHAFETS: Right. I haven't read the book. I've read the reviews of the
book but most saliently I read the title of the book, which is really, as far
as I can tell, the main issue here. The use of the term `apartheid' in Israel
is not accidental and I don't even think it's commercial, although I think
that they thought, you know, his publisher, that it would sell some books, and
it has sold a lot of books. The idea is to say that Israel is the same as
South Africa and South Africa is the same as Israel, and therefore, Israel is
a racist fascist apartheid state and so on and so forth. And this is a stock
argument in the anti-Israel rhetoric of the Arab world and of the European far
left or anti-Jewish left or anti-Israeli left, and in taking it up, it's--I
understand why Americans were upset with Carter, especially Jewish Americans
and Jewish Zionists, because it means that if you're a supporter of Israel,
you're basically a supporter of South Africa, and I think that there are a lot
of American Jews who were offended and a lot of other Americans were offended
by that suggestion. Beyond that, you know, as I said, I haven't read the
book...

GROSS: Since you haven't read the book, let me point out a couple of
distinctions that Carter makes between the type of apartheid he's accusing
Israel of and South African apartheid. He says that in Israel, he's talking
about not Israel itself but he's talking about Israeli policies toward Gaza
and the West Bank, and he describes the apartheid-like treatment of people
there, not as being racial but as being about land. Does that change your
point of view at all?

Mr. CHAFETS: No, because the headline is that Israel is an apartheid
society, and that isn't--that's not a--you know, the fact that he has an
explanation to go with it is not very relevant. He did what he did on
purpose. He's not stupid, Jimmy Carter, and he's not unsophisticated about
the language that's used in this particular debate, and for him to use that
language is deliberately provocative. Does he have the right to use it?
Sure, he does.

GROSS: Now we've been talking about politics, but one of the things you spend
a lot of time doing and writing about, in addition to politics, is music
and...

Mr. CHAFETS: A little bit.

GROSS: You love rhythm and blues, you like doo-wop, and in one of your
writing credits, you pointed out that you cowrote the Hebrew doo-wop song,
"Boi Motek." Am I saying that right?

Mr. CHAFETS: Perfectly. Thanks.

GROSS: What is the song?

Mr. CHAFETS: A friend of mine, and I--I have a friend who's a big Israeli
rock star and like me, he's an Israeli-American, an American-Israeli, and he
grew up on this music also, and we decided one day, we said, `What does Israel
not have that we could make a contribution to in its culture?' you know, and
we said, `Well, let's try a doo-wop song.' So we translated the Del Vikings
song, "Come Go with Me"...

GROSS: Great.

Mr. CHAFETS: ...into Hebrew, and we took it in the studio, and he recorded
it, and it became a, you know, a hit, and that, as far as I know, that's the
first Hebrew doo-wop song.

GROSS: Zev, since I know you speak Hebrew, have you seen the Borat movie?
And now that we all know that Borat, that when he's allegedly speaking the
language of Kazakhstan, he's really often speaking in Hebrew. Can you tell us
some of the things that he's saying?

Mr. CHAFETS: Well, that was an amazing thing. You know, I went to see the
movie, and as he's leaving his village in Kazakhstan or wherever he's supposed
to be, Kazakhstan, he says to a guy with one arm...(foreign language spoken).
`I'll buy you an arm in America,' and I looked at my wife and I said, `Do I
understand this language?' Because I had no idea that they were going to be
speaking in Hebrew. And the thing about the Borat Hebrew is not only that he
spoke in Hebrew but that his Hebrew is so amazingly current and sort of hip.
So you know, it was a little bit distracting for me in a way, watching the
movie, because I kept listening to what he was saying in Hebrew, which
sometimes was and sometimes wasn't what he was, you know, supposedly saying in
English.

GROSS: So are there any Hebrew in-jokes in Borat that you can clue us in on?

Mr. CHAFETS: No, I think the only Hebrew in-joke was the fact that it was in
Hebrew.

GROSS: Right.

Mr. CHAFETS: I mean, I wasn't paying, you know, strict attention to--if
there was any additional jokes beyond the Hebrew itself, but as I say, the
Hebrew was extremely colloquial, and he spoke in an accent which would have
been funny in Israel--in Hebrew, too, I mean, in Israel.

GROSS: Well, Zev Chafets, thanks so much for talking with us.

Mr. CHAFETS: Well, thanks a lot for having me on.

GROSS: Zev Chafets is the author of the new book, "A Match Made in Heaven,"
about the alliance between Israel and Christian Zionists.

OK, so we found an excerpt of the Hebrew version, cowritten by Chafets, of the
Del Vikings doo-wop hit, "Come Go with Me." So here it is, sung by Danny
Sanderson, back to back with the Del Vikings.

(Soundbite from "Come Go with Me")

Mr. DANNY SANDERSON: (Singing in foreign language)

(Singing) "If I need you, if I really need you, please, babe, never leave me.
(Unintelligible)...say you never, never, really never, never give me a chance.
Come, come, come, come, come, come into my heart. Tell me, darling, we will
never part. (Unintelligible)...darling, come and go with me. Yeah!"

(End of soundbite)

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Profile: Lead singer of The Spaniels, Pookie Hudson, dies from
complications from cancer at age 72
TERRY GROSS, host:

A great singer from the early days of doo-wop died this week. Pookie Hudson
was the lead singer of The Spaniels, who were best known for the 1954 hit,
"Good Night, Sweetheart, Good Night," which was written by Hudson. He died of
complications from cancer at the age of 72.

(Soundbite from "Good Night, Sweetheart, Good Night")

THE SPANIELS: (Singing) "Do-do-do-do-do. Good night, sweetheart, well, it's
time to go. Do-do-do-do-do. Good night, sweetheart, well, it's time to go.
Do-do-do-do. I hate to leave you but I really must say, oh, good night,
sweetheart, good night. Do-do-do-do-do. Good night, sweetheart, well, it's
time to go. Do-do-do-do-do. Good night, sweetheart, well, it's time to go.
Do-do-do-do. I hate to leave you. I really must say, oh, good night,
sweetheart, goodnight. Well, it's three o'clock in the morning. Baby, I just
can't treat you right. Well, I hate to leave you, babe. Don't mean maybe
because I love you so. Do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do. Good night,
sweetheart, well, it's time to go..."

(End of soundbite)

GROSS: Coming up, Ken Tucker reviews a new CD by one of Canada's most popular
bands. This is FRESH AIR.

(Announcements)

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Review: Rock critic Ken Tucker reviews "Never Hear the End of It"
album by Sloan, one of Canada's most popular rock bands
TERRY GROSS, host:

Sloan is a quartet that formed in Nova Scotia in 1991 and has spent most of
the time since then as one of Canada's most popular rock bands. Their new
album, "Never Hear the End of It," consists of 30 new songs, an unusually
large amount of new material, but rock critic Ken Tucker says this creative
feat isn't a stunt.

(Soundbite from "Can't You Figure It Out")

SLOAN: (Singing) "Do you remember when October
disappeared...(unintelligible). And by December...(unintelligible)...live in
the past. Well, I have to go. You see, the sign said so. A well-known title
comes to mind, did you ever have to make up your mind? Can't you figure it
out, yeah, figure it out, yeah. So..."

(End of soundbite)

Mr. KEN TUCKER: Sloan is a pop band, first and foremost, steeped in American
and British music from the '60s and '70s in particular. In the song I just
played called "Can't You Figure It Out," the first verse culminates in the
lines, "A well-known title comes to mind, did you ever have to make up your
mind?" The title Sloan is referring to is a 1966 song by the Lovin' Spoonful.
Elsewhere, Sloan's close harmonies and layered production is reminiscent of
the British band Squeeze.

(Soundbite of music)

SLOAN: (Singing) "I can't sleep even though I want to. My nerves are shot
right between...(unintelligible). I can't sleep, I'm always looking forward
to...(unintelligible). (Unintelligible)...a matter of what we keep and how we
got to let it all go. Ahhhhhh. I can't sleep."

(End of soundbite)

Mr. TUCKER: Sloan's four members--Andrew Scott, Patrick Pentland, Chris
Murphy and Jay Ferguson--seem to operate like a musical collective. They
alternate instruments. Murphy, for example, plays the base most frequently,
but also plays drums and lead guitar. Scott plays all of these at various
times. They alternate lead vocals or blend them in various combinations of
harmonies. One thing they do individually is write songs. In fact, that's
probably the main reason putting 30 songs on "Never Hear the End of It" really
isn't such a stretch. Divide the number by four songwriters, and it comes out
to seven and a half songs a piece, not too strenuous a workload when you're as
clever and fertile as these guys seem to be. But I must say, whoever wrote
the best song on this album, "Ill-Placed Trust" deserves an extra cut of the
royalties.

(Soundbite from "Ill-Placed Trust")

SLOAN: (Singing) "Everything you do, I want to do, too. Everywhere you go,
I'll follow you. When I'm on my own, I wonder where you are. People tell me
that I take it too far. Ill-placed trust promises rust. Ill-placed trust,
ill-placed trust. Ill-placed trust standing in the dust. Ill-placed trust.
Ill-placed trust. Yeah. Can you feel it all around you.
(Unintelligible)...know you that surround you. Ill-placed trust..."

(End of soundbite)

Mr. TUCKER: Of course, using the phrase "Ill-Placed Trust" as a song hook is
a dead giveaway that this is a group of Canadians. I don't mean to
stereotype, but their command of the more literate cliches is something of a
national trait. In fact, Sloan plays into many American rock band's ideas of
our neighbor to the north as a kind of a fractured mirror of US pop culture
with the influences and details slightly scrambled. Just listen to the way
they make an original composition, such as this one, called "I Understand,"
sound like the Beach Boys turned inside out.

(Soundbite from "I Understand")

SLOAN: (Singing) "Falling from the sky, you're free finally. You took me by
surprise, crashing down in front of me, but it's all right. You open up your
eyes to show how they see. You open up your heart to show how it beats. You
open up your hands to show how they can bleed. It's all right. It's OK
because everything will work out fine today because I understand..."

(End of soundbite)

Mr. TUCKER: Eight albums into their career, Sloan has yet to break through
in a big way in America. I think the reason is pretty simple. Their brand of
throwback-power pop appeals to only a sliver of the American market, a peppy
little cult. On the other hand, they are huge in Canada, which is a huge,
diverse country. But America likes its new music to sound new, at least in
keeping with whatever the current trends are in rhythm, instrumentation and
sentiment. The Sloan boys are happy to live in a self-created world where the
Beatles never broke up, where ill-placed trust is a reason for puppy love
breakup and where you really do never have to make up your mind about which is
your favorite Sloan song because there's always a new one, right here on an
album that never seems to end, in a good way.

GROSS: Ken Tucker is editor at large for Entertainment Weekly. He reviewed
"Never Hear the End of It," the new album from Sloan.

(Credits)

GROSS: I'm Terry Gross.

(Soundbite of music)

Unidentified Singer: (Singing) "Listen to the radio where..."

(End of soundbite)
Transcripts are created on a rush deadline, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of Fresh Air interviews and reviews are the audio recordings of each segment.