Warnock Blasted Israel, Netanyahu in 2015 Sermon: ‘Apartheid’; ‘Racist’; ‘Clever Politicians’

Rev. Raphael Warnock told his congregation in 2015 that Israel would become an “apartheid” state, and attacked Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a “clever politician” who used “racist” language.

Warnock is one of the two Democratic Party nominees for U.S. Senate in the upcoming Jan. 5 runoffs in Georgia.

Warnock spoke on March 29, 2015 (from 1:15:12 in the video linked here) from his pulpit at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia. He was commenting in the wake of Israel’s elections earlier that month, which the media had expected Netanyahu to lose (he won).

The Obama administration interfered in that election to assist Netanyahu’s opponents, who were backed by international non-governmental organizations (NGOs). At one point, Netanyahu warned that foreign NGOs were busing Arab voters to the polls — a remark for which he apologized on March 23, a week before Warnock’s sermon.

In his remarks, Warnock likened “young Israeli children and young Palestinian children” to the young man described in the New Testament in Mark 14:51-52 (“And there followed him a certain young man, having a linen cloth cast about his naked body; and the young men laid hold on him: And he left the linen cloth, and fled from them naked.”)

Warnock then launched into criticism of Israel, referring to Netanyahu as “a very clever politician,” accusing him of racism, and failing to note his apology:

I heard a very clever politician running for reelection as prime minister suddenly announce, “No two-state solution.” Some of you acted like you didn’t understand the magnitude of what he just said. No — that’s tantamount to saying occupation today, occupation tomorrow, occupation forever. Why? Because when you look at the demographic trends, the Arabs will outnumber the Jews. And so if you don’t have a Palestinian state, you cannot have a Jewish democracy. The state will either be Jewish, or it will be a democracy. It cannot be both. If you do not have a Palestinian state, you will have to have apartheid in Israel that denies other citizens, sisters and brothers, citizenship. Or you will have a democracy that is not a Jewish state. All the clever politicians say, “You better get to the polls, the Arabs are coming.” Kind of racist and vicious language that betrays the legacy of Micah and Amos and Isaiah who said let justice run down like waters and righteousness as a mighty stream; betrays the legacy of Micah who said, “He has shown you, O man, what is good and what does God require, but that you do justice and love mercy and walk humbly with your God.” [Micah 6:8] While powerful people play games, pawns who happen to be people are suffering in the middle while the elephants fight, the grass suffers.

The idea that “the Arabs will outnumber the Jews” is based on faulty demographic data, promoted by the Palestinian Authority. In fact, the Jewish birthrate in Israel is among the highest in the industrialized world, and Jews could be two-thirds of the population if Israel were to annex all of the West Bank.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). His newest e-book is Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.