McCain team: Palin rejects views of church’s Jews for Jesus speaker

NEW YORK (JTA)—Vice presidential pick Sarah Palin says she doesn’t share the views of a Jews for Jesus leader who in a speech at her church suggested that violence against Israelis resulted from God’s judgment against Jews who have failed to embrace Jesus.

David Brickner, the executive director of Jews for Jesus, suggested in his Aug. 17 sermon at Wasilla Bible Church that the refusal to accept Jesus was responsible for the long history of devastation visited upon Jerusalem. He also described his group’s successful targeting of Israeli Jews, both in Israel and elsewhere.

“Judgment is very real, and we see it played out on the pages of the newspapers and on the television,” said Brickner, according to a transcript posted on the church’s Web site. “It’s very real. When [my son] Isaac was in Jerusalem he was there to witness some of that judgment—some of that conflict—when a Palestinian from East Jerusalem took a bulldozer and went plowing through a score of cars, killing numbers of people. Judgment—you can’t miss it.”

Audio and transcript