March for Israel Rally Features Speaker Who Said ‘God Sent’ Hitler To Help Create Jewish State

Tuesday’s March for Israel drew tens of thousands of people to the National Mall on Tuesday, including a speaker who claimed Adolf Hitler was sent by God to help Jews create Israel.

Televangelist John Hagee was a featured speaker at the event amid Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza. Hagee has made a slew of controversial comments over the years, including remarks about Hitler and the Jews.

In a sermon delivered in 1999, Hagee told congregants that Hitler was sent by God to carry out the Holocaust, which subsequently led to the creation of the state of Israel. Hagee claimed “God sent a hunter” in the form of the German dictator, who was key to realizing God’s “top priority for the Jewish people”:

Then God sent a hunter. A hunter is someone who comes with a gun and he forces you. Hitler was a hunter. And the Bible says, Jeremiah writing, “They shall hunt them from every mountain and from every hill and out of the holes of the rocks,” meaning, there’s no place to hide.

And that will be offensive to some people. Well, dear heart, be offended. I didn’t write it. Jeremiah wrote it. It was the truth and it is the truth. How did it happen? Because God allowed it to happen. Why did it happen? Because God said, “My top priority for the Jewish people is to get them to come back to the land of Israel.”

Hagee’s remarks went largely unnoticed until he endorsed John McCain for president in 2008. Their resurfacing led the Republican candidate to reject Hagee’s support.

“Obviously, I find these remarks and others deeply offensive and indefensible, and I repudiate them,” the senator said at the time.

Hagee later apologized for his comments.

The televangelist has been an outspoken supporter of Israel, whose existence he views as a necessary precondition to usher in the End Times.