Next week Glenn Beck will take his hate crusade to Israel, a nation that does not want him there and fears that his presence can only inflame tensions and create division. Beck is a proud enemy of peace with Palestine and rejects negotiated settlements with people he regards as heathens. As the date for Beck’s hatefest nears, more Israelis are speaking out against him:

“There are enough racists in Israel without importing them from the US,” Hadash MK Muhammad Barakei said. […] “There is a danger that the event will lead to people being harmed, and the police should have prevented it,” Barakei added.

MK Ahmed Tibi (UAL-Ta’al) called Beck “a bizarre, conservative, neo-fascist comedian who is motivated by a hatred of Islam.”

The danger that Beck may set off violence in Israel is not anecdotal. He has certainly set off violence in the United States. And the threat of violence was even acknowledged by Beck’s own security team when they advised him to change the original location of the rally due to security concerns. Ironic, isn’t it, that Beck should have to move his “Restoring Courage” rally because he’s afraid of violence.

Since then Beck has continued spewing rhetoric that can only incite more anger. The Christian Science Monitor reports that last week Beck insulted hundreds of thousands of Israelis who were protesting the lack of affordable housing. He implied that they were radical leftists and communists. In fact, polls show 87% of the population agreed with the protesters. This strident disrespect for the people of the nation he is visiting is not being well received. A well known conservative Israeli published an editorial criticizing both Beck and the local rightists who support him:

“[N]ow that Beck has spoken before the Knesset and is given the green light in the staging of his ‘Courage’ rally, he believes he has earned the right to pontificate about all matters Israeli. Specifically, he has called the current ‘tent city’ protests in Tel Aviv and other locations the doing of ‘communists,’ calling into question the financing of these protests and suggesting a sinister connection between the protesters in Israel and world socialism, framing the whole matter in the context of the sort of anarchists who protest G-8 meetings, and squeezing the square peg of what should be an internal Israeli matter into the round hole of his us-and-them, liberal-versus-conservative worldview. Whether he is right or not, let him go on back to where he came from and stick to things he might actually know a thing or two about, and let Jews and Israelis handle Jewish and Israeli matters.”

Finally, Beck’s event may not be getting much traction. Reports from the region suggest that he is being forced to take measures to prevent the whole affair from being a monumental embarrassment. Also from the CSMonitor:

“There are signs that Beck is struggling to promote his event. Writing on the left-leaning 972 blog, Mya Guarnieri notes an online ad seeking foreign citizens to act as ambassadors to ‘stand with Israel’ at the Aug. 24 event. She responded to an e-mail on the ad asking if participants would be paid for acting as ambassadors, and writes that a senior aide to Likud lawmaker Danny Danon responded, ‘depends where you are from.’ Mr. Danon is a Beck fan.”

Beck speaks so often of the risks he undertakes to spread his vile message that it would not be surprising to learn that he is hoping for trouble, and even encouraging it. He has literally alerted his audience to the prospect that he could be assassinated and enlisted them in an effort to make sure he is avenged. He has accused the Obama administration of plotting to kill him, and George Soros as well. His obsession with imagined assassins is pure Messianic delusion. He has had this to say about his Israeli Escapade:

“Will my event hurt foreign policy of the U.S.? I damn well hope so now.”
“If Israel falls the western way of life falls. That’s not hyperbole.”
“This may be it for our generation or for all mankind.”
“I will stand, I will speak, and in the end, if it be His will, I will die right alongside my brother.”

Let’s just hope that he doesn’t try to carry out his demented prophecy in a manner that harms the innocent.