Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) defended his recent pro-Israel speech that was shouted down by audience members at a Middle Eastern Christian conference, in an interview published Tuesday.
Critics have accused Cruz of intentionally provoking the audience–which included some prominent supporters of Hezbollah and the Syrian regime–by praising Israel during his speech to the In Defense of Christians conference in Washington, D.C. on Sept. 10.
Others have applauded the senator for telling the conference, which was organized to bring attention to the persecution of Middle Eastern Christians, that "Christians have no greater ally than Israel," before he was drowned out by shouts and boos from the heavily Syrian and Lebanese audience.
Cruz told World Magazine that he was surprised by the angry reaction to his pro-Israel comment, but said he did not regret attending and attempting to speak at the conference.
"Look, I anticipated that there were one or two radical speakers who I didn’t expect would be happy with what I was saying," said Cruz. "What I didn’t understand was that a significant minority of the attendees there reflected the same bitter hatred towards Israel and the Jews. That surprised me. It disappointed me, but at the end of the day, we are called as Christians and Americans to speak the truth. That is what I endeavored to do."
Cruz said he and his staff debated whether he should give the keynote address, after the Washington Free Beacon reported on some of the other conference speakers’ support for Hezbollah and Bashar Al Assad.
"Before I arrived, a news story broke that a couple of the speakers who had been at the event were prominent supporters of Hezbollah," said Cruz. "There were some in the office who advocated that we should cancel, that I should simply not go, but I didn't think that would be the right thing to do."
"I didn’t want to not go and to not do what I could to shine the light on the persecution of Christians, which is absolutely unspeakable," he added. "Secondly, I didn’t want to cede the discussion to the extremes."
During the speech, Cruz was booed and heckled when he blasted Hezbollah and Assad, described Israel as a great friend to Christians and called on the audience to support the Jewish state. The crowd eventually drowned him out with angry shouts, and he left the stage after saying, "If you will not stand with Israel and the Jews, I will not stand with you."
While Cruz said the portion of the audience booing him was a minority, he added that, "unfortunately, it was more than just a handful."
"It was a couple of hundred people; it wasn’t one or two. It was angry enough that I ended up putting aside my written remarks that I had for that evening and just speaking from the heart to the people who were booing and heckling," said Cruz.
The senator said after his speech he "received a great deal of encouragement, both within the Christian community and the Jewish community, people saying simply thank you for standing up and speaking out and speaking the truth."
He said objections to the speech came from "sort of the elite, intellectual Washington, D.C., crowd."
"A number of the critics, a number of the folks in the media have suggested, for example, that my saying what I did distracted from the plight of persecuted Christians," said Cruz. "What I find interesting is almost to a person,almost to a person, the people writing those columns have never or virtually never spoken of persecuted Christians in any other context."
The interview prompted additional backlash from Cruz’s critics, who disputed the claim that they have not previously spoken out against the persecution of Christians.
Cruz later walked back this allegation in a statement to the Daily Caller.
"It was a mistake to suggest that critics of my remarks at IDC had not spoken out previously concerning the persecution of Christians; many of them have done so, often quite eloquently," he said. "It was not my intent to impugn anyone’s integrity, and I apologize to any columnists who took offense."
In a recent interview, the director of In Defense of Christians said he regretted inviting Cruz to give the keynote and blamed the senator for inciting the audience.
"It’s unfortunate that Senator Cruz was booed," said IDC executive director Andrew Doran told the National Review. "But what’s more unfortunate is that he chose to make a summit of and for Middle Eastern Christians about something other than a summit about Middle Eastern Christians."
Doran also denied that some speakers at the conference were prominent supporters of Hezbollah, adding that, "anyone who continues to knowingly spread false reports should understand the consequences of doing so."
The Washington Free Beacon first reported that one of the top speakers, Syriac Orthodox Church Patriarch Moran Mor Ignatius Aphrem II posted photos on his official Facebook page of his meeting with a high-level Hezbollah delegation just days before the conference began.
Maronite Patriarch Bechara Rai of Lebanon has also defended Hezbollah’s attacks on Israel and recently requested a meeting with terror chief Hassan Nasrallah.
Other speakers are backers of the Assad regime in Syria or Michel Aoun, Hezbollah’s top Christian ally in Lebanon. IDC funder Gilbert Chagoury has been one of Aoun’s major benefactors, according to U.S. diplomatic cables published by Wikileaks.
Chagoury is also a top Clinton donor, and has pledged $1 billion to the Clinton Global Initiative.
At least one Lebanese-based news outlet was threated with legal action after reporting on links between IDC conference funders and the Hezbollah-backed "March 8" coalition in Lebanon, according to a source with direct knowledge of the incident.
The French-language newspaper L'Orient-Le Jour questioned whether the conference would be used as a screen to lobby Washington for pro-Assad policies. Shortly after, it was reportedly contacted by associates of IDC donor Gilbert Chagoury from Washington, D.C. and Lebanon.
"They considered this as an attack from the newspaper against Mr. Chagoury," said the source. "[They] put pressure on the newspaper and they asked that the journalists who wrote the article, they wanted them to be fired."
The reporters were not fired, but the paper’s publisher Michel Edde issued a lengthy apology. The article was updated to correct several inaccuracies–including most significantly, the unproven claim that Chagoury financed terrorist activities.
The other error concerned claims that Chagoury was arrested at a U.S. airport. He had in fact been detained at the airport because he was listed on a no-fly list at the time. The U.S. government later issued an apology.
The Lebanese and Syrian press closely followed the events of the IDC conference, which included lobbying meetings on Capitol Hill and with President Obama.
According to the pro-Assad newspaper Al Akhbar, Obama said during his meeting with the Middle Eastern Christian Patriarchs that Assad "protected the Christians in Syria."
Obama also used the term "Syrian government" instead of "Syrian regime," according to the paper.
"The confused attendees could not believe what they heard," reported Al Akhbar. "However, one of the guests addressed Obama and said: ‘Then you should stop talking about a moderate Syrian opposition.’"