Former Fox News host Glenn Beck led his Restoring Courage rally in Jerusalem this week, and if you didn’t buy tickets in time, don’t worry, you’re weren’t alone.
Beck’s long-ago announced conference in the Holy Land went grossly unattended, despite claims from organizers that the event would reach capacity.For those that did brave a swarm of protestors to hear Beck speak, they were met on Wednesday with a 90 minute diatribe of pessimism and prophecy. “The world is burning,” Beck told the crowd. “The threats are mounting. The evil is growing. Darkness is falling.”It just goes to prove that you can knock the nut job off the air, but you can’t knock the air out of the nut job.Among those culprits of doom, says Beck, are human rights organizations, the UN, Europe and Arab states. As one reporter from The Guardian noted, however, often Beck placed blame on an ambiguous group they he referred to as simply “them.”Attacking human rights groups, Beck said, “They denounce nations like Israel and America and leave alone nations which have no freedoms at all. Whatever moral force they once had is spent."He, of course, neglected to comment on Fox, the company he recently walked away from to launch his own online network. Fox is run by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, which has been taking away some of those freedoms of people across the globe as the media behemoth continues to be subjected to a mass hacking scandal where phone conversations were illegally obtained. If any message was managed to be brought back from those at this week’s rally, it was that Jews need to reclaim Israel as their holy land and not let opposition keep them out. He told the crowd that some world leaders have no concern for their cause, but that those that condemn Israel are cowards that “surrender to falsehood.”"My friends, do not lose hope. You must not lose confidence in yourselves. You must draw courage," said Beck. He told the lackluster turn-out that those who call Israel home were "led to this land by God.”“He promised that Israel would rise again. We have seen this promise fulfilled. Israel, we have witnessed the dawn of your redemption."Michael Novatka, a born-again Christian from Florida told the Guardian that Beck had it right. "Glenn Beck tells the truth, but the rest of the world doesn't want to hear it. I've been watching him for years, and agree with what he says. Now that he's left Fox, he's stepping it up."Now if only we knew how much he needed to step it up before he falls right down.