In her forthcoming book, Marjorie Taylor Greene says she donates to help reconstruct the biblical Temple
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) on Nov. 14. Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
By Jacob Kornbluh November 17, 2023
Marjorie Taylor Greene has a new response to those who accuse her of antisemitism: She’s working to rebuild the Temple — as in the one originally built by King Solomon 3,000 years ago.
In her new memoir, titled MTG and scheduled for release on Tuesday, the Republican congressperson from Georgia writes that she has “donated to the Temple Institute in Israel, a fund that helps rebuild the Jewish temple on the Temple Mount in Israel.” The group, known as Machon HaMikdash in Israel, was founded to rebuild the Temple on the site of the Dome of the Rock — the Islamic shrine — and to reinstate animal sacrifice.
The site — the holiest in the world to Jews and the third-holiest to Muslims — is a flashpoint in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which flared into a war on Oct. 7 when Hamas attacked Israel. Members of the terror group described the attack as a defense of the Al-Aqsa Mosque complex, which includes the Dome of the Rock. The Jewish movement to rebuild the Temple there is not widespread, since the site has not been the center of Jewish religious life for centuries and the effort would antagonize Muslims.
Greene, a Christian nationalist, didn’t reveal how much or how often she has given to the Institute in the book, a copy of which was obtained by the Forward. The revelation is part of a full chapter in which she defends her infamous suggestion that a Jewish-funded space laser had sparked wildfires in California in 2018. In a social media post, Greene falsely described a devious plot that invoked a longstanding antisemitic slur of the Rothschild family.
‘My Savior is a Jewish carpenter’
The post prompted widespread ridicule of her “Jewish space lasers” theory, and the Democrat-controlled House, with the support of 11 Republican members, took the rare step of removing her from Congressional committees in 2021 for these and other incendiary remarks.
“This was something I had once said in a sarcastic social media post years before I was elected,” Greene writes in the book.
In 2021, Greene told a Brooklyn Orthodox Jewish group that she hadn’t known that the Rothschilds, one of the most famous Jewish families in history, were Jewish. She later said that her past acceptance of antisemitic QAnon conspiracy theories was not her fault, but rather that of “the internet.”
“There is not an antisemitic bone in my body,” Greene writes in her book. “My Savior is a Jewish carpenter who died on the cross for my sins, and I have no antisemitic sentiments whatsoever.”
Greene said despite the accusations against her, some Orthodox Jews consider her an ally. “Orthodox Jews reached out to me, befriended me, and some even donated to my campaigns.” she writes. In 2021, Greene visited Orthodox areas of Brooklyn and Long Island, a tour organized by Chovevei Zion, an Orthodox conservative group based in Brooklyn.
‘I actually support Jewish space lasers’
Greene, an ally of former President Donald Trump, also writes that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee didn’t invite her to join a trip to Israel for new members of Congress because she has been labeled an antisemite, and that it made her feel as if she was “robbed” of her “dignity, credibility and chance to visit the Holy Land.”
Greene in the book, published by Winning Team Publishing, touts her voting record on Israel military aid, including funding for the “Iron Beam,” a new laser missile defense system. She called it “Israel’s real” space laser. “So, it turns out I actually support Jewish space lasers,” she writes.
Greene also notes her visit to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., in 2021 after provoking outrage for calling on “rational” Jewish people to back her claim that pandemic mask mandates were comparable to the Holocaust. “Never mind that I’d actually been to Germany and seen the camps when I was a young woman,” she writes.
Greene also doubled down on her critique of George Soros, the Hungarian-born Democratic megadonor and Holocaust survivor who has long been the subject of antisemitic attacks from the far-right. Calling the Jewish billionaire a “globalist,” Greene writes that “Soros has his hands in so many pockets he probably can’t even keep track of them all.” But she maintained that her attacks are due to his politics, not his ethnicity, and criticized Democrats for similar attacks against the late GOP megadonor Sheldon Adelson.
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