Ted Cruz Booed, Walks Off Stage

Sen. Ted Cruz walked off the stage and left an event host­ed by a Christian orga­ni­za­tion mid-speech after being booed on Wednesday night fol­low­ing com­ments prais­ing Israel. The Texas Republican sen­a­tor and tea par­ty icon was a keynote speak­er at a Washington sum­mit host­ed by In Defense of Christians, a group that focus­es on per­se­cut­ed Christian and minor­i­ty com­mu­ni­ties in the Middle East.

According to sev­er­al reports and a video tak­en by EWTN News Nightly and obtained The Daily Caller, Cruz upset many in the crowd by offer­ing strong sup­port for Israel, say­ing at one point: “Christians have no greater ally than Israel” — a com­ment that drew boos.

(QUIZ: Do you know Ted Cruz?)

In a sub­se­quent state­ment to Breitbart News, Cruz said the crowd showed “a shame­ful dis­play of big­otry and hatred.”

The video appears to catch the moments just before Cruz left the stage.

“I will say this: I’m sad­dened to see that some here, not every­one, are so con­sumed with hate,” he said at the out­set of the video, his com­ments prompt­ing con­tin­ued boo­ing and yelling out from some mem­bers of the crowd. “I will say this: If you will not stand with Israel and the Jews, then I will not stand with you. Thank you, and God bless you,” he said, walk­ing off stage to scat­tered applause and boos.

Cruz told Breitbart that he intend­ed to show how the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, as well as oth­er ter­ror­ist groups, threat­ened both Jews and Christians in the region.

“I told the atten­dees that those who hate Israel also hate America,” he said. “That those who hate Jews also hate Christians. And that any­one who hates Israel and the Jewish peo­ple is not fol­low­ing the teach­ings of Christ. These state­ments were met with angry boos.”

“Anti-Semitism is a cor­ro­sive evil, and it reared its ugly head tonight,” he added later.

In a state­ment released Wednesday evening, IDC President Toufic Baaklini blamed a select “few polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed oppor­tunists” for the incident.

“[A] few polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed oppor­tunists chose to divide a room that for more than 48 hours sought uni­ty in oppos­ing the shared threat of geno­cide,” he said in the state­ment.

“Tonight’s injec­tion of pol­i­tics when the focus should have been on uni­ty and faith, momen­tar­i­ly played into the hands of a few who do not adhere to IDC’s prin­ci­ples,” Baaklini lat­er added. “They were made no longer wel­come.”http://​www​.politi​co​.com/​s​t​o​r​y​/​2​0​1​4​/​0​9​/​t​e​d​-​c​r​u​z​-​b​o​o​e​d​-​i​s​r​a​e​l​-​c​o​m​m​e​n​t​s​-​1​1​0​8​4​8​.​h​t​m​l​#​i​x​z​z​3​D​2​A​I​t​ugT