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From: (Active Duty USAF Enlisted Airman’s/MRFF Client's e-mail address withheld)
Subject: Our Air Force Commander and Israel, Hamas and Armageddon
Date: October 13, 2023 at 9:19:55 AM MDT
To: Information Weinstein <mikey@militaryreligiousfreedom.org>
Mr. Weinstein thank you for intervening on our behalf at (name of U.S. military installation withheld) when our (unit commander’s name, rank and title all withheld “reminded” all of us that “...the war between Israel and Hamas has all been foretold by the Book of Revelation in the Gospel of Jesus Christ and no-one can do anything about that.”
I am an active duty USAF enlisted airmen stationed at (name of USAF installation withheld). I am Baptist and my wife is Jewish. We are raising our kids with both.
Earlier this week (name and rank of unit commander withheld) decided to provide his thoughts to us all at a mandatory unit briefing which was supposed to be focusing on “Maintaining Air Force Performance Standards” as it was explained a few days before by our First Sergeant.
He started out normally but then abruptly stopped and decided to tell our whole unit as I said above that the “will of the Lord Jesus is manifesting itself at this very moment in Gaza and Israel.” I tried to look around and others were also as shocked as I was. Our commander then went on about how violent and bloody the Battle of Armageddon would look like and that all “true Christians” sleep well at night knowing that “this carnage all has the will and the purpose of Jesus behind it.” I’m a Christian too and I get it but at our MANDATORY quarterly unit “Air Force Performance Standards” briefing? Where many Airmen who are not even Christians have no choice as to whether to attend or not? And those few Jewish members had to listen to this too? YGBSM?
Our First Shirt was just all smiles as he is as much a pusher of Christianity in our military workplace as our commander always is. This is not at all the first time. And nobody can do anything to stop him it seems?
After this briefing and later that afternoon 8 of us who were truly pissed decided to reach out to the MRFF. This latest “sermon’ had been their last straw. I called Mikey Weinstein and he answered his own phone. Mikey asked for some contact info on our upper chain of command. Of our group's number of 8 airmen 6 of us were Christian like me and one was Jewish and the other Airman said she practiced no faith.
So OK, Just this morning we had an unscheduled meeting with our unit commander. He apologized, kind of, for his statements of the other day and said he’d “…just gotten a little carried away with current events.” He told us it won’t happen again and if it does we should "just come to me with our complaints rather than going with an outside NGO like the MFFR” (he got your acronym wrong too). Like we’d EVER just go to him instead of the MRFF. He would just destroy us.
How easy for him to say! Not so easy for any of us under his command to tell the emperor he has no clothes on especially when it come to his own Christian religion. We don’t know what if anything more will happen with our commander but we are all very grateful to Mikey Weinstein and the MRFF for taking our case and apparently getting our “Christianity-Armageddon enthusiast” commander called onto the carpet. Finally!
(Active Duty Enlisted Airman’s/MRFF Client’s Name, Rank, AFSC, Unit and Installation all withheld)
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