Two days before the election in USA we put up a short video on Facebook, where Sister Hatune addressed our friends in the USA and endorses Donald Trump. Then the emails started to roll in. Nine positive for every critical. Following the news in Europe and USA, this proportion came as a surprise – and a good one.
  

With permission of the author, we publish one of the more critical letters, and we use the occasion, to explain the background of the endorsing video and the greater context: The politicization of our aid work.

 “Dear Sister Hatune, I strongly recommend to You, taking the Trump endorsement off the internet! He says, he wants to help Christians??? Are the Mexicans, the people from the Philippines, that he insulted, and the women that he treated badly, are they not Christians? Sister, you know, how much I appreciate You, but to endorse somebody like that, is not only naïve, but it is morally wrong, and it can cost You a lot of credibility with the German donations. I have already received some questions from the boarding school, which planned to donate. That would be a shame.”

No dear reader, we have not been naive. On the contrary. We have followed the two candidates from the beginning. We did not start with examining their moral. We have tried to find out where they were standing in relation to our aims and visions.

WHY WE ENDORSED DONALD TRUMP

Here’s the main point: our interest was, which of the two candidates would take a stance on the issues of our aid work. These are: the persecution of religious minorities, the refugee crisis, the situation in the Middle East.

PROS AND CONS

After the USA under Bush had weakened the region with the war in Iraq, the Democrats, lead by Obama and Clinton, have set the whole Middle East on fire.

Obama and Hillary Clinton created the “Arab Spring” without any strategy to control the situation or to help the victims. Islamic State was only one of the bloody results that came out of this political delusion.

Sister Hatune and the foundation have worked day and night on the battlefield – without any government support. We were trying to save as many as possible of the tens of thousands of Christians and Yazidis, who became the innocent victims of this politically imposed humanitarian disaster. We hold a great record in this work.

Against this, we had Donald Trump, whom the media has loved to hate since he came out in the open and claimed he would run for presidency. He had a harsh tone – so did Hillary Clinton, calling Trumps voters “deplorable”. He was revealed in saying vulgar things about women. He apologized and called it “men’s locker room talk”.

Hillary Clinton received 25 million dollars from Saudi Arabia and Qatar, from the same sources that financed ISIS and Al Nusra. When revealed she tried to hide it, together with her involvement in the Benghazi disaster and the fact, that the Clinton Foundation only gives 5% to charity while the rest goes to the Clintons! And she has not yet apologized for this.

Donald Trump says he wants to build a wall against Mexico, because USA do not need more criminals to illegally cross the border. He said that there is already enough in USA. He never called all Mexicans criminals. The press, who quoted him, did that, twisting his words.

Hillary Clinton talked for open borders maybe because she knows, that 90% of illegal immigrants will vote for her.

We know, that Donald Trump never will be the first-choice politician for a conservative Christian. We never said that. But we saw from the start, that Trump is a strategist, who knows how to play the media, rather to be played by them.

ON THE PERSECUTION OF CHRISTIANS

Trump called it a big scandal, that the worldwide persecution and murdering of Christians would be going on almost unnoticed. This had to be stopped. The Western world had to do more to save the Christians. He asked, why the USA would receive so few persecuted Christians as refugees, far lees as their portion in the war countries. He pledged for better immigration controls and for securing the border; to let in the real refugees and to facilitate immigration. He vowed to eliminate the Islamic State rapidly and enduringly. And he called radical Islam the greatest threat to the free world.

With all his positions, he is in full accord with our foundation. Sister Hatune has been preaching these issues for many years. They are heard by the politicians only reluctantly. Not because Sister Hatune’s hair is not that blond, like Mr. Trump’s. Rather because her aid work is bringing some inconvenient truths about the war in the Middle East to light; about the root causes and the perpetrators. Fighters of the Islamic State wearing Turkish military uniforms, as Hatune encountered it during one of her last trips to Iraq, is a much too bitter pill for the German chancellor, that is dependent on the goodwill of the Turkish dictator – and for the lapdog media too.

And Clinton? Hillary Clinton did not say a word about the persecution of Christians, but wants to bring far more Muslim immigrants into the USA.

Now, after Trump is elected, we see him as a powerful voice in the future, to bring the issues to the world stage, to tackle them and to aim for a solution. If he does not, we will openly and harshly criticize him for that. Generally, it is our attitude judge people more by their actions than their words.

WE BELIEVE IN DEEDS

Constant work on the ground, at the hotspots of misery, is a special experience. In the end, it produces a very different political attitude than the elastic narratives of political correctness. And Sister Hatune has always been an advocate of uncompromised truth. So, the politicization of our aid work became inevitable.

To say, that more help on the ground in the war countries would be better than squandering money in Germany, that there are real and false refugees, that there are wolves and sheep, that some religious and ethnic groups integrate better than others, all that shouldn’t brand anyone as unhuman. Or as a racist, xenophobe, Islamophobe. But the discussion in Europe is all hysteria. Long before the election of Trump. Trump serves as a booster of that hysteria. Because the narratives are in danger. The situation is the mirror image of the Obama fever eight years ago, his Nobel Peace Prize before taking office included.

We are glad, that Trump could possibly be a voice, who is supporting our message. During the last year, Sister Hatune has spoken more and more in front of political conventions. To left wing and right wing parties, in Germany and abroad. She talked to different Christian groups and secular organizations. No matter where she speaks, her message will not be tainted by any political affiliation, it will be the same: the outright commitment for the poor and persecuted worldwide.

Hans Erling Jensen
International Director
Hatune Foundation International