Daphne Anson: "May It Please The Kangaroo Court": Christian Scholar socks it to Britain's BDSer Methodists

Eretz Israel is our unforgettable historic homeland...The Jews who will it shall achieve their State...And whatever we attempt there for our own benefit will redound mightily and beneficially to the good of all mankind. (Theodor Herzl, DerJudenstaat, 1896)

We offer peace and amity to all the neighbouring states and their peoples, and invite them to cooperate with the independent Jewish nation for the common good of all. The State of Israel is ready to contribute its full share to the peaceful progress and development of the Middle East. (From Proclamation of the State of Israel, 5 Iyar 5708; 14 May 1948)

With a liberal democratic political system operating under the rule of law, a flourishing market economy producing technological innovation to the benefit of the wider world, and a population as educated and cultured as anywhere in Europe or North America, Israel is a normal Western country with a right to be treated as such in the community of nations.... For the global jihad, Israel may be the first objective. But it will not be the last. (Friends of Israel Initiative)

Tuesday, 5 November 2013

"May It Please The Kangaroo Court": Christian Scholar socks it to Britain's BDSer Methodists

Infamously, as is well-known, the pro-BDS Methodist Church in Britain (a dying church hijacked by leftists) posted some weeks ago a survey regarding BDS that has caused considerable controversy. (See a summary and the link on our old pro-Boycott pal Richard Hall's blog here.)

Among those who took the opportunity to respond was pro-Israel Nick Gray of the UK-based Christian Middle East Watch (see here).

Now, in an absolute corker of an "open letter" to the Methodist Church's Peter Tidey, American Christian scholar and pro-Israel advocate Dexter Van Zile characterises the survey's fourteen questions as the products of a "kangaroo court" since

'A quick perusal of the questions indicates that the church has already concluded that Israel is solely responsible for the continued existence of the Mideast conflict, and that the Palestinians (and their Arab supporters) bear no responsibility.'

Van Zile goes on:

"Despite my misgivings, I decided to respond to your survey.

.... I am responding as a Christian who has grown disgusted with the monomaniacal focus of so-called peace and human rights activists in the West, who have hijacked church bureaucracies in their campaign to demonize Israel.

Below are my responses to your church's interrogatories.

Question One: What do you understand to be the motivation/inspiration behind the call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions in relation to Israel?

The BDS campaign has, as intended by its organizers, proven to be a powerful vehicle in the effort to enlist people to the demonization and de-legitimization of the Jewish State, which represents the gold standard for human rights in the Middle East.

Israel treats its enemies, dissidents, minorities, and its own citizens with far greater humanity and respect than any other country, regime, or political movement in the region and yet it is the country that is being targeted by BDS activists both inside and outside the Methodist Church in England. Anti-semitism is clearly part of the equation in the BDS movement.

If you doubt that anti-semitism plays a role in this campaign, consider the following:

Saudia Arabia is responsible for broadcasting Wahhabism, a radical form of Islam, to other countries in the world. In addition to oppressing women and minorities, and supporting jihadis who have killed Christians in Syria, the Saudi regime has funded the construction of mosques in North America and Europe whose leaders have made it harder for Muslims to integrate into Western society. (Inhabitants of England may have some knowledge of this problem.)

Iran has oppressed religious and ethnic minorities and supports Hezbollah, an organization that has intentionally murdered civilians throughout the world. It is, by many accounts, pursuing a nuclear weapons program to provide an atomic umbrella to its proxies in Syria and Lebanon.

Syria has been the scene of a deadly civil war where more than 100,000 people have been killed in just over two years. The Assad regime has used poison gas against civilians.

Turkey brutally oppresses Kurds and has refused to accept responsibility for the Armenian Genocide, which resulted in the deaths of 1.5 million people between 1915 and 1922.

Many goods produced in China are manufactured by slave labor. The country oppresses religious and ethnic minorities and has occupied and brutally repressed Tibet.

Moreover, Christians are being ethnically cleansed in Iraq, with hardly a word of protest from their co-religionists in the West, although to be fair, people are coming around on this issue. (Just not the Methodist Church.)

Why is there no BDS campaign targeting these countries? Where is the Methodist outrage over these misdeeds?

Question Two: In your view, what would be the essential elements of any peace agreement in Israel/Palestine?

Personally, I used to think that the Clinton Parameters would bring an end to the conflict. Today I’m not so sure.

The problem we face is that the current crop of Palestinian leaders who have encouraged their people to fight against Israel for the past several decades cannot obtain anything that wasn’t already offered to them previously on a number of occasions.

If they were to accept a peace treaty now that was largely similar to what could have been achieved in 1947, 1948, 68, or at Camp David in 2000, Palestinians would ask: “What was the point of all the suffering we endured over the past several decades? Why did you send us off to war? What did we achieve with the death of our children?”

As a result of this reality, one essential aspect of peace is the departure of the current crop of aged leaders from the Palestinian scene.

Other essential elements of peace include an acknowledgement of Israel as a Jewish state by Palestinian leaders and a repudiation of the anti-Jewish hostility that has animated Palestinian public life for decades (and which has only gotten worse since the Oslo Accords).

A normalization and routinization of daily life for both Israelis and Palestinians would also be necessary. That would require the cessation of rocket and other terror attacks against Israel, which in turn, would allow the reduction of security measures that Palestinians complain about. This is not possible until Palestinian leaders of all stripes abandon their efforts to exercise a veto of Jewish national life in a sovereign state.

Peace will also likely require tolerance for the presence of Jews in the West Bank. The West Bank will not and should not be Judenrein, even if it is part of a Palestinian state. Israel has a 20 percent Arab population. Palestinians will have to tolerate the presence of the other in their state, just as Israel has.

Can the Methodist Church in England encourage Palestinians to accept the Jewish other?...."

This is impressive, highly relevant, stuff from Dexter Van Zile. Read his entire piece here

6 comments:

Colin6 November 2013 at 08:17
Hi, its a bit off topic, but last year, annoyed by the Gaza = Warsaw rubbish, I did some comparisons. I pass them on, for what they are worth.

Warsaw ghetto
400,000 people
less than 3 square miles (approx 7.5 square kilometers = 7,500,000 sq meters)
population density per square km = 53,500
In its 2 year existence, over 100,000 people died of starvation, disease and violence.
By May 1943, all had been murdered
Death rate 125/1,000 per year excluding the final deportations
Infant mortality (this figure is too low, as all histories mention the over representation of children among the dead) 125/1,000
Food - 186 cal per person

Gaza
1,600,000 people
360 square kms = 360,000,000 sq meters (45 nations are smaller)
Population density 4270/square km 5 states, including Hong Kong and Macau, exceed this.
death rate 3.36/1,000 per year 217 nations have a higher death rate
infant mortality rate 17.7/1,000 106 nations have a higher infant mortality rate
life expectancy 73.7 112 nations have a lower life expectancy (incl Egypt, Brazil, Turkey and the Philippines – Russia is 66.16)
food – 1800 cals per person/day minimum

Comparisons
Warsaw Gaza Ratio Nations in between Gaza and Warsaw
Population density 53,500/sqkm 4,270/sqkm 1,250% more 5
Death rate 125/1,000 3.3/1,000 3,789% greater 217
Food per person 186 1800+ 1,000% + greater
Killed by enemy violence 300,000 (75% of total) 6,500 (0.4% of total 18,750% greater

“Ninety-eight per cent of Warsaw's Jews perished. More broadly, about 63 per cent of Europe's pre-war Jewish population were killed during the Holocaust.
The roughly 6,500 Gazans killed by Israel since it unilaterally withdrew its soldiers and settlers in 2005 equals 0.4 per cent of the population of the Strip.
In comparison, upwards of 75 per cent of Rwanda's Tutsi population, about 800,000 people, were murdered during the 100 days of genocide in 1994. Over 200,000 Bosnian Muslims (10 per cent of the pre-war Muslim population) were killed by Serbs between 1993 and 1995.

“The Gazan death toll would have to be more than 20 times greater to approach Bosnia, 175 times more to approach Rwanda.” Mike Levine
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Dexter Van Zile6 November 2013 at 14:01
Thanks Daphne!
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'For as long as these antisemites wrap themselves up in the Palestinian flag, too many people are willing to turn a blind eye. Only against Jews is this type of racism openly tolerated. It is flourishing in schools, colleges, universities, unions and in city councils. In fact, so rampant is the disease now, in some settings you can be ostracised if you do not partake in the frenzy yourself. Bashing Jews has becomes a trendy position for the ignorant social justice warrior. "Palestinianism" is a viral "ponzi scheme" and as it spreads, it carries antisemitism in the undergrowth.' David Collier (2017)

'This new rise in antisemitism, which I had thought long dead, was not shaven-headed white imbeciles from the far right. It was Muslims, a large chunk of it.... Suddenly I grasped that the British far left didn’t want people to know about antisemitism because it pointed the finger at people they really, really liked. From that moment on, it all fell into place.... Time and again the same tropes emerged, the same sort of stuff that Streicher and Goebbels would have commended – and uttered.... And from that a whole bunch of other stuff emerged: the old blood libel business (a favourite of the repulsive Jenny Tonge).... Nice, avuncular, Jeremy Corbyn, with his peace badges, happily laying a wreath at the graveside of Palestinian terrorists who murdered innocent Jewish athletes, oh, and much much more.... It is the same antisemitism, exactly the same: the obsession with Israel to the exclusion of everything else, the conspiracy theory paranoias, the derangement.... Here’s the test – if you cannot see the flagrant racism in the BDS movement, and if you are obsessed with the perfidy of the Middle East’s only democracy to the exclusion of all else, you are an antisemite. That means a good proportion of the Labour Party, including the leader, and almost all of Momentum: no brown shirts, no marching bands, but the same old filth, dressed in the clothes of a polytechnic geography lecturer.'
Rod Liddle (2018)

'Before the June 1967 Six Day War, there were no such things as "settlements". Palestinians were trying to destroy and displace Israel anyhow. The core problem is not, and never was, "settlements," but the right of Israel (or any non-Muslim nation) to exist inside any borders in that part of the world.
If you take a stand that is based on a lie, then that stand cannot succeed. If you try to oppose antisemitism but pretend it is the same thing as "Islamophobia," then the structure on which you have made your stand will totter and all your aspirations will fail. If you try to make a stand based on the idea that settlement construction rather than the intransigence of the Palestinians to the existence of a Jewish state is what is holding up a peace deal, then facts will keep on intruding.' Douglas Murray (31 December 2016)
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/9685/britain-little-lies

'Islamophobia does NOT come from the same wellspring of hatred as antisemitism. Antisemitism is a true prejudice because the hatred and demonisation it promotes derive entirely from lies and a repudiation of rationality itself.
Islamophobia is a false allegation of prejudice which is deployed to silence rational criticism based on actual facts about attitudes and practices within the Islamic world.
[L]ethally compromised even-handedness is to misunderstand, and thus minimise, antisemitic attitudes and behaviour while shutting down legitimate and necessary discussion of the threat from the Islamic world – even to demonise as “Islamophobic” anyone who draws attention to the extent and consequences of Muslim antisemitism.' Melanie Phillips (14 December 2016)

Jews have re-assumed the role of the canary in the mine and are the first to be targeted, but the world would face the same threat if Jews did not exist. Israel has been at the front lines confronting Islamic extremism but has received scant support... For Jews, the writing has been on the wall for a long time. The virulence of the antisemitic hatred closing in on Jews in Europe (and elsewhere) is horrifying...
Europe is today facing a crisis as serious as the confrontation with Nazism. If Western leaders continue behaving like Chamberlain and fail to stand up to this global threat, it could usher in a new Dark Age in which the Judeo-Christian culture is subsumed by primitive barbarism. The writing is on the wall Isi Leibler (12 January 2015)

Expose The Lies!

There is a war of lies and deceit on the internet generating unbelievable hate by denigrating and delegitimising the legal rights conferred on the Jewish people by the League of Nations in 1922 and the United Nations in 1945. The idea that there are two narratives on the Arab-Jewish conflict is rubbish. There is only one – the factual truth that details the return of the Jewish people to reconstitute the Jewish National Home in its ancient biblical, ancestral and historic homeland after 3500 years of dispersion with the unanimous endorsement of the nation states then comprising the League of Nations.... Generals can’t fight a war without soldiers. Jews around the world need to join the fight or vacate the internet to the Jew-haters and their lies that repeated often enough eventually become accepted as truth. David Singer (2016)

The "Apartheid" Slur

The division of Judea and Samaria (West Bank) into three separate areas “A”, “B” and “C” was agreed on by Israel and the PLO pursuant to the Oslo Accords.
95% of the West Bank Arabs live in Areas A and B and their daily lives are under the total administration and control of the PLO since the Palestinian Authority was disbanded by Abbas in January 2013. The PLO has total security control in A and shares security control in B with Israel. Israel has total administrative and security control in C.
Israel is entitled to and will continue to take responsibility for the security of Jews living in the West Bank.
Jews were given the legal right to settle in the West Bank under article 6 of the Mandate for Palestine and article 80 of the UN Charter. They did so for decades until they were driven out in 1947 and not able to return there until 1967.
There are Arab roads only in the West Bank that Jews are not allowed to use. Jews are also forbidden from entering Area “A”. Selling land to Jews is forbidden by the PLO under pain of death. The PLO runs the daily lives of 95% of the West Bank Arabs and Hamas runs the daily lives of 100% of the Gazan Arabs. They have been under occupation – and subjugation – by these two evil groups for the last ten years and given no say in their future or any opportunity to elect others to lead them following the disastrous political decisions of their leaders over the past ten years. Hamas and the PLO do not accept the continued existence of a Jewish State and call for its disappearance.
The narratives did not begin in 1948 – they began in about 1917. How do you make peace with an enemy that has been obsessed with not recognising any Jewish national rights in former Palestine for the last 100 years? David Singer (2016)

The Jews of the Holy Land ... are surrounded by hostile states 650 times their territory and sixty times their population. Yet their last, best hope of ending two millennia of international persecution - the State of Israel - has somehow survived. When, during the Second World War, the island of Malta came through three terrible years of bombardment and destruction, it was rightly awarded the George Cross for bravery. Today, Israel should be awarded a similar decoration for defending democracy, tolerance and Western values against a murderous onslaught that has lasted twenty times as long. Andrew Roberts (historian)

Israel is understandably obsessed with security, but its greatest security lies ultimately not in the Israeli Defence Forces, but in political warfare.... Most of the world is not deeply interested in what happens in Israel, and probably does not want to be deluged with legalistic defences of particular actions. What it wants is a clear, calm, repeated case. It is a case – aimed more at public opinion than at foreign ministries – about freedom, democracy, a Western way of life and the need for the whole of the free world to fight terrorism. Sometimes you hear Israelis say: “It doesn’t matter what we say. The whole world is against us.” You can see why they say it, for they are indeed unfairly treated. But when they say it, they are uttering a self-fulfilling prophecy. If they won’t say what needs saying, no one else will say it for them. Charles Moore (2010)

Once again the armies of the Arab nations are coordinating their military efforts to destroy Israel - whatever they say about wishing merely to regain the lost territories.... [I]f the present Arab offensive had been launched at the pre-1967 frontiers, then the Israelis would indeed have been fighting to avoid annihilation. It seems now that the Israelis were right to maintain the ceasefire lines gained in 1967, and that to do so is the only guarantee of their continued safety.
Alan Sillitoe (The Times, 11 October 1973)

Iran and ISIS are competing for the crown of militant Islam... In this deadly game of thrones, there’s no place for America or for Israel, no place for Christians, Jews or Muslims who don’t share the Islamist medieval creed, no rights for women, no freedom for anyone... [T]he greatest danger facing our world is the marriage of militant Islam with nuclear weapons. To defeat ISIS and let Iran get nuclear weapons would be to win the battle, but lose the war. We can’t let that happen...[T]he days when the Jewish people remained passive in the face of genocidal enemies, those days are over. We are no longer scattered among the nations, powerless to defend ourselves. We restored our sovereignty in our ancient home. And the soldiers who defend our home have boundless courage. For the first time in 100 generations, we, the Jewish people, can defend ourselves....Even if Israel has to stand alone, Israel will stand. But ... I know that America stands with Israel... You stand with Israel, because you know that the story of Israel is not only the story of the Jewish people but of the human spirit that refuses again and again to succumb to history’s horrors. Bibi Netanyahu (12 Adar 5775; 3 March 2015)

The Jews are a peculiar people: things permitted to other nations are forbidden to the Jews. Other nations drive out thousands, even millions, of people, and there is no refugee problem.... [N]o one says a word about refugees. But in the case of Israel displaced Arabs have become eternal refugees.... Other nations - when they are defeated - survive and recover, but should Israel be defeated it would be destroyed.... [A]s it goes with Israel, so it will go with all of us. Should Israel perish the holocaust will be upon us. Eric Hoffer (1968)

Most of the present Arab countries were given their freedom after the 1914-18 War, or after the 1939-45 War.... Yet to listen to Arab spokesmen one might think that they had been cheated ... because they have not also got Israel. Israel is only .2 per cent of the land where Arab States have been established. Surely no fair-minded man can begrudge the Jews their own promised land when it is remembered that for every 2 acres that went to make up Israel, 1,000 acres became Arab.... Why is there an Arab refugee problem? The oil-rich countries have the money. There is no shortage of land, and the Israelis have the technical knowledge to show how it could be developed and made fertile. Bring those things together and the problem could be solved. 3rd Earl of Balfour (1968)

January 7, 2015 has already its place in the history of infamy, but also will be the date when the defenders of freedom and democracy will rise and pay tribute to those who died for their freedom and ours. Therefore, we must not forget on which side we are and who are our allies in the defense of the West and its values. Whether we admit it or not, the West is at war with an enemy who will not stop to destroy us...
The State of Israel boasts a commandment that, in one of the darkest hours in the fight for liberty Winston Churchill taught: "Never give up". Israel has proven to be a key ally in the fight against Islamism and also an example of how a liberal democracy can resist the jihadist stake and thrive as a Western nation ... Not only France but also all the West should look to Israel to defeat Islamism...
friendsofisraelinitiative.org

[I]t’s impossible to believe that an active antisemite wouldn’t – if only opportunistically – seek out somewhere to nestle in the manifold pleats of Israel-bashing, whether in generally diffuse anti-Zionism, or in more specific Boycott and Divestment Campaigns, Israeli Apartheid Weeks, End the Occupation movements and the like....[T]ell me that not a single Jew-hater finds the activity congenial, that criticising Israel can “never” be an expression of Jew-hating, not even when it takes the form of accusing Israeli soldiers of harvesting organs... Howard Jacobson (The Independent, 27 May 2013)

For Western countries to side with those who question Israel's legitimacy, for them to play games in international bodies with Israel's vital security issues, for them to appease those who oppose Western values, rather than robustly to stand up in defence of those values, is not only a grave moral mistake, but a strategic error of the first magnitude. Israel is a fundamental part of the West. The West is what it is thanks to its Judeo-Christian roots. If the Jewish element of those roots is lost and Israel is lost, then we are lost too. Jose Maria Aznar

Israel is, for us, a normal and a special country. A normal country, because it is just like any other democracy. A special country, because the Jewish culture, which eventually became the Judeo-Christian culture of the dignity of man, is the conceptual foundation of liberalism and democracy. This is why attacking Israel is tantamount to attacking Europe and the West. This is also why disputing Israel's legitimacy and its right to existence means questioning democracy. And this is why we are Friends of Israel. By defending Israel, we are defending ourselves. Marcello Pera

Israel ... is beset today by a unique combination of threats. It must defend its people from attack while defending its very right to exist. No other nation in the world faces this dual challenge. To deny Israel's right to confront some of the world's most vicious terrorist groups in order to ensure the safety of its citizens is to corrode international norms from within ... The assault on Israel is one part of a more general assault on the West, on democracy, and on the moral and cultural heritage that grew from the fruitful interaction of Jerusalem, Athens, and Rome ... Should these efforts succeed, similar efforts will certainly be turned against other western democracies. George Weigel

Apart from America itself, Israel still stands as the world's brightest model of national self-liberation based on ideals of individual responsibility and human freedom. Israel's ability to withstand Arab attempts to destroy it in one of the longest and most lop-sided wars ever fought serves as an indelible testimony to the strength of democratic culture.... We know from the past that the West paid dearly for ignoring Hitler's war against the Jews. One can only hope it will not pay as dearly for having ignored or underestimated for so long the Arab war against Israel and the Jews. Ruth Wisse

I am duty-bound to defend freedom, culture, peaceful coexistence, the civic education of children, and all the principles that the Tablets of the Law have rendered universal. Principles which Islamic fundamentalism systematically destroys. This means that, since I am a Gentile, a journalist and a leftist, I have a triple moral commitment to Israel. Because, if Israel were to be vanquished, modernity, culture and freedom would also be crushed. Even though the world has failed to wake up to this fact, Israel's struggle is the world's struggle. Pilar Rahola

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