Time For The Vicar To Hang His Head in Shame?

Photo: Richard Millett

On my penultimate post (which concerns the heinous replica "Apartheid Wall" outside St James's Church, Piccadilly, which according to a church steward cost 30,000 quid !!!; they must hate Jews, mustn't they, to deprive the deserving poor of such funds, which came from private donors including the sponsoring charities!), a Christian reader, Colin, has left the following comment:

"As a Christian this just so disgusts and sickens me!! Are they evil or ignorant, and if ignorant, why dont they have the humility to listen and learn?! Do you know if this church has replied to any of the excellent e-mails etc sent to them? Profoundly, profoundly disgusted."

One of the many condemnations of the church's behaviour (in collusion with Interpal and other Israel-demonising bodies) comes in the form of an Open Letter from a distinguished British scholar, Professor Denis MacEoin, editor of the Middle East Quarterly, proving his doughty pro-Israel credentials yet again:

"....Throughout the Middle East, Christians are dwindling rapidly in numbers, mainly because extremist Islamic groups drive them out. Israel is the only country in the region where Christian numbers have been growing steadily since 1948. It goes without saying that Israel is the only country across the Islamic world where Jews can live safely, after almost a million were killed or driven out of Arab lands in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Those few Jews who live in Iran live on a knife-edge.

 ... [Y]our church has constructed a mendacious wall on its premises in order to make an ignominious political point, something I would not have believed your church capable of.

It is mendacious because it pretends the entire separation is a wall, when the wall covers about 1%. It is mendacious because it does not mention the 30 or so security walls and fences that have been built by other countries, many much longer than Israel’s.

It is mendacious because it carries no message to explain why it is there, when it is explicitly there to deter violent attacks from the West Bank into Israel.

 It is mendacious because it carries no statement alerting onlookers to the fact that the barrier has already saved thousands of lives.

 Or does saving lives really not matter to Christians. Or are Jewish lives not as important as the lives of suicide bombers and other terrorists? If you seek fairness ­ and I suspect you do in a muddled way ­why did you not contact the Israeli embassy, who could have loaned you something apposite: a bus, on board which passengers died when a suicide bomber detonated himself?

 From the moment Israel was established, the Palestinians and their neighbours tried again and again to fight wars and to inflict wounds on Israeli civilians. The Palestinians were offered a state of their own but rejected it and turned to 65 years of violence. Why is this not made clear?

 Sadly, large numbers of people on the far political left, aided and abetted by a surprising and disappointing force of Christians, have become fiercely one-sided. I have attended a Christian conference where much of the discourse verged on anti-Semitism. These people will not engage in open debate, they stamp their feet and shout, to drown out pro-Israel speakers, they lumber into a controversy about which they know little or nothing.... [My emphasis]

 In an age when anti-Semitism is growing daily, when Jews are fleeing European countries, when calls to exterminate the Jews are easily found on the Internet, what on earth are you thinking, to dice so freely with the very forces you might otherwise despise. Why do terrorists win your sympathy more readily than Jewish children murdered in their beds? The Palestinians still freely quote the words of the 1967 Khartoum Declaration, ‘No peace with Israel, no negotiations with Israel, no recognition of Israel (as a Jewish state)’. Doesn’t that tell you how hard it has been for Israel to make a peace agreement? Why don’t you publicize that? It is Palestinian refusal that has blocked peace, not Israeli aggression. Why don’t you say so? Surely you believe in the truth and the virtue of speaking the truth. Why should well-meaning Christians let themselves be guided by hardline communists and anti-Semites? It seems altogether confused to me...."

Professor MacEoin notes:

"An Anglican priest, Stephen Sizer, who was responsible for your wall, is a fanatic whom all Jews I know consider to be an anti-Semite, bringing back to modern churches a theology that we thought had been discarded. Supercessionism is just another way of saying that Christians are superior to Jews, that Jews have denied God and are destined to go to Hell. It is not a pleasant doctrine, and it shocks me that you make room for it." [My emphasis]

Colin, in his comment quoted above, asked me:

"Do you know if this church has replied to any of the excellent e-mails etc sent to them?" 

At the time of writing I do not.

But I do know (hat tip: reader P) that Stephen Sizer has been receiving emails from people linking to articles supportive of Israel.

And does he reply to them?  I've no idea, but from what reader P has sent to me it doesn't seem like it.

For what has this man of the cloth, Stephen Sizer, done with emails received from "Zionists"?

He's posted them to his Facebook page like badges of honour, where they can be read by followers who express sentiments such as this:

This:

 And, as we saw earlier, this:

Here are screenshots of what two of these "Zionists" linked to; the emailers are, respectively, a man and a woman.

 

On Facebook, Stephen Sizer has also posted the email addresses of the people who've thus contacted him.

Surely he has not done so without the permission of the "Zionists" concerned?

Surely he does not hope his followers will contact those "Zionists", to harass them a bit?

Ah, but Stephen Sizer is an ordained minister of the Church of England.

And that wouldn't be Christian behaviour, would it?

After all, Jesus told his followers to "turn the other cheek".