Father, Dear Father! The cleric and the convict ...

Yes, Virginia, there is an antipodean version of the Reverend Stephen Sizer.  His name's Dave Smith and he's widely known as "Father Dave".

 Unlike the vicar of Virginia Water, whose hobby (apart from denigrating Israel) is, I understand, of the aesthetic kind  –  if 'm not mistaken he's a keen and rather impressive photographer; indeed, I'm led to believe that his body of work includes a fetching shot of a donkey dubbed "Daphne" as well as one of a Portsmouth pub called "The Ship Anson" –  the clerical incumbent of Holy Trinity Church in Sydney's Dulwich Hill is a boxing and martial arts enthusiast.

What these two Anglican men of the cloth have in common besides their creed and calling is a fanatical attachment to the Palestinian cause that is correspondingly anti-Israel and which seems , in its furtherance, inclined to urge common cause between Christians and Muslims with little or no regard for the outlook of that great majority of Jews who are Zionists. These two clergymen are also bloggers, each with their own eponymous dot com (Sizer) and dot org (Father Dave) addresses.

Neither seems to care one iota for the United States' polity, although to the best of my knowledge Father Dave has never appeared on Iran's propaganda channel Press TV to air his views.

Whereas the Reverend Sizer delivers his not dissimilar anti-American, anti-Israel remarks in soft soothing tones, the less polished, more pugilistic Father Dave is apt to turn up the Strine full throttle; as evidenced below in a sermon given by him last month that is a full-on political rant.

Hard on the ear and even harder on the intelligence, it does nevertheless evoke appreciative noises from the audience congregation.  It drives home the message to the assembled faithful that the perpetrators of the 9/11 atrocity and the Bali bombings did what they did because the United States and Australia, respectively, support Israel and are thus complicit in the "Palestinian Occupation" (around 3:00 and 4:08 respectively).  Presumably the audience congregation is accordingly indoctrinated, though one suspects most if not all of its members were indoctrinated already.

Father Dave has his adoring public: admired for his worthy work with underprivileged urban youth, he's been a nominee for the Australian of the Year award; he's occasionally on the ABC; and he goes down a treat with the BDS crowd of Marrickville and beyond. (And why wouldn't he, with demagoguery such as this?)

Dedicated Sizer-watcher Reader P has drawn my attention to a photograph that he explains is of Father Dave on 29 November, the so-called "International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People".  Attributed by Reader P to Mr Peter Boyle, a New South Wales leftwing activist, the photo shows Father Dave, keffiyeh draped over surplice (or do I mean "cassock"?) avowing support for a lady named Rasmea Odeh.

photo credit: Peter Boyle

That is the Rasmea (or Rasmieh) Odeh known in Israel as a convicted terrorist bomber (sentenced to life imprisonment for her crimes but released in 1979, during a prisoner exchange with the PFLP) who early last month was found guilty of naturalisation fraud by a federal court the United States, where she had become became Associate Director of the Arab American Action Network. 

(Details of the case here)

As described by the niece of one of her victims, both of whom were students at the Hebrew University:

"On Friday, February 21st 1969, my father’s brother, Edward Joffe, and his best friend, Leon Kanner, went to the supermarket Supersol at the intersection of Agron and Hamelech George in Jerusalem, to make some purchases for a botany department excursion in which they were to participate.

As they approached the meat counter, an explosive device, a biscuit can filled with 5 Kgm of dynamite, which had been placed by Rasmieh Odeh and Ayesha Oudeh, was detonated and Eddie and Leon were both instantly killed."

Odeh's relative and accomplice Ayesha Oudeh recalled Odeh's seminal  role in that outrage:

"Rasmea Odeh was more involved than I was [in the grocery store bombing] ... I only got involved during the preparation of explosives. We wanted to place two bombs to blow up consecutively. I suggested to have the second bomb go off five or six minutes after the first bomb so that those who get killed in it would be members of the army and secret service, but it did not explode. They diffused it 20 seconds before it exploded."

To quote that victim's niece again:

'I spent last week attending the Immigration Fraud Trial in Detroit of Rasmieh Odeh. I sat in that courtroom with my father (alone in our row) surrounded by supporters of Odeh. We endured days of hateful looks and the rehashing of a traumatic event that changed my family forever.

While I find a great sense of relief in knowing that a unanimous jury found her guilty in less than two hours, I still remain troubled by her numerous supporters.

As I stated in my piece on Huffington Post,

 “That she has resurfaced after years of hiding her true person and now with hundreds of blind followers and supporters unaware (or worse, who don’t care) of what she did is sheer agony.

That she only served 10 years of her life sentence before being part of a prisoner swap was always painful for us, but that she moved to the US and became Associate Director of the Arab American Action Network, a group which does many things including trying to combat stereotypes of Arabs and is being called an “icon” and “pillar of her community” while hiding her past is awful.”

I want to ask you [Odeh's supporters] this:

 Can you not pick a hero who has not killed two people by placing a bomb in a supermarket (with the intent to kill many more)? One who did not then place another bomb at the British consulate on the same day (said bomb was found and defused). And one who didn’t go back (alone) to the British Consulate again 4 days later placing another bomb which caused structural damage?

Have you seen the documentary, “Women in Struggle”, in which Odeh and her accomplice sit on a couch together years after the bombing and talk in detail about their gruesome acts? That it was their idea to have a second bomb go off 5 minutes after the first to kill the first responders?

That her accomplice, Ayesha, names her as the ringleader and says she drew her into “military work”?  [Emphasis added]

 Questions that can be reasonably directed at Father Dave.